Claudia's Secret, chapter one
by Piscaria
"Watch out, Claudia!" Jackie Rodowsky screamed, and I slammed on the brakes of my bike just as a blue Buick slid out of the Rodowsky's driveway and into the street, narrowly missing me. Stoneybrook, Connecticut has its share of bad drivers, but from the frightened face staring at me through the car windows, I knew this wasn't one of them.
"Shea!" I screamed, dropping the bike and running after running after the car. "Jackie!"
The car wasn't moving very fast, but with an eleven-year-old driving it, it shouldn't have been moving at all. As I watched, Shea frantically turned the steering wheel, just preventing the car from slamming into the neighbor's mailbox. The car turned towards me again, and I rushed to get out of its way, just as the door to the Rodowski's house swung open and Mrs. Rodowsky dashed out.
"Oh my God!" she cried. "Boys!"
The car finally slid to a stop, and Shea stepped out, looking shaken. Jackie followed from the passenger side, in tears. Mrs. Rodowsky opened her arms, and both of the boys ran to hug her.
"I told you to start the car, not drive it!" she said. "What happened?"
"Jackie pulled the emergency break!" Shea said.
"It was an accident!" Jackie protested.
A lot of accidents happen when Jackie is around.
Mrs. Rodowsky glanced up, and finally noticed me. "Oh, Claudia!" she said. "Thank goodness you're here early. I'm running a little late, and I asked Shea to warm up the car for me. I didn't realize he'd bring Jackie with him."
She sounded shaken, but not too mad. The problem with Jackie is that he never means to cause trouble. He just somehow always does. My friends and I call him the Walking Disaster, but not to his face, of course. Aside from his accidents, Jackie is a really sweet kid. With tears running down his face and his cheeks almost as red as his hair (all of the Rodowskys have flaming red hair), Jackie looked so miserable that I couldn't feel upset about nearly getting hit by a car.
"Claudia," Mrs. Rodowsky said. "Can you bring the boys into the house? I need to get the car back into the driveway."
I nodded, propping my bike against the fence and picking up the kid kit that I'd dropped when trying to get away from the runaway car.
"Come on, boys," I said, "Let's go inside where it's safe." Inside the house, I could see their little brother Archie peering through the front window with a frightened expression.
Jackie and Shea followed me inside, where Archie immediately fell on us with questions.
"What happened?" he asked. "Were you really driving?"
"Kind of," Shea said, looking modest.
I should probably explain that my baby-sitting jobs don't usually start off with this much excitement. These days, I hardly baby-sit at all, even though I still belong to The Baby-sitters Club, which my friend Kristy Thomas thought up. More on that later. I met the Rodowskys through the BSC. In seventh grade, I even sculpted Jackie for a gallery opening! My sculpture won an honorable mention, even though it was just a work in progress.
Art is my favorite hobby. In fact, you could probably say it's my passion. Art is also the reason why I don't babysit very often these days. I'm in a sculpting class on Saturdays; I'm taking a textile design class with my friend Mary Anne every Wednesday after school; and even though I'm only a freshman, I got special permission to take advanced art with the juniors and seniors. Sadly, art is the only subject I'm good at in school. Most of the time, I'm lucky to get Cs in my classes. In fact, my grades are so bad that I need to stay after school for tutor lab twice a week.
Of course, with all of that time spent on school and art, I don't have a whole lot of time left for baby-sitting. I still make exceptions for some of my favorite clients like the Rodowskys, though.
The door opened, and Mrs. Rodowsky stepped inside, still looking frazzled. For the first time, I noticed that she was missing her shoes, and that her silk blouse was mis-buttoned.
"Claudia," she said. "Could you fix the boys a snack while I finish getting ready? There are some cookies in the cupboard over the fridge. I'm running behind because Jackie somehow managed to get my closet door stuck. Now I'll be lucky to make it to my meeting on time."
"Sure," I said, and Mrs. Rodowsky disappeared up the stairs. I turned to look at the Rodowski brothers, who were still clustered around the kitchen table looking worried.
"Do you boys want a snack?" I asked them. They shrugged. "I could probably find some broccoli," I said, trying not to make a face. (I'm not a big fan of health food.) Archie stuck out his tongue, and I laughed.
"Well, what about some brussel sprouts, then?" Jackie pretended to gag. I leaned back against the counter, scratching my head and pretending to think hard.
"Well," I said, "There are always the cookies your mom mentioned . . ."
"Yeah!" Jackie and Archie cried, as I got them down. Shea was too old to get very excited over cookies anymore, but he still sat up and took one when I offered it to him. I poured the boys some milk to go with their cookies, and was just putting the gallon away when Mrs. Rodowsky came back downstairs looking much more presentable.
"Thank you, Claudia," she said. "You're a lifesaver. I'll be meeting my client downtown; I'll probably be home by five o'clock. The office number is on the fridge along with our emergency contacts."
"All right," I said.
"Make sure the boys do their homework, and then they can play. Do you have any questions?"
I shook my head, and Mrs. Rodowsky hurried off to her meeting. I turned back to the boys, who were finishing their snack.
"What type of homework do you guys have?" I asked.
"I need to finish the book we're reading," Shea said. "I should go up to my room to finish it."
"Okay," I said, and he disappeared up the stairs. Jackie had a sheet of math problems to work on, and Archie needed to finish copying down his spelling words. They decided to work downstairs at the kitchen table. I washed their milk glasses while they did their homework, and hoped that neither of them would need any help. I'm not very good at spelling. Or math.
Just as I set the last glass in the strainer, the doorbell rang.
"Were you expecting company?" I asked, drying my hands on a dishtowel. They shook their heads, looking surprised. From upstairs, I could hear Shea coming down to see who it was.
I shrugged, and answered the door. Ashley Wyeth was standing on the front step, wearing a long, pink skirt, a denim jacket, and her usual hiking boots. Her long, dirty-blonde hair was loose for once, and falling around her shoulders in gentle waves. Beneath it, I could barely catch a glimpse of her earrings. She has three holes in each ear!
When Ashley first moved to Stoneybrook, she and I were very close. She's an artist too, but she's a lot more serious about it than I am. She even studied at Keyes Institute in Chicago! For awhile, I spent so much time with Ashley that it even jeopardized my relationships with my other friends in the BSC. Fortunately, in the end I realized that Ashley liked me for my talent, not for me. Now, Ashley and I are sometimes-friends. We talk to each other in our art classes, and she sometimes sits with my friends and me at lunch, but we don't really hang out much outside of school. She lives next door to the Rodowskis, though, and I was guessing that she'd seen all of the excitement that happened earlier.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
I nodded, leaning against the door jamb. "Jackie accidentally pulled the emergency break while the boys were warming up the car for their mom. Everything's okay, though. Shea managed to stop the car in time, and nobody got hurt."
Behind me, the boys were craning to get a look at Ashley. I didn't blame them. As long as she's lived next door to them, she was still an unusual sight. She always wears long skirts and puffy peasant blouses, and her long hair is usually twisted into a braid. Then there are all of her earrings, and her hiking boots. I like the way she dresses (I admire creativity), but I understand why other people can be a bit put off by it. Despite her old-fashioned clothes, Ashley is actually very pretty, in a delicate sort of way. If she were friendlier, I bet lots of boys would have crushes on her. Ashley doesn't care much about anything but art, though.
"I'm glad you're okay," she said.
"Thanks." We glanced at each other, kind of awkwardly, and then looked away again. That's the trouble with sometimes-friends: you don't always know what to say to them.
Finally, she gave me a small, quick smile. "I need to go work on my self-portrait," she said. "I'll see you in class tomorrow." (Like me, Ashley takes advanced art with the juniors and seniors).
"Definitely," I said.
She nodded shortly, and started back towards her own house. I watched her walk away, and then I turned around. Archie was looking after her with wide eyes, and Shea had an expression that I'd seen before, although not on him. He looked both awed and embarrassed. I pressed my lips together to keep from giggling.
It seems at least one boy in Stoneybrook had a crush on Ashley! Too bad he was only a sixth-grader. I wondered what my friends would say when I told them.
"I need to go finish my homework," Shea said shortly, and he started back upstairs.
"Okay," I said, smiling. I was trying to remember my first crush. Had it been on Pete Black or on Trevor Sandbourne? I've had crushes on so many boys that it was hard to remember.
Archie was standing uncertainly near the front door, and I glanced down at him. "Did you finish your homework, Archie-roo?"
He nodded.
"How about your brother?" I asked. "Hey, wait a second -- where is Jackie?" I realized that I hadn't seen him since Ashley first rang the doorbell.
Archie and I glanced at each other with wide eyes, and then rushed back towards the kitchen -- but not in time to prevent a loud crash and the sound of breaking glass. When we got there, Jackie was standing by the kitchen sink, and one of the milk glasses was shattered on the floor.
"I'm sorry!" he said. "I just walked by the strainer, I swear! I just wanted to put my worksheet in my backpack."
"That's okay," I said. Archie was already gathering up the broom and dustpan.
We cleaned up the broken glass, and got the boys' homework put away without any further incident.
"How about a game?" I said. When I sat for the Rodowskys, I normally tried to take the boys outside, away from anything breakable, but today was just a little too cold for it. It was still very early in spring, and even though the snow was gone, the bite of winter was still in the air. I had some board games and puzzles in my kid kit, though, and I didn't think that even Jackie could manage to break them.
The boys shrugged. "Sure," Jackie said. I handed them my kid kit, and told them to pick out whatever they'd like. Then I went upstairs to see how Shea was doing.
When I got there, his bedroom door was shut. That was a bit unusual, but I only shrugged. Shea is starting to get to the age where kids want more privacy. Really, he's almost too old for a babysitter. When my friends Mallory and Jessi were eleven, they were already babysitters themselves.
I knocked on Shea's door. "Shea?" I called, "your brothers and I are going to play a game? Do you want to play too?"
"No thanks," he called back. "I'm still reading my book." His voice sounded a little strange. I wondered if he was still feeling uncomfortable about Ashley. I decided not to question him, though; I'd have been mortified if a babysitter had asked me about a crush.
So I just said, "All right. Let me know if you need anything."
I went back downstairs. Jackie, Archie, and I spent the rest of the afternoon playing Mouse Trap, and fortunately, nothing managed to get broken or lost. Shea stayed upstairs until his mom came home, fifteen minutes after five.
"I'm sorry I'm late," Mrs. Rodowsky said as she stepped inside the door. "The meeting ran longer than I'd expected, and then I got stuck in traffic. How did everything go?"
"Not too bad," I said. I told her about the broken glass, but she only shrugged. Mrs. Rodowski is pretty laid back about those kinds of things. She has to be, living with Jackie.
Mrs. Rodowsky paid me, and I gathered up my kid kit and said goodbye to the boys. Loading my kid kit into the bike basket, I took off towards home. I had my own meeting to go to!