Babysitter of the Daleks, part 3
Chapter 9
Mary Anne
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Dear Dawn,
I wanted to send you a Christmas card to your house in California! Hi Mr. Schafer! Hi Jeff! I feel so silly for doing this since you’re here in Stoneybrook after all, but I didn’t want your other house to go without a Christmas card. I mean, being bicoastal means you should have a Bichristmas too!
See you later,
Mary Anne
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“Tigger!” I shouted. “Tigger, where are you?”
The neighborhood was a mess! Claudia’s house had blown up somehow and Tigger had run off in all of the commotion. Tigger is my kitten who I love very much. He’s so soft and fun to cuddle. Now he was missing and I didn’t know what to do! A tear began to roll down my cheek, followed by another on the other side. I’m really quite sensitive so situations like this aren’t fun for me.
I stopped on the sidewalk and felt like just falling down and sobbing. Though I wiped my cheek on the arm of my orange sweater and sighed. At least I looked nice this evening. I was in my orange sweater with a simple, collared white shirt under it, my plaid skirt, and a pair of tennis shoes with big, slouchy socks. To think I was considering wearing one of my Laura Ashley dresses today. My father used to be very strict about what I could wear, but he’s recently let me dress how I like.
“Tig-” I started, but was cut off.
“You there! Girl in the... orange,” that familiar British voice said.
Looking up, I saw the Doctor. He was running toward me with his hair bouncing and was looking every which way. Why wasn’t he looking at me? I deserved to be looked at as well, but he didn’t seem to care at all that my cat was missing.
“Doctor, are you looking for Tigger?” I asked.
“Tigger? No, not Tigger, her name is Vanessa. One of those Pike children. She’s locked in a closet,” he said as he grabbed my hand and dragged me with him into the Pike house.
We looked around and were met with mostly silence. There were still some people outside talking about the burned down house, but inside was quite nice. It was almost eerie since the Pikes weren’t in the house. Yet here we were, still two sitters at the Pikes! As I looked around, the Doctor looked around the living room before stepping into the hall and tapping on the linen closet. There was a squeak from inside so he promptly opened it. I stayed behind just in case Tigger came out to greet me.
“Locked in a box like a fox! It is not kind and I will give them a piece of my mind!” Vanessa said as the Doctor squatted down to pick her up.
“Look at you! Rhyming, eh? You know, there’s a whole planet that rhymes all the time. Marvelous place,” the Doctor told Vanessa as he walked out with her, and I rolled my eyes. “Now let’s get you back to your siblings.”
We left the house, sneaking by the group that was growing bigger outside. They were all streaming toward the Kishi’s house as the smoke billowed up into the sky. It was almost like when Dawn’s house burned down, but I had a feeling the Kishis would get over this much faster than Dawn did. I was busy watching people so I hadn’t noticed the Doctor had started to walk briskly away. I had to jog to catch up!
“Where are we even going?” I asked him.
“Back to the TARDIS. The Pikes are there. It’s safe. Very safe,” he said before stopping in his tracks. “Unless they touched something.”
I rolled my eyes again. “Telling those boys not to touch something means they’ll touch it for sure!”
We reached the park and I saw a strange, blue box sitting there. It hadn’t been there before, but the Doctor was making a beeline toward it. He yanked the door open and hurried inside so I huffed and hurried after him. Though when we got inside I was not prepared for what I saw.
“Doctor, we didn’t mean to! I told Jordan not to touch anything, but...” Mallory said.
Well, at least I thought it was Mallory. Before me was a gorgeous woman with long, slender legs, a very ample bosom, beautiful slender fingers, and a lovely neck. She even had long, auburn hair that was wavy and went down to the middle of her back. Her clothes were ill fitting- the sweater was too small so the bottom of her stomach showed and her bosoms were pushing it out, while her skirt was too short and barely covered her legs!
“Geronimo,” the Doctor said in a soft voice.
“Mal?” I asked, probably giving her a Look.
The woman nodded and folded her hands in front of her chest, pushing her bosoms together. “Yes?”
We all said Mal would one day be a beauty, but I never expected it to be today! I then looked around at the others and saw they too were all older! The triplets were all rather tall and surprisingly good looking. They were still shoving each other, their clothes having ripped and ridden up in places. Margo and Claire were a bit taller and looked more mature- surely BSC Junior Member material.
“You touched a thingy, didn’t you!” the Doctor said accusingly as he set Vanessa down.
She started to grow as well, getting taller than me by about an inch and started to look older too! They may have all been pretty and looked good, but I wasn’t interested. Finding Tigger was far more important than a bunch of people who had aged in minutes. Besides, Mal was still only a junior member to me.
The Doctor was at the weird, central area of the box we were in. It was somehow bigger on the inside so there was room in the center for such a thing. I just couldn’t understand all this so I began to cry. I tried to wipe my tears away as they came, hoping no one could see me. Byron, or who I assumed was Byron, came over and offered me a scrap from his shirt.
“Here, Mary Anne. I think you need this,” he said softly.
I thanked him just as the Doctor tapped a button and looked at his screen. Then he turned to us all and wagged a finger at the two triplets who were still trying to wrestle each other. This Doctor was about to scold them which we certainly do not do in the BSC!
“You boys did something. You boys pulled one of the thingies or pushed a button that fixed your own timestreams. Which one?” the Doctor said as the boys stopped wrestling.
“We pushed that big, green, glowy one!” said the one who had to be Adam.
“The big, green...” the Doctor said, twirling and dashing for the big computer-thing again.
Mallory walked over and tried to adjust her sweater, but it wasn’t doing much. I looked away as she stood next to me. I focused on the Doctor furiously working while looking into the screen above his head. I heard Mal sigh, but I didn’t bother to look at her.
“Mary Anne, I’m worried. What’s going on? I’m not sure if this is dibble or scary,” Mal said to me.
“Me either,” I said simply.
“Are you mad at me, Mary Anne?” she asked me.
I just folded my arms across my chest and shook my head. “No.”
“Well if you are, I’m sorry for whatever I did,” Mallory said, sighing.
I finally glanced at her, but could only see that she certainly didn’t need that nose job anymore. Then the Doctor stepped forward toward us all, looking hurried. It was distracting me from the fact that I was still flat chested while Mallory could easily fill a bikini.
“We need to go back to that house and find something,” he said to us.
“Find what?” asked Margo, holding her stomach. She was nervous.
The Doctor turned to look at her, “A piece of something. I have a hunch. I believe that thing that blew up at Kristy’s house could be a part of the puzzle that is... this.”
He motioned to the Pikes with an odd look. This was going to be a long night. We had already ruined a meeting so Kristy was probably not very happy. She’d need to watch an I Love Lucy marathon before she felt better.
“They wanted Stacey and all signals I’m picking up are from them. But not them. But then how do you have a them that is not them when we saw that it was them?” the Doctor said as he went to the doors. “Kids, come with me. Though, Mallory?”
“Yes, Doctor?” she asked, quite disgustingly perky.
“Stay here and find some... clothes. Try a closet. Any closet,” he said as he stepped out the door. He popped his head back in. “But not the one in the terrarium.”
With that he popped back out and the rest of us followed. It looked like we were going to go back to Kristy’s and then I had no idea where to after that. I still hadn’t found Tigger.
Chapter 10
Karen
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Hello Ricky!
How are you? I hope you are having a gigundoly amazing time with your aunt and uncle in Florida and that I got the address right so that you get this letter in time for Christmas! Guess what? Exciting things have been happening at the Big House this season! I will tell you all about it when we are back at school. I cannot wait!
From Karen
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I stamped my foot. I was frustrated. Nobody was doing anything right.
“No, Claudia, you can not be Mrs Mysterious, too! I am Mrs Mysterious!” I cried.
“But I love this cloak!” Claudia exclaimed, twirling round, so that the silky purple dressing gown fanned out around her. She was stealing all of my best dressing up things!
“That is my cloak!”
Claudia's big sister, Janine, tapped the pencil she was holding against the desk. “You could take turns wearing the, um, cloak?” she suggested.
I spun round to her. “That is not how it works!” I sighed. I was ready to tear my hair out! She just did not get it! “The person wearing the cloak gets to be Mrs Mysterious, and that is me! There can not be two people being Mrs Mysterious, that would not make sense!”
Janine shrugged. She was obviously not taking the game seriously enough.
I should probably explain the problem. See, Let's All Come In is my very favouritest game in the world! Everybody dresses up, and pretends to be a different person checking into a hotel. I have an incredible imagination, everyone says so, so I am really, really good at inventing characters. My favourite character to play is Mrs Mysterious, a strange, witchy lady, who visits regularly with the Addams family. My daddy is really rich, so when I stay at his mansion with daddy and his wife Elizabeth (who I thought was a mean old stepmother at first, but turned out to be very nice!) and my big sister Kristy (though she is only my half sister really, we like to pretend to be real sisters!) and her brothers, I have a really great collection of dressing up clothes! It's perfect for playing Let's All Come In!
But now Claudia was not only stealing the best clothes, but all my best character ideas as well. She was never my favourite babysitter. I like it best when Kristy sits for me. She was not at home today, though. I did not really need a babysitter, because there were lots of grown-ups in the house. (Daddy and Elizabeth were both home, and Claudia's parents were staying with us, because their house blew up. Nannie was out bowling.) My brother Andrew would not play with me tonight, because David Michael wanted to test out his science project on someone, and Andrew had volunteered. Charlie and Sam were out, and anyway they are too old to play. So was Janine, really, but she did not seem to have anything better to do.
Janine is very, very clever, but she does not have many friends, and none who will play games as fun as Let's All Come In with her! She did not have many good ideas for characters, though, so I made her be the Bell Captain. I knew she would not make any spelling mistakes. Spelling things right is very important to me, which is why my softball shirt says “Kristy's Crushers”, with a C- for 'cat'- unlike everyone else on the team.
This was also why I was angry with Claudia- not only was she refusing to play the game properly (she just wanted to put on all the dressing up clothes), but when she did sign in to the hotel as a character, she spelled everything wrong! Janine tried to fix it, but that just made a mess of the Guest Book. I could have screamed!
I was about to explain the rules of the game to Claudia again, when the doorbell rang, followed immediately afterwards by an extremely loud pounding.
“I'll get it!” I shouted. I love getting the door.
Before I could reach it though (the mansion is very big, and it took me a long time to get from the playroom to the front door), someone had already come barging into the house! How rude!
“Hello! Hello?!” I heard someone calling. It was the man with the funny accent, the one who called himself 'Doctor'. I liked him. He knew how to play dress-up!
“Doctor!” I shouted, throwing myself at him as I rounded the corner of the hall. Maybe he could replace Claudia as a guest, and Claudia could be Bellhop! That would definitely improve the game!
“Oooft! “ the Doctor grunted, as I hit him around the middle. If I cling to people, they are more likely to play with me. I have learned this.
“You're Karen, aren't you?” the Doctor said, prising my arms from around his waist. “Where's everybody else, then?”
“I am here!” I informed him. “We are playing 'Let's All Come In'. It is my favourite game.”
“You mean 'Let Us All Come In'?” the Doctor asked, looking down at me keenly.
I was confused. “No, the game is called 'Let's All Come In'. Do you want to see my daddy? Or Elizabeth? Kristy is not here right now.”
“I know. I'm sorry.” The Doctor looked down at me earnestly. “Claudia, you say? I could do with speaking to her. I also need to see the room that I... babysat in... last time I was here.”
I nodded. We had been in the playroom last time this strange man had babysat for us. “Come on! You can take Claudia's place in Let's All Come In!” I grabbed the Doctor's hand and led him towards the playroom.
“As long as you are not Mrs Mysterious!” I said. “Claudia wants to be Mrs Mysterious, but that is my character. Maybe you could explain the rules to her? She will not listen to me.”
“How could anyone not listen to you?” the Doctor glanced down at me. I could not tell whether he was making fun of me.
“Oh! Doctor!” Claudia cried as I led the Doctor into the playroom. “Do you like my kimono?”
The Doctor appraised Claudia. “Well, it isn't really a kimono, is it? It's just a sort of... dressing gown... with a house coat wrapped around it.” Claudia stared at him. “It's lovely! No! Really, absolutely lovely!” he stuttered, waving his arms towards Claudia. “On anyone else it would look ridiculous, but on you, it... it... well, frankly, it still looks ridiculous.. BUT... lovely. I mean, I've seen worse. Right. Well. Anyway. I was looking for the, uh, robot, thingy...”
The Doctor turned towards me. “Do you remember? Last time I was here? There was a boy... who turned out to be... a... robot..” He coughed. “Well, something like that. He exploded. Do you remember?”
Of course I remembered. It had only been a few days ago!
“Yes, we swept up the pieces over there.” I pointed to the corner where the strange bits of wire and chunks of metal had been piled up.
“Ah!” the Doctor said, swooping over to the corner. “Now I know what I'm looking for, I can analyse the compound and determine the point of origin, and, possibly, even the generation and spawn site of the entity!”
The Doctor was using a lot of words that I did not understand now, even though I have a great vocabulary. This man the Doctor must have been very clever indeed! Cleverer than Kristy's brother Charlie, who is in high school! I noticed Janine squinting at him over her glasses from behind her Receptionist desk.
“Do you mean to say...” She pushed her glasses up her nose, looking the Doctor in the eyes. “That the visitor to this house... and my house... was in fact an extraterrestrial biological entity?”
The Doctor rounded on Janine. “Yes! Yes! Do you know? ..No, you can't possibly know... Do you know?”
“Hey!” I shouted. “I thought you were going to play 'Let's All Come In' with me!”
The Doctor was being a very bad babysitter. It was as though he was ignoring me!
“Doctor!” I shouted.
“Sorry, love,” he looked round towards me. “Claudia here will play with you. I need to do some work. To, you know, save the rest of your life.”
He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Okay, okay... Something here, a time bubble, a time... a linear feedback shift register, looping over and over again, perhaps at some preset condition, perhaps the feedback loop is random? Perhaps I need to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow...”
The Doctor trailed off.
Claudia and I stared at him.
“Wait.” Janine was speaking! “If that is indeed the case, then reversing the polarity of the neutron flow would be ineffective. You would need to break the feedback cycle itself. Have you any idea what the periodicity of the sequence may be?”
The Doctor stared at Janine.
I pouted. No one seemed like they would play with me. “Claaaaud!” I cried. “Can I have my robe back!?”
“You're right,” the Doctor said, slowly. “The Pike children broke their own time loop while inside my TARDIS... Perhaps, if I could extend the field across the entire affected area... But I need to know what kind of tech is responsible before I can counteract the effect!”
“Alright,” Janine nodded. “We need more data.”
“More data is gooder data!” the Doctor cried, scooping a handful of the debris that used to be Carver into his pocket. “Also...” he winked at Janine mischievously (she blushed) “I have this.”
I stared. He was holding up what looked like one of Stacey's insulin syringes. Janine gasped, her hands clenched at her neck.
I sighed. Clearly no one was going to play with me. I slunk out of the room, to see what my little brother Andrew was up to...
Chapter 11
Claudia
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Dere Ant Peeches,
I hoep yoo hev a gud crismis. Wee hed a gud crisamus heer. Are noo siter helpt Juhneen in the kichen wile I sat for the Brwr Kids. dgherthoifassdgdh. GEEEEhfiiudnbir. Sigthgyba fgu theawrg, ds thgewuxex. Aju!
Luv,
Caludia
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I put back the kimono... on second thought, it didn’t really match my outfit. (I was wearing the same outfit I’d been wearing hours ago when my house blew up: an oversized men’s shirt dyed pink, open over a lime green tank top, with lime green and pink polka-dot leggings and a pair of lime green overalls that were held up by a bungee cord belt. I had pink high-top sneakers with lime green shoelaces, and my hair was pulled into a side ponytail with a barrette shaped like a pink lime! This outfit was taking my mind off the destruction of my house and all my property, not to mention the fact that my friend was missing. It’s hard to think of anything when you’re surrounded by bright colors. (At least, it is for me.))
Gurgle my stomach growled... it had been all of half an hour since my last snack. I was glad we’d ended up staying at the Brewer house instead of the Spier-Schafers’, because there was a chance of getting some decent food here! Mal had told me that rich people ate Oreos with Coke. That sounded just right... maybe with chocolate or caramel sauce over the cookies. Or both! And maybe some Fritos for dessert! Mmm! I grabbed my sketchbook in case I wanted to draw my snack before I ate it, but it felt like I wouldn’t have enough time. I was seriously hungry!
As I came towards the kitchen, I could hear Janine and the Doctor speaking some strange language to each other.
“Just as I thought,” the Doctor was saying. “This is nothing like ordinary Dalek tech.”
“It looks as though the mechanism was inexpertly constructed from salvaged materials,” said Janine. “But it must have been constructed by someone familiar with the underlying technology. What does it mean, Doctor?”
“Familiar with the underlying technology...” the Doctor said softly. “Familiar with the underlying technology...”
I opened the door.
There must have been a hundred pots and pans on the stove, each filled with a different colored liquid! And all the chairs were piled up in one corner with an electric oscillating fan perched on top. The fan was oscillating twice as fast as I’d ever seen a fan like that move, but the blades were spinning very slowly, and someone had duct taped a metal spatula to the end of each blade. The Doctor and Janine weren’t interested in the stove anymore, though. They were standing on top of the counter, holding up a tiny piece of machinery under the bright kitchen ceiling light. Janine was squinting at it through her magnifying glass with her glasses propped on her head. (Why she doesn’t just get contacts has always been a mystery to me! She’d look so much nicer with contacts.)
The Doctor was tracing numbers in the air with one finger as if he were solving a math problem in his head. This didn’t make sense to me, but then math never did.
“That’s IT!” the Doctor jumped up so quickly he almost hit his head on the ceiling. “But I’m going to need to analyze a piece of the creature itself. Janine, how fast can we get back to your old house?”
“We could borrow Mr. Brewer’s conveyance if you liked,” Janine said.
I shut the door. Clearly I wouldn’t be getting a snack from that kitchen! Besides, their talk was giving me a headache.
The doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it!” I shouted to nobody. Then I sprinted up the hall as fast as I could.
Karen was already at the door when I got to the foyer. (‘Foyer’ is a word I learned in school the other day. It means “front room where the door is.” I failed a spelling test because I spelled it ‘folghguywxyz.” I still don’t get why that’s wrong.) I couldn’t tell who she was talking to at first-- there were no people at the door; only a big metal wastebasket with polka-dots down the side and a salad bowl for a head. It looked like a cool modern sculpture. I wanted to sketch it!
“No,” said Karen. “This is not Stacey’s house! I do not know where Stacey lives but it is somewhere on Bradford Court! Stacey is not my favorite babysitter; that is Kristy! Kristy is only my half sister because I am a two-two and--”
“this social interaction will cease!” said the wastebasket. At first I couldn’t believe that a wastebasket was talking, but then I realized it must be-- the little red lights on the sides of the salad bowl lit up whenever it did. I had a pair of earrings like that once. “i seek the one you call sta-cey! You will lead me to the one you call sta-cey! Obey! obey!”
“How do you talk like that with no mouth?” Karen asked. “Do you talk out of your ears? Are those gigundoly small blinky things supposed to be your ears?”
The wastebasket pointed at her with an arm that looked like an eggbeater. “exterminate!” it shouted.
Then the salad bowl part of it blew up. At least, that’s what I thought had happened! Then I realized it didn’t blow up, it was shot off. I figured that out when I saw someone standing outside Watson’s front door with an enormous gun.
The woman holding the gun looked oddly familiar. She had wavy red hair teased into a ridiculous mop, much curlier than Stacey’s. She was wearing one of the most distant outfits I’d ever seen: an oversized blue sweatshirt with pink sequins all over it, over blue and pink paisley leggings and pink sneakers with an enormous pair of pushdown socks! They covered her sneakers and flopped onto the snowy sidewalk. She also had at least six pairs of clip-on earrings dangling from her ears. And like I said, she was holding a black gun almost as big as her whole torso.
She squinted at me. Maybe she needed to be wearing glasses. “Claudia?”
“Mallory?” I asked. (It sounded like Mallory.) “I didn’t recognize you! Did you get your braces off?”
The woman I thought might be Mallory ran her tongue over her perfectly straight white teeth. She jumped and cried out, happily, “Dibbley! Yes! I hadn’t noticed yet. Can I have something to eat?”
“I was just going to get a snack,” I said. “But I think I lost my appetite.”
This was turning out to be the strangest Christmas ever.
Chapter 12
Jessi
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Dear Mme Noelle,
Merry Christmas! Do they celebrate Christmas in France? I think they do.
I hope all is well with you. I know you’re going to be doing The Nutcracker again this year but I’m not in the right age group for it I’m afraid. I would have done well in any role! Maybe next year? Think about it. I’m in the middle of something VERY exciting anyway. This man called the Doctor is whisking us all over the place and Mal can drive! (Not very well though.)
Yours,
Jessi
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I jétéd onto the porch of the Brewer mansion since there was no excuse not to be practicing my ballet. Dance students never pause in their training and at this moment of craziness I could still feel the music in me and I needed to dance. Though I’m sure many people would stare at me because of my dancing and because this was a very rich neighborhood where I was still unsure if they had ever seen a black person before.
The Pikes were all in a car that Mallory drove over. We had found it on the street with the keys in it after the driver abandoned it in the chaos after the explosion. I told her it wasn’t a nice thing to do and that in Washington, DC where I lived before, when people stole cars, they were often very bad people. No amount of Looks would punish them and they would have to go to jail. I couldn’t go to jail! I had a recital soon!
“Hello?” I called out to the empty foyer.
A foyer is a type of room that rich people have. It’s small and like a hallway where they can greet guests. Though there was no one here to greet me despite the door being open. First stealing and now sneaking into a house! I was either a criminal or a detective; my vote was on detective.
“Is anyone home?” asked a groggy Margo.
Due to Mal’s crazy driving, Margo had vomited all over herself. She may have gotten older, but she sure didn’t outgrow her problem. Now the over-sized sweater and leggings that she had found in the Doctor’s closet were covered in puke and we had to find a way to clean her up. Though as we walked out of the foyer we still couldn’t find anyone. I could hear voices upstairs, but no one was downstairs so I decided that the adults must have gone out to an estate sale.
I took Margo into the kitchen so we could clean her up, but when we got there all we could see were pots and pans everywhere as well as big hunks of metal strewn all over the table. My mouth fell open in shock! I was hoping that Kristy and Mal weren’t doing drugs. (I spend a lot of time in New York and people there do lots of drugs.) I’ve never done drugs because they’re bad and I’d never be able to babysit ever again if I did!
“What happened in here?” asked Margo, looking around the mess room as pots bubbled and pans simmered.
Thump, thump, thump. The sound of footsteps came from the stairs and down the hall toward the kitchen. Margo and I turned to see who it was and saw Mallory and Kristy come in. Mallory had that weird gun slung over her shoulder. I wasn’t fond of the gun because I saw them so often in New York on many bad people. Though I knew I could trust Mallory even if she did mature before I did!
“Oh, it’s just you. Sorry, I was going to come back for you, but something went wrong,” Mallory said, twirling a curly lock around her finger.
“Well now look at this mess! I’m gonna be so grounded thanks to you guys,” Kristy groaned, throwing up her hands. “Who’s gonna run the club if I get grounded?”
Before I could answer, our vice president Claudia came into the room looking confused. Though she often looks confused so it was difficult to see if anything was wrong. She sat down at the table and picked up one of the pieces of metal. She stared at it and then started to try to nibble on it. Margo retched and almost threw up again so I rushed her to the sink.
“Claudia, what are you doing?” I could hear Kristy ask.
“I thought it was chocolate. It looks like chocolate,” she replied as I held Margo’s hair.
Mallory came over to rub Margo’s back to help soothe her. Mal was a great babysitter and now I really wanted to become just like her when I grew up. Maybe I could ask the Doctor to do whatever plastic surgery he did to the Pikes on me. Though Aunt Cecilia would probably just get mad at me since she’s no fun.
“Did you see which way they went?” Mallory asked.
I wondered who she meant, but Claudia spoke up. “Down the street. It looked like they were going to Eve’s house.”
We all looked at each other rather puzzled.
“Eve?” Kristy asked, giving Claudia a Look.
“Huh? I mean Dawn. Wait, is that her name?” Claudia said as she started to play with her hair barrette. “How did you get here, Mal?”
Mal and I looked at each other now. I decided to tell the story since Mal had already had the chance. “We found a car and since Mal is sixteen now, she can drive! Well, we thought she could. She did a lot of speeding and then ran the car into a mailbox down the street.”
“That’s when Margo threw up,” Mal sighed. “Then we came here to see the Doctor, but we ran into that... thing.”
Margo finished throwing up into the sink and we helped to clean her up. Then we heard someone else enter the kitchen and jumped when we heard her speak.
“I am hungry! I want a snack!” yelled Karen as she came up to the table.
Kristy sighed and went to the refrigerator to look for one. Karen sat at the table and started to poke at all the pieces of metal and some of the spilled goo. I decided to take Margo to go change her clothes since it was my job as babysitter. As we walked by, Karen let out a shriek.
“Who is that! She looks like Margo Pike but she is old like Kristy! I am sorry, but that means that she cannot be Margo!” Karen yelled.
“It is Margo, Karen. She just grew up due to some special circumstances,” I explained.
“What are special circumstances?” Karen asked as I tried to get away.
Kristy set a plate with some crackers on it down in front of Karen. She started to eat them as she kicked her legs in her chair and stared at us. Crunch, crunch she went as she ate them and we all tried to think up a way to explain it to her. I felt Margo jerk under my arm which meant she had to puke again. She was probably too nervous to answer Karen.
“Look, Karen, we don’t have time to explain this to you. We have a mystery to solve and we need to go find the Doctor and Janine,” Kristy told her as I hurried Margo to a bathroom.
I let Margo handle herself as she took a shower. Now she was too old for me to help bathe but I didn’t know if I could just leave her there on her own. The duty of a babysitter was to care for a child at all times! I decided that if she was this old, she didn’t need my help and I was better off helping everyone else with this mystery.
“If they went to Dawn’s then it must be something to do with the secret passage!” Kristy said, pounding her fist into her open palm.
“Maybe, but,” Mal started, but was interrupted.
“I want to help solve the mystery! Ms. Coleman read us a mystery story the other day and I know that I can do it!” Karen said as she finished her crackers.
I realized that I was feeling kind of hungry as well. I hadn’t really gotten a chance to eat at the diner. There are a lot of girls who get eating disorders when they do ballet but I was not one of those girls. I had met one once, but I eat sensibly and know that not to is wrong. I also don’t want to be discriminated against even more!
As everyone tried to convince Karen that she was too young to help us with our detective work, I opened the fridge. Inside was the usual food, but on one of the shelves was a vial that looked very familiar. I picked it up and examined it a bit, seeing that it had a prescription sticker on the side. Though the sticker didn’t look quite right. I had seen many of the labels on Aunt Cecilia’s medicines before and they were all very professional, but this one looked like it was done by hand!
“What’s up, Jessi?” asked Mal behind me.
I held up the vial. “This is Stacey’s insulin but it doesn’t look right.”
Kristy took it from from me. “I’ll be the judge of that!”
She looked at it, then shook it, then looked at it again. (Kristy was a very peculiar girl after all.) Then she started to peel the sticker off to get a better look at it.
“She’s right! It’s handwritten and it’s not really from Stoneybrook Pharmacy!” she said, showing it to Mal.
Mal took the sticker and then looked back in the fridge, seeing a slip of paper where the vial had been. Her beautiful eyes quickly scanned over it and then she looked at Kristy.
“I’m going to Stacey’s. You all can come or you can go to Dawn’s, but we have to go now!” Mal said.
We all looked at each other as we tried to decide. This sure was one crazy Christmas!
Chapter 13
Stacey
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Dear Laine,
Happy Christmas! How is New York without me? I suppose Bloomingdale’s probably feels empty! I can’t wait to be back. Just a heads up, there’s a bit of an emergency situation in Stoneybrook at the moment, so I might not be able to make it back in time for us to hit the end-of-season sales together as usual this year. Hopefully it won’t come to that! Save a fitting room for me!
Love, Stace
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I frowned, and started counting again. “One, two...” I whispered to myself. I was sure I had had twelve vials of insulin yesterday. Now I could only count eleven. Everyone else had been acting stupid for a while now; I hoped it wasn't starting to affect me as well. Especially now that the Doctor was here... I didn't want to show myself up in front of him!
I shrugged and shut the drawer containing my medicine. One misplaced vial: it probably wasn't important.
I left my room and started downstairs to the kitchen, to make myself a snack of wheat toast.
As I was assmbling bread and hummus onto a plate together, there was a pounding at the door. I sighed. Because of my diabetes, I need to eat according to a strictly regulated schedule, and if this interruption took longer than twenty minutes, I could be in danger of my life! Sometimes people around me don't seem to appreciate how serious my condition really is.
Before I could even make it to the hallway, however, the person causing the racket at my front door came bursting into the house. I drew my breath at the cheek of it! Even if it was just one of my friends (and they were the only people I could imagine being forward enough to do so), it was still an invasion of privacy. I would never have any of my friends burst unannounced into my apartment in New York City! The doorman would stop them before they even got into the building, for a start. If only my house in Stoneybrook could have a doorman...
"Stacey! Stacey! I have to talk to you!" I heard.
"I'm coming!" I called back. I didn't recognise the voice.
The mass of curly red hair that came bouncing towards me, though, was unmistakable. "Mal?" I frowned. She looked... different. Jessi came bounding in after Mallory.
"Mal, I still don't understand!" she was saying. She sounded confused. Oh no, I thought. What had I missed?
"What's happened to you?" I directed at Mallory. It was as though she'd gained a good four years in age overnight! She was missing her glasses, and- was I seeing correctly?- her braces were gone, too!
And her clothes were just odd.
“Never mind what's happened to me, it's you we're here to talk about!” Mallory said.
I looked at her dubiously. She kept reaching up to her face to try and push her glasses up, and, not finding them, settling for fingering the end of her nose. It made her look slightly less than perfectly sane.
“Me? What have I done?” I asked. “Was I meant to be at a sitting job or something? Did someone reschedule and not tell me?” I love the Babysitters’ Club and being a member of it, and I understand that we all need to be completely responsible when parents trust us with their kids. I would never knowingly miss a sitting job.
“It's much worse than that and you know it!” Mallory said, triumphantly.
“Worse than missing a job?” gasped Jessi. She clearly had no idea what her best friend was talking about.
Mallory rounded on her. “Yes! I told you! She's been lying to us all along!”
I sighed. “Jessi, what's been going on? Maybe you can talk some sense. Mal's clearly lost it.” I knew I should take Mallory's rants more seriously (we've been involved in solving a lot of mysteries in the BSC, and in many cases, I'm sure one of us has sounded strange telling everyone else about what they had experienced!), but Mallory needed to calm down and speak more coherently before I would be able to understand what she was talking about. Besides, it seemed that I was the focus of this mystery! How strange to think that any of my friends would want to investigate anything that I might be doing!
Jessi looked doubtful. “Well, Mal grew up...”
“I see that,” I said. That was much more of a mystery than anything Mallory might think about me. “How?”
“The Doctor's TARDIS restored us all to our proper ages!” Mallory cried, spinning round in apparent delight. I had to admit, from what I could make out under her bulky sweater, she would have had no trouble filling out my yellow bikini. Truth be told, I was a little jealous. If she were to sort out her hair and outfit, she could be a proper knock-out...
I tore my mind back to the conversation. “The Doctor's what...?”
“TARDIS! It's bigger on the inside!” Mallory exclaimed.
I turned to Jessi, baffled. What was going on?
“I think it's a sort of European car,” she shrugged.
“Oh! Like a Lunar Body!” I nodded. The Doctor had a lot of very sophisticated modes of transport.
“No!” cried Mallory. “It's not a car! It's a spaceship!”
“Okay!” I held up my hand to stop her. “This is getting ridiculous. Have you been reading science fiction?” (Sometimes, when Mal and Jessi had read a lot of horse stories, they would get overexcited and pretend to be horses. Maybe this was more of the same. That, or something seriously strange was going on.)
Mal went to push her non-existent glasses up her nose again. She took a deep breath, and appeared to take a few moments to calm herself.
“Stacey,” she said, seriously. “I know about you. The Doctor left a note, and I know you've been lying to us.”
“Lying?” I frowned. “Lying about what?” I honestly didn't know what Mal might be referring to.
“About your diabetes!” Mallory burst out, finally seeming to get to the bottom of what had been bothering her.
My mouth dropped open. I was glad none of my older, more mature friends were there to see me! I'm sure it must have looked as though my jaw was about the hit the floor! So un-dibble!
“What..?” I managed to gasp out, “What are you talking about? How can you say that to me, after everything you know about how difficult it's been for me, dealing with my illness?”
Mallory looked ready with a come-back, but stopped herself as my mom walked into the room. She'd been upstairs, probably reading fashion magazines in her bedroom. She's a buyer for Bellair's department store, and is, like me, very fashion-conscious. She needs to keep up with the current trends to know where to order clothes from for the shop, and what's hot in the big cities, like New York.
"What's all this noise?" my mom asked, smiling at me.
I sighed, partly glad for the interruption, and partly worried that she'd overheard Mallory's outburst. I didn't want to worry my mom. She's far too protective of me sometimes. I think she worries about leaving me on my own at home so much, while she works full-time.
But she's learning that I'm far more responsible than she gives me credit for. I'm fine to manage on my own more than a small amount of time, and very mature for my age.
"Sorry, mom. Jessi and, um, Mal's older cousin are just excited about the Papadakis family's friend, who's visiting from Europe.” I didn't think my mom needed to hear about Mallory's spontaneous ageing. That would raise more questions than I was willing to deal with, no matter how mature I am. Some things, it's just better not to get your parents involved in.
Jessi seemed to understand this, and kept quiet, waving and smiling at my mother just like she normally would.
Mal, however, threw up her arms. “I'm Mallory!” she cried.
“Yes!” I said, quickly. “Mallory's cousin is also called 'Mallory'!” I grinned desperately at my mom. “Isn't that funny!”
Jessi, much smarter and quicker on the uptake than I'd ever given her credit for before (remind me not to make that mistake again!) grabbed her best friend's elbow and tugged sharply, giving her a glare as though saying, Keep quiet!
My mom smiled, luckily seeming none the wiser for all the confusion around her. “Well, it's lovely to meet you... Mallory!” She laughed. “I'm sorry, I can't stay and get to know you better, but I have an important meeting that I simply must dash off for!”
My mom likes to keep busy with her work. Sometimes, I wish she would allow herself to slow down a little and relax, but, having lived in Manhattan, I suppose she just prefers it this way! We still spend more than enough time together, and are very close, all things considered.
This time, though, I'll admit I was glad that she was going out. She didn't need to be involved in the conversation that I had found myself caught in. Talk about awkward!
I kissed my mom on the cheek. “Have a great day!” I told her. “Love the purse!” I smiled, and gave an approving nod at the black, patent leather bag she was clutching to her. It perfectly matched her shoes. My impeccable fashion sense is something I have my mother to thank for!
She gave one last nod to Jessi and Mal, before sweeping out of the door.
I waited for a moment before drawing in a breath and turning back to my friends. I blinked, slowly, steeling myself for the exchange that was now going to continue.
“Why did you lie about me!?” Mallory blurted out as soon as I met her eyes again.
Jessi answered for me. “Because it would just be too much to explain!” she murmured. “I mean, even I don't understand what happened! How could we tell Stacey's mom? She would think we had all gone crazy!” Suddenly, Jessi was giggling. “I'm not sure that we haven't, to be honest! Look at you!”
Mallory glanced down at herself, and grinned. “I know. I can still barely believe it myself!” she said, happily.
Carefully, I took a half-step back. (I had some half-formed notion that I could maybe just run away from all this, while Mal and Jessi were distracted. Oh, if only...!)
Mallory's head snapped up when she saw me move. “Stacey!” she said, suddenly all business again. “You have some explaining to do.”
“About what?” I asked. I was feeling uneasy, but tried to project confidence. Whatever was going on, it could probably still be fixed. As long as I kept my cool...
“Your medicine,” Mallory said, her face now stony, and her eyes squinting sharply at me. “It's not insulin. It's nothing but fish paste!”
“It's what?” I gasped. This was clearly worse than I had first thought.
“The Doctor and Janine tested it! They left a note!” Mallory was walking closer to me as she spoke, appearing to gain in confidence. Involuntarily, I took a step back. Sixteen-year-old Mallory was a shade taller than me, and the giant red puff that was her hair was intimidating. I swallowed.
“If you've been lying to us about your insulin injections, what else have you been lying about?” Mallory continued. “The Doctor says there's something wrong in Stoneybrook, something that's keeping us all at the same age, repeating the same year of our lives over and over again! ...And he says it all started when you arrived!”
I drew in a shuddering breath, and looked at Jessi, hoping for some support. She just looked back at me helplessly. I knew then that I couldn't count on any of my friends any more. They either had no idea what was going on, like Jessi... Or had turned against me, like Mallory, who was now standing right in front of me, almost as though she wanted to press her nose against mine as she accused me of things that she had no knowledge of.
So, I thought, this is it.
“Mal...” I started, “Let me explain.”
Suddenly, Mallory's eyes seemed to fill with a fierce glow.
“There's no explanation!” she screamed. “There is nothing that you can say to me that would make up for my having to be eleven years old for five years of my life!!”
Mallory's fists were clenched, her arms rigid by her sides. Her eyes were squeezed shut, angry tears leaking from their corners.
There was nothing for it. My hands shot up, grabbing handfuls of red curls, and I threw my head forwards with all the force I could muster, cracking my forehead against Mallory's while her eyes were still shut tight in her fury. She screamed, and, as she buckled forwards from her waist in pain, I caught her shoulders and threw her body around, my right hand deftly finding the back of her neck. (No simple job, underneath that ridiculous mass of ringlets!)
As I squeezed my fingers together just above the ridge of bone that I knew instinctively to look for, Mallory toppled forwards in a dead faint. I let go of her neck, and jumped out of the way as she sprawled, face down, on the hardwood flooring of my living room. I chanced a quick glance at Jessi (she had her hands clasped over her mouth, immobilised with shock- no danger there!), before spinning around and sprinting for the back door. From my garden, I could jump the fence into the yard next door, and from there straight into the road running perpendicular to mine. And then... I didn't know. But I knew I had to leave, and now.
My time in Stoneybrook was coming to an end.