"Yes. I'm proud you're my sister."
"Wow, I - Thanks. . . . Janine?"
"What?"
"How come you don't come to my room and talk to me like this more often?"
"Because you usually tell me to shut up or go away or mind my own business."
"Well, that's because you usually start talking like some big show-off professor. When we were little, we used to have fun. You talked like a kid."
Janine frowned. "Am I talking like a professor now?"
"No. But . . . but you're always telling me all this stuff I don't want to know, like how the fear process works. Who cares?"
"I do. Those things are interesting to me."
"Not to me."
"What is interesting to you?" asked Janine.
"Oh, mysteries and scary stories and babysitting and painting."
Janine nodded. "What happened tonight was exciting."
"Yeah!"
"I'm glad you let me come in and talk."
"Me, too," I said.
"Maybe we could do this more often?" Janine sounded a bit timid.
"Sure. I have a lot of other candy hidden around my room."
Janine smiled. "I'll tell you a secret. I do, too."
"You do?"
"Mm-hmm. It's my vice."
I wasn't sure what a vice was, but I wasn't about to ask. "I didn't know that."
"There are a lot of things you don't know about me."
"Same here."
"Well, let's go tell Mom and Dad what happened."
"Okay."
So we did. Mom and Dad and Mimi were pretty proud, too. After that, Janine gave me one final review for the math test the next day. She didn't seem to bug me as much as usual.
Everything was fine until I got into bed.
Then I thought of two things that made me feel sort of chilly all over. The first was that Trevor hadn't asked me to the dance.
The second was much worse. If Alan had been making the scary calls to Kristy over the past couple of weeks, then who had been making the calls to me? I'd gotten them several different times when I'd been baby-sitting, and the Phantom was still at large. . . . Was it possible, just possible, that he was after me?
No, I decided a few seconds later. It wasn't very likely at all. The Phantom went after jewelry, not people. And especially not people who didn't have any jewelry. How would Nancy Drew think if this were a mystery and she were the sleuth? I wondered. She would analyze the clues. She would review all her information.
Well, I thought, Kristy had received mysterious phone calls. I had received mysterious phone calls. Kristy's caller turned out to be Alan, a boy who secretly liked her. Maybe my caller was a boy, too! After all, Alan had looked in our record book. Maybe he had shown it to someone else.
Who could have a crush on me? Rick Chow? Maybe. Howie? I needed more clues.
I rolled over on my side and fell asleep.
The awful mystery was cleared up the next afternoon on what turned out to be a red-letter day. First, I took the math test. I worked very carefully and was the last kid to turn my test in. I wasn't sure how well I'd done, but I knew I had tried my best, which is not something I can say often.
But, boy, was I surprised when Mr. Peters found me at my locker at the end of the school day and said, "Congratulations, Claudia!"
"On what?" I asked warily.
"I started grading the test papers at lunch today. Yours was on top. I thought you'd like to know that you got an eighty-six."
"Really? An eighty-six? What is that, a B?"
"A 'B' or a B-plus, depending on how the rest of the class does. I can tell you've been working hard. It's really showing. Keep it up."
"I will, oh, I will! Thank you!"
As if that weren't enough excitement, I was baby-sitting for Nina and Eleanor Marshall a couple of hours later when the phone rang. I picked it up nervously.
No one was there.
"Darn," I said, as I replaced the receiver.
"What?" asked Nina.
"Oh, just a - a wrong number." Was it my secret caller? I actually began to hope the phone would ring again!
Immediately, it did. I grabbed up the receiver, "Hello? Who is this? Say something, please!" I waited, and after a moment an unfamiliar male voice said, "Claudia?"
I caught my breath. "Y-yes?"
The voice cleared its throat. "Um, this - this is Trevor. Trevor Sandbourne."
I very nearly fainted. "Nina," I whispered, placing my hand over the mouthpiece, "go get out the Sesame Street puzzles. I'll help you and Eleanor with them in a few minutes." I uncovered the phone as Nina and Eleanor ran off. "Trevor?" I said. I couldn't believe it!
"Yes. You . . . know who I am?"
"Oh, yes. I mean, of course I do. You're the poet. You write for The Literary Voice."
"That's right," he said shyly. "What I was wondering is - I mean, I know this is last-minute, but could you - would you like to go to the Halloween Hop with me?"
This wasn't happening. It couldn't be. In a few minutes, I would wake up and find that the phone call was just part of a very real dream, like Dorothy's trip to Oz.
I pinched myself. It hurt. "I'd like to, Trevor. Thanks."
"You mean you can go?"
"Yes."
"Oh, good. I'll meet you there ... at the dance. Tomorrow at four, okay?"
"Okay. Trevor?" (I had to ask him.) "How did you know where to reach me? This isn't my house."
There was a pause at Trevor's end of the phone. "I sort of found out from Alan Gray."
"Aha."
"I - I know you know about Alan and the baby-sitting book. And, see, every time Alan took it, he'd check to see where Kristy'd be sitting . . . and then he would write down where you'd be sitting and give me the information. He knew I liked you. He caught me writing a poem about us once."
"A poem? About us?"
"Yeah. ..."
"Do you still have it?"
"No," said Trevor sheepishly. "I threw it away. I was so embarrassed. Alan started singing some dumb song about kissing in a tree. Everybody heard him."
"So that's how he found out," I said.
"Yeah. Well, he felt bad about teasing me, since we're friends, so he began looking up your appointments for me. It was just his way of apologizing. ... I guess now I owe you an apology. I'm really sorry, Claudia. Alan told me what happened last night. He didn't want to get me in trouble, so he didn't mention my name in front of the police. But when he got home, he phoned me and said I better straighten things out with you, no matter how sh- how hard it is for me. I'm sorry I've scared you with the phone calls. I really like you. I've been noticing you all year. I was just afraid to talk to you."
"That's all right, Trevor. I'm glad you finally did. I like you, too. I'll see you tomorrow."
I hung up the phone. I was going to go to the Halloween Hop after all! What a day!
"Hey, girls!" I called to Nina and Eleanor. "We're going to celebrate. Get your coats. I'll treat you to ice-cream cones!"
So we celebrated. We celebrated the happiest day of my life.
Chapter 15.
The Halloween Hop was terrific. Kristy and Alan were there, and so were Stacey and Pete. Stacey looked as if she were having fun. Maybe Pete would help her forget about Sam Thomas. Mary Anne didn't go, and seemed quite happy about it.
On Thursday night, the night before the dance, Stacey and Kristy and I ran around to each of our houses as a group, trying on outfits for the others to approve. We had made a unanimous decision not to go in costume. We wanted to look nice. Besides, the boys had said they wouldn't be caught dead in costumes. Stacey and I ended up with baggy jeans and new bulky sweaters. We couldn't talk Kristy out of a plaid jumper and red turtleneck, but the next day, Alan didn't seem to care. When we got to the school gymnasium (after dashing home, changing out of our school clothes and into our dance clothes, then dashing back), Alan met Kristy with a grin on his face that was as big as the ones on Trevor and Pete's faces.
After I hung up my coat, Trevor and I stood at the punch table and laughed about his phone calls and the Jell-O accident. When we ran out of things to talk about, we danced. To be honest, Trevor isn't much of a dancer and neither am I, but we had fun - lots of fun - anyway.
I had a new friend.
On the Monday after halloween, Mr. Peters handed back our math tests. My eighty-six had worked out to a B-plus. I gave my family the good news at dinner that night.
"Bravo!" said Dad.
"I'm so proud," said Mom.
Janine got up and actually gave me a little hug.
And Mimi smiled gravely and said, "I knew you could do it, my Claudia."
Two days later, the police caught the Phantom Caller - for real. They caught him in the act. A Mr. and Mrs. Johnson Neustetter, who lived in a house in Mercer that was more like a palace, got two of the Phantom's phone calls on Wednesday afternoon. The Neustetters had been following the accounts of the Phantom in the news, and alerted the police. On a hunch, the police staked out the Neustetters' that night. They arranged for the Neustetters to go out (figuring the Phantom was watching the house from somewhere). Sure enough, about twenty minutes after they'd left, the Phantom showed up. The police let him get into the house and all the way into Mr. Neus-tetter's safe before surprising him. He confessed to everything.
That night the Phantom was behind bars.
But guess whose mystery didn't get solved. The Goldmans'. The Phantom said he'd never been in Stoneybrook. So the police decided the Goldmans really had been robbed by a copycat thief. With the Phantom behind bars, though, no one would try that again. It would be too risky.
With that news, Mary Anne was back in the Baby-sitters Club. As soon as she and her father heard the news, Mary Anne begged to be allowed to baby-sit again and her father gave in.
We celebrated the capture of the Phantom at our next club meeting. I was ready with soda, a big bag of potato chips, another of peanut M&M's, and an apple and a package of crackers for Stacey.
"Well," said Kristy, tipping her head back and getting ready to drop a handful of M&M's in her mouth, "we survived the Phantom Caller."
"Yeah," I said. "This club can do anything."
"I've earned sixteen dollars in the last two weeks," said Stacey.
"I earned fourteen," added Kristy.
I opened up four cans of diet soda and handed them around.
"Here's to success," said Stacey.
"To us," said Mary Anne.
"To the Phantom," said Kristy, giggling.
"Here's to the Baby-sitters Club!" I cried.
We grinned, and clinked our soda cans.