#9: The Ghost at Dawn's House: Part 1
The Ghost at Dawn's House was one of my favorites as a child. I was in love with all things ghost-related, and I'm pretty sure that's why I still somehow own a copy of this book. I found it while digging through an old box a few weeks ago and was way too excited that I can finally snark something myself.
Let's start with the cover. Aryan children Dawn and Jeff both appear to have tan lines from sunglasses around their eyes. Dawn is wearing high-water jeans. It looks like Jeff has broken his knee at some point and it was never reset properly. His mouth is hanging open, showing off a diastema that would put Madonna, David Letterman, and Condoleezza Rice to shame.
One thing that always bothered me here was that Dawn and Jeff are standing at the entrance of the secret passage, staring up some stairs, when they should be looking down some. The book tells us so, but there's also the fact that the passage is underground and Dawn's room is on the second story of the house. (That must be a really long set of stairs, by the way.) Also, there's a banister. This was very thoughtful, so here's to you, Mr. Original Secret Passage Constructor Guy.
Chapter One
The books opens with someone quoted as screaming. Then a bunch of unidentified people are shouting at other unidentified people. It's the first BSC meeting since THE LONGEST SEPARATION OF THEIR LIVES (two weeks). Dawn says that the members were scattered from Stoneybrook, CT, all the way to California. She then tells us that Claudia and her family went to a resort in New Hampshire. I feel like it would have been more accurate of Dawn to say the club members were scattered from New Hampshire to California, from a geographical standpoint, but whatever. She also comments that "poor Kristy Thomas" didn't go anywhere, then helpfully adds, "She'd stayed here." Oh.
Dawn tells us about going to California to visit her dad. The in-flight movie was European Vacation, which, shockingly enough, was only three years old at the time this book was published. Maybe being stuck in the past is confined solely to Stoneybrook and airplanes are safe zones. Or maybe Dawn slept through all three hours of Birth of a Nation.
At dinnertime, Jeff collects extra desserts from the passengers around him who don't want theirs. California's magical granola hold on him isn't as strong as it is with Dawn and Mama Schaefer. Dessert, it seems, is chocolate cake. Wtf flight is this on? I only ever got a dry shortbread cookie for dessert on airplanes.
Next, Jeff collects all the packets of salt, pepper, sugar, and non-dairy creamer he can and saves them in a "barf bag," which he goes on to enshrine on his bedroom dresser at home. This sounds like the crappiest souvenir ever. Couldn't he just ask his dad to buy him something at Disneyland? Disneyland Daddy wouldn't care.
Dawn mentions Claudia's personal phone line, along with her personal phone book listing. This may have impressed me as a child, I can't remember, but now it strikes me as a bad idea. Does the entire town need immediate access to Claud's number? It's bad enough that it's posted all over the place on BSC fliers. On one hand, I see how it's handy, but I feel like realistically, she'd get at least a few late-night phone calls of heavy breathing (lol @ expecting anything to happen "realistically" in Stoneybrook).
Everyone is amazed when Claudia pulls a big book off her shelf and opens it to reveal a hollow container filled with candy. Shouldn't they have been more amazed that she had a big book on her shelf? Dawn seems to think this is going too far, even for Claudia. Stfu, Dawn.
Note: Claudia is described as "Japanese and exotic-looking."
Kristy, of course, suggests they all discuss their baby-sitting experiences from vacation, instead of, like, sharing photos of places they've never been or talking about the interesting things they saw there.
Dawn volunteers Mary Anne and Stacey to go first. What's the matter, Schaefer? You don't want to tell them about the wonder that is the Barf Bag of Individual Serving Additives? MA and Stacey went to New Jersey with the Pike family to help watch the kids, presumably so the parents could find a beach with no indecency laws and engage in their favorite activity, procreating.
Mary Anne and Stacey share a meaningful Look and a giggle. Dawn's face bursts into flames as jealousy threatens to consume her at the thought that they "shared something--something the rest of us weren't part of." May I just point out that this would also be the case if they had passed a stomach bug back and forth in New Jersey.
Dawn tells us about Stacey crossing her long legs before beginning. Concentrate on the baby-sitting, Dawn; she'll only break your heart.
Stacey alerts everyone to Claire Pike's annoying ass "silly-bill-goo-goo" stage. Ma and Pa Pike need to nip that shit off at the bud by refusing to acknowledge anything she says when using that phrase. Same with Vanessa, who's speaking solely in rhyme because she's a poet and she know it. I look forward to the day when she is kicked out of health class during a human sexuality course for informing the other students that the primary difference between the sexes is that boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider and girls go to Mars to get more candy bars.
We're also told that Byron Pike can swim, but he's afraid of the water. "It turns out he has a lot of fears," Stacey says, but doesn't elaborate. I can only assume this was addressed in some previous book, but since I have no idea, it seems merely ominous, foreshadowing Byron's complete psychological breakdown before he becomes a shut-in who's terrified of germs and, thus, all human contact.
It is mentioned that trouble is brewing between Nicky and the Pike triplets. The older boys have decided Nicky is a baby they don't want cramping their style, and since his other siblings are all girls, he's at a loss for playmates. Yeah, welcome to the real world. At least you got a few good years in. My older siblings were looking for ways to shake me off and make me miserable ever since I could remember.
Dawn goes next, talking about the neighborhood kids she babysat for in California. Everyone has a good laugh over their names, Clover and Daffodil. I'm sure those trusting children would appreciate that. Their parents, according to Dawn's father, were hippies in the sixties. This seems weird to me, since, considering their daughters' ages, they were probably just children themselves in the sixties. Dawn confesses that she doesn't know what "flower child" means. Kristy suggests that it means you have to name your children after flowers, and everyone laughs, because they are idiots. That portion of dialogue made zero sense to me as a child.
Clover and Daffodil cried when Dawn left (again). Mary Anne finds this sad, because, Dawn explains, she is sensitive, and apparently only the most sensitive among us could be moved by the sincere tears of a child.
Kristy, we're told, didn't go on vacation when everyone else did because...wait, can you guess? Is it because her family doesn't plan its vacations to coincide with that of every other family in Stoneybrook? No, sorry, it's just because her mom remarried to real, live millionaire Watson Brewer and the new parental units wanted everyone to have lots of together time at the real, live mansion. I think it would have been more fun for the family to go away together in a company resort-type scenario, where they rock climb together to build trust. While everyone was away, Kristy babysat for the new family living in her old house. Enter Stoneybrook's own wonder kids, Myriah and Gabbie Perkins.
Chapter 2
Dawn and Jeff are a lot alike, except that she's a girl and he's a boy. I know, because Dawn explicitly states it. Jupiter/Mars, anyone? Where's Vanessa Pike when you really need someone to break it down to basics for you?
Dawn tells us her mom is not a slob (she actually says "personal slob," wtf?), but that the house is usually a mess, which...kinda has the makings of a slob. When Dawn walks in after her BSC meeting, she finds hedge clippers in the living room (Why? Was someone diffusing a bomb in there?) and a trail of popcorn leading from the living room to the kitchen, as well as several other things out of place...You were saying, Dawn?
Dawn complains that since her mom got a job, she and Jeff are in charge of making dinner on weeknights. She further whines that Jeff's idea of making dinner is getting a loaf of pumpernickel bread out, but later in the chapter, all Dawn does is reheat some vegetable casserole leftovers...You were saying, Dawn?
When she can't find Jeff in the house after a thorough search that involves shouting, "Hey!" from the bottom of the stairs a few times, she immediately decides to search the barn. She bursts in, screeching the place down, and hears a thump somewhere inside. She listens to faint rustling and distant thunder, then half-whispers, "Jeff?" And here we see our first instance of Characters Speaking in Dramatic Tones.
Normally, this is the point in the story where the clueless girl wanders into the dark barn, telling her friend to stop messing around and come out already, at which time, the killer emerges with a pitchfork and stuffs it through her skull, effectively pinning her to the wall in such a way that one of her friends will later A) trip over her while attempting to escape the killer or B) be taken by surprise by running right into her corpse and screaming a lot, thus giving away their hiding place. But Dawn's never had sex, drank beer, exposed her extraordinarily large chest to any innocent nerd bystanders, or gone camping at a supposedly haunted location, so none of this happens. Instead, to no one's surprise but Dawn's, Jeff leaps out and scares her.
As punishment, Dawn forces him to help her make what sounds like the world's worst salad, consisting of cottage cheese, pineapple, peaches, and coconut topping, while she heats up the aforementioned casserole and brews some herbal tea. Make no mistake, there's no plain, old, everyday Luzianne tea in this house any more than there's normal salad. Just herbal tea and coconut topping. Every day. Forever.
After noting how sticky and hot the weather is, the Schaefer kids decide to eat outside. I want to ridicule this logic, but I assume their old house doesn't have central heating and A/C, because my old house doesn't, and I know how stuffy it can get in the summer.
Jeff goes outside to set the picnic table and Dawn suddenly becomes aware of the immensity of the creepy-ass old house looming on all sides. There's a creak behind her, but when she looks, she sees nothing. She describes her house as being like a big dollhouse, in much the same way, I would think, that all houses are like larger versions of miniature houses.
Dawn randomly starts talking about how she's sure that since the house is so old, there must be a secret passage in it somewhere. Newsflash: you don't live in the mansion from Clue. I read this book while moving as a child. I decided that my new home must also have a secret passage, despite there being no real room in it for one. I moved out 18 years ago, but still to this day dream about finding a haunted secret passage in that house. Thanks for being a lifelong influence on my nightmares, Dawn.
Mama Schaefer appears suddenly, scaring the imitation crab meat out of Dawn. Mama Schaefer proceeds to remove her glasses and place them carefully in a butter dish. Seriously, wtf, woman?
As they eat outside, they notice that the sun is setting unnaturally early. Then it starts raining on them. Um, do they not have storm clouds in California? I know they don't have junk food or meat.
That night, amidst the mother of all thunderstorms, Dawn curls up in bed to read some ghost stories. When the power flickers, rather than attributing it to the deafening storm howling outside, she suspects poltergeist, something I find it odd to mention in a book for young people.
When she hears rapping on one of her walls, instead of doing what any normal person would do and getting the hell out of the room, she sits there screaming until her mom comes running, worrying that something's, you know, wrong. For whatever reason, Mama Schaefer asks which wall the tapping's coming from, then says the same thing she would have said if it were any other wall: the house is just settling. She turns off all the lights and shuts the door, and I can only imagine she does this with the intention of being a bitch, because the last thing a scared kid wants is to be plunged into total darkness, alone.
Dawn turns the lights back on and opens the door, then lies in bed, struggling to sleep while something seems to moan behind the wall. Who the fuck would actually stay in this room? I'd be down the stairs and sleeping on the couch in like five seconds, with one of those cartoon trails of dust left where I'd been standing.
Chapter Three
Dawn has to babysit for the Barretts, who are often described as pains and really come off as pretty tame. As she's leaving, she slips on some wet grass and all three kids, who are for some reason watching her leave, mock her:
Buddy: "Have a nice trip. See ya next fall!"
Suzi: "Snap, crackle, pop!" (What?)
Marnie: *blows a raspberry*
Yes, kids can be so cruel. Dawn, don't cry. Dry your eyes. Never let up. Forgive, but don't forget. Girl, keep your head up.
With another storm brewing, Dawn invites the BSC over to search her house for a secret passage. They decide to split up in small groups. When Claudia suggests searching the basement and attic, everyone balks. Dawn wisely improves matters by relating to them a scary story about a haunted basement. It takes place in a really old house.
"As old as this one?" Mary Anne whispers. (Characters Speaking in Dramatic Tones Count: 2). A gust of wind blows the curtains into her face and she starts screaming. Ha ha. Dumbshit. If this were a real horror story, that'd be the killer surprise-attacking your ass by lunging through the window to plant a knife in your back. A really long one, that stabbed all the way out through the front with bits of internal organs on it. Consider yourself lucky, Spier.
Thoroughly freaked, Mary Anne pleads for Dawn not to finish the story, but Kristy's all, "Bitch, take it outside, I want to hear the rest of this." Reasonably, Mary Anne protests against going out into a dark, narrow hall by herself, but Stacey offers to join her. They wait until the screaming dies down, then return to the room. Kristy calls them scaredy-cats, which is a pretty bitch move for someone who was just screaming over a fictional horror story. She thinks the two scaredy-cats should team up to search together on the first floor, where they'll be near Jeff. Because there is nothing quite as comforting as the presence of an oblivious nine-year-old when you're terrified. Stacey is offended, but before she can tell Kristy to shove it up her mother's ass, MA takes the offer and runs.
Dawn, Claudia, and Kristy search Jeff's room first. Claudia suggests they check the floor for trap doors. Understandably, Dawn questions the point of looking for trap doors on the second floor. Apparently, she is unfamiliar with Montgomery Burns' Super Happy Fun Slide. I make the D: face as Kristy looks under Jeff's bed, unearthing some Space Creature comics. If that's all you found, Kristy, you got off easy today. The junior miss catalogue is probably hidden between the mattress and the box spring.
Coming up with nothing, they move to Dawn's room, and I wonder why they didn't just start there in the first place. I mean, they were already there. Dawn tells us that Claudia pokes while Kristy shines the flashlight, and I wonder if they're confused and actually giving Dawn a gynocological exam.
They find a spot on the wall--the wall where the tapping noise was coming from--that sounds hollow, but can't find any springs, catches, or unusual cracks in the wall. This, by the way, led to so many wasted childhood hours as I walked around knocking on walls.
Kristy has a(nother) great idea, that they explore the attic to show the chickenshits downstairs how brave they are. Um, didn't you already do that, by listening to the end of Dawn's stupid story and electing to search the second floor, devoid entirely of nine-year-olds though it was?
Hesitantly, Claudia and Dawn go along. Naturally, the light switch for the attic is at the top of the stairs (I seriously fucking hate this set-up, because I'm a huge wuss but also because I don't enjoy not being able to see where the hell I'm going), and halfway to the top, the attic door slams shut behind the girls.
They pile back down the stairs, whimpering, because they are so, so brave, and then the door opens slowly by itself, proceeded by a growl. As the girls shriek uncontrollably, Mary Anne and Stacey jump out from behind the door, rightfully gloating.
Stacey and MA report that they didn't find anything downstairs, but they have yet to search the den. While they head back downstairs to finish up, Dawn directs Claudia and Kristy into Mama Schaefer's room (oh, my), where there's a heating vent that leads down to the den. The girls crowd around, moaning and whispering into the vent (ohhh, my) and laugh as they hear the girls downstairs shitting themselves.
Then a hand falls on Dawn's shoulder. A green hand. A monster shouts, "BOO!" at them, which seems like an unmonstery thing to say, and Dawn, Kristy, and Claudia scream some more as Jeff, in a green space creature mask, falls over laughing. This ends the secret passage hunt.
Chapter Four
Mary Anne complains in the BSC notebook that looking out her bedroom window just isn't the same. Now instead of looking into Kristy's room, she looks into Myriah's. I picture MA with a camcorder, like that kid in American Beauty.
MA laments that she now has to ring the bell at the old Thomas house, instead of walking right in. I knew people who did this as children and could never fathom that level of ease in someone else's home. The only times I've ever done it were as an adult, and the other person's home was my boyfriend's or my parents'.
Mary Anne also laments that while she hears feet flying to the door, it sounds like fewer feet than when the Thomases lived there. Did the entire family answer the door as a group?
The door opens and MA sees two little girls, then a woman struggling with a giant dog, who knocks the smaller of the two girls down before being banished to the backyard. As someone growing up with dogs, it was always our practice to make sure they were outside if we were expecting guests. There's no point in inviting someone over if your dog's going to throw itself at the screen door every time your visitor tries to open it.
This chapter is very boring. We see that Myriah has moved into Kristy's old room, that she's preternaturally mature, that Gabbie is going through "a phase" where she repeats everything she hears other people saying. In real life, this would lead to issues like the time I gleefully shouted, "Asshole!" as a young kid after watching a PG-13 movie. Instead, Gabbie merely mimics harmless junk Myriah says while throwing around baby dolls. While the girls color, they sing "Hush, Little Baby" and "Take Me out to the Ball Game" in their entirety, including lyrics even Mary Anne doesn't know. Well, well. Looks like we have new resident expert on novelty songs. Chin up, Mary Anne. You're still the biggest baby around.
Gabbie does a rendition of Birth of Man on the wall in finger paints. When Mary Anne doesn't get the picture, Gabbie explains that when two adults love each other very much, they share a special kind of hug and it makes a baby, like the one in Mrs. Perkins's stomach. MA's ovaries explode in excitement at the mere thought. Mary Anne has many questions, but doesn't "dare" to ask them. What, exactly, would you ask a five-year-old and a two-year-old about their mother's pregnancy? What trimester she's in? If she's hired a doula? If she's considered a water birth at home? Actually, given who we're talking about here, the girls probably could fill her in. They're also probably licensed midwives, and I'm sure Myriah, at the very least, gives Lamaze classes in her spare time.
As she's leaving, Mary Anne tells Myriah to go to her bedroom and watch at the window for a surprise. I imagine Myriah waiting patiently, oblivious to the red dot of the sniper rifle Mary Anne has trained at her forehead. Her friendly facade has all been a lie, a ploy to win Myriah's trust so Mary Anne can take her out once and for all, then fix her unused room up to look like Kristy's used to. As an added bonus, with Myriah out of the way, MA will regain her status as the kid on the block who knows the most nursery rhymes.
Disappointingly, Mary Anne just runs to her own bedroom window and points out the obvious to a child who is probably much smarter than she is: "We can see each other!" She then tells Myriah it'll be their "special secret." There's something so sinister about that phrase. And as a child, I always thought this was a dumb move on MA's part, because I imagine in real life, the kid would constantly be bugging her. "Hey! We're talking to each other, but no one else knows! It's like we're talking to each other downstairs--only we're not. Guess what! I got new shoes! Look! Hey, I'm doing homework, what are you doing? Wait--are you ignoring me?"
Chapter Five
Amazingly, Dawn leaves nine-year-old Jeff alone in the house while she goes to babysit for the Pikes. He is apparently the one child in Stoneybrook who has matured before he turns eleven.
Upon arriving at Pike House, Dawn is greeted by Mallory, who tells her that she will be the second babysitter that day. I pause to wonder how Dawn would be unaware of this beforehand. I could have sworn I remembered that one of the things asked when scheduling a BSC appointment was how many children would need sitting. Since no second sitter was hired, it seems like Mrs. Pike lied on the phone or something. Plus, what if Dawn wasn't so cool with this? It'd be kinda funny if she were like, "I'm supposed to be babysitting with Mal? Oh, hell, naw," before peacing her way out.
Instead, she reacts enthusiastically. Mrs. Pike tells Dawn that Nicky is off sulking by himself because his older brothers don't want to play with him. Mrs. Pike says that Nicky's having a tough time, but that he's got to learn to deal. I appreciate an aspect of that, because I think it sounds better than forcing the older siblings to hang out with the younger one. My parents tried that and it was always disastrous for the youngest sibling. That'd be me. But I wonder if leaving him to sit in the dark by himself is the best idea. I mean, he's already pretty isolated. He's the only male Pike offspring who wasn't born into a trio of built-in friends. Couldn't you, like, try to engage him in an activity by himself? Or, hell, I don't know, find a way to introduce him to non-family members who are his age. Are there no other eight-year-old boys in the neighborhood? Anyway, Mrs. Pike tells Dawn that while they don't have a lot of rules in their house (I'll say), they do have a new one for Nicky: he's allowed to go off alone, as long as he stays within two blocks of the house.
After Mrs. Pike leaves, Dawn checks on the triplets. She finds them in their darkened room. Byron whispers that they are playing with their glow-in-the-dark space creatures. (Characters Speaking in Dramatic Tones Count: 3.)
Dawn finds Nicky alone in the rec room. I imagine him in dim lighting, a deep scowl on his face, a cigarette in one hand.
Nicky refuses to join the girls at the backyard sprinkler. Dawn says she'll ask the triplets if Nicky can play with them and his reaction would suggest that this has never occurred to anybody in the household before. Could it really be that easy?
No, apparently not. The triplets come racing out of their room in swim gear, shouting to Dawn that they're going swimming at a friend's house. I feel like this shouldn't fly so easily, like a babysitter should be asked if this is okay, not told.
Nicky tells everyone to go fuck themselves and storms off to be alone some more. After "about five minutes," Dawn begins to feel bad for him. No wonder these people are always going on and on about how sensitive Mary Anne is: their ability to feel sympathy is obviously stunted. She goes outside and shouts for him, but when he doesn't respond, she gets Mary Anne to come over and finish her babysitting job while she looks for Nicky. You know, if someone besides Mal had already been there, this wouldn't even be an issue...
She walks around shouting his name, looking up trees and shit. Did she check dumpsters? What about gutters, for his dead body? He suddenly appears, looking sweaty and dusty, and makes some smug remark about finding his own way to cool off. Did he kill a group of neighborhood children or something? Dawn doesn't know and Dawn doesn't care. She just wants to get him home before his parents arrive so she isn't screwed out of her $1.50 babysitting fee.
Let's start with the cover. Aryan children Dawn and Jeff both appear to have tan lines from sunglasses around their eyes. Dawn is wearing high-water jeans. It looks like Jeff has broken his knee at some point and it was never reset properly. His mouth is hanging open, showing off a diastema that would put Madonna, David Letterman, and Condoleezza Rice to shame.
One thing that always bothered me here was that Dawn and Jeff are standing at the entrance of the secret passage, staring up some stairs, when they should be looking down some. The book tells us so, but there's also the fact that the passage is underground and Dawn's room is on the second story of the house. (That must be a really long set of stairs, by the way.) Also, there's a banister. This was very thoughtful, so here's to you, Mr. Original Secret Passage Constructor Guy.
Chapter One
The books opens with someone quoted as screaming. Then a bunch of unidentified people are shouting at other unidentified people. It's the first BSC meeting since THE LONGEST SEPARATION OF THEIR LIVES (two weeks). Dawn says that the members were scattered from Stoneybrook, CT, all the way to California. She then tells us that Claudia and her family went to a resort in New Hampshire. I feel like it would have been more accurate of Dawn to say the club members were scattered from New Hampshire to California, from a geographical standpoint, but whatever. She also comments that "poor Kristy Thomas" didn't go anywhere, then helpfully adds, "She'd stayed here." Oh.
Dawn tells us about going to California to visit her dad. The in-flight movie was European Vacation, which, shockingly enough, was only three years old at the time this book was published. Maybe being stuck in the past is confined solely to Stoneybrook and airplanes are safe zones. Or maybe Dawn slept through all three hours of Birth of a Nation.
At dinnertime, Jeff collects extra desserts from the passengers around him who don't want theirs. California's magical granola hold on him isn't as strong as it is with Dawn and Mama Schaefer. Dessert, it seems, is chocolate cake. Wtf flight is this on? I only ever got a dry shortbread cookie for dessert on airplanes.
Next, Jeff collects all the packets of salt, pepper, sugar, and non-dairy creamer he can and saves them in a "barf bag," which he goes on to enshrine on his bedroom dresser at home. This sounds like the crappiest souvenir ever. Couldn't he just ask his dad to buy him something at Disneyland? Disneyland Daddy wouldn't care.
Dawn mentions Claudia's personal phone line, along with her personal phone book listing. This may have impressed me as a child, I can't remember, but now it strikes me as a bad idea. Does the entire town need immediate access to Claud's number? It's bad enough that it's posted all over the place on BSC fliers. On one hand, I see how it's handy, but I feel like realistically, she'd get at least a few late-night phone calls of heavy breathing (lol @ expecting anything to happen "realistically" in Stoneybrook).
Everyone is amazed when Claudia pulls a big book off her shelf and opens it to reveal a hollow container filled with candy. Shouldn't they have been more amazed that she had a big book on her shelf? Dawn seems to think this is going too far, even for Claudia. Stfu, Dawn.
Note: Claudia is described as "Japanese and exotic-looking."
Kristy, of course, suggests they all discuss their baby-sitting experiences from vacation, instead of, like, sharing photos of places they've never been or talking about the interesting things they saw there.
Dawn volunteers Mary Anne and Stacey to go first. What's the matter, Schaefer? You don't want to tell them about the wonder that is the Barf Bag of Individual Serving Additives? MA and Stacey went to New Jersey with the Pike family to help watch the kids, presumably so the parents could find a beach with no indecency laws and engage in their favorite activity, procreating.
Mary Anne and Stacey share a meaningful Look and a giggle. Dawn's face bursts into flames as jealousy threatens to consume her at the thought that they "shared something--something the rest of us weren't part of." May I just point out that this would also be the case if they had passed a stomach bug back and forth in New Jersey.
Dawn tells us about Stacey crossing her long legs before beginning. Concentrate on the baby-sitting, Dawn; she'll only break your heart.
Stacey alerts everyone to Claire Pike's annoying ass "silly-bill-goo-goo" stage. Ma and Pa Pike need to nip that shit off at the bud by refusing to acknowledge anything she says when using that phrase. Same with Vanessa, who's speaking solely in rhyme because she's a poet and she know it. I look forward to the day when she is kicked out of health class during a human sexuality course for informing the other students that the primary difference between the sexes is that boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider and girls go to Mars to get more candy bars.
We're also told that Byron Pike can swim, but he's afraid of the water. "It turns out he has a lot of fears," Stacey says, but doesn't elaborate. I can only assume this was addressed in some previous book, but since I have no idea, it seems merely ominous, foreshadowing Byron's complete psychological breakdown before he becomes a shut-in who's terrified of germs and, thus, all human contact.
It is mentioned that trouble is brewing between Nicky and the Pike triplets. The older boys have decided Nicky is a baby they don't want cramping their style, and since his other siblings are all girls, he's at a loss for playmates. Yeah, welcome to the real world. At least you got a few good years in. My older siblings were looking for ways to shake me off and make me miserable ever since I could remember.
Dawn goes next, talking about the neighborhood kids she babysat for in California. Everyone has a good laugh over their names, Clover and Daffodil. I'm sure those trusting children would appreciate that. Their parents, according to Dawn's father, were hippies in the sixties. This seems weird to me, since, considering their daughters' ages, they were probably just children themselves in the sixties. Dawn confesses that she doesn't know what "flower child" means. Kristy suggests that it means you have to name your children after flowers, and everyone laughs, because they are idiots. That portion of dialogue made zero sense to me as a child.
Clover and Daffodil cried when Dawn left (again). Mary Anne finds this sad, because, Dawn explains, she is sensitive, and apparently only the most sensitive among us could be moved by the sincere tears of a child.
Kristy, we're told, didn't go on vacation when everyone else did because...wait, can you guess? Is it because her family doesn't plan its vacations to coincide with that of every other family in Stoneybrook? No, sorry, it's just because her mom remarried to real, live millionaire Watson Brewer and the new parental units wanted everyone to have lots of together time at the real, live mansion. I think it would have been more fun for the family to go away together in a company resort-type scenario, where they rock climb together to build trust. While everyone was away, Kristy babysat for the new family living in her old house. Enter Stoneybrook's own wonder kids, Myriah and Gabbie Perkins.
Chapter 2
Dawn and Jeff are a lot alike, except that she's a girl and he's a boy. I know, because Dawn explicitly states it. Jupiter/Mars, anyone? Where's Vanessa Pike when you really need someone to break it down to basics for you?
Dawn tells us her mom is not a slob (she actually says "personal slob," wtf?), but that the house is usually a mess, which...kinda has the makings of a slob. When Dawn walks in after her BSC meeting, she finds hedge clippers in the living room (Why? Was someone diffusing a bomb in there?) and a trail of popcorn leading from the living room to the kitchen, as well as several other things out of place...You were saying, Dawn?
Dawn complains that since her mom got a job, she and Jeff are in charge of making dinner on weeknights. She further whines that Jeff's idea of making dinner is getting a loaf of pumpernickel bread out, but later in the chapter, all Dawn does is reheat some vegetable casserole leftovers...You were saying, Dawn?
When she can't find Jeff in the house after a thorough search that involves shouting, "Hey!" from the bottom of the stairs a few times, she immediately decides to search the barn. She bursts in, screeching the place down, and hears a thump somewhere inside. She listens to faint rustling and distant thunder, then half-whispers, "Jeff?" And here we see our first instance of Characters Speaking in Dramatic Tones.
Normally, this is the point in the story where the clueless girl wanders into the dark barn, telling her friend to stop messing around and come out already, at which time, the killer emerges with a pitchfork and stuffs it through her skull, effectively pinning her to the wall in such a way that one of her friends will later A) trip over her while attempting to escape the killer or B) be taken by surprise by running right into her corpse and screaming a lot, thus giving away their hiding place. But Dawn's never had sex, drank beer, exposed her extraordinarily large chest to any innocent nerd bystanders, or gone camping at a supposedly haunted location, so none of this happens. Instead, to no one's surprise but Dawn's, Jeff leaps out and scares her.
As punishment, Dawn forces him to help her make what sounds like the world's worst salad, consisting of cottage cheese, pineapple, peaches, and coconut topping, while she heats up the aforementioned casserole and brews some herbal tea. Make no mistake, there's no plain, old, everyday Luzianne tea in this house any more than there's normal salad. Just herbal tea and coconut topping. Every day. Forever.
After noting how sticky and hot the weather is, the Schaefer kids decide to eat outside. I want to ridicule this logic, but I assume their old house doesn't have central heating and A/C, because my old house doesn't, and I know how stuffy it can get in the summer.
Jeff goes outside to set the picnic table and Dawn suddenly becomes aware of the immensity of the creepy-ass old house looming on all sides. There's a creak behind her, but when she looks, she sees nothing. She describes her house as being like a big dollhouse, in much the same way, I would think, that all houses are like larger versions of miniature houses.
Dawn randomly starts talking about how she's sure that since the house is so old, there must be a secret passage in it somewhere. Newsflash: you don't live in the mansion from Clue. I read this book while moving as a child. I decided that my new home must also have a secret passage, despite there being no real room in it for one. I moved out 18 years ago, but still to this day dream about finding a haunted secret passage in that house. Thanks for being a lifelong influence on my nightmares, Dawn.
Mama Schaefer appears suddenly, scaring the imitation crab meat out of Dawn. Mama Schaefer proceeds to remove her glasses and place them carefully in a butter dish. Seriously, wtf, woman?
As they eat outside, they notice that the sun is setting unnaturally early. Then it starts raining on them. Um, do they not have storm clouds in California? I know they don't have junk food or meat.
That night, amidst the mother of all thunderstorms, Dawn curls up in bed to read some ghost stories. When the power flickers, rather than attributing it to the deafening storm howling outside, she suspects poltergeist, something I find it odd to mention in a book for young people.
When she hears rapping on one of her walls, instead of doing what any normal person would do and getting the hell out of the room, she sits there screaming until her mom comes running, worrying that something's, you know, wrong. For whatever reason, Mama Schaefer asks which wall the tapping's coming from, then says the same thing she would have said if it were any other wall: the house is just settling. She turns off all the lights and shuts the door, and I can only imagine she does this with the intention of being a bitch, because the last thing a scared kid wants is to be plunged into total darkness, alone.
Dawn turns the lights back on and opens the door, then lies in bed, struggling to sleep while something seems to moan behind the wall. Who the fuck would actually stay in this room? I'd be down the stairs and sleeping on the couch in like five seconds, with one of those cartoon trails of dust left where I'd been standing.
Chapter Three
Dawn has to babysit for the Barretts, who are often described as pains and really come off as pretty tame. As she's leaving, she slips on some wet grass and all three kids, who are for some reason watching her leave, mock her:
Buddy: "Have a nice trip. See ya next fall!"
Suzi: "Snap, crackle, pop!" (What?)
Marnie: *blows a raspberry*
Yes, kids can be so cruel. Dawn, don't cry. Dry your eyes. Never let up. Forgive, but don't forget. Girl, keep your head up.
With another storm brewing, Dawn invites the BSC over to search her house for a secret passage. They decide to split up in small groups. When Claudia suggests searching the basement and attic, everyone balks. Dawn wisely improves matters by relating to them a scary story about a haunted basement. It takes place in a really old house.
"As old as this one?" Mary Anne whispers. (Characters Speaking in Dramatic Tones Count: 2). A gust of wind blows the curtains into her face and she starts screaming. Ha ha. Dumbshit. If this were a real horror story, that'd be the killer surprise-attacking your ass by lunging through the window to plant a knife in your back. A really long one, that stabbed all the way out through the front with bits of internal organs on it. Consider yourself lucky, Spier.
Thoroughly freaked, Mary Anne pleads for Dawn not to finish the story, but Kristy's all, "Bitch, take it outside, I want to hear the rest of this." Reasonably, Mary Anne protests against going out into a dark, narrow hall by herself, but Stacey offers to join her. They wait until the screaming dies down, then return to the room. Kristy calls them scaredy-cats, which is a pretty bitch move for someone who was just screaming over a fictional horror story. She thinks the two scaredy-cats should team up to search together on the first floor, where they'll be near Jeff. Because there is nothing quite as comforting as the presence of an oblivious nine-year-old when you're terrified. Stacey is offended, but before she can tell Kristy to shove it up her mother's ass, MA takes the offer and runs.
Dawn, Claudia, and Kristy search Jeff's room first. Claudia suggests they check the floor for trap doors. Understandably, Dawn questions the point of looking for trap doors on the second floor. Apparently, she is unfamiliar with Montgomery Burns' Super Happy Fun Slide. I make the D: face as Kristy looks under Jeff's bed, unearthing some Space Creature comics. If that's all you found, Kristy, you got off easy today. The junior miss catalogue is probably hidden between the mattress and the box spring.
Coming up with nothing, they move to Dawn's room, and I wonder why they didn't just start there in the first place. I mean, they were already there. Dawn tells us that Claudia pokes while Kristy shines the flashlight, and I wonder if they're confused and actually giving Dawn a gynocological exam.
They find a spot on the wall--the wall where the tapping noise was coming from--that sounds hollow, but can't find any springs, catches, or unusual cracks in the wall. This, by the way, led to so many wasted childhood hours as I walked around knocking on walls.
Kristy has a(nother) great idea, that they explore the attic to show the chickenshits downstairs how brave they are. Um, didn't you already do that, by listening to the end of Dawn's stupid story and electing to search the second floor, devoid entirely of nine-year-olds though it was?
Hesitantly, Claudia and Dawn go along. Naturally, the light switch for the attic is at the top of the stairs (I seriously fucking hate this set-up, because I'm a huge wuss but also because I don't enjoy not being able to see where the hell I'm going), and halfway to the top, the attic door slams shut behind the girls.
They pile back down the stairs, whimpering, because they are so, so brave, and then the door opens slowly by itself, proceeded by a growl. As the girls shriek uncontrollably, Mary Anne and Stacey jump out from behind the door, rightfully gloating.
Stacey and MA report that they didn't find anything downstairs, but they have yet to search the den. While they head back downstairs to finish up, Dawn directs Claudia and Kristy into Mama Schaefer's room (oh, my), where there's a heating vent that leads down to the den. The girls crowd around, moaning and whispering into the vent (ohhh, my) and laugh as they hear the girls downstairs shitting themselves.
Then a hand falls on Dawn's shoulder. A green hand. A monster shouts, "BOO!" at them, which seems like an unmonstery thing to say, and Dawn, Kristy, and Claudia scream some more as Jeff, in a green space creature mask, falls over laughing. This ends the secret passage hunt.
Chapter Four
Mary Anne complains in the BSC notebook that looking out her bedroom window just isn't the same. Now instead of looking into Kristy's room, she looks into Myriah's. I picture MA with a camcorder, like that kid in American Beauty.
MA laments that she now has to ring the bell at the old Thomas house, instead of walking right in. I knew people who did this as children and could never fathom that level of ease in someone else's home. The only times I've ever done it were as an adult, and the other person's home was my boyfriend's or my parents'.
Mary Anne also laments that while she hears feet flying to the door, it sounds like fewer feet than when the Thomases lived there. Did the entire family answer the door as a group?
The door opens and MA sees two little girls, then a woman struggling with a giant dog, who knocks the smaller of the two girls down before being banished to the backyard. As someone growing up with dogs, it was always our practice to make sure they were outside if we were expecting guests. There's no point in inviting someone over if your dog's going to throw itself at the screen door every time your visitor tries to open it.
This chapter is very boring. We see that Myriah has moved into Kristy's old room, that she's preternaturally mature, that Gabbie is going through "a phase" where she repeats everything she hears other people saying. In real life, this would lead to issues like the time I gleefully shouted, "Asshole!" as a young kid after watching a PG-13 movie. Instead, Gabbie merely mimics harmless junk Myriah says while throwing around baby dolls. While the girls color, they sing "Hush, Little Baby" and "Take Me out to the Ball Game" in their entirety, including lyrics even Mary Anne doesn't know. Well, well. Looks like we have new resident expert on novelty songs. Chin up, Mary Anne. You're still the biggest baby around.
Gabbie does a rendition of Birth of Man on the wall in finger paints. When Mary Anne doesn't get the picture, Gabbie explains that when two adults love each other very much, they share a special kind of hug and it makes a baby, like the one in Mrs. Perkins's stomach. MA's ovaries explode in excitement at the mere thought. Mary Anne has many questions, but doesn't "dare" to ask them. What, exactly, would you ask a five-year-old and a two-year-old about their mother's pregnancy? What trimester she's in? If she's hired a doula? If she's considered a water birth at home? Actually, given who we're talking about here, the girls probably could fill her in. They're also probably licensed midwives, and I'm sure Myriah, at the very least, gives Lamaze classes in her spare time.
As she's leaving, Mary Anne tells Myriah to go to her bedroom and watch at the window for a surprise. I imagine Myriah waiting patiently, oblivious to the red dot of the sniper rifle Mary Anne has trained at her forehead. Her friendly facade has all been a lie, a ploy to win Myriah's trust so Mary Anne can take her out once and for all, then fix her unused room up to look like Kristy's used to. As an added bonus, with Myriah out of the way, MA will regain her status as the kid on the block who knows the most nursery rhymes.
Disappointingly, Mary Anne just runs to her own bedroom window and points out the obvious to a child who is probably much smarter than she is: "We can see each other!" She then tells Myriah it'll be their "special secret." There's something so sinister about that phrase. And as a child, I always thought this was a dumb move on MA's part, because I imagine in real life, the kid would constantly be bugging her. "Hey! We're talking to each other, but no one else knows! It's like we're talking to each other downstairs--only we're not. Guess what! I got new shoes! Look! Hey, I'm doing homework, what are you doing? Wait--are you ignoring me?"
Chapter Five
Amazingly, Dawn leaves nine-year-old Jeff alone in the house while she goes to babysit for the Pikes. He is apparently the one child in Stoneybrook who has matured before he turns eleven.
Upon arriving at Pike House, Dawn is greeted by Mallory, who tells her that she will be the second babysitter that day. I pause to wonder how Dawn would be unaware of this beforehand. I could have sworn I remembered that one of the things asked when scheduling a BSC appointment was how many children would need sitting. Since no second sitter was hired, it seems like Mrs. Pike lied on the phone or something. Plus, what if Dawn wasn't so cool with this? It'd be kinda funny if she were like, "I'm supposed to be babysitting with Mal? Oh, hell, naw," before peacing her way out.
Instead, she reacts enthusiastically. Mrs. Pike tells Dawn that Nicky is off sulking by himself because his older brothers don't want to play with him. Mrs. Pike says that Nicky's having a tough time, but that he's got to learn to deal. I appreciate an aspect of that, because I think it sounds better than forcing the older siblings to hang out with the younger one. My parents tried that and it was always disastrous for the youngest sibling. That'd be me. But I wonder if leaving him to sit in the dark by himself is the best idea. I mean, he's already pretty isolated. He's the only male Pike offspring who wasn't born into a trio of built-in friends. Couldn't you, like, try to engage him in an activity by himself? Or, hell, I don't know, find a way to introduce him to non-family members who are his age. Are there no other eight-year-old boys in the neighborhood? Anyway, Mrs. Pike tells Dawn that while they don't have a lot of rules in their house (I'll say), they do have a new one for Nicky: he's allowed to go off alone, as long as he stays within two blocks of the house.
After Mrs. Pike leaves, Dawn checks on the triplets. She finds them in their darkened room. Byron whispers that they are playing with their glow-in-the-dark space creatures. (Characters Speaking in Dramatic Tones Count: 3.)
Dawn finds Nicky alone in the rec room. I imagine him in dim lighting, a deep scowl on his face, a cigarette in one hand.
Click to viewNicky refuses to join the girls at the backyard sprinkler. Dawn says she'll ask the triplets if Nicky can play with them and his reaction would suggest that this has never occurred to anybody in the household before. Could it really be that easy?
No, apparently not. The triplets come racing out of their room in swim gear, shouting to Dawn that they're going swimming at a friend's house. I feel like this shouldn't fly so easily, like a babysitter should be asked if this is okay, not told.
Nicky tells everyone to go fuck themselves and storms off to be alone some more. After "about five minutes," Dawn begins to feel bad for him. No wonder these people are always going on and on about how sensitive Mary Anne is: their ability to feel sympathy is obviously stunted. She goes outside and shouts for him, but when he doesn't respond, she gets Mary Anne to come over and finish her babysitting job while she looks for Nicky. You know, if someone besides Mal had already been there, this wouldn't even be an issue...
She walks around shouting his name, looking up trees and shit. Did she check dumpsters? What about gutters, for his dead body? He suddenly appears, looking sweaty and dusty, and makes some smug remark about finding his own way to cool off. Did he kill a group of neighborhood children or something? Dawn doesn't know and Dawn doesn't care. She just wants to get him home before his parents arrive so she isn't screwed out of her $1.50 babysitting fee.