Claudia and the New Girl
The moment I saw the creation of bsc_snark, I knew that I was going to have to do this book. I hate it with a flaming passion, the way Stacey hates barf, Mallory hates everything cool, and Kristy will eventually hate men. As such, it errs on the side of being terribly mean. It also contains profanity, a robot, an abusive relationship, nine single spaced pages in Word, ironic fashion, a shitty "moral," and required me to add the word "dumbass" to my computer dictionary before it suffered a complete meltdown. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Open scene: A classroom in Stoneybrook Middle School. Claudia is sitting in English class, watching a fly, and totally gets busted with a pop spelling quiz for not paying attention. Hilariously, she spells “pharaoh” as “faro,” then changes it to “farrow” and congratulates herself for adding “one of those killer silent letters.” Er, which one is silent, the second “r” or the “w”? She just spelled the word phonetically and then patted herself on the back for NOT spelling it phonetically. My God, Claudia is a moron.
But no time to focus on Claud’s special needs! Our titular plot device is about to walk through the door! Enter Ashley Wyeth, dressed like a hippie, who, according to Claudia’s vast knowledge of hippie culture via watching the movie Woodstock, “wore tons of beaded or silver jewelry and funny long skirts or bell-bottom jeans.” So in other words, exactly the same kind of shit Claudia wears. I love how “bohemian” is a bizarre and foreign concept to her when she’s supposed to be so creative. She’s probably just confused because she’s trying to spell it “bowheemeein.”
Claudia is impressed because Ashley’s already read all the books they’re studying in English class - I think Claudia would be impressed by someone who’d read all the words on the back of a cereal box - and then Claud walks Ashley to her next class and they talk shop about artists for a minute. Claudia says that “I knew that somebody very...different had walked into my life.” I check the cover to make sure I’m not reading “Claudia’s First Lesbian Experience.” No such luck.
Some stuff happens in chapter 2, but I don’t know what, because I haven’t read the second chapter of a BSC book in about ten years.
...Okay, just for you guys, I did a quick skim just to see what Claud is wearing. Shockingly, she is wearing “a very short pink cotton dress, white tights, and black ballet slippers.” Hey, that doesn’t sound SO terr - “I had swept all of my hair way over to the side...only one ear showed, and in it I had put my big palm tree earring.” Oh. SO close.
The next day Claudia goes to her plot device pottery class, and who does she meet there but Ashley! I for one am shocked, I tell you. Shocked! Ashley asks about their teacher’s credentials (Claudia doesn’t think she has any and doesn’t understand why that matters) and then she snottily and kind of awesomely goes through Claudia’s portfolio to critique it. Claudia also looks at Ashley’s: “I turned to the next piece in the portfolio. It was a watercolor. I wasn’t sure what it was a watercolor of, but I knew it was very, very good. ‘That is innovation,’ Ashley told me.” Hilarious. I know art can be abstract, but I love how it’s not specified that it’s supposed to be abstract; just that Claudia can’t identify it. Luckily Ashley realizes what a moron she’s dealing with and helpfully tells her what it is. It’s INNOVATION. Wait, I’m sorry. INOVAYSHUN.
Ashley casually name-drops the swank art school she used to study at, and Claudia says that she wanted to go to a summer session there but her parents said it was too expensive. I pause for a moment to call my father and ask what our computer cost in the late 80’s. It was $2200 (which according to the conversion calculator would be $3615.51 today, if you were dying of curiosity). So the Kishis can drop that kind of dough for Janine to pursue her interests, but not on Claudia for hers. Guess we know which kid they love more, and it ain’t the one they dropped on her head as a kid.
The other students arrive! Ashley’s as socially retarded as Claudia is actually retarded, because she’ll only look at the person’s art and not their face while Claudia introduces them. I feel like ANM is trying to make Ashley seem really artistic and intense, but she actually comes off sort of autistic. The completely unqualified teacher announces a sculpture contest and Ashley bullies Claudia into entering, even though Claud doesn’t think she has enough time. But Ashley only spends time with people with TALENT, yo.
Baby-sitting for the Rodowskys the next day. They actually acknowledge the fact that Mrs. Rodowsky named her infant child “Archibald” and will probably burn in hell for that. Hey, did you know that Jackie is a walking disaster? Cause I didn’t, at all. It's so subtle, what with Jackie dumping a box of cereal on the floor, getting his hand stuck in a drain, and locking himself in the bathroom in the space of about ninety seconds. (Also, Claudia “helpfully” adds “Rice Krispys” to Mrs. Rodowsky’s shopping list. Even though it says “Rice Krispies” right there on the fucking box in her hand. My GOD, Claudia is a moron.) She takes them outside to play Red Light, Green Light, where Jackie probably won’t kill any innocent civilians, and runs into Ashley again. Claudia feels babyish for being seen baby-sitting. I don’t get it. Isn’t the baby-sitter the grown-up person in that situation? I think Claudia doesn’t know how baby-sitting works. (And the list doesn’t end there.)
Chapter 5! Claudia is about to eat lunch with the BSC and thinks about how the five of them used to be different and not hang together so much, but now they’re practically sewn together. Yeah, see, Claud, that’s not so much a HEALTHY thing, as this book illustrates. She parentheticals that they still have non-club friends, but I am not buying it. Especially not when Ashley hooks her outside the caf to come sit with her and Claud’s “heart began to pound. How would the club members react when one of us ‘defected’? It wasn’t like I was sick or had to do makeup work in the Resource Room or something.” Okay, first of all, “defected”? I will buy a group of thirteen year olds winning the lottery, but I will NOT buy that Claudia Kishi knows the word “defected.” I have SOME principles. Second, when you fear their reaction when you want to hang out with someone new without permission, call a hotline, because that’s one of the first signs of AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP. The BSCers are, predictably, total hags about it. Then Claudia gets annoyed all, “Hey, why CAN’T I have a new friend? Stuff it, bitches!” I’ll spoil it for you - it doesn’t last.
Over at their sad, defective (see what I did there?) table for two, Ashley and Claudia talk about the sculpture contest. Ashley wants to go check out a watercolor exhibit for inspiration and Claudia’s like, “Durr, but we need ideas for SCULPTURES, not PAINTINGS!” Claud, sweetie, that’s why it’s called “inspiration” and not “going to an art gallery and copying something.” Seriously, I still had a teeny smidgen of respect for Claud before I read this book because I thought her intelligence was channeled into art, but in this book she’s actually as stupid about art as she is about everything else.
She goes to the art exhibit anyway and ends up late for the BSC meeting because Ashley won’t move her ass or respect her time or anything like that. The club is, of course, completely passive-aggressive about it and doesn’t schedule her for anything, even though that’s really the whole point of the appointment book. When she says she was hanging with Ashley, Stacey turns pale and asks if going to the art gallery was as fun as hanging out at the mall with her. HOW much fun? On a scale of one to ten? How would it affect the score if, say, there were a good sale on neon orange stirrup pants?
Chapter 6, time for a completely random sideplot - Dawn is baby-sitting for the Perkins girls, and I know they’re major Mary Sues, but they do sound adorable, smearing makeup all over themselves. For no particular reason, Myriah has stuffed animals named Mrs. Xerox and Mrs. Refrigerator. I miss when the books had hilarious random touches like that. Suddenly, Jeff calls and tells Dawn she needs to come pick him up because he’s in trouble at school - foreshadowing! - and their mother is at work and can’t be reached, and they won’t let him go home until they talk to her. This sideplot is ridiculous because I’m pretty sure that a school can’t legally refuse to let a kid leave, and if the situation is serious enough that they actually won’t let him go until they reach his mother, I doubt they’re going to release him to his thirteen year old sister. But Dawn packs up the girls in their wagon and heads over to the school, without so much as leaving a note for Mrs. Perkins. Which is weird, because when they get back Mrs. Perkins asks where they were, Dawn apologizes for not leaving a note, Mrs. Perkins is cool and forgiving, and nothing happens. I thought Kristy would bust a lugnut if they weren’t textbook perfect babysitters, unless an Important Lesson could be learned from the mistake. I guess this is back when the books were still sort of realistic.
The next day, that traitorous whore Claudia is eating lunch with Ashley again. She doesn’t understand anything Ashley is saying, which is especially stupid because Ashley’s saying shit like, “I am an artist and my craft is calling.” I mean, that’s a sort of fruity thing to say, but I’m not sure what part is actually hard to understand, Then, hilariously, Claudia gets all confused when Ashley says she’s going to sculpt an inanimate object, because “inanimate” is a lot of syllables, and then when Ashley breaks it down into tiny words for her - “not alive” - she thinks Ashley’s going to sculpt a corpse. Sweet DAMMIT, Claudia’s a moron. Then, even when she figures out what Ashley’s talking about, she still doesn’t get it, because “most sculptures are of people or animals.” Okay, I don’t know how true that is, because I know nothing about art, but if it actually NEVER OCCURRED to her that it was possible to make a sculpture out of an inanimate object - and furthermore actually CAN’T CONCIEVE of the concept once it’s pointed out to her - then I throw up my hands in defeat. I don’t know how she doesn’t just, like, drink the paints and rub clay all over herself and scream about Twinkies.
After school Ashley drags her downtown for “inspuhrayshun” and they point enthusiastically at stoplights and used condoms and things. Claudia says she needs to go to her club meeting because it’s important, but when Ashley starts to pout she immediately says it’s not important (add “important” to the list of words Claud does not understand) and calls Dawn to say she’s not coming. In the previous meeting Kristy said it’s a club rule that she should have called to say she wasn’t coming, so of course when she calls to say she’s not coming they get all pissed. Seriously, Claud. Seek help. You don’t have to take this.
Chapter 8 begins with one of my pet peeves - a group notebook entry! Seriously, do they just huddle around, reading over each other’s shoulders and elbowing each other out of the way to write something when they want to cleverly “interrupt” someone in print? They not-so-passive-aggressive about what a bitch their vice president is (in fairness, Claudia probably won’t be able to figure out who they’re talking about) and, in my favorite unintentionally ironic line in the whole book, Stacey snots that Claudia used to be nice, but now “she hangs around with someone who wears BELL BOTTOM BLUE JEANS to school.”
...I’ll give you a minute to let that sink in. That’s right, Claudia Kishi, the girl who flagrantly dresses like a drunk blind wino on Halloween because she’s just so funky and original, is fine, but the girl whose pant legs are slightly bigger than standard issue is a complete outcast. She doesn’t toe the line! She wears eye-searing, randomly thrown together items of clothing that are different from our eye-searing, randomly thrown together items of clothing! We’re probably just jealous that WE never thought of pairing a petticoat with combat boots! SHUN HER!
First, how immature are they that they openly gossip about her right in the club notebook instead of behind her back the way the good lord intended? “Plus later - when we were friends again - Stacey filled me in on every little thing I’d missed.” Because when I’m patching up a fight with someone, the first thing I do is repeat every nasty thing that I and everyone else said about them. It clears the air and makes everyone feel SO much better. Then they tear up her room looking for snacks, which, it’s DAMN nice of Claudia to allow them to meet in her room even when she’s not there, and I think it’s downright saintly of her to always share the snacks that she pays for, so these bitches really deserve an epic beatdown for being so rude and entitled to Claud’s stuff. They talk about Jeff’s problems and how weird Ashley is and they juggle around their schedules to make sure Claudia doesn’t get any jobs. It’s both amazingly bitchy and boring at the same time.
The next day at school, Ashley corners Claudia at her locker while having the downright gall to be wearing “a long, all-the-way-to-her-ankles dress with three rows of ruffles at the bottom...I’ll admit it. She looked a little bizarre.” Hey, Pot! I want you to meet my old college roommate Kettle. I think you two have TONS in common. She doesn’t get a chance to pitch her inanimate object scheme again, though, because the BSC have come for the head of Benedict Claudia. “Nice dress,” Stacey snots at Ashley, because no one in New York would be caught dead in a long skirt. The bohemian movement certainly never existed in the Village or anything. Luckily, Claudia is there to let the slower members of the audience know what’s going on in this highly complex exchange by telling us that Stacey’s being sarcastic. Thank you, Claudia, sweetie. Just go sit down over there while the big people talk.
Actually, that’s pretty much what she does while the BSC and Ashley argue over her. I’m having a Claudia moment, because I don’t even really understand what Ashley wants here. She says that Claudia needs to spend as much time as possible on her art, and that “spending time on anything else, especially baby-sitting, is just a waste.” Then when the BSC collectively stomp away like some abusive drunk going to sleep it off, she says, “Who needs friends when you have art?” So...she doesn’t even WANT to be friends with Claudia, because friendships are a waste of time and she and Claudia both need to spend all their time with art? So what exactly is this all about? Is she doing it just be malicious and tear the BSC apart right at the official club headquarters? Cause that’d be kind of awesome. I think Ashley would be a cool villain if she could learn to look people in the eye.
Back at the old plot contrivance sculpture class, Unqualified Teacher checks out what everyone’s making for the show. She totally doesn’t get the statement Ashley’s making by sculpting a fire hydrant. I don’t really get what sort of statement you make by sculpting a fire hydrant either, but I don’t know what kind of art teacher wants to discourage art just because it’s unconventional. An Unqualified one, I guess. She loves the hand Claudia is sculpting, but Claudia says it’s just a practice piece and wants to make a statement too. Unqualified Teacher wanders away to paint some stick people and Ashley finally gets to pitch Claudia her great idea - sculpting a concept like “love” or “peace” instead of an object. I’m shocked. That’s actually a pretty good idea, artistically, and not all that unconventional.
But Claudia - steel yourself - doesn’t get it. She asks how Ashley would sculpt “love,” and Ashley says, “With gentle curves and tender feelings.” Claudia still doesn’t get it. I have never progressed beyond the finger painting stage and I can think of a hundred ways that you might visually represent love. Seriously, she’s never heard of this artistic concept at all? What a shitty artist. Ashley still doesn't know this, because Claudia doesn't have the stones to tell her, so she invites Claud over to check out her bitchin studio.
Chapter 10 opens with Stacey writing an open bitchfest directly to Claudia in the club notebook. I’m pretty sure that’s not actually what the notebook is for. Luckily, Stacey’s not so angry that she doesn’t stop to dot each and every i and j with a little heart. We discover that this scene has been prompted by Claudia blowing off Stacey to catch up on homework (she REALLY REALLY planned to go to the library, she assures no one at all) but then Ashley invites her over and, conveniently forgetting all about homework, she goes. And then calls to say she’s not coming to the meeting again. And actually tells them she’s spending the afternoon with Ashley. Because she is the world’s. Biggest. Dumbass.
This is the only part of the book that I really don’t feel sorry for Claudia, because half an hour is not really a big commitment, and she knows fully well how pissed they are that she can’t be arsed to show up. Either just suck it up and go so no one can say anything to you (which would require growing a pair and standing up to Ashley) or don’t go and make it clear that you have other commitments and interests in your life (which would require growing a pair and standing up to Kristy). Or split the difference and explain that you would like some time to focus on the sculpture contest right now but you’ll be back when it’s over, which is technically true. Claudia, of course, goes with option D: total obliviousness.
I go back to feeling sorry for her again right away, though, because the BSC reaches epic levels of heinousness at the meeting. Dawn has “a mean little rhyme” running through her head, which goes:
Traitor, traitor
Claudia - we hate ‘er!
Traitor, traitor
So long, see you later!
Goodbye, Claudia.
And then I laugh so hard my nose starts to bleed, because a) that poem is EPIC levels of stupid, especially the random floating final line, and b) I love how it’s implied that the reason Claudia can narrate Dawn’s thoughts is that Dawn must have repeated it word for word to her later. They decide to raid her junk food again and eat it all this time, just to be bitches. Yeah, that’s JUST the level of maturity I want to leave my children alone with.
The second they decide to eat Claudia’s junk food, Dawn volunteers to help (“making, for her, a supreme sacrifice”) and eats a bunch of marshmallows, “but then made a big deal out of rinsing her mouth out so she wouldn’t get cavities.” I hate Dawn. I might make fun of Claudia for being dumber than a sack of hammers, but I HATE Dawn. Because her only real defining character trait is that she’s such an individual and so self-possessed and would never sacrifice her ideals to make anyone else happy, except that she sacrifices her ideals every time it’s cloudy out, or it’s 5:15, or someone says her name. She’s the kind of girl who volunteers to ditch her strict no-sugar principle on a complete whim, with no prompting, for no reason other than to be mean to someone, and THEN ACTS LIKE A MARTYR ABOUT IT. GOD.
And then when they’re done gorging themselves, they hide the rest of Claudia’s food, short-sheet her bed, and leave nasty notes hidden for her around the room.
Because she didn’t show up for a meeting.
Think about it. She made a new friend and started devoting some time to her passion, and the response of her “friends” is to call her a traitor, eat her food, mess up her room, and play mean tricks on her WHILE THEY’RE GUESTS IN HER HOME. This is actually sort of scary, that we’re supposed to side with them.
It gets even worse, though, as the girls discuss how Ashley has no other friends and Stacey says that “Ashley likes Claud because she’s an artist, not because she’s Claud. And if that’s true, I’m beginning to wonder just how good a friend Ashley Wyeth is.” Um...maybe Ashley would rather have one good friend who shares her passion instead of a bunch of bitches who make fun of her clothes and short-sheet her bed when she dares have an interest that doesn’t involve them? This is so unhealthy I can’t even deal with it.
After a brief rage blackout, I’m back on the scene, where Claudia is sitting for the Rodowskys again, Jackie is a klutz again, Claudia distracts them with Red Light, Green Light again, and Ashley comes by again. Did I hit my head when I blacked out? Oh, no, this time Ashley’s openly bitchy about the baby-sitting (was she just spying out the window, waiting to catch Claudia sitting?) and wants to know why Claudia’s so into mushy sentimental stuff. I have no idea what’s sentimental about baby-sitting, but actually Claudia manages to muster all her brainpower and lob back a decent point, which is that wanting to sculpt love out of soft curves is pretty damn mushy and sentimental. Ashley sputters out a “this is the thanks I get for all my blah blah mentor” which makes absolutely no sense. Claudia didn’t INSULT you, she just pointed out that artists have to be in touch with their feelings. Though I guess that might be insulting to someone with Ashley’s cold robot heart.
Of course, the non-sequitor provides the perfect opening for our Important Lesson of the Week, because Claudia finally gets to speechify about how friends are friends because they like each other, not because they owe each other anything. So if someone decides they don’t like you anymore because you might stop giving them free candy, unlimited use of your private telephone line, and your undivided time and attention, they aren’t your real friends. Got it.
...Oh, wait. Ashley has a hilariously overblown reaction and calls Claudia “ungrateful” and “foolish,” because she is 73 years old. What happened to the good old days when teenage girls just called each other sluts? She stomps off and Claudia realizes that Ashley’s right; she HAS been foolish and ungrateful. To the BSC! She will right this wrong by using Jackie as the subject for her sculpture, because obviously a painstaking and fragile process is certainly one that you want to involve a child called the Walking Disaster in.
The next day (I have no idea what day this is, so I always assume it’s the next day) Claudia comes over while Mary Anne’s baby-sitting to start sculpting Jackie and tells Mary Anne how Ashley’s microchip short-circuited when presented with human emotion. And then Ashley shows up at a complete stranger’s house because she saw Claudia’s bike outside and wanted to chastise her for baby-sitting. Is this the book where absolutely everyone acts intrusive and creepy? Christ. She’s not pleased to see Claudia sculpting a person instead of, I don’t know, a big mound of dog shit. Claudia tells her to fuck off. It’s a nice little exchange, if not kind of weird, but then, so are most parts of this book.
Claudia’s got a lot to do, folks. So much to do that she makes a list of the lists she needs to make! Dude, I do that sort of thing all the time. I’m also an anal-retentive neat freak, so I have trouble buying this from Miss Irresponsible. It’s like she sat around thinking about what a smart, organized person would do and the only thing she could come up with is “make a list.” Her List of Lists includes “Freinds,” “Schoolwork,” and “Scupture shou show.” She can spell “schoolwork” but not “show”? Why do I even question these things anymore? Also, I remember her saying in a book that she was tested for dyslexia but doesn’t have it, but I’ve read my dyslexic brother’s writing for years and she is absolute textbook. (A bad speller probably would spell “Ashley” as “Ashlee,” but Claudia spells it “Aslhey,” which doesn’t even make sense phonetically...no, seriously, why am I thinking about this?)
For friends, she needs to apologize to Kristy and Stacey and try to explain to Ashley. I don’t know what she thinks needs explaining; she and Ashley both made their positions pretty clear. It’s not like they had a misunderstanding. But I guess since Claudia needs everything explained to her in tiny words, she wants to return the favor. For schoolwork, she needs to finish one book, start another, go to the library, and ask if she can retake her “speling” test. I gotta be honest; I don’t think it’ll help. For the contest, she needs to figure out how much time her sculpture’s going to take, talk to her art teacher (?), and talk to her parents (?). Then she throws away the first list, which probably took her about an hour to come up with, and then stares at the other lists and panics. Okay, not wasting time writing things down probably would have been a good start. She could have called her friends and apologized in the time it took her to write down the word “apologize.”
She actually listens to me and calls her friends, except she calls Ashley first, which is kind of stupid and pointless. She says pretty much exactly what she said back at the Rodowskys, and Ashley’s reaction is pretty much the same, by which I mean she hangs up on Claudia. I really don’t get why Ashley warrants the “I have lots of different interests in my life, not just one” speech, but the BSC doesn’t, seeing as how they’re guilty of demanding Claudia’s undivided time as much as Ashley is. But calling Stacey is next on the list, and she gets the “I’ve been a terrible friend” speech. Stacey laughs and tells her to look under her pillow, under which she has left a nasty note. (No, I was excited for a minute too, but she’s just telling Claudia to throw it away.) So...she stoops to leaving rude messages in someone’s room, but Claudia’s the one who has to grovel for being a shitty friend. I hate this book so much.
Kristy’s up next, and she is not so accepting of Claudia’s apology, which is especially crappy since Claudia really didn’t do anything to her except refusing to cater to the every whim of Kristy’s precious club. I have a feeling that Kristy thinks that she actually IS the club, and a slight against it is a slight against her personally.
Then Claud decides against being in the sculpture show, because she’s just too busy to get it all done, and gets approval to retake the spelling test, which makes no sense, because it’s supposed to be a weekend. I hope she didn’t call her poor teacher at home. On Monday she makes up her homework, tells Jackie that his sculpture is not going to be in the show (he loves her anyway and it’s adorable), and then presents a little poem of apology at the BSC meeting. Again, coming up with those four lines of rhyme probably took her hours that she could have been sculpting. They forgive her, of course, and the part where they apologize to HER for destroying her room, writing nasty things about her, and generally being shittier than she was happens offscreen. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, or else I might go apoplectic.
The next chapter opens with Claudia freaking out with nerves at the show. Why is she freaking...oh, of course. Unqualified Art Teacher has taken it upon herself to enter the Jackie sculpture as a work-in-progress without Claudia’s permission, even though if someone entered one of my half-finished pieces of writing in a contest without my permission, that person would wake up in a dark alley with half their limbs. (I’m a little tetchy about people seeing my work in progress.) And of course, UAT tells her she HAD to do it, because even though it’s not finished she can tell how amazing it’s going to be. I have no idea whether it’s possible to tell how good a piece is going to turn out to be when it’s only half done, but considering this same teacher didn’t think Ashley’s fire hydrant was any good when it was half done and it ends up winning first place, I don’t think much of her eye for that sort of thing. You guys, I think maybe this teacher is unqualified. It’s never adequately explained why she didn’t enter Claudia’s finished sculpture of a hand instead, considering that’s the piece she was urging Claudia to enter in the first place. The scary half-head gets an honorable mention and would have won if it were finished, we’re told.
In the closing scene, we’re back in the caf with Kristy doing her usual gross-out routine over lunch. That must get so boring and repetitive. Ashley comes by, and Claudia informs us that she looks “just plain weird” in her outfit, which for reference is “a long knitted vest over an even longer shirt which she was wearing tails-out over a skirt that didn’t match either the vest or the skirt.” A) As a professional editor, let me just say nice catch, whoever edited this book. The skirt doesn’t match ITSELF, apparently. B) I have spent long enough on this recap, or else I would take five minutes to pick out a book at random and catch Claudia wearing this exact same outfit. The irony, it hurts. Claudia invites her to sit with them anyway and she actually does instead of clubbing Claudia over the head with her lunch tray and screaming, like her previous overblown reactions. She bonds with Kristy by comparing the hot lunch to various unappetizing art supplies, and we are bid adieu with the statement that from there on out, Ashley sometimes sat with them at lunch, which is a complete and total lie. Or else Claudia has mixed up the words “sometimes” and “never” again. I would not put it past her.
Open scene: A classroom in Stoneybrook Middle School. Claudia is sitting in English class, watching a fly, and totally gets busted with a pop spelling quiz for not paying attention. Hilariously, she spells “pharaoh” as “faro,” then changes it to “farrow” and congratulates herself for adding “one of those killer silent letters.” Er, which one is silent, the second “r” or the “w”? She just spelled the word phonetically and then patted herself on the back for NOT spelling it phonetically. My God, Claudia is a moron.
But no time to focus on Claud’s special needs! Our titular plot device is about to walk through the door! Enter Ashley Wyeth, dressed like a hippie, who, according to Claudia’s vast knowledge of hippie culture via watching the movie Woodstock, “wore tons of beaded or silver jewelry and funny long skirts or bell-bottom jeans.” So in other words, exactly the same kind of shit Claudia wears. I love how “bohemian” is a bizarre and foreign concept to her when she’s supposed to be so creative. She’s probably just confused because she’s trying to spell it “bowheemeein.”
Claudia is impressed because Ashley’s already read all the books they’re studying in English class - I think Claudia would be impressed by someone who’d read all the words on the back of a cereal box - and then Claud walks Ashley to her next class and they talk shop about artists for a minute. Claudia says that “I knew that somebody very...different had walked into my life.” I check the cover to make sure I’m not reading “Claudia’s First Lesbian Experience.” No such luck.
Some stuff happens in chapter 2, but I don’t know what, because I haven’t read the second chapter of a BSC book in about ten years.
...Okay, just for you guys, I did a quick skim just to see what Claud is wearing. Shockingly, she is wearing “a very short pink cotton dress, white tights, and black ballet slippers.” Hey, that doesn’t sound SO terr - “I had swept all of my hair way over to the side...only one ear showed, and in it I had put my big palm tree earring.” Oh. SO close.
The next day Claudia goes to her plot device pottery class, and who does she meet there but Ashley! I for one am shocked, I tell you. Shocked! Ashley asks about their teacher’s credentials (Claudia doesn’t think she has any and doesn’t understand why that matters) and then she snottily and kind of awesomely goes through Claudia’s portfolio to critique it. Claudia also looks at Ashley’s: “I turned to the next piece in the portfolio. It was a watercolor. I wasn’t sure what it was a watercolor of, but I knew it was very, very good. ‘That is innovation,’ Ashley told me.” Hilarious. I know art can be abstract, but I love how it’s not specified that it’s supposed to be abstract; just that Claudia can’t identify it. Luckily Ashley realizes what a moron she’s dealing with and helpfully tells her what it is. It’s INNOVATION. Wait, I’m sorry. INOVAYSHUN.
Ashley casually name-drops the swank art school she used to study at, and Claudia says that she wanted to go to a summer session there but her parents said it was too expensive. I pause for a moment to call my father and ask what our computer cost in the late 80’s. It was $2200 (which according to the conversion calculator would be $3615.51 today, if you were dying of curiosity). So the Kishis can drop that kind of dough for Janine to pursue her interests, but not on Claudia for hers. Guess we know which kid they love more, and it ain’t the one they dropped on her head as a kid.
The other students arrive! Ashley’s as socially retarded as Claudia is actually retarded, because she’ll only look at the person’s art and not their face while Claudia introduces them. I feel like ANM is trying to make Ashley seem really artistic and intense, but she actually comes off sort of autistic. The completely unqualified teacher announces a sculpture contest and Ashley bullies Claudia into entering, even though Claud doesn’t think she has enough time. But Ashley only spends time with people with TALENT, yo.
Baby-sitting for the Rodowskys the next day. They actually acknowledge the fact that Mrs. Rodowsky named her infant child “Archibald” and will probably burn in hell for that. Hey, did you know that Jackie is a walking disaster? Cause I didn’t, at all. It's so subtle, what with Jackie dumping a box of cereal on the floor, getting his hand stuck in a drain, and locking himself in the bathroom in the space of about ninety seconds. (Also, Claudia “helpfully” adds “Rice Krispys” to Mrs. Rodowsky’s shopping list. Even though it says “Rice Krispies” right there on the fucking box in her hand. My GOD, Claudia is a moron.) She takes them outside to play Red Light, Green Light, where Jackie probably won’t kill any innocent civilians, and runs into Ashley again. Claudia feels babyish for being seen baby-sitting. I don’t get it. Isn’t the baby-sitter the grown-up person in that situation? I think Claudia doesn’t know how baby-sitting works. (And the list doesn’t end there.)
Chapter 5! Claudia is about to eat lunch with the BSC and thinks about how the five of them used to be different and not hang together so much, but now they’re practically sewn together. Yeah, see, Claud, that’s not so much a HEALTHY thing, as this book illustrates. She parentheticals that they still have non-club friends, but I am not buying it. Especially not when Ashley hooks her outside the caf to come sit with her and Claud’s “heart began to pound. How would the club members react when one of us ‘defected’? It wasn’t like I was sick or had to do makeup work in the Resource Room or something.” Okay, first of all, “defected”? I will buy a group of thirteen year olds winning the lottery, but I will NOT buy that Claudia Kishi knows the word “defected.” I have SOME principles. Second, when you fear their reaction when you want to hang out with someone new without permission, call a hotline, because that’s one of the first signs of AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP. The BSCers are, predictably, total hags about it. Then Claudia gets annoyed all, “Hey, why CAN’T I have a new friend? Stuff it, bitches!” I’ll spoil it for you - it doesn’t last.
Over at their sad, defective (see what I did there?) table for two, Ashley and Claudia talk about the sculpture contest. Ashley wants to go check out a watercolor exhibit for inspiration and Claudia’s like, “Durr, but we need ideas for SCULPTURES, not PAINTINGS!” Claud, sweetie, that’s why it’s called “inspiration” and not “going to an art gallery and copying something.” Seriously, I still had a teeny smidgen of respect for Claud before I read this book because I thought her intelligence was channeled into art, but in this book she’s actually as stupid about art as she is about everything else.
She goes to the art exhibit anyway and ends up late for the BSC meeting because Ashley won’t move her ass or respect her time or anything like that. The club is, of course, completely passive-aggressive about it and doesn’t schedule her for anything, even though that’s really the whole point of the appointment book. When she says she was hanging with Ashley, Stacey turns pale and asks if going to the art gallery was as fun as hanging out at the mall with her. HOW much fun? On a scale of one to ten? How would it affect the score if, say, there were a good sale on neon orange stirrup pants?
Chapter 6, time for a completely random sideplot - Dawn is baby-sitting for the Perkins girls, and I know they’re major Mary Sues, but they do sound adorable, smearing makeup all over themselves. For no particular reason, Myriah has stuffed animals named Mrs. Xerox and Mrs. Refrigerator. I miss when the books had hilarious random touches like that. Suddenly, Jeff calls and tells Dawn she needs to come pick him up because he’s in trouble at school - foreshadowing! - and their mother is at work and can’t be reached, and they won’t let him go home until they talk to her. This sideplot is ridiculous because I’m pretty sure that a school can’t legally refuse to let a kid leave, and if the situation is serious enough that they actually won’t let him go until they reach his mother, I doubt they’re going to release him to his thirteen year old sister. But Dawn packs up the girls in their wagon and heads over to the school, without so much as leaving a note for Mrs. Perkins. Which is weird, because when they get back Mrs. Perkins asks where they were, Dawn apologizes for not leaving a note, Mrs. Perkins is cool and forgiving, and nothing happens. I thought Kristy would bust a lugnut if they weren’t textbook perfect babysitters, unless an Important Lesson could be learned from the mistake. I guess this is back when the books were still sort of realistic.
The next day, that traitorous whore Claudia is eating lunch with Ashley again. She doesn’t understand anything Ashley is saying, which is especially stupid because Ashley’s saying shit like, “I am an artist and my craft is calling.” I mean, that’s a sort of fruity thing to say, but I’m not sure what part is actually hard to understand, Then, hilariously, Claudia gets all confused when Ashley says she’s going to sculpt an inanimate object, because “inanimate” is a lot of syllables, and then when Ashley breaks it down into tiny words for her - “not alive” - she thinks Ashley’s going to sculpt a corpse. Sweet DAMMIT, Claudia’s a moron. Then, even when she figures out what Ashley’s talking about, she still doesn’t get it, because “most sculptures are of people or animals.” Okay, I don’t know how true that is, because I know nothing about art, but if it actually NEVER OCCURRED to her that it was possible to make a sculpture out of an inanimate object - and furthermore actually CAN’T CONCIEVE of the concept once it’s pointed out to her - then I throw up my hands in defeat. I don’t know how she doesn’t just, like, drink the paints and rub clay all over herself and scream about Twinkies.
After school Ashley drags her downtown for “inspuhrayshun” and they point enthusiastically at stoplights and used condoms and things. Claudia says she needs to go to her club meeting because it’s important, but when Ashley starts to pout she immediately says it’s not important (add “important” to the list of words Claud does not understand) and calls Dawn to say she’s not coming. In the previous meeting Kristy said it’s a club rule that she should have called to say she wasn’t coming, so of course when she calls to say she’s not coming they get all pissed. Seriously, Claud. Seek help. You don’t have to take this.
Chapter 8 begins with one of my pet peeves - a group notebook entry! Seriously, do they just huddle around, reading over each other’s shoulders and elbowing each other out of the way to write something when they want to cleverly “interrupt” someone in print? They not-so-passive-aggressive about what a bitch their vice president is (in fairness, Claudia probably won’t be able to figure out who they’re talking about) and, in my favorite unintentionally ironic line in the whole book, Stacey snots that Claudia used to be nice, but now “she hangs around with someone who wears BELL BOTTOM BLUE JEANS to school.”
...I’ll give you a minute to let that sink in. That’s right, Claudia Kishi, the girl who flagrantly dresses like a drunk blind wino on Halloween because she’s just so funky and original, is fine, but the girl whose pant legs are slightly bigger than standard issue is a complete outcast. She doesn’t toe the line! She wears eye-searing, randomly thrown together items of clothing that are different from our eye-searing, randomly thrown together items of clothing! We’re probably just jealous that WE never thought of pairing a petticoat with combat boots! SHUN HER!
First, how immature are they that they openly gossip about her right in the club notebook instead of behind her back the way the good lord intended? “Plus later - when we were friends again - Stacey filled me in on every little thing I’d missed.” Because when I’m patching up a fight with someone, the first thing I do is repeat every nasty thing that I and everyone else said about them. It clears the air and makes everyone feel SO much better. Then they tear up her room looking for snacks, which, it’s DAMN nice of Claudia to allow them to meet in her room even when she’s not there, and I think it’s downright saintly of her to always share the snacks that she pays for, so these bitches really deserve an epic beatdown for being so rude and entitled to Claud’s stuff. They talk about Jeff’s problems and how weird Ashley is and they juggle around their schedules to make sure Claudia doesn’t get any jobs. It’s both amazingly bitchy and boring at the same time.
The next day at school, Ashley corners Claudia at her locker while having the downright gall to be wearing “a long, all-the-way-to-her-ankles dress with three rows of ruffles at the bottom...I’ll admit it. She looked a little bizarre.” Hey, Pot! I want you to meet my old college roommate Kettle. I think you two have TONS in common. She doesn’t get a chance to pitch her inanimate object scheme again, though, because the BSC have come for the head of Benedict Claudia. “Nice dress,” Stacey snots at Ashley, because no one in New York would be caught dead in a long skirt. The bohemian movement certainly never existed in the Village or anything. Luckily, Claudia is there to let the slower members of the audience know what’s going on in this highly complex exchange by telling us that Stacey’s being sarcastic. Thank you, Claudia, sweetie. Just go sit down over there while the big people talk.
Actually, that’s pretty much what she does while the BSC and Ashley argue over her. I’m having a Claudia moment, because I don’t even really understand what Ashley wants here. She says that Claudia needs to spend as much time as possible on her art, and that “spending time on anything else, especially baby-sitting, is just a waste.” Then when the BSC collectively stomp away like some abusive drunk going to sleep it off, she says, “Who needs friends when you have art?” So...she doesn’t even WANT to be friends with Claudia, because friendships are a waste of time and she and Claudia both need to spend all their time with art? So what exactly is this all about? Is she doing it just be malicious and tear the BSC apart right at the official club headquarters? Cause that’d be kind of awesome. I think Ashley would be a cool villain if she could learn to look people in the eye.
Back at the old plot contrivance sculpture class, Unqualified Teacher checks out what everyone’s making for the show. She totally doesn’t get the statement Ashley’s making by sculpting a fire hydrant. I don’t really get what sort of statement you make by sculpting a fire hydrant either, but I don’t know what kind of art teacher wants to discourage art just because it’s unconventional. An Unqualified one, I guess. She loves the hand Claudia is sculpting, but Claudia says it’s just a practice piece and wants to make a statement too. Unqualified Teacher wanders away to paint some stick people and Ashley finally gets to pitch Claudia her great idea - sculpting a concept like “love” or “peace” instead of an object. I’m shocked. That’s actually a pretty good idea, artistically, and not all that unconventional.
But Claudia - steel yourself - doesn’t get it. She asks how Ashley would sculpt “love,” and Ashley says, “With gentle curves and tender feelings.” Claudia still doesn’t get it. I have never progressed beyond the finger painting stage and I can think of a hundred ways that you might visually represent love. Seriously, she’s never heard of this artistic concept at all? What a shitty artist. Ashley still doesn't know this, because Claudia doesn't have the stones to tell her, so she invites Claud over to check out her bitchin studio.
Chapter 10 opens with Stacey writing an open bitchfest directly to Claudia in the club notebook. I’m pretty sure that’s not actually what the notebook is for. Luckily, Stacey’s not so angry that she doesn’t stop to dot each and every i and j with a little heart. We discover that this scene has been prompted by Claudia blowing off Stacey to catch up on homework (she REALLY REALLY planned to go to the library, she assures no one at all) but then Ashley invites her over and, conveniently forgetting all about homework, she goes. And then calls to say she’s not coming to the meeting again. And actually tells them she’s spending the afternoon with Ashley. Because she is the world’s. Biggest. Dumbass.
This is the only part of the book that I really don’t feel sorry for Claudia, because half an hour is not really a big commitment, and she knows fully well how pissed they are that she can’t be arsed to show up. Either just suck it up and go so no one can say anything to you (which would require growing a pair and standing up to Ashley) or don’t go and make it clear that you have other commitments and interests in your life (which would require growing a pair and standing up to Kristy). Or split the difference and explain that you would like some time to focus on the sculpture contest right now but you’ll be back when it’s over, which is technically true. Claudia, of course, goes with option D: total obliviousness.
I go back to feeling sorry for her again right away, though, because the BSC reaches epic levels of heinousness at the meeting. Dawn has “a mean little rhyme” running through her head, which goes:
Traitor, traitor
Claudia - we hate ‘er!
Traitor, traitor
So long, see you later!
Goodbye, Claudia.
And then I laugh so hard my nose starts to bleed, because a) that poem is EPIC levels of stupid, especially the random floating final line, and b) I love how it’s implied that the reason Claudia can narrate Dawn’s thoughts is that Dawn must have repeated it word for word to her later. They decide to raid her junk food again and eat it all this time, just to be bitches. Yeah, that’s JUST the level of maturity I want to leave my children alone with.
The second they decide to eat Claudia’s junk food, Dawn volunteers to help (“making, for her, a supreme sacrifice”) and eats a bunch of marshmallows, “but then made a big deal out of rinsing her mouth out so she wouldn’t get cavities.” I hate Dawn. I might make fun of Claudia for being dumber than a sack of hammers, but I HATE Dawn. Because her only real defining character trait is that she’s such an individual and so self-possessed and would never sacrifice her ideals to make anyone else happy, except that she sacrifices her ideals every time it’s cloudy out, or it’s 5:15, or someone says her name. She’s the kind of girl who volunteers to ditch her strict no-sugar principle on a complete whim, with no prompting, for no reason other than to be mean to someone, and THEN ACTS LIKE A MARTYR ABOUT IT. GOD.
And then when they’re done gorging themselves, they hide the rest of Claudia’s food, short-sheet her bed, and leave nasty notes hidden for her around the room.
Because she didn’t show up for a meeting.
Think about it. She made a new friend and started devoting some time to her passion, and the response of her “friends” is to call her a traitor, eat her food, mess up her room, and play mean tricks on her WHILE THEY’RE GUESTS IN HER HOME. This is actually sort of scary, that we’re supposed to side with them.
It gets even worse, though, as the girls discuss how Ashley has no other friends and Stacey says that “Ashley likes Claud because she’s an artist, not because she’s Claud. And if that’s true, I’m beginning to wonder just how good a friend Ashley Wyeth is.” Um...maybe Ashley would rather have one good friend who shares her passion instead of a bunch of bitches who make fun of her clothes and short-sheet her bed when she dares have an interest that doesn’t involve them? This is so unhealthy I can’t even deal with it.
After a brief rage blackout, I’m back on the scene, where Claudia is sitting for the Rodowskys again, Jackie is a klutz again, Claudia distracts them with Red Light, Green Light again, and Ashley comes by again. Did I hit my head when I blacked out? Oh, no, this time Ashley’s openly bitchy about the baby-sitting (was she just spying out the window, waiting to catch Claudia sitting?) and wants to know why Claudia’s so into mushy sentimental stuff. I have no idea what’s sentimental about baby-sitting, but actually Claudia manages to muster all her brainpower and lob back a decent point, which is that wanting to sculpt love out of soft curves is pretty damn mushy and sentimental. Ashley sputters out a “this is the thanks I get for all my blah blah mentor” which makes absolutely no sense. Claudia didn’t INSULT you, she just pointed out that artists have to be in touch with their feelings. Though I guess that might be insulting to someone with Ashley’s cold robot heart.
Of course, the non-sequitor provides the perfect opening for our Important Lesson of the Week, because Claudia finally gets to speechify about how friends are friends because they like each other, not because they owe each other anything. So if someone decides they don’t like you anymore because you might stop giving them free candy, unlimited use of your private telephone line, and your undivided time and attention, they aren’t your real friends. Got it.
...Oh, wait. Ashley has a hilariously overblown reaction and calls Claudia “ungrateful” and “foolish,” because she is 73 years old. What happened to the good old days when teenage girls just called each other sluts? She stomps off and Claudia realizes that Ashley’s right; she HAS been foolish and ungrateful. To the BSC! She will right this wrong by using Jackie as the subject for her sculpture, because obviously a painstaking and fragile process is certainly one that you want to involve a child called the Walking Disaster in.
The next day (I have no idea what day this is, so I always assume it’s the next day) Claudia comes over while Mary Anne’s baby-sitting to start sculpting Jackie and tells Mary Anne how Ashley’s microchip short-circuited when presented with human emotion. And then Ashley shows up at a complete stranger’s house because she saw Claudia’s bike outside and wanted to chastise her for baby-sitting. Is this the book where absolutely everyone acts intrusive and creepy? Christ. She’s not pleased to see Claudia sculpting a person instead of, I don’t know, a big mound of dog shit. Claudia tells her to fuck off. It’s a nice little exchange, if not kind of weird, but then, so are most parts of this book.
Claudia’s got a lot to do, folks. So much to do that she makes a list of the lists she needs to make! Dude, I do that sort of thing all the time. I’m also an anal-retentive neat freak, so I have trouble buying this from Miss Irresponsible. It’s like she sat around thinking about what a smart, organized person would do and the only thing she could come up with is “make a list.” Her List of Lists includes “Freinds,” “Schoolwork,” and “Scupture shou show.” She can spell “schoolwork” but not “show”? Why do I even question these things anymore? Also, I remember her saying in a book that she was tested for dyslexia but doesn’t have it, but I’ve read my dyslexic brother’s writing for years and she is absolute textbook. (A bad speller probably would spell “Ashley” as “Ashlee,” but Claudia spells it “Aslhey,” which doesn’t even make sense phonetically...no, seriously, why am I thinking about this?)
For friends, she needs to apologize to Kristy and Stacey and try to explain to Ashley. I don’t know what she thinks needs explaining; she and Ashley both made their positions pretty clear. It’s not like they had a misunderstanding. But I guess since Claudia needs everything explained to her in tiny words, she wants to return the favor. For schoolwork, she needs to finish one book, start another, go to the library, and ask if she can retake her “speling” test. I gotta be honest; I don’t think it’ll help. For the contest, she needs to figure out how much time her sculpture’s going to take, talk to her art teacher (?), and talk to her parents (?). Then she throws away the first list, which probably took her about an hour to come up with, and then stares at the other lists and panics. Okay, not wasting time writing things down probably would have been a good start. She could have called her friends and apologized in the time it took her to write down the word “apologize.”
She actually listens to me and calls her friends, except she calls Ashley first, which is kind of stupid and pointless. She says pretty much exactly what she said back at the Rodowskys, and Ashley’s reaction is pretty much the same, by which I mean she hangs up on Claudia. I really don’t get why Ashley warrants the “I have lots of different interests in my life, not just one” speech, but the BSC doesn’t, seeing as how they’re guilty of demanding Claudia’s undivided time as much as Ashley is. But calling Stacey is next on the list, and she gets the “I’ve been a terrible friend” speech. Stacey laughs and tells her to look under her pillow, under which she has left a nasty note. (No, I was excited for a minute too, but she’s just telling Claudia to throw it away.) So...she stoops to leaving rude messages in someone’s room, but Claudia’s the one who has to grovel for being a shitty friend. I hate this book so much.
Kristy’s up next, and she is not so accepting of Claudia’s apology, which is especially crappy since Claudia really didn’t do anything to her except refusing to cater to the every whim of Kristy’s precious club. I have a feeling that Kristy thinks that she actually IS the club, and a slight against it is a slight against her personally.
Then Claud decides against being in the sculpture show, because she’s just too busy to get it all done, and gets approval to retake the spelling test, which makes no sense, because it’s supposed to be a weekend. I hope she didn’t call her poor teacher at home. On Monday she makes up her homework, tells Jackie that his sculpture is not going to be in the show (he loves her anyway and it’s adorable), and then presents a little poem of apology at the BSC meeting. Again, coming up with those four lines of rhyme probably took her hours that she could have been sculpting. They forgive her, of course, and the part where they apologize to HER for destroying her room, writing nasty things about her, and generally being shittier than she was happens offscreen. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, or else I might go apoplectic.
The next chapter opens with Claudia freaking out with nerves at the show. Why is she freaking...oh, of course. Unqualified Art Teacher has taken it upon herself to enter the Jackie sculpture as a work-in-progress without Claudia’s permission, even though if someone entered one of my half-finished pieces of writing in a contest without my permission, that person would wake up in a dark alley with half their limbs. (I’m a little tetchy about people seeing my work in progress.) And of course, UAT tells her she HAD to do it, because even though it’s not finished she can tell how amazing it’s going to be. I have no idea whether it’s possible to tell how good a piece is going to turn out to be when it’s only half done, but considering this same teacher didn’t think Ashley’s fire hydrant was any good when it was half done and it ends up winning first place, I don’t think much of her eye for that sort of thing. You guys, I think maybe this teacher is unqualified. It’s never adequately explained why she didn’t enter Claudia’s finished sculpture of a hand instead, considering that’s the piece she was urging Claudia to enter in the first place. The scary half-head gets an honorable mention and would have won if it were finished, we’re told.
In the closing scene, we’re back in the caf with Kristy doing her usual gross-out routine over lunch. That must get so boring and repetitive. Ashley comes by, and Claudia informs us that she looks “just plain weird” in her outfit, which for reference is “a long knitted vest over an even longer shirt which she was wearing tails-out over a skirt that didn’t match either the vest or the skirt.” A) As a professional editor, let me just say nice catch, whoever edited this book. The skirt doesn’t match ITSELF, apparently. B) I have spent long enough on this recap, or else I would take five minutes to pick out a book at random and catch Claudia wearing this exact same outfit. The irony, it hurts. Claudia invites her to sit with them anyway and she actually does instead of clubbing Claudia over the head with her lunch tray and screaming, like her previous overblown reactions. She bonds with Kristy by comparing the hot lunch to various unappetizing art supplies, and we are bid adieu with the statement that from there on out, Ashley sometimes sat with them at lunch, which is a complete and total lie. Or else Claudia has mixed up the words “sometimes” and “never” again. I would not put it past her.