On the afternoon that I was to baby-sit for them, Linny and Hannie were waiting for me in the front yard.

"Hi!" called Hannie, jumping up as soon as she saw me coming.

"Hi, you guys," I said.

"Guess what we want to do today," Linny said. "We want to have a pet fashion show."

"Yeah, we want to dress up Myrtle and Noodle," Hannie added.

This is the great thing about the Papadakises. They have just as much money as anyone else around here, but you wouldn't know it, except for the mansion. They're very down to-earth, and their pets are named Myrtle the Turtle and Noodle the Poodle, not Astrid of Grenville, like some pets I can think of. The children are allowed to choose their own clothes every morning, even though they sometimes end up wearing stripes with plaids, and they go barefoot all summer long.

"Let me talk to your mom first," I told Linnie and Hannie, "and then we'll see about Myrtle and Noodle."

"Okay," said Hannie cheerfully. She took my hand and led me inside the Papadakises' house. "Mo-om!" she yelled. "Kristy's here!"

Mrs. Papadakis came bustling through the hallway from the back of the house. "Hi, Kristy," she said. "Thanks for coming."

Linny, Hannie, and Sari look exactly like their mother. Mrs. Papadakis wears her dark hair so that it frames her face. And when she smiles her terrific smile, the corners of her wide-set brown eyes crinkle just the way Hannie's were crinkled then.

"I should be back by five o'clock," she told me. "I've got a meeting at the children's school."

"Okay," I replied. "Are there emergency numbers somewhere?" (As a baby-sitter, I always ask this if I'm working for a family I'm not too familiar with. You just never know what could happen.) "Oh, yes," said Mrs. Papadakis. "I almost forgot. They're on the memo board in the kitchen. Pediatrician, grandparents, and George's - I mean, Mr. Papadakis' - office number."

"Great," I said. "Where's Sari?"

"Upstairs napping, but she should wake soon. And she'll want apple juice then. There's some in the refrigerator. But no snacks for the kids, okay?"

"Okay."

Mrs. Papadakis kissed Linny and Hannie and rushed off.

"Now," I said briskly, "what's this about dress - "

"WAHH!".

I was interrupted by a cry from upstairs.

"Oh, Sari's awake," said Linny.

"I'll get her," I told him. "Why don't you guys go play in the backyard?"

"Okay," they agreed.

"But stay there," I added. "Don't leave without telling me."

"Okay!" They were already halfway out the door.

I ran upstairs and followed the sound of Sari's sobs to her bedroom. I opened the door slowly, knowing she would be confused to see me enter instead of her mother.

"Hi, Sari!" I said brightly.

The sobs increased.

I cheerfully pulled up the shade and straightened the room, talking to Sari all the time. "Hi, I'm Kristy," I told her. "We're going to have fun playing this afternoon."

"No, no, no, no, no!" wailed Sari.

But by the time I'd changed her, tickled her, and talked to her teddy bear, we were old friends. We walked down the stairs hand in hand. I gave her some apple juice, and then we joined Hannie and Linny in the yard.

"Hi, Sari-Sari!" cried Hannie, running over to her sister.

"Kristy," Linny said, "we want to have a fashion show for Myrtle and Noodle."

"You're going to dress up a turtle?" I replied. "Don't you think that's going to be kind of hard? Besides, where are you going to find turtle-size clothes?"

"Well, that's one of our problems," said Linny. "The other one is that we can't find Noodle. And we do have clothes for him. He fits into Sari's old baby clothes."

"Really?" I said.

"Yeah. For my pet show last summer, he wore this little sundress and a bonnet and two pairs of socks."

I giggled. "Maybe Noodle was embarra.s.sed and now he's hiding so you won't be able to do that to him again."

"Maybe ..." said Linny doubtfully, not seeing anything funny about that.

My eyes drifted across the yard and over a low stone wall in search of Noodle. They landed in the yard next door - on one of the girls I had noticed at the bus stop. She looked like a short version of Shannon. She was sitting in the sun filing her nails and listening to a tape deck.

I nudged Linny. "Hey," I whispered, pointing to the girl. "Who's that?"

Linny looked across the yard. "That's Tiffany Kilbourne."

'Tiffany," I repeated. "She must be Shannon's sister."

"Yeah," said Linny. "She is. You know what? Sometimes Shannon baby-sits for us."

"She does?" I asked in surprise. "Do you like her?"

"Sure. She's neat."

"You know," I said, "I don't know too many people around here. Tell me who your neighbors are."

"Okay." Linny plopped to the ground, and I joined him. Not far away, Hannie was playing "This Little Piggy" with Sari.

"Shannon and Tiffany have another sister, Maria. She's eight, like me. They all go to Stoneybrook Day School. But Hannie and I go to Stoneybrook Academy."

"Oh," I said. "Right. So does Karen. She and Hannie are in the same cla.s.s."

"Yeah," agreed Linny with a smile. I could tell he was proud that I'd given him the responsibility of telling me about the neighborhood.

"Next door to the Kilbournes," he went on, pointing to the yard two houses away, "are the Delaneys. And they are - "

"Awful," Hannie supplied. She'd stopped wiggling Sari's toes and was listening to Linny and me.

"Really?" I asked. I'd met Amanda. She hadn't seemed too bad. "How are they awful?"

"Well, there are two of them," said Linny.

"Amanda and Max," Hannie added, making a horrible face.

"They're our ages." Linny pointed to himself and Hannie. "Amanda's eight and Max is six."

"But we never, ever play with them," said Hannie. "Because they are mean and nasty and spoiled. And bossy. Mostly bossy."

"Wow," I exclaimed. I'd never heard Hannie get so worked up. I was about to ask them some more about the Delaneys when Shannon Kilbourne came out of her house and joined Tiffany in the yard. I know she'd seen me, but she pretended she hadn't. At first. After a few minutes, though, she began to stare at me.

How rude.

"Come on, you guys. Let's go inside," I said. "Maybe Noodle's there. We better find him."

Since Linny and Hannie are endlessly agreeable, they followed me into the house. I carried Sari on my hip.

"Noooo-dle!" Hannie called.

"Noooo-dle!" Linny called.

"Noooo-noo!" Sari called.

We hadn't gotten further than the living room when the phone rang. "I'll get it," I said. "You guys keep looking for Noodle."

I ran into the kitchen and picked up the phone. "h.e.l.lo, Papadakis residence."

"h.e.l.lo? Is that you, Kristy?"

The voice was vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. "Yes. This is Kristy. . . . Who's this?"

"It's Shannon Kilbourne next door. Listen, there's smoke coming out of the upstairs windows at the Papadakises'. The house is on fire!"

I felt my stomach turn to ice. My knees buckled. This was the one thing I feared most when I was baby-sitting. A fire. But I had to stay calm. Don't panic, I told myself.

"Call the fire department!" I yelled at Shannon. Then I slammed down the phone and raced into the living room. I was hoping desperately that I would find all three kids together where I had left them.

But the only one there was Sari, sucking on one of her fingers. I scooped her up. From the other end of the house, I could hear Linny and Hannie calling for Noodle. I raced through the living room, a hallway, the library, and onto the sunporch. Thank goodness. There they were.

"Hannie, Linny," I said breathlessly, "I want you to pay very close attention to me. The house is on fire. We have to get out. There's no time to try to take stuff with us. Is there a way off the sunporch?"

"No," replied Linny. "It's not a real porch."

"We have to get Myrtle and Noodle!" Hannie cried, already sounding panicked.

"We can't," I told her, pushing her and Linny ahead of me into the library. "Now go straight to the front door. But don't run. You might fall."

The kids obeyed. On the way to the door, though, we pa.s.sed Myrtle's box and in one swift movement, Linny stooped down, picked up the turtle, and kept on going. I didn't say anything.

As soon as we were out the front door, I cried, "Now you can run! Go right to the sidewalk, but don't run into the street."

Hannie and Linny ran, their legs pumping up and down. Myrtle was clutched between Linny's hands. Halfway across the lawn I dared to look back at the house. That's funny, I thought. I couldn't see even a wisp of smoke. I stopped. I sniffed the air. I didn't smell smoke, either. The house looked fine.

"Linny! Hannie! Stay where you are!" I called to them. They were standing on the sidewalk. Hannie was crying.

I was trying to decide whether it would be safe to approach the house with Sari in my arms, when I heard loud laughter from the Kilbournes' house. Shannon was in her front yard, doubled over. "Fake out! Fake out! Made you look!" she screeched.

I put Sari down and marched over to her. "Are you saying there's no fire?" I asked.

Shannon was laughing too hard to answer me.

So I stuck my tongue out at her and stomped away. I felt like a fool.

I calmed Hannie and Linny down, and then we found Noodle (who'd been napping under a bed). By then, Mrs. Papadakis was due home, so we never did hold the pet fashion show.

Of course, I had to tell Mrs. P. what had happened, since the false alarm was all Hannie and Linny could talk about. Mrs. P. became very angry, put her hands on her hips, and said, "I'll have to have a talk with Shannon before she sits again." But I didn't feel much better about the situation. All I wanted to do was get back at Shannon. The question was how?

The idea came to me early that evening, and I have absolutely no idea where it came from. One moment, I didn't know what to do about Shannon Louisa Kilbourne. The next moment, this great idea was in my head.

I got out a phone book, found the number of a diaper service, and dialed it.

"Mr. Stork's Diapers," said a pleasant-sounding man.

"h.e.l.lo," I said. "I'm sorry to be calling so late, but this is sort of an emergency. My mom is sick, so we're going to need diaper service for my baby sister for about two weeks, starting tomorrow morning, if possible."

"Of course," replied the man. "Name please?"

"Shannon Kilbourne."

"Address?"

I gave the man the Kilbournes' address. When I went to bed that night, I was smiling.

And the next morning, I was delighted with what I saw from one of the guest bedrooms at the front of our house. It was the Mr. Stork truck. It pulled into the Kilbournes' driveway, and even from across the street I could hear bells jangling out "Rock-a-Bye, Baby." Then a man dressed as a stork dumped a huge package of diapers on the Kilbournes' front steps and drove off.

I was nearly hysterical.

Gotcha, Shannon! I thought.

Chapter 5.