The Babysitters Club #2: Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls

A phantom phone caller is striking areas around Stoneybrook. He calls people frequently and when they stop answering, he knows they’re missing and sneaks into the house to steal all their jewelry. The BSC is a little worried because they don’t know what to do if it happens while they’re sitting. They finally decide to come up with a code. They’ll call another and ask about a red ribbon, which is a sign that something is wrong.

Meanwhile Claudia is crushing hardcore on Trevor Sandborne, the new boy in school, but she isn’t sure if he even knows who she is. She takes a couple of sitting jobs and keeps getting random hang up calls, which freaks her out. The other girls aren’t experiencing the same thing, but Kristy starts getting a few calls too.

Mary Anne gets so freaked out by the calls that she decides to set up alarm systems around the house, while sitting for a sick David Michael. She rigs pots and pans on one door, rigs a radio to go off on another and ties a bag of marbles to the last door. One of the alarms goes off and she flips out, but Louis the dog accidentally set it off. The Thomas family gets a kick out of it when they get home to find her.

The club members start bringing their record book to school every day. They check out who is sitting where so they can call the cops if they need to. Stacey sits for Charlotte and the only unordinary thing that happens is when a storm knocks out the power. She points out that she didn’t get any calls, but no one seems to think it’s too weird.

Claudia and Kristy take a job sitting for Jamie Newton and his cousins. They get several hang up phone calls and it worries them even more because someone in their neighborhood was recently robbed. The kids notice a weird noise outside and the girls see a shadow outside. Claudia calls the cops and they show up, only to find Alan Gray sneaking around outside.

It turns out that Alan stole the club record book every day, looking for Kristy’s information. He wanted to ask her to the Halloween Hop dance, but was too scared to ask her. She agrees to go and the cops take him home. At her next sitting job, Trevor calls and asks Claudia to the dance. He got her information from Alan and was behind her phantom calls. They go to the dance and the real phantom caller is captured.

*Mary Anne’s dad won’t let her sit until the phantom caller is caught. She also opts not to go to the dance and is actually the only club member without a date.

*Claudia keeps complaining about Janine, but Janine actually comes in and wants to hear the whole story of what happened with the police. She also admits that she hides candy all over her room too, but of course they dislike each other again by the next book.

*Mimi helps Claudia with her math homework. I know Mimi helped her with school a lot, but given the description of her, I don’t know how helpful she would really be.

*Claudia wears purple knee length pants, clock patterned tights, matching purple plaid hat and shirt and lobster earrings, with high tops. That sounds…wait, is Claudia color blind? That would explain a lot.