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curlers.
    "Better let me," said Dawn. "I'll be right back. You guys keep . . . keep up the good work." She dashed into Mr. and Mrs. Perkins' bedroom and picked up the phone, which was ringing for the third time.
    "Hello, Perkins residence," she said.
    "Dawn?" asked a disgruntled voice.
    "Yes. Jeff? Is that you?"
    "Yeah."
    "What's up? Are you at home?"
    "Not exactly. I'm kind of at school. Using the teachers' phone. And I'm kind of in trouble."
    "What do you mean, 'kind of in trouble'?"
    "Oh, all right. I am in trouble. And Ms. Besser wanted me to call Mom. She won't let me go home until she talks to her. Only I called Mom's office and they said she went to a meeting somewhere in Stamford. So then I remembered you said you were sitting at the Perkinses' and I looked up their number. What should I do now, Dawn?"
    "Okay," Dawn said, trying not to get upset,
    "let's start at the beginning. Why are you in trouble with Ms. Besser?"
    "I threw an eraser across the room. You know, a big blackboard eraser."
    "Gosh, that doesn't sound so bad. I mean, you shouldn't have done it, but — are you sure that's all you did?"
    "It was sort of the third time I threw it across the room. And it knocked over Simon Beal's tile mosaic. And the mosaic broke. And one of the tiles cut Lynn Perone's leg. ..." Jeff's voice was fading into nothingness.
    "Oh, Jeff," was all Dawn could say. She paused, thinking. "You're sure you can't get in touch with Mom?"
    "They said she isn't coming back to the office today. She's going to be in Stamford until five o'clock."
    "Well," said Dawn slowly, "I guess I could come to school myself. Maybe I can talk to Ms. Besser or something. I can't let you sit there all afternoon."
    "Oh, that'd be great."
    "All right. But Jeff, I want you to know I'm not happy about this. I'm baby-sitting. I'll have to bring Myriah and Gabbie with me."
    "Okay," replied Jeff, but he didn't say he was sorry.
    Dawn returned to the bathroom. "You guys," she said, "I'm really sorry, but we have to close up your beauty parlor for awhile. We've got to go over to your school, Myriah."
    "We do?" Myriah looked awed. At her age, going to school after hours is kind of like sneaking into an amusement park when it's been closed for the night.
    Dawn tried to explain why they had to go, while figuring out the fastest way to get the girls there.
    "But let's not close the beauty parlor," said Myriah. "Let's take it with us."
    "Whatever," replied Dawn, who just wanted to get going fast.
    "Goody!" cried Myriah and Gabbie, scooping up makeup and curlers and supplies.
    Dawn hustled the girls and their junk downstairs. She didn't have time to wash their faces. She just loaded them and their things into Myriah's red wagon and ran them over to the elementary school in what must have been a wagon-pulling record.
    When she reached the front door, she wasn't sure what to do with the wagon, so she pulled the girls right inside and down the hall to Jeff's fifth-grade classroom. She found him sitting sullenly at his desk, while Ms. Besser worked quietly at hers.
    "Urn, excuse me," said Dawn.
    Ms. Besser and Jeff both looked up in surprise at the sight of Myriah and Gabbie in the wagon with their lipstick-smeared faces.
    "I'm Dawn Schafer, Jeff's sister." Dawn explained why she had come instead of her mother.
    "And I," spoke up Myriah, "am Miss Es-merelda. I run a beauty salon. This is my assistant," she added, climbing out of the wagon and pointing to Gabbie.
    "I am Miss Gabbie," said Gabbie.
    "Would you like a makeover?" Myriah asked Ms. Besser.
    "Oh . . . not today, Miss, um — "
    "Esmerelda," supplied Myriah. She turned to Jeff. "Would you like a makeover? From our traveling beauty parlor?"
    "No way," replied Jeff, turning red.
    "I would like a makeover," Gabbie told her sister.
    "Oh, good," said Myriah, and got to work.
    Ms. Besser led Dawn into the hall. "I'm very concerned about your brother," she said. "He's gone beyond just being a nuisance or a disturbance in