Up in her room, along with being very very unhappy, Lulu was trying to figure out what to do. Actually, she knew WHAT to do: get rid of the babysitter so her mom and her dad would have no one to leave her with. All she needed to figure out was HOW.

She went to her computer—yes, she has her own computer; she has her own everything—and typed in “How To Get Rid of a Babysitter.” But nothing too helpful came up, so Lulu started making a list of possibilities, and as she wrote she chanted this little chant:

While Lulu was chanting and making her list, the doorbell rang and a voice boomed through the house, a voice that sounded to Lulu like real bad news. “Sonia Sofia Solinsky,” it said. “At your service.”

Lulu heard the gentle murmurs of her mom and her dad, interspersed with Ms. Solinsky’s boom, and the quiet patter of their feet, interspersed with Ms. Solinsky’s clomp, and then someone (either her mom or her dad) was knocking softly at her bedroom door, with Ms. Solinsky bellowing, “The eagle has landed, Lulu. Open up.”

(“The eagle has landed”? That’s how Ms. Solinsky says hello?)

Lulu, thinking fast, took off her shoes, jumped into bed, and huddled pitifully underneath her comforter, hoping to make all three of them believe that she had suddenly been struck down with some dreadful disease. And so, when she heard her mom calling, “Come out, my darling, and meet Ms. Solinsky,” she said, “I think that I just got real sick.”

“Probably not,” said Lulu’s dad. “You looked perfectly fine to me only an hour ago.”

“But I’m not fine now,” Lulu replied. “I think I’m very sick. And, anyway, I’m definitely contagious.”

“Not a problem,” Ms. Solinsky boomingly replied. “I never catch anything.”

She then—the nerve!—turned the doorknob, opened Lulu’s bedroom door, and marched herself straight over to Lulu’s bed.