Aloha, Baby-Sitters! Read online

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Peter Lerangis

  for his help in

  preparing this manuscript.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  I’m dancing. I’m writing one sentence, then dancing around the room. Tour jetés. Good ones, better than I’ve ever done in ballet class.

  I guess total ecstasy is good for coordination.

  My aunt Cecelia is looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind. Well, maybe I have. This will be the farthest away from home I’ve ever traveled. And I’m going with all my best friends.

  Well, almost all.

  Mallory Pike can’t go. When I think of that, I stop dancing.

  Mal is my absolute number-one friend in the world. We’re so alike, we can almost read each other’s minds. We’re both horse fanatics. We both love to read. We’re both the oldest kids in our families. Our parents treat us alike, too — like babies — even though we’re both eleven. Okay, we have differences. I love to dance, Mal loves to write and illustrate stories. She’s Caucasian and I’m African-American. Still, we’re like sisters.

  Why can’t Mal go to Hawaii? Timing, mostly. And money. You see, the trip was offered to us by our school, Stoneybrook Middle School, last month. We leave in three days, on the next-to-last Monday in July. Nothing like advance warning, huh? Luckily, I had no other plans for the month. But Mal does. She’s helping her neighbor, Mrs. Stone, run a day camp on her farm.

  Mal thought about finding someone to take her place. Mrs. Stone even said it would be okay. But when Mal mentioned the Hawaii trip to her parents, they said aloha. No way. Too expensive.

  The Pikes just can’t afford the trip. It takes a lot of money to support a family nearly the size of a baseball team. (Mallory has seven younger brothers and sisters.)

  At first my parents didn’t want me to go. But I told them it would be safe (fifty kids and six teacher chaperones are going). They finally agreed to pay for half the trip. I had to earn the other half. My best friends had the same half-and-half deal (yes, our parents did discuss this over the phone).

  How did my friends and I raise the rest of the money? Well, we washed cars, mowed lawns, and held a special Fourth of July festival for kids. And we baby-sat like crazy, of course. We do a lot of that. We all belong to a group called the Baby-sitters Club, or BSC.

  By the way, two other BSC members aren’t going, either. Kristy Thomas is helping with Mrs. Stone’s day camp, too (but her family is going to Hawaii in August, anyway). And Shannon Kilbourne is at summer camp.

  Today I decided I would prepare a special gift for Mallory. First I bought a beautiful scrapbook. Next I called all my BSC friends who are going on the trip and asked them to arrive at our regular club meeting twenty minutes early. Then, before Mallory showed up, I began writing in it.

  By the time the meeting started, this is what the first page looked like:

  Well, not exactly the neatest start.

  That was okay. It would make Mallory laugh.

  We all decided to write in spiral notebooks, then cut out our pages and paste them in the scrapbook.

  I am determined to make this journal fantastic. I’m going to sightsee up a storm and write down every single detail. Not only that, I’m going to take along a camera and a tape recorder. For Mal’s sake, I will dedicate myself to having the greatest trip ever.

  Well, maybe not just for Mal’s sake.

  For mine, too, a little bit.

  “Bluuuuuuue … bluuuuue Hawaaaaiiii …” Abby Stevenson sang as Logan Bruno strummed along on air ukelele.

  “Yuck!” Claudia Kishi was draping pineapple rings over Mallomars on a plate, and the juice was dribbling onto her bedspread.

  Stacey McGill held up a coconut, examining it as if it were some exotic moon stone. “How do you open this thing?”

  My friends were sick with Hawaii fever.

  To be honest, so was I. But I kept my sickness inside. In every Baby-sitters Club meeting, someone has to have two feet on the ground, even if everybody else is in the ozone layer.

  Since I am club president, that someone is me.

  I’m Kristy Thomas, by the way. I live in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, I’m thirteen years old, and I have medium-length brown hair. If you were a bug on Claudia’s wall, you’d know exactly which girl was me — the short, loud one wearing old, casual clothes and a visor. My friends say I “dress down” (or worse), but I think that’s ridiculous. I dress for comfort. And even though I’m just barely five feet tall, what I lack in height, I make up in energy and ingenuity.

  Actually, I’m glad you weren’t a bug on the wall. I would have swatted you by now.

  Just kidding.

  Anyway, it was 5:27 on Friday. In three minutes, we would begin our last full meeting of the month. And in three days, on Monday, Mary Anne Spier, Abby Stevenson, Claudia Kishi, Jessi Ramsey, Stacey McGill, Dawn Schafer, and Logan Bruno were going to board a plane to Hawaii.

  Why did I have Hawaii fever? Well, I was going to Hawaii, too, but not until August. It would have been nice to go with my best friends, but I’ll settle for my family. They’re cool.

  They’re large, too. Not large as in fat, but large as in numerous. That’s because we’re two families combined.

  Family number one is the Thomases — my mom, my three brothers, and me. (Charlie is seventeen, Sam is fifteen, and David Michael is seven.) I suppose I should count my dad. I don’t, usually. He left us soon after David Michael was born and hardly ever keeps in touch. (Frankly, I try not to think about him too much.)

  Family number two is the Brewers. Watson Brewer, my stepdad, is a millionaire. When he fell in love with my mom, she was a single mother raising four kids. We lived in a small house across the street from Claudia and next door to Mary Anne. After Mom and Watson were married, we moved into Watson’s mansion on the other side of town. I had never seen so many rooms in a house before. Plenty for everyone, including Watson’s seven-year-old daughter and four-year-old son (Karen and Andrew) from a previous marriage. They live with us every other month, and with their mom in between.

  Emily Michelle is the newest addition to our family. She’s my two-year-old adopted sister, who was born in Vietnam. Objectively speaking, I do believe she’s the most adorable child in Stoneybrook, if not the world. If you don’t believe me, ask my grandmother, Nannie. She moved in with us shortly after Emily was adopted, and the two of them are super close.

  Our other family members are Shannon (a puppy), Boo-Boo (a cat), and Crystal Light the Second and Goldfishie (goldfish). Emily Junior (a rat) and Bob (a hermit crab) belong to Karen and Andrew and travel back and forth with them.

  Nowadays life is pretty easy for us. But back in the pre-Watson days, things could become hairy. Especially with Mom holding down a job and doing all the parenting. I was always trying to come up with ideas to
make things easier. Even now, my friends call me the Idea Machine. (They call me bossy and loud, too, but I won’t go into that.)

  My very best idea was the Baby-sitters Club.

  I got the idea one day when Mom was having trouble finding a sitter for David Michael. I saw the yellow pages near the phone and I imagined a bold heading in it that said BABY-SITTERS. My first thought was, “Wouldn’t it be great if finding a sitter were that simple?”

  My second thought was, “Why not?” Okay, not a real company with a listing in the yellow pages, but a group of sitters that parents could call. All we needed were a phone number, a central headquarters, a good way to keep records, and some dedicated sitters.

  We started with just Mary Anne, Claudia, and me. Nowadays we have seven members (ten, if you count our two associates and one honorary member). Claud has her own private phone line, so we use her room as headquarters. We meet from five-thirty to six o’clock, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. Our clients call during those times to set up sitting jobs.

  I, President Kristy, call the meetings to order and run them. But that’s just part of my job. I also try to think about the Big Picture: new ideas for publicity, new ways to entertain our charges, and charity fund-raising events. Two of my favorite creations are Kid-Kits and the Krushers. No, that’s not a rock group. Kid-Kits are boxes of toys, games, and other kid-related stuff we sometimes take with us on our jobs. The Krushers (Kristy’s Krushers, to be exact) are a softball team. Technically it’s not a BSC activity, but it’s made up mainly of BSC charges who love to play softball. (I adore sports.)

  I also invented the official BSC notebook. In it, we write about each of our jobs in detail, making sure to include kid news: who’s been toilet-trained, who’s lost an old fear or gained a new one, who’s developed new likes and dislikes. We read it once a week, and it’s a perfect way to keep each other up-to-date and prepared.

  Claudia is our vice-president, mainly because she’s the phone provider. But she does have one other major function: Club Appetite Spoiler.

  Honestly, if Claudia’s room ever caught fire, it would turn into one huge s’more. She has hidden away so many chocolates, candy bars, crackers, marshmallows, cookies, chips, and pretzels, she can’t keep track of them all. Years from now, her granddaughter will discover a fuzzy, moldy Milky Way bar left over from Grandma Claud’s BSC days.

  Despite the high-fat, high-sugar, high-chocolate, low-good-stuff diet, Claudia isn’t the least bit overweight. Her skin? Perfect (even though chocolate is supposed to give you zits). She doesn’t exercise at all, either. I don’t know how she does it.

  Claudia is second-generation Japanese-American. That means her grandparents immigrated to the United States. In fact, her grandmother, Mimi, used to live with the Kishis. Mimi was a lot like Claudia — creative and funny and smart. When Mimi died, Claudia was devastated.

  Unfortunately, the rest of the family is on a different planet from Claud. They’re nice and all, but they’re the kind of people who read only serious books, discuss science at the dinner table, and eat dull and healthy foods. They even forbid Claudia to read her favorite books, Nancy Drew mysteries, because they’re too “frivolous.” (Claud hides those in her room, too.) Janine, Claudia’s older sister, has an IQ of two gazillion and takes college courses even though she’s still in high school.

  Claudia has enough trouble with middle-school courses. Her spelling and math are especially horrible. But put her in front of an easel and she’s in her element. Claud’s fantastic. She can paint, sculpt, draw, and make gorgeous jewelry. I guess you could call her an artistic dresser, too. She buys the ugliest junk at thrift shops and somehow turns it into cool outfits.

  Stacey wears great clothes, too, but her theory of fashion is more cool-at-the-store, cool-on-the-body. Her style is Young Sophisticate. (At least that’s the name of the section she shops in at Bellair’s department store.) She spots all the hottest styles right away. (It’s not stuff I would wear, but then Stacey calls my style Early Cro-Magnon.)

  As BSC treasurer, Stacey collects our weekly dues and handles the club finances. That means paying Claudia for her phone bill; paying my brother Charlie, who chauffeurs Abby and me to and from meetings; buying supplies for Kid-Kits; and saving money for our special events.

  Stacey has long, golden-blonde hair. She was born and raised on the streets of New York City (well, actually, in an apartment). She moved to Stoneybrook when her dad’s company relocated to Connecticut. We snapped her up into the BSC. Then — whoosh! — another relocation, back to NYC. We thought we’d lost her for good. But Mr. and Mrs. McGill, who hadn’t been getting along too well, finally divorced, and Stacey ended up moving to Stoneybrook again, this time with just her mom.

  Stacey has a boyfriend named Robert Brewster, who is also going on the Hawaii trip. He’s tall and cute and athletic. He used to play on the SMS basketball team, but he quit, partly in protest over the cruel way the school cheerleaders treated Stacey when she tried out for the squad. (That’s dedication.) He’s also very sensitive to Stacey’s special health needs. You see, she has diabetes. Her body doesn’t produce enough insulin, a hormone that regulates blood sugar. If Stacey eats too much sugar, she could go into a coma. But she can lead a perfectly normal life as long as she eats meals on a rigid schedule, avoids sweets, and injects herself with artificial insulin every day. Stacey insists that the last part’s not gross at all.

  It’s a good thing she never does it in front of Mary Anne, though. Mary Anne would pass out. She is the most sensitive person I’ve ever met. Also the shyest and kindest and sweetest. And my all-time best friend. (I know what’s on your mind — “opposites attract” — and you’re not the first to think of it.) Mary Anne tends to cry a lot. Her boyfriend, Logan, says they’ll need a mop for the tarmac when we’re saying good-bye at the airport.

  Mary Anne’s the club secretary. When a call comes in, we turn to her. She keeps the BSC record book, which has a calendar of our jobs. In her small, neat handwriting, she records all of our conflicts: doctor appointments, lessons, family trips, and extracurricular activities. She lets us know who’s available for each job request, then helps assign the job, trying to divide the work equally. In the back of the book, she keeps a list of all our clients’ names and addresses, the rates they pay, and information about their kids.

  Mary Anne inherits her quiet, neat nature from her dad. Maybe the sweetness comes from her mom, but we’ll never know. Mrs. Spier died when Mary Anne was a baby, and Mary Anne’s dad raised her alone. He kind of went overboard with rules, I guess because he felt he had to be Mr. Superparent. Mary Anne is pretty and petite, with dark brown hair and a nice figure, but her dad made her dress like a little girl right up through seventh grade.

  Eventually he did ease up, thank goodness. And his life (and Mary Anne’s) took a huge turn for the better. First Dawn Schafer moved to Stoneybrook from California with her younger brother and their divorced mom. Next, Dawn and Mary Anne became friends. Then they discovered that their parents had been high school sweethearts. Before you knew it, Dawn was a BSC member, the two old folks were walking down the aisle, Mary Anne had a great mom and stepsister, and they all moved into Mrs. Schafer’s old farmhouse. (Dawn’s brother, Jeff, hated Stoneybrook from the get-go and moved back in with his dad long before the wedding.)

  These days, Dawn is our honorary member. She’s visiting us for the summer. She used to be a regular member, until she moved back to California to live with her dad, her brother, and her stepmother.

  Dawn is also the world’s foremost All-natural Baby-sitter. She won’t touch red meat. She writes letters to congresspeople against rain forest destruction. If a study showed that grass was nutritious, Dawn would graze for her supper.

  She’s really opinionated and independent, which I admire. But she’s also fun to be around and always cheerful. She has the looooongest hair, down past her waist, which is the absolute lightest shade of blonde before pure white.

&nb
sp; I find it pretty weird that Dawn came all the way to Connecticut to visit and now she’s flying off to Hawaii — but hey, life is for living, right?

  After Dawn returned to California, we went without an official replacement for awhile. Our two junior officers, Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike, handled a lot of extra daytime jobs (they’re eleven, and their parents don’t allow them to baby-sit at night unless it’s for their own siblings). Our two associates worked overtime, too. They’re kind of our reserve forces. Normally they’re not required to attend meetings or pay dues — which is a good thing, because both of them are involved in lots of after-school activities. One of them, Shannon Kilbourne, lives in my neighborhood and goes to a private school called Stoneybrook Day School. She has thick, curly blonde hair and high cheekbones. The other is Logan Bruno, Mary Anne’s boyfriend. Yes, he’s a boy (and yes, I think he spends too much time with Mary Anne), but I admit he’s a great sitter. He has wavy hair, a dimply smile, and a trace of a southern accent (he comes from Louisville, Kentucky).

  Anyway, even with Logan’s and Shannon’s help, we were going crazy with an overload of job requests. We needed help, big-time.

  Right around then, Abby and Anna Stevenson — thirteen-year-old twins who love kids — moved into a house on my block. I mean, is that luck or what? I got to know them, introduced them to my friends, and our problem was solved! Abby became our new alternate officer. We offered Anna membership, too, but she turned it down. She’s super-serious about her violin playing and practices for hours every day. (Me? I’d rather listen to screaming kids than a squeaky fiddle.)

  Abby and Anna are identical twins, but you’d have no trouble telling them apart. Abby’s about as musical as a tree stump. She’s very athletic and has a crazy sense of humor. Her hair is a thick, wild volcano of dark brown curls. Because of her asthma, she carries around an inhaler all the time, and she’s allergic to just about anything you can think of. Anna’s nonallergic and nonasthmatic, she doesn’t like sports at all, and her hair is cut in a short, pageboy style.