Jessi's Wish Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  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

  Letter from Ann M. Martin

  About the Author

  Scrapbook

  Also Available

  Copyright

  “Whing, whing. Whing, whing.”

  That’s Squirt-talk. It means, “Swing, swing. Swing, swing.” Squirt is my baby brother. He doesn’t say many words yet, but he loves to swing, so he made up a word for that pretty quickly.

  I am Jessica Ramsey, known as Jessi. I’m eleven years old. My family and I live in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, a small town. We’re sort of newcomers, since we arrived near the beginning of this school year, when I was starting sixth grade. I have a mom and a dad; a sister, Rebecca; and of course Squirt. Both of my parents work. They like their jobs a lot. In fact, Dad likes his so much that when his company told him he was being transferred to the branch office in Stamford, Connecticut, he picked up and moved us Ramseys to Stoneybrook, which is near Stamford. (We used to live in New Jersey.)

  Rebecca is eight. Just as I go by the nickname Jessi, she goes by the nickname Becca. Becca is a neat little sister. She has a sense of humor and a good imagination, although she’s shy. Sometimes I think she’s too sensitive. Maybe she needs to develop a thicker skin. On the other hand, if she weren’t so sensitive, she might not be so kind and thoughtful. Here’s an example of what makes Becca special. You know how most kids participate in some kind of after-school activity? Like sports or dance lessons or Brownies or Cub Scouts? Well, when Becca decided to try an activity for the first time, she joined the Kids-Can-Do-Anything Club at her school, Stoneybrook Elementary. The club (which the members refer to simply as the Kids Club) is for boys and girls ages eight, nine, and ten, and its purpose is to … help others. The kids think of ways to help out in the community. Then the two teachers, who volunteer their time to run the club, help the kids carry out their plans. The kids have done all sorts of things. They cleaned up the trash in an empty lot so the mayor could put a park there. They collected food for people who wouldn’t have had a Thanksgiving otherwise. And now they were working on a toy drive. They were collecting new toys to give to the children’s ward at the hospital. Becca always comes home from a Kids Club meeting with a huge smile on her face.

  There are two other members of our household. One is Misty, our hamster. The other is Aunt Cecelia. She moved in to watch Squirt and to give us a hand when Mama went back to work. Becca and I used to call her Aunt Dictator. That was right after she moved in, when she didn’t really understand my family. She was so strict and mean. But now she is much nicer, and we all get along pretty well. The one thing I don’t like about Aunt Cecelia is that she still seems to think she’s my baby-sitter. And I’m already a baby-sitter! Before Aunt Cecelia came, I was always taking care of Becca and Squirt. Now I don’t have the chance very often. Which is a shame because I love to baby-sit and (sorry for bragging) I’m really good at it. I’m good enough to be part of a business called the Baby-sitters Club.

  Today, though, I was sitting. It was a weekday afternoon. Mama and Daddy were at work. And Aunt Cecelia had made plans with some friends. So I was in charge of Squirt. And as soon as Becca returned from her Kids Club meeting I would be in charge of her, too.

  Squirt had stopped singing “Whing, whing.” In fact, he held his arms toward me. That meant he wanted to get out of the swing. I lifted him up and set him on the ground near our swing set.

  “Come on, Squirt. Walk to me!” My brother is beginning to toddle around. It’s a good thing he wears about nineteen diapers. They provide a nice cushion for when he suddenly sits on his bottom, which happens about every ten wobbly steps he takes.

  “Da!” cried Squirt, and hurtled himself into my arms.

  I heard a clank in our garage then and realized that Becca had come home from school. (The clank was the sound of the kickstand on her bicycle hitting the cement floor.) A few moments later, she rounded the corner into our backyard.

  “Hi, Becca!” I called.

  “Hi.” Becca’s eyes were downcast. She didn’t smile. She didn’t even greet Squirt, whom she loves as much as I do. (In case you’re wondering, Squirt is not my brother’s real name. His name is John Philip Ramsey, Jr. But when he was born in the Oakley, New Jersey, hospital, he was the smallest baby in the nursery. It was the hospital staff who first called him Squirt, and the name has stuck, even though Squirt isn’t much of a squirt anymore.)

  “Is something wrong?” I asked Becca. “Something with the toy drive?”

  Becca dropped her schoolbag on the ground and sat on the end of the slide. “No,” she replied, “the toy drive is going really well. Bellair’s gave us one hundred dollars’ worth of new toys.” (Bellair’s is Stoneybrook’s department store.)

  “That’s great!” I exclaimed. “So why do you look like you just lost your best fr —?” I stopped talking. Maybe Becca had just lost her best friend. Maybe she’d had a fight with Charlotte Johanssen. Having a fight with a friend is never fun, but for Becca it would be a crushing blow. First of all, she doesn’t make friends easily. Second of all, moving to Stoneybrook was difficult for my family; not just because of who we left behind in New Jersey (our relatives and good friends), but because not everyone in Stoneybrook accepted us in the beginning. That was because my family is black, and only a few black families live in Stoneybrook. People thought we were “different.” But now we’ve settled in and made friends. However — had something happened between Becca and Charlotte?

  “Did you and Char have a fight?” I asked.

  Becca looked shocked. “A fight?” she squeaked.

  “Well, you’re upset about something.”

  “Yes, but not Char. Or the toy drive. It’s the Kids Club.” Becca sat on the ground next to me, where I was playing with Squirt. “We might not be able to have the club anymore. We might have to stop it.”

  “How come?”

  “Because Ms. Simon’s husband is going on a really long trip, and she decided to go with him. So she has to leave school for awhile. She can’t find anyone who’ll take her place at the club, and Mr. Katz doesn’t think he can run the club by himself.” (Ms. Simon and Mr. Katz are the two teachers who volunteer their time with the Kids Club.)

  “Becca, that’s too bad,” I said.

  “I know.” Becca’s voice wavered and her lower lip quivered.

  “Are you sure that’s the only reason you’re upset?” I asked, frowning.

  My sister didn’t answer me for a long time. When she did, her eyes were filled with tears. “You know what Vanessa Pike told me today?” she asked.

  “What?” (Vanessa is another Kids Club member. She’s a year older than Becca.)

  “That one of the girls in the hospital who’ll be getting toys from our drive used to be a club member.”

  “Well, that’s nice. She’ll —” I started to say.

  “No! It isn’t nice at all!” Becca interrupted me. “That girl is nine, like Vanessa. Her name is Danielle Roberts, and she’s been in the hospital ever since last summer because she has leukemia. You know what that is?”

  “Yes,” I said softly. “It’s cancer of the blood. Sort of. I mean, I think it’s cancer of the things in your body that form blood.”

  “Right,” said Becca. “Cancer. And she’s only a year older than me.”

  “That�
��s awful,” I agreed. “But you know what? I’m pretty sure that lots of kinds of cancer can be cured now. Especially leukemia.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup. I mean, it’s still a terrible disease to have, but lots of kids recover from it these days. There are so many new kinds of medicine and treatments. I bet Danielle —”

  Becca interrupted me again. “Then how come she’s still in the hospital? She’s been there a long time.”

  “She’s busy getting better. I didn’t say it’s easy to fight cancer.”

  Becca nodded. Her eyes overflowed.

  I put my arms around her. “I’m sorry you’re upset,” I said. Then I added, “It’s scary to think that kids can get so sick, isn’t it?”

  Becca nodded again. “Am I going to get cancer?” she asked.

  “I hope not. But we can’t be sure about those things. You probably won’t get cancer, though.”

  “Danielle did.”

  “I know. That’s one kid out of the entire fourth grade.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Becca, drying her eyes. She sniffled. (Aunt Cecelia would have pulled a tissue out of her sleeve, but I let Becca be sloppy.)

  “Isn’t it nice to think that Danielle might get well?”

  Becca actually smiled. “Yup. And it’s nice to think of her having fun with the toys we collect. Bellair’s gave us some dolls.”

  “Great!” I said.

  Becca put Squirt back in the swing and began to push him gently.

  “Whing, whing!” called Squirt.

  I stood up and leaned against our fence for awhile. I watched Becca and Squirt. And my mind returned to the Kids Club. Would it really come to an end? I couldn’t believe that no one else would volunteer to help Mr. Katz until Ms. Simon came back. The club is important to an awful lot of people. Not just to the ones who benefit from it, like the kids in the hospital, but also to its members. I knew pretty many of the members, too. Aside from Becca, Charlotte, and Vanessa, there was Nicky Pike (Vanessa’s younger brother), and a bunch of other children the Baby-sitters Club sometimes takes care of. The kids were proud of their work. And they had fun at club meetings. They would be really disappointed if they couldn’t continue their after-school activity. I’d be disappointed, too. The club had been terrific for Becca.

  What could I do about the problem? I wondered. Sometimes I feel like I’m practically an adult and I can do anything. Other times I feel like a little kid. That’s one of the problems with being eleven. My best friend, Mallory Pike, would agree with that. (By the way, Mallory is the older sister of Nicky and Vanessa. There are eight Pike kids altogether!) Mal thinks being eleven is as frustrating as I do. Maybe I would give her a call. Or maybe I would call one of my other friends in the BSC. (That’s how us club members refer to the Baby-sitters Club.) I would certainly have my choice of people to call. Here’s a list of the other members of the club: Kristy Thomas, Claudia Kishi, Mary Anne Spier, Dawn Schafer, and Stacey McGill.

  I was about to take my sister and brother inside so I could call Mallory, when Squirt suddenly shrieked, “Who!” He was pointing to his feet.

  “Hey, he learned a new word!” exclaimed Becca. “I think who means shoe.”

  “Well, you two,” I replied. “You and your whos come inside. I have to make a phone call.”

  I have thought a lot about what makes a best friend. I still do not have an answer. Among the girls in the BSC are several pairs of best friends. There’s Mal and me, of course. There are Stacey and Claudia, Mary Anne and Dawn, and Mary Anne and Kristy. (Yes, Mary Anne has two best friends.) It looks to me as if best friends have some things in common, but not everything. For instance, Mal and I are the same, yet different. Maybe that means that best friends need to have something in common but also need to find something in each other that’s foreign or unusual or unexpected. (Opposites attract.) I’m not sure, though. Friendship can be complicated.

  Take me. As I’ve said, I come from a pretty typical family — a mom, a dad, three kids, and an aunt. My passion is ballet. (I take lessons at a special dance school, and I’ve even starred in some productions.) I’m black. Now take Mallory. She comes from an eight-kid family, her passion is writing, and she’s white. We couldn’t be more different, right? Wrong. Mal and I happen to have some common interests. We both love children and baby-sitting (duh), and we adore reading, especially horse stories. Our favorite books are by Marguerite Henry. She wrote Misty of Chincoteague and Stormy, Misty’s Foal and Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West. Mal and I even read Brighty of the Grand Canyon, despite the fact that it’s about a mule, not a horse. We like mysteries, too. Not horror stories, but gentle mysteries like the Green Knowe books by L. M. Boston, or Tom’s Midnight Garden. Time-travel is always fascinating and mysterious.

  Uh-oh. I am way off the subject. Let me tell you some more about Mal, so you can see the ways in which we’re alike and different. Okay. I’ve said that she has seven brothers and sisters. They’re all younger than she is. And three of them are identical triplets. They are Byron, Jordan, and Adam, who are ten. Next comes nine-year-old Vanessa, then eight-year-old Nicky, then seven-year-old Margo, and finally five-year-old Claire. (The Pikes have a pet hamster, just like we do, only their hamster is named Frodo, after the character in Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.)

  When Mal isn’t watching her brothers and sisters or reading or baby-sitting or doing her homework, she’s writing and drawing. Mal would like to write books for children someday, and maybe illustrate the books, too. Mal feels insecure about her appearance. (I don’t worry much about mine. I figure that as long as I have the body of a ballerina, I’m okay.) But Mal thinks her nose is too big, her hair is too red, and she has too many freckles. On top of all that, Mal wears braces (the clear kind, at least) and glasses. Her parents refuse to let her get contacts. However, they did let her get her ears pierced — which prompted my parents to let me get mine pierced at the same time. Even so, Mal and I both think our parents treat us like infants (another reason eleven is such an awful age). They won’t let us baby-sit at night unless we’re sitting at our own houses. They won’t let us dress as wildly as we’d like to. The Pikes won’t even let Mallory get a nose job. (“Just wait till I make my first million,” says Mal.)

  At any rate, as you can see, Mal and I are similar and different.

  So are Kristy Thomas and Mary Anne Spier.

  Kristy and Mary Anne grew up right next door to each other. (Well, now neither of them lives in her old house, but they were next-door neighbors until the summer before they started eighth grade. That was when Kristy’s mom, who’d been divorced, got remarried. Kristy was the first of the two of them to move away.) Kristy and Mary Anne actually look a little alike. They’re both short for their age, which is thirteen (Kristy’s shorter), and they both have brown eyes and longish brown hair, which they often fix in ponytails. Neither one is a terribly trendy dresser. This is because Kristy couldn’t care less about clothes, while Mary Anne’s father can be strict about his daughter’s wardrobe. Here is what Kristy almost always wears: jeans, running shoes, a turtleneck shirt and a sweater, sometimes a T-shirt and a sweatshirt. She also has a baseball cap with a picture of a collie on it. Mary Anne’s father used to make her wear all this boring stuff, like plaid dresses, or corduroy jumpers with plain white blouses. Now he’s loosened up enough so that Mary Anne is allowed to buy her own clothes. But she’s not allowed to wear tight jeans, or shirts with a lot of glitter, or anything Mr. Spier thinks is “too revealing.” Needless to say, she has not been allowed to get her ears pierced. (Kristy doesn’t have pierced ears, either, but only because she doesn’t want them. She thinks punching holes in her ears is gross.)

  One thing that’s totally different about Mary Anne and Kristy is their personalities. Kristy is outgoing; Mary Anne is shy. Kristy sometimes runs off at the mouth (she doesn’t intend to be rude; she just doesn’t always think before she speaks). Mary Anne won’t even talk unless she’s around people with whom she feels
comfortable. Kristy is a tomboy who loves sports (she coaches a softball team for little kids), and doesn’t have much use for boys, unless the boy is Bart Taylor, coach of a rival softball team; Mary Anne is sensitive (she cries at the drop of a hat) and romantic, and is the first of any of us BSC members to have a steady boyfriend.

  Also, Kristy and Mary Anne come from pretty different backgrounds, in terms of family, but now (surprisingly) their family situations are similar. This is what I mean: Kristy was born into a family with a mom, a dad, and two brothers (Sam and Charlie). A few years later, her little brother, David Michael, came along, and not much later … her father ran out on the family. He just left one day. So it was up to Mrs. Thomas to raise Kristy and her brothers, and to provide for them. She did both things really well. The Thomas kids are all down-to-earth and, well, just nice. And Mrs. Thomas got a good job at a company in Stamford. I’m not sure what she does, but I know she’s considered very important in the business. Anyway, when Kristy was in seventh grade her mom met and fell in love with this guy named Watson Brewer. Watson (that’s how Kristy refers to him) is an actual millionaire. And after the wedding, he moved Kristy and her family across town into his mansion. Kristy gained a part-time stepbrother and stepsister in the process. They’re part-time because they live with their father only on alternating weekends and on certain holidays and vacations. The rest of the time they live with their mother and stepfather, who have a house in Stoneybrook not far from Watson’s. Since Kristy has absolutely fallen in love with Andrew and Karen (who are four and seven) she wishes they could spend more time with their father. But Kristy’s household is something of a zoo as it is. Her mom and Watson adopted a little girl from Vietnam (Emily Michelle is about two and a half), and then Nannie, Kristy’s grandmother, moved in to help care for Emily. Plus, David Michael has a dog, Watson has a cat, and Karen and Andrew keep two goldfish at their dad’s. Whew!

  Mary Anne, on the other hand, was born to her mom and her dad, but she has no brothers and sisters. Then, when Mary Anne was really little, her mom died. (Mary Anne doesn’t really remember her mother.) After that, it was just Mary Anne and her father, on their own. Mr. Spier loved his daughter, but he was pretty strict with her. I think he wanted to prove that he could raise a perfect child all by himself. He made Mary Anne wear clothes that he chose for her, he made her fix her hair in braids, he wouldn’t let her talk on the phone after dinner, and so forth. Then everything changed.