Snowbound Read online

  This special book is for a very special person, Nikki Vach.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  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

  “Kristy, erase that!”

  “What?”

  “Erase that P.P.S. This is a letter about a newspaper article, not the Baby-sitters Club.”

  My best friend, Mary Anne Spier, is far too practical. I didn’t think an announcement about our business could hurt anything. Even so, I took out the P.P.S. It wasn’t worth arguing over.

  Boy, you will never believe what happened to me and my friends in the Baby-sitters Club (BSC) when a huge blizzard hit our little town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut, last week. The storm caught everyone by surprise, and different things happened to all of us. Some of our adventures were scary, some were exciting … and mine was funny! Most of us were separated during the storm. We were also out of touch, because after awhile, the phone lines went down. (Also, the power went out.) So we didn’t hear about the adventures until the next day, when we could gab on the phone again.

  Considering how fascinating our experiences were, I was surprised to read the article headed “Blizzard” in the paper the next day. I know I told the editor, Marian Tan, that the article was very informative (and it was), but the truth is, it was also an incredible bore. It mentioned lots of facts and statistics. For instance, about 28 inches of snow fell in Stoneybrook, and there was this windchill factor of minus 8 degrees. But the article didn’t say anything about people. There was no human interest. What about the cars that got stranded (I mean, with people in them)? What about parents who had left their kids with baby-sitters and couldn’t get home to them? And what about people who got stuck at airports?

  I decided that my article would give people the kind of news they wanted. Interesting news. If only Marian Tan would print it.

  “Mary Anne?” I said. “How long do you think we’ll have to wait to hear from the editor?” (I am not the most patient person in the world.)

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “In the meantime, let’s go over the material you’ve collected.”

  “Kristy, can you please help me with my sweater?”

  I turned around. I was sitting at the desk in my room, slaving over a math problem. Since I was nowhere near solving it, I didn’t mind the interruption. My stepsister, Karen, was standing in the doorway.

  “For heaven’s sake. Why are you wearing your sweater on your legs?” I asked. Karen had put each of her feet through a sleeve of her sweater and was now struggling to hold the bottom of the sweater around her waist.

  “It’s a new style,” Karen replied. “Sweater-pants.” She hobbled over to my desk. “Can you button me up the back, please?”

  “I have a feeling,” I said as I fastened the buttons, “that this isn’t what Nannie had in mind when she knitted this sweater for you.”

  Nannie is my grandmother. She and Karen are just two of the people in my big, jumbly family. The others are my mom; my stepfather, Watson; my three brothers (Charlie, who’s seventeen; Sam, who’s fifteen; and David Michael, who’s seven); my stepbrother, Andrew (he’s four and Karen is seven); and my adopted sister, Emily Michelle. Emily is two and a half. Mom and Watson adopted her from Vietnam. I don’t really think of her as my adopted sister. She’s just my sister, the same as Karen and Andrew are just my sister and brother.

  That’s a big family, right? Nannie is Mom’s mother. She helps care for Emily while Mom and Watson are at work. Karen and Andrew are Watson’s kids from his first marriage. Usually, they live with us every other weekend, but this December they were living with us for two weeks while their mom and stepfather went on a ski vacation. (Karen and Andrew’s other house is right here in Stoneybrook, not far from their father’s house.) They had arrived yesterday. When Karen is here, things are never dull.

  Karen pranced out of my room, wearing her sweater-pants.

  “What are you going to do now?” I asked her.

  “Play with Emily Junior.” (Emily is Karen’s rat. Karen named her after Emily Michelle. I think that was a compliment.)

  I turned back to my homework, but those numbers and signs sort of swam around on the paper. I let my mind wander. It wandered right to the Winter Wonderland Dance. It was going to be held on Friday evening after school, and it would be a pretty big deal. It was for every student at SMS — sixth-graders, seventh-graders, and eighth-graders. For once, every single one of my friends and I had a date for the dance. We planned to attend together, seven girls and seven boys. We couldn’t wait. The decorating committee was going to transform the SMS gym into a snowy fairyland — sparkly flakes and white cotton-drifts, tinsel icicles. It would be awesome.

  In the past, I have not thought much about dances, but now they’re a little more meaningful. This is because I have a friend. I mean, a friend who’s a boy. Oh, all right. He’s my boyfriend. I guess. I never thought I would have a boyfriend. My friends say I’m a tomboy, and I suppose that’s true. I love sports. I’m happiest wearing jeans and running shoes. Basically, I think makeup is a waste of time. And jewelry? I can take it or leave it. I don’t even have pierced ears.

  However, I met Bart.

  Everything changed. No, that’s not true. Bart and I met because we each coach a softball team for little kids. So our friendship is founded on sports. Also, I would still rather wear blue jeans than a dress. And I don’t plan to get my ears pierced. But … I look forward to spending time with Bart. And I was particularly looking forward to going to the Winter Wonderland Dance with him. I was even looking forward to wearing a dress (since I would only be in it for a few hours). Plus, going to a dance with all of my friends and all of their dates would be really fun. Mary Anne and I had been talking about the event for weeks. We planned to buy carnations for our dates. (We had a feeling they might be buying corsages for us.)

  I could hear the phone ring then. It brought me back to reality, and I tried to focus on the math problem.

  “Kris-teeee!” I heard David Michael call from the first floor. “Phone for you! It’s your boyfriend. It’s … Bart, Bart bo Bart, banana fana fo —”

  I was at the top of the stairs before David Michael could sing another syllable of his stupid song. “Be quiet!” I hissed. “Do you want Bart to hear you?”

  “Yes,” replied David Michael. He started the song over.

  I sprinted into Mom’s room, grabbed the receiver off the phone, and began talking loudly, hoping Bart wouldn’t hear my brother. At last David Michael whispered, “Cowabunga, dude,” into the phone, and then (thankfully) hung up the extension.

  “Sorry about that,” I said to Bart.

  “Who wound him up?” was Bart’s reply.

  “Oh, no one. It’s Christmas, I think. Karen is loony, too.”

  “Actually, so’s my little brother. Except he’s loony because he still thinks we’re going to get some snow.”

  I laughed. “The only snowflakes we’re going to see wil
l be decorating the walls of the gym for the dance on Friday. Oh, by the way,” I went on, trying to sound nonchalant, “what color suit are you wearing?”

  “Puce.”

  Puce? Where was I going to find a puce carnation? Even worse, my dress was red. We were going to clash horribly. See? That’s the problem with dressing up. You have to worry about things like colors clashing. Or whether your slip will show. “Puce?” I repeated.

  “Well, not really. I’m just teasing, Kristy. My suit is black.”

  That made life easier. Almost any color goes with black. Even gray. I almost giggled. I pictured myself in the flower store, asking the clerk for a gray carnation. I would tell him, “It’s for an elephant.”

  Bart and I spoke for a few more minutes. We got off the phone when I heard Karen screaming from the playroom. I ran to her. “For heaven’s sake, what’s the matter?”

  “Emily Junior is gone!” wailed Karen.

  Sure enough, the rat cage was empty. Great. Mom and Nannie were going to love this. For that matter, Watson wouldn’t be especially thrilled.

  “What happened?” I asked. (I could hear the rest of my family making a dash for the playroom.)

  “She’s just gone,” replied Karen. “Kidnapped, probably.” (Karen has mysteries and detective stories on the brain.) “No sign of a struggle, though.”

  Guess what. My family searched high and low for Emily Junior that evening — and we didn’t find her. Oh, goody. A rat was missing in our house. Now I could rest easy.

  I returned to my room and the math problem. After I had stared at my paper for awhile and still had not figured out what to do next, I stood up, stretched, and switched on my stereo. I tuned the radio to WSTO, the Voice of Stoneybrook. Can you believe it? The weatherwoman (that’s what I call her, even though the people on WSTO call her a weathergirl) was predicting snow again. She said the storm would hit the next day.

  What a laugh.

  I turned off the radio. I finished my homework. Then I read a story to Andrew and David Michael. Andrew, thinking positively, had requested that I read Katy and the Big Snow. So I did. Then I helped him get ready for bed. I was all set to put him to bed, too, but he asked for Daddy, so I called Watson upstairs.

  I checked on Karen. She was crawling around on her hands and knees. I knew she was looking for Emily Junior again.

  “Karen,” I said, “I’m sure she’ll turn up.”

  Karen got to her feet. “I guess,” she replied.

  “It’s supposed to snow tomorrow,” I told her, trying to cheer her up.

  Karen transformed before my eyes. “It is?” (She never gets tired of hoping for snow.) “Oh, yippee, yippee, yippeeeee!” she screeched.

  I returned to my room. I opened my closet and gazed for awhile at the red dress for the Winter Wonderland Dance.

  That night, I dreamed of snowflakes and carnations and Bart. In the dream, a storm hit Stoneybrook. Only it snowed fat white carnations, which showered down on Bart and me.

  So I’m not a very good speller. So sue me.

  Oops. Sorry. I know I sound defensive. My friend Stacey McGill tells me so. Kristy does, too, of course. If something is on her mind, she says it.

  I’m Claudia Kishi. I’m one of the members of the Baby-sitters Club. In fact, I’m the vice-president. And I’m not a good speller, or even a very good student, but my friends don’t care. (I wish my parents and teachers would follow their examples.)

  Well, another snowy forecast, another wrong prediction. There was only one good thing about the lack of snow. I didn’t have to worry whether the SMS Winter Wonderland Dance would be held. In past years, it has been canceled three times due to bad weather. And I wanted desperately to go. My date was going to be Iri Mitsuhashi, this kid who’s in a couple of my classes. We aren’t girlfriend-and-boyfriend or anything, but we are friends and we have fun together. In case you’re wondering, Iri is Japanese. So am I. Well, we’re Japanese-American. Our parents were born in Japan; we were born in America.

  Here are the reasons I wanted snow:

  I wanted school to be canceled. (I usually do.)

  I wanted snow for Christmas.

  The kids in Stoneybrook were getting zooey because practically every other day, snow was forecast — and then it didn’t come. That Monday afternoon, the Perkins girls were pretty disappointed. And they weren’t the only ones.

  * * *

  “The triplets are driving me crazy!” exploded Mallory Pike as she entered my room for that day’s BSC meeting. “All they do is complain because they haven’t been able to build a snow fort yet.”

  “Tell me about it,” replied Jessi Ramsey. “Becca’s been moping for days.”

  “Well, guess what I did,” said Kristy. “Last night I told Karen we were supposed to have snow today. I told her because she was upset that Emily Junior is missing —”

  “She is?” interrupted Mary Anne. “Remind me not to baby-sit at your house until … until the problem has been straightened out.”

  “So now,” Kristy continued, “Emily is still missing and it didn’t snow.”

  The time was 5:23, according to my digital clock (the official club timepiece). Three afternoons a week — Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from five-thirty until six — the members of the BSC hold a meeting. The members are Kristy Thomas, me, Stacey McGill, Mary Anne Spier, Dawn Schafer, Mallory Pike, and Jessi Ramsey. What do we do at our meetings? We take phone calls from people in Stoneybrook who need sitters for their kids. My friends and I wind up with lots of jobs that way. Our club has become a real business. And we run it professionally.

  Kristy is the president. The club was her idea. She figured out how to make it work, and she keeps the rest of us on our toes!

  I’m the vice-president because the meetings are held in my room. They’re held there because I’m the only one of us who has not only a private phone but a private phone number. This is important. We get a lot of calls during most of our meetings, and we’d hate to tie up some grown-up’s phone three times a week.

  Stacey McGill is our treasurer. She collects weekly dues and keeps track of the money we earn. She’s also my best friend — the first best friend I’ve ever had. Stacey and I are alike in that we both adore wild clothes and wild jewelry, fixing our hair, painting our nails — that sort of thing. (I even have two holes pierced in one ear, and one hole in the other. Stacey just has one hole in each ear.) Sometimes, since I love art, I make jewelry for us. If I may be honest, I must add that Stacey and I (and this isn’t bragging) are a little more sophisticated than the other club members — even Dawn, Mary Anne, and Kristy, who are thirteen-year-old SMS eighth-graders, just like Stacey and me. (Jessi and Mal are eleven and in sixth grade at SMS.) Stacey and I have really different lives, though. Stacey’s parents are divorced, and she’s an only child. My parents are not divorced, and I have an older sister, Janine. Stacey grew up in New York City. I grew up here in Stoneybrook. (Stacey still visits New York pretty often, though, because her dad lives there.) One other difference: Stacey has a disease called diabetes. I don’t understand the technical stuff about her illness, but I do know that she has to be very careful about what she eats because her body doesn’t break down blood sugar properly. Too much or too little sugar and she can get really sick. (Stacey has a severe form of the disease. She’s called a brittle diabetic.) Every day, she has to test her blood, count calories, pay strict attention to her diet (no candy or gooey desserts, which would be a real trial for me, since I’m a junk-food addict), and give herself injections of this stuff called insulin. (The idea of giving myself a shot grosses me out, but not Stacey. She’s used to it.)

  The club secretary is Mary Anne Spier. Her job is to maintain the BSC record book — keep it up-to-date and accurate. To do that, Mary Anne has to know the complicated schedules of the seven club members. Then, when someone calls needing a baby-sitter, Mary Anne can check the appointment pages in the book and see who’s free to take the job. Being the secretary isn’t ea
sy, but Mary Anne is a very careful worker.

  Mary Anne is Kristy’s best friend, but she sure is different from her. She’s shy, she’s softspoken, she cries easily — and she has a steady boyfriend! His name is Logan Bruno. (Of course, Logan and Mary Anne were going to go to the Winter Wonderland Dance together.) Mary Anne grew up with just her dad. She had no brothers or sisters, and her mom died when Mary Anne was a baby. But things have changed. Mr. Spier recently remarried. And guess who his new wife is — Dawn Schafer’s mother. So now Mary Anne and Dawn are stepsisters and best friends. (Mary Anne is lucky. She has two best friends.) Mary Anne, Dawn, and their dad and mom live in this wonderful old farmhouse that Mrs. Schafer bought.

  Dawn is the alternate officer of the BSC. This means she can fill in for any other officer if that person has to miss a meeting for some reason. Dawn has to know everything — how to schedule appointments, how to keep track of the money in the treasury, etc. Her job is not simple, but since club members rarely miss meetings, she doesn’t have to take over very often.

  You might be wondering how Dawn’s mom and Mary Anne’s dad got together. This is an interesting story. Both Mr. Spier and Mrs. Schafer grew up in Stoneybrook. They were sweethearts in high school, but they lost track of each other when Mrs. Schafer left for college in California. While she was on the West Coast, she met Mr. Schafer and got married, and they had Dawn and Dawn’s younger brother, Jeff. When Dawn was twelve, though, her parents decided to divorce, so Mrs. Schafer moved back to Stoneybrook with Dawn and Jeff. She met up with Mr. Spier again (who was Mary Anne’s father by then) and they got married the following year. That’s when Mary Anne and Dawn became stepsisters. Now the Spiers and Schafers are one big happy family — most of the time. They’ve had their share of problems. I guess the worst was that Jeff never grew to like Stoneybrook. He just wasn’t happy here. So he returned to California to live with his dad. Dawn and Jeff get to see each other pretty often, though. They fly across the country a lot, and they run up huge phone bills!

  Our California girl is beautiful. Her hair is long and shiny and so blonde it’s practically white. Her eyes are blue and she looks … healthy. I’m not sure how to describe that. Glowing, maybe? Anyway, this might be a result of the tons of health food Dawn consumes. She’s as addicted to raw vegetables and tofu as I am to Ring-Dings and Devil Dogs. We could never live together, but I think Stacey enjoys having Dawn around because the two of them can turn down my goodies and pig out on whatever appeals to them — pretzels, crackers, stuff without sugar. Blech. I love Dawn despite this flaw, though. She’s an individual, sure of herself (mostly), happy to go her own way, dress her own way, make her own friends. Everyone is glad Dawn came to Connecticut and joined the club.