Stacey's Mistake Read online

  This book is in honor of

  the birth of my new godson,

  Andrew Cleveland Gordon.

  Contents

  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 13

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Letter from Ann M. Martin

  About the Author

  Scrapbook

  Copyright

  Dear Stacey,

  Hi! I’am so, so exited! I cannot wait to see you I realy didn’t beleve that the frist time we got to see each other again woud be in new York. Just five more days and we’ll be their. I’am bringing lots of speding money. Can we go to bloom blume that big huge depratment store. And lets go to some art musims or at least one. I can’t wait!

  Luv ya!

  Claudia

  It could only happen in New York. Only in New York could you be sitting in the middle of your absolutely gorgeous blue-and-white bedroom reading a postcard, and see a gigantic roach sneak out from behind the dresser and have the nerve to run right across the rug and disappear under the closet door. In any other place, a roach would have the good sense to stick to yucky places like laundry rooms or greasy kitchens. But in New York, they get all bold and start invading bedrooms.

  My first thought, after he disappeared into the closet was, Oh, disgust. Now do I have to go look for him? My second thought was, I sure hope my friends don’t see him (or any of his buddies) when they visit this weekend. My friends live in Connecticut, and the worst insect they’ve ever seen is a bee. A roach would freak them out. (I left the roach alone in the closet. No way was I going after him.)

  If I’d known what was going to happen when my friends came, I might have taken the roach as a bad sign, a sign that the weekend was going to be a mistake. (Do you have any idea what I’m talking about? You must be pretty confused by now, so I better give you the background to this story.)

  For starters, I am Stacey McGill. I’m thirteen years old and I live in New York City. I’ve lived here all my life, except for last year. Last year, my parents and I moved to Stoneybrook, Connecticut, which was where I met these friends I’ve been talking about. My friends are Claudia Kishi (she’s the one who wrote the postcard), Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, and Dawn Schafer. The five of us had this neat business called the Baby-sitters Club. But after only a year (well, a year and a couple of months) in Stoneybrook, my mom and dad and I moved back to New York. (These moves have to do with Dad’s job, and the explanations for them aren’t too interesting.)

  I have to admit that I wasn’t very upset at the idea of moving back to New York. I’ve always loved the city, and I missed it when we were in Connecticut. Believe me, I really minded the idea of leaving my new friends, but I was thrilled to be getting back to such a bustling, busy place. I love people and stores and shopping and museums and restaurants and theaters. I don’t love roaches, but I’ll take one or two of them any day over the quiet of Stoneybrook. Stoneybrook is a very pretty little place with nice people, but if you want excitement, you have to drive all the way to Washington Mall, outside of Stamford, which just does not live up to Fifth Avenue.

  Anyway, I had moved back to New York, and my friends and I hadn’t seen each other in a while. Claudia and I had just been starting to talk about my visiting Stoneybrook for a weekend, when something happened.

  The something was Judy.

  I don’t know Judy’s last name. She’s the homeless woman who lives on our block. (Some people call her a bag lady.) Now I bet you’re wondering about something. You’ve heard me mention a roach in my bedroom and a bag lady on my block. Just where in New York do I live? you’re probably asking yourself. Well, I live in a very nice neighborhood on the Upper West Side. As I said before, New York roaches live everywhere — and lately, so do homeless people. Homelessness is a serious problem in New York. There are thousands and thousands of people like Judy. Some of them live in shelters or welfare hotels, some live in subway stations or railroad stations, and some actually live on the street. Judy is one of the ones who actually live on the street. She sleeps in doorways or on top of grates where warm air blows up from the subway. She gets her food from garbage cans or begs for handouts.

  It is not a nice life.

  I see Judy at least twice a day (when I go back and forth between my nice, comfortable, doorman apartment building and my nice, comfortable private school), and I have an idea of what her life is like. Although I’m sure you can’t completely understand homelessness until you’ve experienced it.

  What I see when I see Judy is a woman who looks a lot older than she really is. (She looks about a hundred, but Dad says she’s only forty-two. I don’t know how he knows this.) I see a woman who owns so few things that she won’t part with any of them. And I mean, she hangs onto empty tin cans, bottle caps, newspapers, and used plastic cups. She carries her stuff around in old, wrinkled, falling-apart shopping bags. She’s a walking dump — but that stuff we’d call trash is her life. I see a woman who is almost always hungry, who has huge sores on her legs, whose hair is matted, and whose face and hands are permanently red from being exposed to the sun, wind, heat, and cold.

  Judy and I couldn’t be more different. Yet we’re friends. Well, sort of. When Judy is in a good mood, we smile and say hello to each other. Judy calls me Missy. When she’s not in a good mood, which is often — watch out! Judy will stand on the sidewalk and just shout stuff for hours. She screams and yells, then finally she quiets down and mumbles crossly. When she’s in those moods, she doesn’t call me Missy. She doesn’t call me anything. I don’t think she even recognizes me.

  So what does Judy have to do with my friends’ visit to New York? Well, it’s like this: The people on our block who see and hear Judy everyday began to get worried about her. They decided that it was time for them, plain old ordinary citizens, to see what they could do to help Judy and other homeless people in the neighborhood. So they organized a big meeting that was to be held for an entire Saturday afternoon. Most of the adults in my building (including Mom and Dad) were eager to go. Which meant that a lot of kids were going to need baby-sitters. Remember the Baby-sitters Club I belonged to in Stoneybrook? Well, I sort of carried the club back to New York with me, except that I’m the only member of the city branch. For some reason, most of my friends here don’t seem interested in sitting. On the one hand, this is nice, because there are plenty of little kids in my building, so I get lots of jobs. On the other hand, I have to turn down lots of jobs, too, and I always· feel bad about that. Besides, I miss the meetings our club used to hold.

  Well, anyway, a total of five parents called up a whole month in advance to ask me to baby-sit on the afternoon of the big meeting. I felt bad about turning four of the families down, especially when the parents were all going to be at the same place for the same time. If only —

  And that was when I got my brilliant idea.

  “Mom! Mom!” I called.

  I ran into our kitchen. As New York apartments go, ours is fairly large. The due that you have a large apartment is if you can actually eat in your kitchen. If you’ve got room for a table and chairs in there, it’s a big apartment. And our kitchen had room for a table and chairs.

  That was where I found my mom — seated at the table. She was paying bills. I wasn’t sure if bill-paying time was the right moment to approach her with my idea, but I decided to risk it.

  “
What is it, honey?” Mom replied.

  I sat down across from her. I explained the baby-sitting situation. Then I said carefully, “Um, remember when Kristy’s mother got remarried?”

  “Yes?” Mom looked a little confused.

  “Remember how the Baby-sitters Club took care of those fourteen children all week before the wedding?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I was thinking. All in all, there are ten kids in the five families that asked me to sit. If my friends were here, we could easily take care of the kids for just one afternoon. And I’m dying to have Claudia and everyone come visit. They could stay for the weekend. What do you think?”

  “Four guests?” said Mom thoughtfully. “That seems like a lot of people. It would be fine if it were just Claudia, but —”

  “Please? In a way it will help Judy.”

  “Do you think you’re up to it?” asked Mom.

  “Of course! I haven’t been sick in ages.” (I have diabetes, and Mom and Dad worry about me a lot, but lately, as long as I stick to my diet and give myself the insulin injections, I’ve been just fine.)

  “Well,” said Mom, “it’s okay with me, but you’ll need your father’s permission, too.”

  “Thanks, Mom!” I cried. I gave her a kiss. Then I waited for Dad to come home from work. I pounced on him the second he stepped through the door.

  “Please, please, please?” I said after I’d explained everything.

  Dad adjusted his glasses. At long last he said, “All right.”

  My parents didn’t seem too excited then, but you should have seen them a few days later. They told me I could take Friday off from school that weekend. This was because it turned out that my friends had that Friday off since there was a teachers’ convention in Connecticut, so they had a three-day weekend. Mom and Dad said that as long as they were coming into the city — their first trip to New York without their parents along (and Dawn’s first trip ever) — they might as well get the most out of it.

  Then my parents even suggested that I give a party on Friday night so that my Connecticut friends could meet my New York friends. I couldn’t believe my good luck. What a weekend the five of us would have — three days in the city, a party, and a baby-sitting adventure.

  Claudia and I called and wrote constantly as the weekend approached.

  “What should I wear in New York?” Claud asked once.

  “What you wear in Connecticut,” I told her.

  “Exactly?”

  “Believe me, you see everything in the city. Once I saw someone dressed as Batman.”

  “Maybe it was Batman,” said Claudia, giggling. “But really. What will your friends wear to the party?”

  We weren’t getting anywhere. “Wear your black outfit. That really cool one,” I told her. Claudia has incredible clothes. And I wanted her to wear this outfit that was sleek and black and covered with silver stars and sparkles.

  “Oh, okay,” said Claud. “Boy, I am so excited! I don’t think I can wait two more weeks. How can I wait two weeks?”

  I didn’t know. I was dying of excitement myself.

  But the two weeks passed — somehow — and finally it was Friday morning, and time for me to get in a cab and meet my friends at Grand Central Station.

  Dear Stacey,

  I can’t wait! I can’t wait! I can’t wait! New York, here I come! I’ve been reading everything I can find about New York. Please can we eat at Serendipity, or maybe at the Hard Rock Café, if we can get in there? Do you think we’ll see anyone famous? Does anyone famous live in your apartment building? Is your building on the route of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade? Just curious.

  See you soon!

  Love,

  Mary Anne

  Obviously, Claudia and I weren’t the only ones excited about my friends’ trip to New York. Mary Anne was nearly frantic. The thing about Mary Anne and New York is that, if this is possible, she has a crush on the city. I’m serious. She’s starstruck. She feels the same way about New York that most kids feel about their favorite movie star or rock group. And coming to New York at thirteen without her dad (she’d been here before, but it’s different when your father’s dragging you around) was for Mary Anne like getting the opportunity to meet her idol.

  I thought about that as I put my coat on and left our apartment that Friday morning.

  “Bye, Mom!” I called.

  “Bye, honey! Say hi to everyone for me.”

  And have fun and be careful, I thought.

  “And have fun and be careful!” she added.

  It never fails. Mom always says that as I leave the apartment. Sometimes I try to escape before the words leave her lips, but so far, I haven’t been able to.

  In the hallway, I punched the DOWN button and waited for the elevator to arrive. Then came the stomach-tossing ride to the lobby. Our elevator doesn’t just rise and fall, it zooms.

  The doors opened and I crossed the lobby, calling hello to Lloyd and Isaac, who were on duty at the desk, and thanking James, who held the door open for me. Some people think I’m spoiled, living in this doorman building, but I’ll tell you something, I just feel safe. I like doormen for security. (But it is nice to have someone hold the door open for you when your hands are full.)

  I left our building and walked up the block to Central Park West, where I hailed a cab. Mom gives me cab fare any time I’m going more than ten feet away from the apartment, unless I’m going to be with a group of people. She doesn’t like me walking around the city alone, or even taking the bus or subway alone. I can’t tell if she’s being overprotective or just sensible. In a big city like New York, you really can’t be too careful.

  I closed the door of the cab. “Grand Central Station, please,” I told the driver.

  He didn’t say anything. (Cabbies hardly ever do.) He just pulled the taxi into the traffic.

  I settled back in the seat and thought about the friends I would see soon. In a way, it’s surprising that the five of us are friends, because we’re so different. Or maybe that’s why we’re friends. Isn’t there some old saying about variety being the spice of life? And opposites attracting? If we were alike, we’d probably be really boring and not at all interested in each other. Well, there isn’t any danger of that. Let me tell you a little about the friends I was going to meet. I’ll start with Kristy Thomas, since she’s the president of the club.

  If I thought the last year of my life (moving from New York to Connecticut and back again) had been wild, wait till you hear about Kristy’s. Kristy, Claudia, and Mary Anne used to live in the same neighborhood. Kristy’s house was next door to Mary Anne’s (the two of them are best friends), and across the street from Claudia’s. At the beginning of seventh grade (last year), Kristy had this idea for starting a baby-sitting service in her neighborhood. She saw how long it sometimes took her mother to find a sitter for David Michael, Kristy’s little brother. If Kristy and her big brothers weren’t available, her mom sometimes had to make four or five calls before she found someone who was free. So Kristy teamed up with Claudia, Mary Anne, and me, and we formed the Baby-sitters Club. (Dawn joined us later.) We’d meet three times a week, and parents would call us while we were meeting. The great thing about this arrangement was that parents could reach four sitters with just one call, so they were practically guaranteed a sitter. No more calling everyone in the world.

  This was Kristy’s idea, and it was brilliant. That’s one thing Kristy is known for — her brilliant ideas. She has them all the time. The other thing she’s known for is her mouth. She can’t keep it closed and sometimes it gets her in trouble. I really hoped Kristy would behave herself in New York and not do or say anything embarrassing. But I couldn’t count on that. Kristy is a little immature. She even looks immature. She’s sort of small for her age, and she doesn’t pay much attention to her clothes. In fact, she almost always wears the same kind of outfit: jeans, turtleneck, sweater, and running shoes.

  What about Kristy’s wild year? We
ll, ever since she was little, Kristy had lived with her two older brothers, Sam and Charlie, David Michael, who’s seven now, and her mom, who was divorced. But when Mrs. Thomas decided to marry Watson Brewer, this millionaire she’d been dating, Watson moved Mrs. Thomas and her family across town to his mansion. There, Kristy not only lives in the lap of luxury, but she inherited a stepsister and stepbrother whom she adores, and of course, Watson, her stepfather. What a change for her! (I’m making it sound better than it is. Kristy is still getting used to having been uprooted, and to her new home and neighbors and neighborhood.)

  Claudia Kishi is the club’s vice president. She’s also my best friend. Well, she’s my Connecticut best friend. I have a New York best friend, too — Laine Cummings. She’ll be at the party tonight, and she and Claudia will meet for the first time. Claudia is the vice president because the girls always hold their meetings in her bedroom. They chose her room because she has a private phone and a private phone number. During meetings, when lots of job calls come in, the girls don’t tie up any line but Claudia’s. This is important.

  I know I said that all the girls in the club are different, but there are some similarities between Claudia and me. The two main ones are our taste and the fact that we are (face it) sort of sophisticated. At least, we’re more sophisticated than Kristy, Mary Anne, and Dawn are. We both love clothes and wear trendy outfits like short skirts and baggy sweaters. And we both like to do things with our hair. I used to get mine permed, but I don’t do that anymore. I let it grow out, and now it’s just thick and fluffy and blonde. You should see Claud’s hair, though. She’s Japanese-American and has this long, silky black hair. And boy, does she go out of her way to do special things to it. For instance, she’ll part it down the middle, fix one side in three or four braids, and let the other side fall loosely over her shoulder. Also, she’s always experimenting with barrettes and hair clips and bows and headbands. Jewelry, too. To top things off, Claudia is just plain gorgeous, with these dark, almond-shaped eyes and this creamlike complexion. She has never once had a pimple, and probably never will. Claud’s hobbies are art (she’s really talented), and reading mysteries. Unfortunately, she’s a terrible student, as you could probably tell from her postcard.