Dawn on the Coast Read online

  The author would like to thank Jan Carr for her help in writing this book.

  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

  Letter from Ann M. Martin

  About the Author

  Scrapbook

  Also Available

  Copyright

  A trip to the West Coast. It was the highlight of my spring, that’s for sure. When I got to California, I had an absolutely fantastic time. So how come I ended up feeling so confused? Believe me, there’s a lot to tell. And I might as well start at the beginning.

  First off, you’re probably wondering who Sunshine is. Well, that’s me. Of course nobody around here calls me Sunshine. Here in Connecticut they call me by my regular name, Dawn Schafer. But not my dad. He started calling me Sunshine when I was little and, unfortunately, it stuck. Maybe he gave me the name because of my long blonde hair. My hair is so light it’s almost the color of cornsilk, and it reaches all the way past my waist. Or maybe Dad gave me the name because I love the sun so much. I really do. I love warm weather and the beach.

  I guess I’m just a California girl at heart. After all, that’s where I came from. And that Sunday, I was getting to go back for a visit!

  I got the postcard from Dad when I came home from school that Thursday afternoon. I still had so much to do, so much to get ready. I dragged my suitcase out of the closet, threw it on the bed, and started to lay out my clothes. I decided to bring my white cotton skirt — I could wear that with anything. And, of course, my bathing suit (a bikini) and my jeans and sneakers. I wasn’t sure about my yellow cotton overalls. And would I really need three sundresses?

  Maybe you’re wondering why my dad lives in California and I live in Connecticut. Well, sometimes I wonder, too. Believe me, it’s not the way I would’ve arranged it. But even so, things are working out okay. You see, about a year and a half ago, Mom and Dad got divorced. Dad stayed in our house in California and Mom moved me and my brother, Jeff, here to Stoneybrook, Connecticut. I think Mom wanted to come here because my grandparents live here and it’s the town where she grew up. To tell the truth, at first I wasn’t the happiest, but then I adjusted. I found myself a best friend, Mary Anne Spier, and I got invited to join the Baby-sitters Club, which is just about the most fun club in the whole wide world.

  My brother, Jeff, though, didn’t adjust so easily. In fact, he didn’t adjust at all. He started getting kind of nasty with me and Mom, and he even started to get in fights at school. It was pretty bad. His teacher kept calling up Mom and I don’t think Mom knew what to do. Finally we decided to let Jeff go back to California for awhile. He really just wanted to be back with his friends and live with Dad. I don’t think Mom was thrilled with the idea, but she figured she had to let Jeff try it for six months.

  Me, I didn’t like the idea at all. It was bad enough that Mom and Dad had to get divorced. Already our family was split. But when Jeff left Mom and me, too, it felt like Jeff was up and deserting us. And then another part of me thought, hey, why couldn’t I be the one to get to move back to California?

  Now I’m kind of used to the idea. In my head I understand all the reasons why things are the way they are. But sometimes it does seem strange the way the family has divided up. Boys against the girls. Or West Coast against the East Coast. I love Mom, and she and I get to stay together, but of course I love Dad and Jeff, and I miss them sometimes. And I know they miss us, too.

  But Mom is the greatest. She and I have gotten a lot closer through all of this and we’ve made a whole new life for ourselves. We live in an old, old farmhouse that was built in 1795. No kidding. The rooms are really small and the doorways are so short that tall people have to stoop to get through them. Mom says people used to be shorter in the 1700s.

  The best thing about our house, though, is that it has a secret trapdoor in our barn that leads into a long, dark tunnel. You need a flashlight to walk through. The tunnel leads up into our house and comes out … right at the wall to my bedroom! The wall has a special latch that springs open to the touch. Talk about exciting. You should’ve seen the faces on my friends in the Baby-sitters Club when I showed them.

  Maybe I should tell you a little bit about the club. There’re six of us in it now, and we also have two associate members. What it is is just what it says, a club for baby-sitters. It was Kristy Thomas’s great idea. She’s our president. She figured that it would be great if there was a club that all the parents in the neighborhood could use whenever they needed a sitter. That way, they’d be pretty sure of getting someone for the job and they’d only have to make one call. Great for them, and great for us, too, since we’re all super sitters and we love the work. Leave it to Kristy to come up with a good business idea. And leave it to Kristy to organize the whole thing.

  What we do is this: Three times a week we have meetings in the afternoon. We meet at Claudia’s house because she has a phone in her room … with her very own number! Claudia is Claudia Kishi and she’s our vice-president. Claudia is about as different from Kristy as you can get. Kristy is kind of small for her age and is a real tomboy. She always wears the same thing — jeans, a turtle neck, and sneakers. But not Claudia. You can always count on Claudia to be wearing some really unusual outfit, like a white jumpsuit with a wide purple belt and purple high-top sneakers. Claudia’s Japanese-American and she’s got beautiful, long, shiny black hair that she fixes differently practically every day. She loves art, too, so she has a really interesting sense of style.

  After those two, there’s Mary Anne Spier, our club secretary, and, as I said, she’s my best friend in Stoneybrook. Mary Anne lives alone with her father because her mother died when she was a baby. Her father’s been kind of strict with her and a lot of people think Mary Anne’s quiet. It’s true, she can be shy sometimes. But wouldn’t you know it, she was the first one of us to get a boyfriend!

  Speaking of boyfriends, when I first moved to Stoneybrook and became friends with Mary Anne, we found out something really exciting — my mom and Mary Anne’s dad used to go out together in high school! Then, for a while, they even started going out together again! Imagine. My mom going with my best friend’s dad. Mary Anne and I were in seventh heaven. We were hoping our parents might even get married to each other. That would’ve made Mary Anne and me sisters! Now things have cooled off a little, but as Mary Anne says, you never know….

  So that’s part of the club. Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and I are all in eighth grade, so we are very experienced sitters. We used to have another eighth-grade member, Stacey, but she moved back to New York City, which was really sad, so we had to get someone to fill Stacey’s place in the club. That’s where Mallory and Jessi come in. Mallory and Jessi are our sixth-grade members. They can’t sit at nighttime, except for their own brothers and sisters, but both of them are really good. We know Mallory really well because we baby-sit for her family, the Pikes. The Pikes have eight kids, and since Mallory is the oldest, she used to help us out.

  Jessi is Mallory’s friend and she’s a newcomer to Stoneybrook. Her family is one of the first black families in the neighborhood, so I think that in the beginning, Jessi felt a little strange. When she first moved here, she wasn’t even sure she wanted to continue with her ballet lessons, and she is a really talented ballet dancer �
�� long-legged and graceful.

  Wow! When I think about it, I do have a nice bunch of friends in Stoneybrook. As I was packing that day, I also started thinking about my friends in California. Clover and Daffodil (those are the kids I used to baby-sit for) and, of course, Sunny, who had been my best friend in California since second grade. That reminded me — I’d better stick suntan lotion in my suitcase. Sunny and I would probably want to go to the beach one day. Then I started making a list of all the other cosmetics and things I would need.

  Just then my mom came home. She usually doesn’t get home from work until 5:45 or so, but that day she was early.

  “Hi, Dawn!” she called up the stairs.

  I could hear her kick off her shoes in the living room, drop her purse on the couch and her keys on the kitchen table. That’s my mom, all right. I love her, but she is a little on the disorganized side. Mom padded up the stairs and plunked herself down on the one corner of my bed that wasn’t covered with stuff.

  “What’s this?” she said, picking up my list. When she saw what it was, she laughed. “I guess you didn’t learn that from your old mother,” she said.

  It’s true. If Mom ever bothered to make a list, she’d probably just lose it.

  “How was work today?” I asked her.

  Mom sighed and looked vaguely across the bed at all my things.

  “You’re going to have such a good time,” she said.

  I suddenly realized that when I went off to California, Mom was going to be left all alone in Stoneybrook.

  “Mom, are you going to be all right?” I asked. “I mean, all alone?”

  She tucked her legs under her, like she had so many times lately when we found ourselves sitting in my room talking.

  “Of course I am, sweetie,” she said. “What? Are you worried about me? Don’t worry. I’ve got Granny and Pop-Pop while you’re gone. And Trip’s already asked me out to dinner….”

  “The Trip-Man!” I groaned. Trip is a man who was dating my mother. I call him the Trip-Man. He’s a real conservative type. Tortoiseshell glasses, you know what I mean. How could I leave Mom alone with him?

  “Mom,” I said, “I feel kind of funny going off to be with Dad and Jeff, and you having to stay here.”

  “It’s only for your spring vacation,” she said. “Besides, think of what an adventure I’m going to have without you. I’ll probably misplace my keys and not find them the whole time you’re away. And when I go out with Trip, I’ll probably end up wearing one brown shoe and one red.”

  I threw my arms around Mom and gave her a quick kiss.

  “Oh, Mom,” I said. “I’m so glad that you and I stuck together. What if you were here and I was there? What if the family was even more split up than it is now? I’ll never leave you. Never.”

  Mom didn’t answer me, she just stared across my bed at the suitcase and all my clothes. Her eyes got a little misty, but right away she turned to me and said, “You didn’t start anything for dinner yet, did you?”

  Weekday dinners are usually my job.

  “Not yet,” I said. “I was thinking maybe barley casserole …”

  “Let’s go out,” Mom said suddenly. “What do you say? We’ll go to Cabbages and Kings and have one of those wonderful tofu dinners.”

  “Or the avocado salad,” I said.

  “Aaaah, avocado …” My mother closed her eyes at the thought. “Think of all those wonderful California avocados you’re going to be gobbling down soon. Come on. Let’s go celebrate. Avocados, here we come.”

  I grabbed my sweater and Mom stood up, puzzled, and glanced around the floor.

  “Where’re my shoes?” she said.

  “Living room,” I answered.

  Mom fumbled in her pockets for her keys.

  “Your keys are on the kitchen table,” I said. “And your purse is on the couch.”

  Mom looked a little sheepish.

  “What am I going to do without you?” she laughed. “You have to admit. We make a good team.”

  We walked down the stairs, gathered up Mom’s things, and headed out the door. When I got home that night I would have to finish packing my things. But, for then, I left them strewn across my bed. It wasn’t every night that Mom and I could decide to drop everything and go to Cabbages and Kings for a close, warm mother-daughter meal. And besides, on Sunday I’d be leaving Stoneybrook for two whole weeks.

  What a party. I was the first one to get to Kristy’s that night and, when I arrived, things were still a little quiet and calm. Kristy lives in a mansion. No kidding. But you practically need a mansion to hold all her family. There’s Kristy and her mom and three brothers, and then there’s Watson Brewer, Kristy’s stepdad. He and Kristy’s mom got married last summer and he has two kids of his own. (They come to stay every other weekend.) That would be plenty, but there’s also Boo-Boo, the cat, and Shannon, the puppy.

  I knocked on the big wooden door and Kristy let me in. She was wearing her usual — jeans, sneakers, a turtleneck. (What did I tell you?) She shut the door quickly behind me, so that Shannon wouldn’t escape. Shannon jumped up on me and licked my arms. She really is a great puppy. She’s still young, so her paws are too big for her body.

  “Hi, Shann,” I said. I petted her soft head and scratched behind her ears.

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Move it, Shannon,” said Kristy. “It’s probably Mary Anne.”

  The madness had started. When Kristy opened the door, it wasn’t Mary Anne at all. It was Karen and Andrew, Kristy’s stepsister and stepbrother.

  “We’re here!” Karen shouted into the house. She dropped her overnight bag on the hallway floor. “Daddy! Everybody! Here we are!”

  Karen is only six years old, but she’s got lots of confidence and is never at a loss for words. Andrew looked up at me and smiled.

  “Hi, Dawn,” he said. “Are you baby-sitting us?”

  Andrew’s only four and sometimes I have baby-sat for him, although, of course, Kristy takes all the jobs in her own house if she can.

  “Not this time, Andrew,” I said. “But I think you are going to see lots of baby-sitters tonight.”

  “Hi, Karen. Hi, Andrew. Oh, hello, Dawn.” Kristy’s mother bustled into the room and gave Andrew and Karen each a warm hug and kiss. “Take your stuff up and stash it in your rooms,” she said. “It’s going to be a full house tonight. Kristy’s expecting a few guests.”

  Karen bounded up the stairs with her suitcase and Andrew stumbled after her, trying to keep up.

  Kristy put her hands over her ears. “Aughhh!” she cried. “It sounds like wild horses!”

  The doorbell rang again. This time it was Mary Anne, and Claudia was right behind her.

  “Come in, come in.” Kristy opened the door a crack, then hustled them in, but Shannon was too quick for her. The frisky puppy darted between Claudia’s legs and scampered right outside.

  “Shannon!” Kristy called, and ran out to catch her.

  While Kristy was chasing after Shannon, Mallory and Jessi arrived. Jessi saw what was happening and took a ballet leap into the yard, just as Shannon was about to run into the bushes.

  “Gotcha!” she said as she grabbed Shannon’s collar. We all started clapping and Jessi took a deep bow. “Grand jeté,” she smiled. “You just never know when one is going to come in handy.”

  Well, one crisis down, but another was on the way. While Kristy led Shannon back into the house, Karen came screaming down the stairs.

  “Ben Brewer!” she shouted. “Ben Brewer! He’s clanking his chains!”

  For a six-year-old girl, Karen has one wild imagination. She’s convinced there’s a ghost in the house named Ben Brewer, and she tells stories about him all the time. As I looked up, Sam and Charlie were sneaking around the bend at the top of the steps. They’re Kristy’s older brothers. Sam is fifteen and Charlie’s seventeen.

  “Shhh,” Sam whispered to Charlie. He slipped down the stairs after Karen, grabbed her up from behind, and li
fted her over his head.

  “Aughhh!” screamed Karen.

  Mrs. Brewer stuck her head back into the room to see what was going on. David Michael, Kristy’s brother who’s seven, was right behind her.

  “No horseplay on the stairs,” said David Michael. (It was obviously a rule he had heard many times.)

  “That’s right,” said Mrs. Brewer.

  Just then, the front door opened behind us and bumped Claudia and Mary Anne on their backsides.

  “Excuse me. Excuse me.” Someone was pushing his way through the crowd. It was Watson Brewer, home from work. “Well,” he said, as he took a look at the chaos that greeted him. “Five more daughters, huh? Where did I get them all? Hello, girls.”

  “Hi, Mr. Brewer,” we chorused.

  “All right. All right. That’s enough,” Kristy said suddenly. “Baby-sitters upstairs.”

  I’m surprised she didn’t say, “Forward, march!” or “Single file!” (she did sound like General Kristy), but we all trooped up the stairs after her. We left Watson and Kristy’s mom kissing hello in the hallway, with their kids and their animals chasing all around them.

  “Phew!” Kristy said. She shut the door behind us. Mary Anne, Claudia, and I collapsed on the bed. Jessi and Mallory sat cross-legged on the floor. Kristy pulled up a chair. It looked just like a regular meeting of the Baby-sitters Club, only we were in Kristy’s room, not Claudia’s. Kristy picked up a clipboard and pencil and rapped on the arm of her chair.

  “The meeting will now come to order,” she said.

  “Meeting!” Claudia cried. “Kristy, this isn’t a meeting. It’s a party.”

  I smiled at Mary Anne. Mary Anne is a good friend of Kristy’s, but she knows how Kristy loves to be bossy.

  “True,” said Kristy. “It’s not exactly a meeting. But we do have a few things to decide. Pizza, for instance. Do we want some? And, if so, what kind?”

  “Pizza would be good,” said Mary Anne. Mary Anne is always agreeable. “Does anyone else want pizza?”

  “P-I-I-I-I-Z-Z-A-A!” said Claudia in a deep, rumbling voice. She sounded like Cookie Monster demanding cookies.