Claudia's Friend 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

  Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  Scrapbook

  Also Available

  Copyright

  I was trying to look on the bright side of things. It was Monday, true. But it was Monday afternoon. School was almost over for the day. Just a couple of more classes and I was home free. Well, not free. I had a baby-sitting job after school and my friends and I would go to our usual Baby-sitters Club meeting at 5:30. But I like baby-sitting and BSC meetings. After all, I’m a good baby-sitter, and I am the vice-president of the BSC. But more about our club later. Anyway, at that moment I was posed in what I hoped was an I-am-an-interested-student way near the back of Mrs. Hall’s English class.

  You might guess from the above comments that I am not a model member of the student body at Stoneybrook Middle School, where I am in the eighth grade. But I wouldn’t say my pose was all a pose. I am an interested student — when it comes to some things.

  Like art. I love art. I take classes at school and extra art lessons after school. Someday I hope to be a great artist.

  And junk food. I am definitely an interested student of junk food. I even managed to combine these two interests — art and junk food — when I had my first private art show. It was held in my garage and it was called “Disposable Comestibles.” That means I painted and drew quite a few pictures of Twinkies, potato chips, and other foods with cool textures (and tastes). And to prove what a dedicated artist I am, I didn’t eat a single subject until after I’d finished painting its portrait.

  What else? Oh, yes. I guess you could say I am a student of fashion, too. I like clothes: colors, textures, surprises. (Which makes me a sort of ongoing work of art, I guess.) But I do think I have a unique style, and a good one, too. In fact (although this may sound conceited), except for one other person at SMS, I think I am the fashion czar, or czarina, or whatever. The other person is Stacey, who is my best friend and the treasurer of the Baby-sitters Club.

  Who am I? Well …

  “Claudia? Claudia Kishi!” I jumped about a mile. It was the mile from wherever my thoughts were to where my body was sitting in Mrs. Hall’s class.

  “Uh,” I said.

  I heard someone behind me snicker.

  I braced myself for the grief I was sure Mrs. Hall was going to dish out, but instead she just gave me a reproachful look and turned to survey the room. Several hands shot up, and I leaned back in my seat, embarrassed but relieved.

  After that I tried to concentrate. I really did. But someone started reading a poem, and when I heard the title, which was “When I Am Old I Shall Wear Purple,” my mind skipped to my grandmother Mimi.

  Mimi was the person I was closest to in my family. I mean, I love my family. But my sister, Janine, is a genuine genius (she even takes courses at the local college even though she’s still in high school!), which makes her a little hard to communicate with sometimes. My parents, who are terrific, just don’t understand why I’m not a good student. They’re always saying things like, “Just put your mind to it, Claudia. If you’d concentrate on your studies just one tenth as much as you do on your art, you’d be a straight-A student.”

  But Mimi understood. She never tried to change me. She supported me and loved me just the way I was. And she listened. I’d go to her with problems and she’d let me talk about them without interrupting or telling me what I’d done wrong, or what I should do to make things right. Then she would look at me and say, “My Claudia, what to do?”

  But Mimi is gone now. She had a stroke, and was sick for a while. Then, one day, she was gone.

  I still miss her, my Mimi …

  “Claudia?”

  Oh, no. Mrs. Hall was calling on me again!

  But then I realized that the bell was ringing and everyone around me was standing up, and Mrs. Hall was motioning me toward her desk.

  I quickly gathered up my books, stuffed them in my bag, and approached Mrs. Hall’s desk. I tried not to look as guilty as I felt about not hearing a word in class.

  Mrs. Hall studied me for a moment and I shifted nervously from one foot to the other.

  Finally she said, “Claudia, as you know we have an English test coming up.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” I said brightly. And I hadn’t, really. I just hadn’t been thinking about it. After all, it was only Monday.

  And the test was a long way away. Plenty of time to worry later.

  “Claudia, are you listening to me?” Mrs. Hall was looking annoyed.

  Hastily I replayed her words in my head. “My performance,” I repeated her last two words.

  My performance. Uh-oh. This sounded ominous.

  Mrs. Hall nodded. “As it stands now, your performance in this class is not good. In fact, unless your spelling improves markedly, you are in danger of failing English this grading period.”

  “Failing!” I exclaimed. “Are you sure?”

  It was a stupid question, of course, but my reaction seemed to make Mrs. Hall a little more sympathetic. “I’m afraid so, Claudia. And half of this test will cover vocabulary and spelling. If you don’t do well on this test — and I don’t mean just pass, you’ll have to do better than that — I am sorry to say you will in all probability fail.”

  I couldn’t think of much to say. Finally I settled for, “Oh.”

  Mrs. Hall pressed her hands together and leaned toward me. “Claudia, why don’t I arrange for you to spend some time in the resource room again? It’s helped before.”

  I could think of what to say to that. “No!”

  Mrs. Hall looked a little startled, so I lowered my voice and tried to sound less panicked and more reasonable. “I mean, no, thank you. I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  “What are you going to do, then?” asked Mrs. Hall.

  “I’ll study,” I promised. “I’ll start tonight and I’ll work hard. I really will.”

  Mrs. Hall didn’t look convinced, but she said, “Very well. However, if you do not pass this test, we will do more than just talk about utilizing the resource room.”

  “Don’t worry,” I told Mrs. Hall. “I’ll be …” I searched my brain and actually came up with a vocabulary word. At least I think it was one. Or maybe it was just one of my sister Janine’s regular words. “I’ll be diligent, I promise.”

  I gave Mrs. Hall a big, sincere smile and then hurried out before she could change her mind.

  Don’t worry, I’d told Mrs. Hall. But it was something I couldn’t tell myself.

  I wasn’t a very interested student for the rest of the afternoon, but this time, it wasn’t because I was thinking about all the other interesting things I could be doing.

  Oh, no. I was concentrating, concentrating on worrying about that test.

  By the time the school day was over I was a wreck.

  Fortunately it didn’t show when I met the other members of the BSC on the steps outside of school at the end of the last period. We all had sitting jobs that afternoon in my neighborhood (business has been booming) and we’d decided to walk there together. Just seeing everybody made me feel better. We’re all such different people that I don’t need to compare myself to any of my friends. Around my fellow BSC members — Kristy, Mary Anne, Dawn, Stacey, Jessi,
and Mallory — I can just be myself.

  The point is we all have strengths and weaknesses and we know it, and we’re all there for each other when we need to be. I guess that’s what friends are for, when you come to think of it.

  Anyway, I felt better seeing my friends and knowing that they accept me for who I am and aren’t going to think less of me for not being the world’s ace student.

  I jumped down the last two front steps of the school and landed by Stacey.

  She gave me a sideways glance and then said, “If I got a pair of purple high-tops, could I do that?”

  “Only if you have ankle socks with lavender lace trim.” I grinned at her.

  “It’s a thought,” said Stacey. “And a little stair work might be just the thing for the Spring Dance.”

  “That’s right!” I let go of my worries about English. This was something much nicer to think about — the upcoming Spring Dance at the Community Center.

  “Has anyone been invited yet?” Mallory wondered out loud. “Mary Anne, has Logan asked you?”

  “Or have you asked Logan, Mary Anne?” put in Kristy.

  “Does that mean you’re asking Bart?” teased Mallory.

  “Maybe,” said Kristy loftily.

  “I wonder if someone’s brother is going to ask anyone,” I said looking around vaguely.

  “I don’t know if Sam knows about it,” said Kristy bluntly, and next to me, I felt Stacey smile (if you know what I mean). Sam, who is Kristy’s older brother, likes Stacey. He has teased her endlessly to prove it.

  Mallory said, “I bet it will be fun, no matter who we go with.”

  “Ben Hobart, Ben Hobart,” whispered Jessi loudly.

  Mallory blushed, but it didn’t keep her from whispering back, “Curtis Shaller, Curtis Shaller.”

  “Well, I agree with you, Mallory,” Mary Anne said. “We haven’t done much at the Community Center, but when we have been there it’s been fun. And maybe I will ask Logan if he wants to go.”

  “Go for it,” said Kristy.

  “So do we dress up? Maybe borrow some of Karen’s perfume?” I joked.

  “Whew!” Dawn held her nose and we all laughed. During summer vacation we had gone to Shadow Lake with Kristy’s family. We went to a dance at the lodge there, and Karen (Kristy’s little stepsister) and her two best friends, Nancy and Hannie, put on their best party clothes and about a gallon of “Lovely Lady” perfume. The perfume should have been called “Knock-Out,” because that’s what it almost did to us. And, even though the Three Musketeers (that’s what Karen and Nancy and Hannie call themselves) changed into more casual clothes and washed some of the perfume off before the dance, they still had a very distinctive aura for the rest of the night.

  I was giggling at the memory of the perfume disaster when Kristy said, “Dress up? What do you mean, dress up?” Kristy is a full-fledged tomboy, and a dedicated casual dresser. She almost always wears jeans, a turtleneck shirt, and sneakers.

  I looked thoughtful. “Well, I was thinking of a long dress, some high heels, maybe doing something really special with my hair.”

  Stacey caught on right away. “Excellent idea, Claudia. I’ve got a terrific three-quarter length ballerina skirt and this cool crop top jacket.”

  “Skirts! Heels! I was thinking maybe a special shirt to go with my good jeans.” Kristy, our fearless BSC president, looked so alarmed that we couldn’t help ourselves, and we started laughing. After a moment, she laughed, too.

  “You got me,” she admitted.

  We laughed and talked all the way to our various jobs and by the time I was knocking on the door of my own baby-sitting job, I’d managed to put the English test worry to one side. I’d be seeing everybody again at our BSC meeting at 5:30. I could talk to them about it then. Among us, we’d come up with something, I was sure.

  After all, if you can’t count on your friends, who can you count on?

  Footsteps pounded up the stairs and a moment later Mallory burst into my room.

  Kristy, who was sitting in a director’s chair, her green visor on her head, looked pointedly at her watch. Our meetings are held Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at my house from 5:30 to 6:00 P.M. and Kristy is a real bear about punctuality. It goes with being hyperorganized, I guess.

  Anyway, it was 5:33. I smothered a grin, but Mallory didn’t bother to try to hide her smile. “Sorry, I’m late, but you know the job was until five-thirty, Kristy.”

  “True,” said Kristy, relenting.

  I handed Mallory the bag of sour cream and onion chips I had pulled from behind my dresser, and I popped the top on a diet soda. A bag of trail-mix was also circling the room (Dawn and Stacey were busy raiding that), as well as a box of chocolate twigs. Those are little sticks of chocolate shaped like twigs, not real twigs dipped in chocolate!

  “Dues,” said Stacey, and we all began the ritual groaning as we fished in our pockets and packs and purses. We pay dues every Monday, and that goes for club expenses. We pay Kristy’s brother Charlie to drive her to and from the meetings, since she lives across town, and we pay for my phone bill, and occasionally we have a pizza party. Plus we also use the money to buy supplies for our Kid-Kits. Kid-Kits are boxes we’ve decorated and filled with books and toys and games and stickers — pretty basic stuff, but a fun distraction, especially if you’re going to a new client’s or it’s a rainy day. Kids always like having new things to play with or to read. Kid-Kits are another one of Kristy’s great ideas, just like the BSC …

  No. I should begin at the beginning and tell you the story in coherent narrative form. I remembered that from English because it actually made sense. In art, the arrangement of your subjects (and colors and all kinds of other things) makes a statement. So it makes sense when you are telling a story to arrange what you say in some meaningful way.

  Anyway, to begin at the beginning: my friends and I are in a club called the Baby-sitters Club. We started it because of one of Kristy Thomas’s great ideas. One night she was listening to her mother try to find a baby-sitter. Mrs. Thomas made one phone call after another, but no one was available. That’s when Kristy had this flash of brilliance. What if her mother could call one number and reach a whole bunch of baby-sitters at once? Since Kristy and Mary Anne and Stacey and I were experienced baby-sitters, naturally we were perfect for the job.

  So that’s the beginning. Kristy became president of the Baby-sitters Club, I became vice-president, Mary Anne Spier became secretary, and Stacey McGill became treasurer. But soon we had more business than the four of us could handle. That’s when Dawn Schafer joined us as alternate officer. And shortly after that, Mallory Pike and Jessica Ramsey joined us, too, as junior officers, when Stacey moved to New York for a while. Oh, and I almost forgot Shannon Kilbourne and Logan Bruno. They’re associate members. They don’t come to meetings or pay dues, but they will take jobs when we can’t.

  So it’s all clear now, right?

  Well, almost. I just need to tell you who everyone is.

  Kristy Thomas is, as you already know, super-organized, a low-profile dresser, and full of terrific ideas. This makes her the perfect president of the BSC. When she started the club, she still lived on Bradford Court, next door to Mary Anne, who was (and is) her best friend, and across the street from me. But a little later on, her mom got married to Watson Brewer and Kristy and her older brothers Charlie and Sam and her younger brother David Michael moved into Watson’s mansion. That’s right — a real mansion, because Watson is a real millionaire!

  Kristy wasn’t thrilled at first, maybe because she missed her old neighborhood and was used to her family of five. (Kristy’s father left when she was little and she can hardly remember him.) But she could see the advantages, like having Watson, who’s a pretty nice guy, for a stepfather. Plus, she adores Watson’s kids from his previous marriage, Karen and Andrew, who are seven and four. They live with their mother during the week and on some weekends, and with Watson on other weekends and some holidays.

&nbs
p; Another advantage to living at Watson’s is that there’s plenty of room for everyone. In fact there’s so much room, the family adopted a new sister.

  Emily Michelle is two and a half. She’s Vietnamese, and Kristy’s mom and Watson (Mr. and Mrs. Brewer, I guess I should say, but it does feel weird, calling Mrs. Brewer that when I called her Mrs. Thomas all my life, or most of it, anyway … ) Now where was I? Oh. So the Brewers adopted Emily Michelle. And then they asked Nannie, Kristy’s maternal grandmother, to come stay with them and help out and she did. There’s also Boo-Boo, Watson’s cross old cat, whose meow is as bad as his bite, and Shannon, a Bernese mountain dog puppy, who is as sweet as Boo-Boo is cranky.

  I think it’s a perfect setup for Kristy. Plenty of scope for her organizational skills. If she sometimes seems bossy and very outspoken, well, in a big family you need a strong voice to be heard, right?

  Now, a strong voice is not the way I’d describe Mary Anne Spier. But just because she is quiet and shy and small (she and Kristy are the shortest people in our eighth grade class) and very sensitive and tenderhearted, doesn’t mean she isn’t strong and strong-willed, too. For one thing, if she wasn’t pretty strong-willed, I don’t think she and Kristy could have stayed best friends. I mean, the fact that they are both short and have brown hair and brown eyes and were neighbors wouldn’t be enough, because in so many ways they are opposite. For another thing, Mary Anne’s mother died when she was a baby, and she was raised just by her father.

  I’ve tried to imagine my family consisting of just me and my father, and I have to admit, it’s pretty unimaginable. In fact, it would be pretty tough. But I guess having only one parent would make you more independent.

  Not that Mr. Spier was a bad parent. He was just the opposite, extra-careful, extra-protective, extra-caring. So extra-everything, that he treated Mary Anne like a baby for way too long. She was still wearing pigtails and little-kid clothes when she was in seventh grade.

  But finally Mary Anne had a talk with her father and he began to loosen up a little. He can still be strict, but he’s changed. So has Mary Anne. She’s wearing cooler clothes and a different hairstyle, and was allowed to get a kitten named Tigger. She even has a boyfriend, Logan Bruno.