California Girls! Read online

  This book is in memory of

  Lisa Novak

  and

  Gregg Peretz,

  whose short lives touched hundreds of others’

  in unique and wonderful ways.

  They will always be remembered.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  It all started when our state’s Jack-O’-Lottery jackpot climbed to 23 million dollars. Can you believe it? Twenty-three million. I didn’t know there was that much money in the whole world, let alone in Connecticut.

  My friend Claudia had been giving her father money to buy her a lottery ticket each week practically forever (kids can’t buy the tickets themselves, which is incredibly unfair), but she never won anything, so my other friends and I were always teasing her. But when the jackpot reached 23 million dollars, the seven of us — Mary Anne Spier, Kristy Thomas, Jessi Ramsey, Stacey McGill, Mallory Pike, Claudia Kishi, and me, Dawn Schafer — chipped in enough money to buy seven tickets. We asked my mom to get the tickets for us, and we agreed that if any of the tickets was a winner, we would split the money seven ways, which would be over three million dollars apiece. At that rate, we figured we could be women of leisure all our lives.

  So anyway, on the day of the drawing, we gave my mom our money and she bought us seven tickets. It was a Friday. The winning number would be drawn that night. With seven tickets, we were so sure we were going to win that we had a sleepover at my house just to watch the news. Promptly at 9:59 we gathered in front of the TV for the Ten O’Clock Report. The Jack-O’-Lottery drawing wasn’t held until 10:25 and I can’t say we were very patient. At one point, Kristy actually said, “Oh, who cares about world peace? When are they going to announce the winning ticket?”

  Anyway, the newscaster finally got around to the jackpot. “And the winning number is … fifty-three …”

  “Yes!” I shouted, looking at the ticket I was holding.

  “Twenty-seven … thirteen … eight … seventy-one …”

  “Yes, yes, yes, YES!” I couldn’t believe it.

  “Are you kidding, Dawn?” asked Mary Anne, who’s my stepsister.

  “Shh. No.”

  “And the final number,” said the announcer, “is eleven.”

  “Eleven?” I cried. “No, it isn’t. It’s thirty-five.” I almost burst into tears.

  “Wait a sec,” said Claud. “Your ticket has five of the six winning numbers?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Then we’ve won a prize!”

  * * *

  We didn’t find out until the next day that we had won ten thousand dollars — one thousand four hundred and twenty-eight dollars and about fifty-seven cents each.

  “You know what?” I said, when my friends and I were actually holding the check. “We’ve got two weeks off from school next month. We could use this money for a trip to California to visit my dad.”

  “Ooh, California,” said Mallory dreamily.

  So we checked with our parents, and we checked with my dad, and everything was settled. He said that my brother, Jeff, and my California friends would be on vacation then, too, and that he would try to take a week off from work.

  So it was all set.

  California, here we come!

  “Come on, Mary Anne!” I called. “We’re going to be late.”

  “Okay, okay.” My stepsister came thundering down the stairs in our house, and we ran into the garage and hopped onto our bikes. We were on our way to a meeting of the Baby-sitters Club at Claudia’s house.

  “What were you doing up there?” I asked Mary Anne as we sped along.

  “Packing,” she replied.

  “Packing? For California?”

  “Yes,” said Mary Anne defensively.

  “But we aren’t leaving for another week.”

  “I don’t want to forget anything.” Mary Anne set her mouth in a firm line and I knew better than to tease her anymore.

  When we reached Claud’s house, Mary Anne and I rode our bikes right into the Kishis’ garage. (We didn’t want them to get stolen, but we didn’t have time to chain them to anything.) Then we raced to Claudia’s bedroom, which is the headquarters for the Baby-sitters Club, or the BSC.

  What is the BSC? Well, it’s a business that my six friends and I run. It was Kristy’s idea. She thought it up at the beginning of seventh grade. (Kristy, Stacey, Mary Anne, Claudia, and I are all thirteen now, and in eighth grade. Mallory and Jessi are eleven and in sixth grade. We go to Stoneybrook Middle School.) Anyway, Kristy’s idea was for a group of her friends who baby-sit to get together several times a week and hold meetings. People who needed sitters could call us during the meetings. Since they would reach a bunch of sitters, they’d almost be guaranteed to find somebody available — instead of making call after call to sitters who might not be at home.

  Well, the club was a success from the beginning. It started with just four girls, and now there are the seven of us, plus two associate members. (The associate members don’t come to meetings, but they are reliable sitters whom we can call on for help if a job comes in that none of us can take. Guess who the associate members are — a friend of Kristy’s named Shannon Kilbourne … and Logan Bruno, who is Mary Anne’s boyfriend!)

  Anyway, the club is run very efficiently, and I think that’s one reason it’s such a big success. Kristy runs the club because she’s the president. And she’s the president because the club was her idea in the first place, and also because she’s always getting more good ideas for the club. She makes us keep a notebook in which we write up our baby-sitting experiences, and she thinks up ways to advertise the club so that we get more clients.

  Kristy comes from an interesting family. There’s her mom; her stepfather, Watson, (her biological father walked out on her family when Kristy was about six); her two older brothers, Charlie and Sam; her little brother, David Michael; her stepbrother and stepsister, Andrew and Karen, who are four and seven; her grandmother, Nannie; and her adopted sister, Emily Michelle. Emily is two and a half. She came from Vietnam. Kristy and her happy, jumbled-up family live in a mansion in a different part of Stoneybrook than where the rest of us live (Karen and Andrew only live there some of the time; they live mainly with their mother and stepfather). The mansion is Watson’s. It’s his family home and he grew up there. But Kristy has only lived there since the summer before eighth grade. That’s when her mom and Watson got married. Before that, she lived next door to Mary Anne (who’s her best friend) and across the street from Claud. Kristy is a tomboy and has sort of a big mouth.

  Claudia Kishi is the club vice-president. This is because we hold our meetings in her room, so three times a week we tie up her phone (Claud has not only her own phone, but a private phone number) and eat the junk food that she hides in her room.

  Claud has a pretty normal family. She lives with her mom and dad and her
older sister, Janine, who is a certified genius. Living with a genius probably isn’t easy for anyone, but it’s especially hard for Claudia, who is bright, but a poor student and an especially poor speller. Claud thinks she isn’t smart, but that’s not true. She just doesn’t like school. What she does like is art — and she’s great at it. She also likes to read Nancy Drew mysteries (but that’s about the only thing she likes to read), and to eat junk food. Unlike Kristy, who is just average-looking and doesn’t care much about clothes, Claudia is absolutely gorgeous and wears wild clothes. The Kishis are Japanese-American, so Claud has this long, silky black hair; a complexion that somehow remains perfect, despite her junk-food addiction; and dark, almond-shaped eyes. You never know what kind of outfit or hairdo you’ll see on Claud. For instance, on the day of this meeting, she was wearing a red shirt with Mexican hats and cactus plants printed on it, and blue-and-white-striped pants held up by polka-dotted suspenders. On her head was what looked like an engineer’s cap (it matched her pants), and dangling from her ears were miniature cowboy boots, which she’d made herself.

  Stacey McGill is the club treasurer and also Claud’s best friend. Stacey is a newcomer to Stoneybrook, unlike Claud, Kristy, Mary Anne, and Mallory, who were born and raised here. Stacey grew up in New York City but moved to Connecticut at the beginning of seventh grade. (She was one of the four original members of the BSC.) As treasurer, Stacey’s job is to collect our club dues every Monday and to use the money to pay for our expenses — for instance, to help pay Claud’s phone bill.

  Stacey is a really terrific person. She’s funny, she’s nice, she’s excellent at math (that’s why she’s our treasurer), and she’s extremely sophisticated. That probably comes from growing up in New York, but I’m not sure. Anyway, Stacey is very mature, and she’s allowed to get her blonde hair permed and to wear nail polish (usually it’s sparkly) and makeup and stuff. And her clothes are about as wild as Claudia’s. On this particular day, Stacey was wearing wide-legged, cropped pants; her Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt; and high-topped running shoes. I feel bad for Stacey, though, because she’s been through a rough time lately. Her parents just got divorced, and now her father lives in New York, and Stacey and her mom live here in Stoneybrook. As if that weren’t bad enough, Stacey has a severe form of a disease called diabetes. Diabetic people have a problem with a gland in their body called the pancreas. Ordinarily, the pancreas makes something called insulin, which breaks down the sugar in your body. But when that doesn’t happen right, you develop diabetes and have to figure out other ways to control your blood-sugar level. Some people can do that through diet alone — by watching how many sweets they eat. But poor Stacey not only has to be on a strictly controlled diet (including calorie-counting), she has to give herself injections — shots — of insulin every day. I do not know how she does that. I couldn’t do it. I admire Stacey.

  The BSC secretary is Mary Anne Spier, who, as I said before, is also my stepsister. (I’ll explain how that happened in just a minute.) Mary Anne’s job is one of the biggest (certainly the busiest) of the whole club. It’s up to her to keep our record book in order. That’s where we keep track of our clients — their names, addresses, phone numbers, and the rates they pay. More important, it’s up to Mary Anne to schedule every single job that comes in. That means she has to know all of our schedules — when Claud has art classes, when Stacey will be in New York visiting her father, etc. But Mary Anne is super organized, so she’s terrific at this job.

  Now — I’ll explain how Mary Anne, from Connecticut, and I, Dawn Schafer from California, wound up as stepsisters. It started when my mom and dad got a divorce. (I could sympathize with Stacey when she was going through her parents’ divorce.) My family — Mom, Dad, my younger brother, Jeff, and I — were living in California then, but after my parents’ split, Mom moved Jeff and me to Stoneybrook because she’d grown up here. Jeff and I weren’t too happy about the move. In fact, Jeff never adjusted to life here, which is how he ended up back in California with Dad. I made friends right away, though, and the first one was Mary Anne. It’s sort of a long story, but we found out that Mary Anne’s dad and my mom had been high-school sweethearts. So we got them together again and they began dating. (Oh, I guess it’s important to mention that Mr. Spier was a widower; Mrs. Spier died when Mary Anne was really little.) Anyway, after they dated for what seemed like forever, my mom and Mr. Spier got married, and Mary Anne, her dad, and her kitten, Tigger, all moved into my house. Mary Anne and I are glad to be stepsisters as well as friends, even though we’re very different people. For one thing, we look different. Mary Anne has brown hair and brown eyes, and is short, just like Kristy. I have long blonde hair and blue eyes (people tell me I look like a California girl, whatever that means), and I dress in my own style. I’m an individualist and pretty independent. Mary Anne, on the other hand, is quiet, shy, a romantic, and much more conservative than I am. (I have two holes pierced in each ear, and Mary Anne has no holes. Sometimes she acts like I’m a barbarian or something.) But Mary Anne and I get along great most of the time. After all, she’s my best friend.

  Let’s see. In the BSC, I hold the position of alternate officer. I’m like a substitute teacher or an understudy in a play. In other words, I take over the duties of anyone who might have to miss a meeting, so I have to know what everyone does. But the club members rarely miss meetings, so mostly I answer the phone a lot.

  Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike are our junior officers. This is because they are eleven and not allowed to sit at night unless they’re watching their own brothers and sisters. They’re a big help to us older sitters, though, since they take on so many after-school and weekend jobs.

  Jessi and Mal are also best friends, even though (like Mary Anne and me) they are pretty different people. Well, they do have some things in common. They both love children (of course); they both love to read, especially horse stories; and they’re the oldest kids in their families, yet they feel that their parents treat them like infants. However, Jessi is a talented (and I mean talented) dancer who might want to be a professional ballerina one day, while Mal loves to write and draw and is thinking of becoming a children’s author and illustrator. Then, while Jessi has a pretty regular family — she lives with her parents; her Aunt Cecelia; her younger sister, Becca; and her baby brother, Squirt — Mallory has seven brothers and sisters. And three of them — Adam, Jordan, and Byron — are identical triplets. The others are named Vanessa, Nicky, Margo, and Claire. Claire is the baby. One final difference between Jessi and Mal is that Jessi is black and Mal is white.

  Okay, so that’s the BSC.

  When Mary Anne and I raced into Claud’s room for the meeting that afternoon, we found that we were the last to arrive.

  “Mary Anne was packing for California,” I couldn’t help saying.

  Mary Anne glared at me, but everyone else laughed.

  Then Kristy called the meeting to order, and we tried to be businesslike and professional for the next half hour, but it was hard. We were too excited about California.

  “You won’t believe all the stuff we can do there,” I said. “Right around L.A. there are a million things.”

  “You mean besides Disneyland?” asked Mal.

  “Definitely,” I replied. “We’ll probably drive to Hollywood—”

  “Hollywood?!” shrieked my stepsister. (She gets absolutely gooey over big cities and movie stars and things.)

  At this point, Claud couldn’t help getting a little dig in. “And you guys thought I was stupid for buying lottery tickets all this time,” she said. She looked pretty smug.

  “Well, not stupid,” said Stacey. “Just, um, frivolous.”

  “I’m not sure what frivolous means,” replied Claud, “but whatever it is, it paid off. We’ve got plane tickets and plenty of spending money.”

  “And I’ll get to see my dad and Jeff,” I added.

  “Oh, my lord,” said Claudia. “How are we going to wait until next Saturday?”

&n
bsp; I don’t think you can imagine a more excited group of travelers than my friends and I. You’d think we were on our way to Paris or someplace exotic. Well, actually, California is exotic, as far as I’m concerned.

  Anyway, we boarded our plane, and it turned out to be huge. There were nine seats across — two, then an aisle, five, then another aisle, and two more. My friends and I were seated in two of the seats on the left-hand side of the plane and a row of those five middle seats. Needless to say, there was some clambering over who got the window seat, but in the end, Stacey pointed out that Claudia’s boarding pass placed her by the window, so Claud took the seat happily. (She also offered to trade places with us periodically so we could each have a turn at the window.)

  “Everybody, buckle up,” said Mary Anne nervously.

  But we couldn’t. Not right away. We were too busy getting settled. We put our jackets in the overhead compartments. Then Dawn said, “This plane is freezing,” and took her jacket out of the compartment, along with a blanket. Then Mary Anne and Claudia wanted pillows, and Stacey remembered that she’d put her boarding pass in her jacket pocket, so she had to get her jacket, too. When we were finally seated, Mary Anne reminded us to buckle up again.

  We all did except for Kristy, who wasn’t paying any attention.

  “Why is it,” Kristy began, “that all planes smell the same? Sort of like coffee … and I don’t know, um—”

  “Is this going to be gross?” Mary Anne asked her. And before Kristy had time to answer, Mary Anne added, “Buckle your seat belt.”

  This time Kristy did.

  “Who wants to play hangman?” asked Mallory.

  “You’re not bored already, are you?” I said. “Because this flight is over five hours long. Maybe we should save hangman for later.”

  “Hey, look!” exclaimed Stacey. “We’re going to get a movie on this trip. There’s the screen. I wonder what we’re going to see.”

  “It’s an old classic,” spoke up a flight attendant who happened to be passing by. “I hope you like Alfred Hitchcock. We’re showing Hitchcock films this month. Today’s is called Vertigo.”