Kristy and the Copycat 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

  How is a school bus like a person with the flu? Well, they both groan, lurch, cough, wheeze, and heave.

  Gross, right? But if you’ve ever really thought about it, it’s true. I mean, if you’ve ever spent any time on a school bus.

  I have — many, many mornings and afternoons, going to and from Stoneybrook Middle School. I like SMS, don’t get me wrong and riding the bus can be, well, interesting. But all the same, that old bus has a lot in common with the symptoms of the flu.

  Still, when I’m riding the SMS bus, I can sometimes get some important thinking done. That might sound kind of weird, I know. I mean, school buses, especially after school, are going to be right on the edge of absolute chaos, right? But it takes a lot of chaos to equal the level of activity at my house when it gets going. What’s one school bus full of kids compared to a house with two parents, one grandmother, five full-time resident kids, two weekend-and-holiday kids, a dog, a cat, two goldfish, and a resident ghost?

  Not that I’m complaining! I wouldn’t have it any other way. But it does make the bus seem sort of peaceful sometimes.

  I guess I’d better introduce myself. I’m Kristy. Kristy Thomas. I live in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, where I’m in the eighth grade at SMS. My mother and father were divorced when I was about eight and my father sort of disappeared from our lives, although we get occasional random cards and phone calls from him in California, where he lives now.

  So that left my mom, my older brother Charlie, who’s four years older than me, my other older brother Sam, who’s two years older, me, and my little brother David Michael, who was just a baby. (He’s seven now.) We lived next door to my best friend Mary Anne Spier and across the street from another good friend, Claudia Kishi (more about them later).

  Then, not too long ago, my mom met Watson Brewer and they fell in love and got married. Pretty amazing. Even more amazing was moving to Watson’s house — only it’s not a house, it’s a mansion, because Watson is a real, live millionaire. Which means that we went from living in a small house (David Michael’s room wasn’t much bigger than a closet) to a house where we all have our own rooms (which are definitely not closets). We also went up a couple of sizes as a family, from my brothers and mom and me to us and Watson and Karen Brewer, Andrew Brewer, Emily Michelle, Nannie, and the ghost of Ben Brewer.

  Andrew and Karen are Watson’s two children from his first marriage. Karen, who’s seven, has a world-class imagination, and Andrew, who’s four, can be world-class shy. They spend every other weekend and a lot of holidays with us.

  Emily Michelle is our newest family member. We adopted her. She’s Vietnamese. She’s two and a half and so cute. She’s just learning to talk, something she’s not overly enthusiastic about. But she manages to make herself understood, with or without words, that’s for sure!

  That’s where Nannie comes in. She’s our maternal grandmother, and when Emily Michelle arrived, Nannie agreed to come live with us to help look after Emily Michelle and all the rest of us. Nannie drives a pink car we call the Pink Clinker (you can sort of tell how it works by its name — a near relative of the school bus, maybe), is a member of a bowling league, and, like Watson, is an avid gardener. Needless to say, we all think she is pretty cool.

  Shannon and Boo-Boo are the quadrupeds. (Vocabulary words do come in handy sometimes. Quadruped means four-legged.) Shannon is a Bernese mountain dog puppy we got a little while after our wonderful old collie, Louie, died. We miss Louie still, but Shannon is very much a member of the family — with a dog imagination to equal Karen’s human one, a little stubbornness like Emily Michelle, and enough puppy energy to keep us all busy.

  Boo-Boo, on the other hand, does not, I think, have any family traits. Boo-Boo is a big, fat, mean old gray cat with yellow eyes. He has a short temper and will bite and scratch if provoked. What constitutes provocation is a mystery to all of us. Sometimes just walking by him is enough to earn you a swat on the ankle!

  Have I forgotten anybody?

  Oh, yeah, the goldfish, and Ben Brewer, the ghost of Watson’s great-great-grandfather. Okay, okay, maybe a ghost really doesn’t live on the third floor. But Karen (who else?) believes it, and she can be pretty convincing. Ben really does have his own room, too, a bedroom with all his old stuff in it including his rocking chair. And sometimes, Karen has even me believing that Ben Brewer’s chair is still rocking, a little, when we visit his room.

  So that’s our household. It’s never, ever dull, and if it sounds chaotic, well, mostly I love it. And who knows? Maybe it’s one of the reasons I am so assertive and organized.

  And maybe it’s my unique organizational skills and training that enable me to use my time on the bus efficiently — like thinking about the Baby-sitters Club (I’m the president, and more about that later, too) and about the Krushers, the, well, unique softball team that I coach.

  Which is what I was thinking about when the bus pulled up to my stop. Not the Baby-sitters Club, but about the Krushers. I’d called a Krushers practice for that afternoon and I was trying to think of something to put a new spin on the usual drills. We didn’t have any really big games coming up, but the last few sessions had felt sort of blah, although I couldn’t put my finger on why. Not the weather — it had been perfect. And not the team — every member who had been at practice had given it his or her all.

  But all the same, something had been lacking.

  I still hadn’t figured out what the problem was or come up with any incredibly brilliant ideas for making the practices more exciting as I hopped off the bus and headed for my house. Maybe something would come to me while I was getting changed into my softball gear.

  “Hey, I’m home!” I called, bombing up the front walk. Nannie and Emily Michelle were surveying a flower bed. Emily Michelle was clutching a handful of wilted green plants and dandelions.

  “We’ve been weeding,” explained Nannie.

  “Super,” I said. “Hi, Emily Michelle.”

  Emily Michelle looked at me unblinkingly. Then she sniffed the dandelions and sneezed.

  “Gesundheit!” I said as the dandelions sort of exploded. Emily looked completely shocked for a moment and then she started to laugh. I couldn’t help but laugh, too.

  “Dandy!” I said and Nannie rolled her eyes at the bad joke as I flung open the door and raced to my room. I was really going to have to hustle to get to practice early (as the coach, I feel like I should, plus it sets a good example).

  “Are you ready?” said David Michael, popping out of his room like a jack-in-the-box. He was, baseball cap and all.

  “Whoa, David Michael! What are you doing home before me?”

  “We got out early,” he said smugly. “Are you ready?”

  “Not quite yet. Give me five, okay?”

  Exactly five minutes later, David Michael knocked on my door. I snatched up my baseball cap (it has a picture of a collie on it — I wear it in memory of Louie) and opened the door.

  David Michael said, “Oh, good.”

  I followed him downstairs and back out the front door.

/>   Nannie and Emily Michelle were blowing on the dandelions now, sending tufts of dandelion fur into the air and laughing with each puff.

  I waved again and trotted to keep up with David Michael. It looked like he was setting an example for the coach.

  “A great day for practice,” I said later as we rounded a corner and crossed the road to SES. It was, too. The sun was bright and golden, not the thin, pale sun of winter. A breeze was blowing, so it was just a little on the cool side of warm, perfect for any kind of sport. The SES field was that shiny new no-more-winter green that makes you think of baseball and flowers and well, you know, spring.

  “Yeah,” said David Michael. “Can I unload the equipment bag?”

  “You may,” I said, hoisting the bag off my shoulder. It wasn’t fancy: extra baseballs, a couple of extra bats and gloves, a batting helmet, a catchers mask and chest protector — and a first aid kit! A good coach, like a good baby-sitter, is always prepared.

  And with the variety of kids on the Krushers team — twenty, with an average age of 5.8, and a wide range of skills — it is extra-important to be prepared.

  Which brought me back to the problem I’d been turning over in my head while I was riding the bus.

  The Krusher practice blahs.

  However, if that is how I felt, clearly the members of the Krushers did not. Almost everyone showed up on time. My friend Claudia Kishi arrived with four-year-old Alicia Gianelli; Mary Anne showed up with the Arnold twins, Carolyn and Marilyn; and Logan Bruno (he’s an alternate member of the BSC) arrived with Mathew and Johnny Hobart — all BSC jobs.

  “Want some help?” called Claudia.

  I shook my head. “No, thanks. But all cheering is welcome.”

  “You got it.” Claudia settled back on one of the benches with Alicia on her lap and began rooting around in her backpack. I was guessing that she had some junk food stashed inside (Claudia is a junk food gourmet) but I was wrong. She pulled out a pair of sunglasses: The frames were plain round wire rims, but the green plastic lenses were square, stuck into the frames by their four corners. I had to smile. Claudia definitely has style, and it’s definitely, uniquely hers.

  Mary Anne grinned, too, and settled in beside Claudia with the twins on one side and Logan Bruno, who is Mary Anne’s boyfriend (more about all of this, I promise, in a little while) on the other. Mathew and Johnny settled in beside Logan, and began watching everything intently.

  By now all the Krushers had arrived.

  I pulled the bill of my hat down and shouted in a good umpire-coach voice: “Okay, let’s play ball!”

  We started with fielding grounders. Right away, a ball skipped up and hit the bill of Jackie Rodowsky’s hat, flipping it off and nearly giving me a heart attack. Jackie didn’t seem to notice. The BSC calls Jackie “the Walking Disaster” because although he’s a cool kid, he does manage to get into all kinds of scrapes. Of course, he’s used to it, so he’s never as upset as the people around him are. “I stopped it, Kristy!” he shouted reassuringly now, snagging both the ball and his hat.

  I took a deep breath and said as calmly as I could, “Good work, Jackie!” A Jackie Rodowsky disaster was not the kind of practice excitement I had in mind! Fortunately, trouble seemed to steer clear of Jackie after that.

  When we’d finished working on fielding, we practiced base running and making throws to the different bases. For that, we did have to get out the first aid kit, but not for Jackie. Karen, who takes her softball very seriously, decided to slide into home plate. Only she slid in headfirst and skinned both her palms.

  By the time Karen got up, Mary Anne was already pulling out the first aid kit. I examined Karen’s hands, then led her over to Mary Anne.

  “The doctor is in,” said Mary Anne, holding up a tube of antiseptic ointment and some Band-aids. “Nice slide, Karen.”

  “Yes,” said Karen. “If I decide to be a famous baseball player, I’ll need to be able to sliiiide. Like in real games.”

  “Oh.” I could hear the smile in Mary Anne’s voice as I started practice back up. A few minutes later, Karen came trotting back onto the field, undaunted.

  Claudia, Logan, and Mary Anne and all their baby-sitting charges cheered from the benches. Karen turned and tipped her hat just as she’d seen the players in the major leagues do. Then she continued, stopping in front of me and saying, “What now, coach?”

  “Umm, right field,” I said. Things didn’t often get hit to right field and I wanted to take it easy on Karen’s hands.

  “Okay, coach.” Karen nodded and went briskly off to right field.

  It was a good practice, despite the Jackie Rodowsky near-mishap and the hand slide. When we gathered for a post-practice cheer, everyone looked tired and happy as they shouted, “YEAH, KRUSHERS!”

  “You’re a good coach,” said Claudia as the team dispersed.

  “Thanks,” I said. But something in my voice must not have sounded too happy.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Mary Anne. I looked at her, surprised at how easily she’d picked up on my down mood. I shouldn’t have been. Not only has Mary Anne known me practically my whole life and not only is she my best friend, but she is also a very sensitive, caring person.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Nothing?”

  “Except, well …”

  “Well?” prompted Mary Anne.

  “Well, I don’t know. I’m having the softball blahs, I guess. I mean, coaching is fun, but it’s hard for me to keep focused on it right now for some reason.”

  “The softball blahs,” said Logan. “Hmmm. Are we talking pre-season slump?”

  “I guess,” I said slowly … and then suddenly it hit me. “No! That’s not it. It’s the pre-season softball coaching slump.”

  My mind went back to the feeling I’d had when David Michael and I had walked out onto the playing field earlier that afternoon. Excitement. The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat. Playing the game. Playing the game.

  “I miss playing!” I exclaimed. “That’s what it is! I miss playing softball!”

  “Oh,” said Mary Anne. She’s not particularly athletic, so I could understand her looking a little puzzled.

  But Logan nodded in sympathy. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I could hardly wait to get my cleats on and get back out on the baseball field this year.”

  Claudia frowned thoughtfully, then said, “Hey, not to worry! I, Claudia, have solved the problem! The SMS girls’ softball team tryouts are coming up. I saw a sign at school today. The graphics weren’t great but …”

  “What a great idea, Claud. I could try out for the SMS team!” The idea cheered me up. Skipping over the insignificant detail of tryouts, I instantly imagined myself up at bat, ruthlessly staring down the rival pitcher, ready to knock the cover off the first pitch that had any possibilities in it …

  Then I remembered. “What about coaching? I can’t try out. Playing and coaching at the same time would be impossible!”

  “Maybe not,” said Mary Anne. “You’re a very organized person, remember? If anybody could do it, you could.”

  “Thanks, Mary Anne. But I’ve learned my lesson about taking on more than I can handle. Some things cannot be organized into my schedule. Now, to play softball, I’d have to give something up, like school.”

  “Give up school? Not a bad idea,” said Claudia.

  “Yeah, but I don’t think they’d let you,” said Logan.

  I shrugged. “Oh, well. It was a nice idea. But hey, not everybody has their own softball team to coach. Who knows — today the Krushers, tomorrow the major leagues.”

  Claudia slid her sunglasses down her nose and peered at me over them, striking a movie star pose. “Darling,” she drawled, “if anybody can do it, you can!”

  We left the field laughing and I didn’t mind, too much, the fact that I wouldn’t be trying out for the softball team after all.

  But I still hadn’t figured out a way to cure my coaching slump, either.

  I lo
oked at my watch. Five-thirty exactly.

  I cleared my throat. “This meeting of the Baby-sitters Club will come to order.”

  Claudia Kishi ripped open a bag of Gummi Worms, held one up, and dropped it into her mouth.

  Mallory Pike pushed up her glasses and said, “You looked like a bird just then, Claudia. You know, one of those baby birds when the mother drops the worm in its mouth.”

  In the act of opening the record book, Mary Anne Spier stopped and cried, “Ugh! Mal!”

  Jessi Ramsey and Shannon Kilbourne started laughing and Claudia lifted up another Gummi Worm and asked, “Is eating worms like eating meat? We’ll have to remember to ask Dawn next time we talk to her.”

  Stacey McGill said, “I don’t think Gummi Worms count, Claud.”

  Mary Anne made a hideous face.

  I cleared my throat again. “Ahem!”

  “Sorry, Kristy. Did you want a Gummi Worm?” asked Claudia innocently.

  I had to grin. “No thanks,” I said.

  It was business as usual at one of our meetings of the BSC. I was (as usual) sitting in the director’s chair in Claudia Kishi’s room, our (usual) meeting place. And (as usual) Claudia had dug out her secret hoard of junk food, this time Gummi Worms and pretzels, for the meeting.

  I’m the president of the BSC, Claudia is the vice-president, Mary Anne is the secretary, Stacey McGill is the treasurer, Shannon Kilbourne is the alternate officer (Dawn Schafer is our usual alternate officer, but she is in California right now with her father and brother, so Shannon is taking her place), and Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike are our junior officers. Logan is also an associate BSC member who doesn’t attend meetings but who takes jobs when none of us can take them.

  We’re a great group (I’m not bragging, I’m just being honest). We’re all different, but our differences work together to bring out the best in each of us — which, of course, helps make us good baby-sitters. In fact, the BSC hardly ever has to advertise anymore. We used to hand out fliers and put them up in supermarkets and stores (sometimes we still do), but now we get most of our business by word of mouth: satisfied customers, parents, and kids!