Baby-Sitters' Fright Night

  Contents

  Title Page

  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

  Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  “Where is everybody? Mary Anne, do you have the notebook? Has everybody brought it up to date? Dues — no, it’s not dues day. It’s Wednesday.”

  Kristy Thomas, president of the Baby-sitters Club, was in what my mother calls a “tizzy.” We were leaving for the Halloween retreat to Salem the next morning, and Kristy was preparing to leave someone else in charge of the BSC.

  “Wonderful Wednesday,” I said, closing the door of Claudia Kishi’s room behind me.

  “Abby,” said Kristy, checking her watch. “You’re —”

  “Right on time. Take it easy, Madame President. We’re only going to be gone four days. What could happen in four days?” (The answer to that question, in case you’re interested, is lots. But I didn’t know that then.)

  Mary Anne Spier, who is the secretary of the BSC, held up the club notebook. “I have the notebook, which I am about to hand to Mallory for her update. I have the record book. So quit worrying.”

  The phone rang. Kristy shrieked, “The phone! Where is the phone?”

  “Where it always is, Kristy.” Claudia, who’d been delicately picking all the yellow M&Ms out of a giant bag, reached out and scooped up the receiver. “Baby-sitters Club,” she said. She asked some questions, scribbled a few notes, and hung up. “The Hobarts,” she announced. “For Sunday afternoon.”

  Kristy said, “Oh, no. We only have four baby-sitters on call. What if —”

  Calmly, Mary Anne flipped open the record book. “Shannon? Or Jessi? Oops, not Jessi.”

  With a grin, Jessi Ramsey bowed in Shannon Kilbourne’s direction. Jessi is a ballet dancer, and she had a part in Stoneybrook University’s Halloween Dance performance. “You’re it, Shannon,” Jessi said.

  “Fine by me,” Shannon answered. Mary Anne wrote down the details of the job in the record book, while Claudia called the Hobarts back to confirm.

  Kristy calmed down, at least momentarily, and we handled a few more phone calls. Claudia’s bedroom, where we hold our meetings, was packed to overflowing. Not only were the seven regular members of the BSC present, but our two associate members were also present — at Kristy’s special request. Since five of us would be away for four whole days, she wanted everybody at the meeting.

  This was so that, Kristy-style, she could double- and triple-check every detail, and make plans for everything that might go wrong. As the meeting progressed, she peppered Jessi, Claudia, Shannon, and Logan Bruno with questions: Did everyone have their Kid-Kits? Were they up-to-date with the club notebook? (Yes and yes, and more about the Kid-Kits later.)

  Suddenly, Mallory Pike held out her hands toward Kristy, closed her eyes, and intoned, “Calm. You will be calm.” She wriggled her fingers and twitched her nose.

  Kristy burst out laughing. “What are you doing, Mal?”

  With a grin, Mal opened her eyes. “Jordan says he has discovered an ancient book of secret spells. He won’t let anybody see it, but he claims he’s been putting spells on Adam and Byron.” Jordan, Adam, and Byron Pike are ten-year-old triplets, younger brothers of Mallory, who is the oldest of eight siblings. Triplets mean triple fun — and triple trouble. As Mal has said more than once (sometimes proudly and sometimes in despair), in a family as big as hers, there is never a dull moment.

  “I wish spells really worked,” said Claudia. “I’d like to put a spell on my homework. Except,” she added darkly, “I think it is already bewitched.”

  “Maybe we can find something in Salem to help you out. After all, the advertisements call it a ‘bewitching city,’ ” said Mary Anne.

  “Salem’s not just about witches, you know,” said Stacey McGill unexpectedly. “I mean, America’s first millionaire lived there. And his money came from shipping and trade. Salem used to be an important seaport and the sixth largest town in America.”

  Claudia held up her hands. “Stop! You sound like a book report. I’d forgotten this trip was a school project and you were going to have to do homework about it. Maybe I should be glad my parents are too worried about my grades to let me go.”

  “Reports or no reports, I wish our school would plan a trip like that for us,” said Shannon. Shannon goes to a private school, which is why she wasn’t coming on the trip with us. She is one of the associate members of the BSC, and doesn’t come to meetings regularly the way the rest of us do.

  Logan is our other associate member. He’s a great baby-sitter and, even more excellently, someone who will play any sport, any time, anywhere. Logan had said no to the trip because of a big football game that weekend. He’s on the SMS football team (and the track team, and the volleyball team, and the baseball team, too).

  Kristy said, “The phone number for the inn is listed in information, if you lose it. You just call information for Salem, Massachusetts.”

  “1-800-W-I-T-C-H,” I cracked. “Seriously, folks,” I continued, as everyone groaned, “have you taken a look at any of the books on Salem that the teachers have been handing around? There are at least three museums about witches, including a wax museum!”

  “I hope they aren’t too scary,” Mary Anne said. “I’d like to take Nidia to some of them. I think she would have fun.”

  Nidia is the daughter of Ms. Garcia, who was one of the chaperons for the trip, along with Coach Wu (everyone calls her that, even though she teaches social studies as well as coaches the girls’ softball team), Mr. Blake, and Mrs. Bernhardt. Mrs. Bernhardt also teaches social studies. Mrs. Blake and Mr. Wu were coming up to join us that weekend, too. Twenty kids, at least four chaperons … and how many witches?

  Anyway, Ms. Garcia had asked if anyone in the BSC wanted a sitting job during the trip, and Mary Anne had volunteered.

  “Yeah, you better not scare a teacher’s kid,” I warned Mary Anne. “You don’t know what that would do to your grade point average.”

  Reaching down into the briefcase that she carries instead of a backpack these days, Mallory produced a guidebook to Salem and flipped it open. After studying it for a minute or two she announced, “No problem, Mary Anne. The wax museum sounds pretty tame. It has interactive displays. You can even make tombstone rubbings.”

  “If I were going to Salem,” said Claudia, “I could use that as the basis for my Salem report. A collage of Salem. That wouldn’t be so bad.”

  I felt sorry for Claudia. So did soft-hearted Mary Anne, only, unlike me, Mary Anne was quick to show it. “I’ll make you a tombstone rubbing, Claudia.”

  “And there is going to be at least one parade, probably more than one.” Mallory jumped back into the conversation, still intent on her guidebook. “In Salem, they have a whole celebration around Halloween called Haunted Happenings. Haunted houses, guided mystery tours, costume balls.”

  The phone rang. As Claudia picked it up, Logan said, “See, Kristy? Nothing’s going to
happen here in Stoneybrook. Salem is where all the action is going to be. So quit worrying.”

  Logan, Shannon, Claud, and Jessi had told me not to worry, and I knew they were right. After all, it was insulting of me to think that my fellow BSC members couldn’t handle club business just because I wasn’t around. They’d done it before.

  But I was still worrying the next afternoon as the bus groaned out of the Stoneybrook Middle School parking lot.

  Abby leaned across the aisle and gave my arm a friendly punch. “Hey, this beats the Wheeze Wagon, doesn’t it?” The Wheeze Wagon is what Abby calls our school bus (she and I are neighbors).

  I nodded, barely registering what should have been a very noticeable lack of coughing and lurching on the part of the bus, not to mention the fact that the seats and floors were actually free of gum, the corpses of former spitballs, broken pens, smashed bits of dropped lunches, and other disgusting things that I happen to believe are recycled from the school bus floor directly into our school lunches.

  “Yo, Thomas,” said Abby. “Snap out of it!”

  Mary Anne, who was sitting next to me, put a sympathetic hand on my arm. “Kristy, you know worrying isn’t going to change anything.”

  I sighed. “True. And once we’re in Salem, I will snap out of it. I’m sure we’ll have so much to do that I won’t have time to worry. So I might as well get it over with now, right?”

  Mal’s head popped over the seat in front of us, and she dropped one of her guidebooks in Mary Anne’s lap.

  “Thanks,” said Mary Anne.

  “I’ve got dibs on it after you,” said Stacey, who was sitting across the aisle from Mal. “I just had an idea for my Salem project — something on its early economic history.”

  Typical Stacey, I thought. She’s a math whiz, and numbers (and economics) are her thing. She wants to be the head of a small company someday, but I don’t think she will be. It’s more likely to be a major corporation.

  Meanwhile, her head for numbers is the reason she is the treasurer of the BSC, the same way my talent for leadership and organization (not to mention the fact that the BSC was my idea) is the reason I’m the president. And the level-headed way I handle myself in a crisis.

  Like the one that happened as I sank deeper into my worry-and-brood mode.

  Something cold and slimy and disgusting and icky touched my neck and then wriggled beneath the collar of my shirt and down my spine.

  Snakes, I thought wildly. Worms. Not that I am afraid of snakes or worms or anything like that, but I do not want to share my shirt space with them.

  I didn’t say that of course. In spite of myself, what I said was, “Eeeeek!” I jumped to my feet. At that moment, the bus took a turn and I lost my balance and fell back across Mary Anne.

  Snickers and laughter broke out behind me. “Alan Gray,” I said through gritted teeth as Mary Anne helped me up. “You are dead meat.”

  Alan Gray is, without question, the biggest jerk in the eighth grade. Even if he were in second grade, he’d be the biggest jerk, but at least there his tricks would be age-appropriate. What had I done to deserve this? Nothing that I could think of. But Alan has never needed a reason to be jerky.

  “Here, I’ll get it.” Mary Anne stuck her hand inside the collar of my shirt and in one deft move pulled out something long and white and cold and icky.

  “Spaghetti for Kristy, special delivery,” sang Alan, and laughed even harder at his stupid trick.

  I saw Cary Retlin watching, a little smile on his lips. Cary Retlin is sort of my nemesis in the class. He is a world-class prank player and (I suspect) the leader of a group of prank players who call themselves the Mischief Knights. Cary and I have had run-ins before. We even faced off in a mystery challenge once.

  But Cary’s style doesn’t include babyish things such as dropping cold spaghetti down someone’s back.

  He said now, “It’s chilled, Kristy. An Alan Gray special touch.”

  I snatched the spaghetti from Mary Anne and hurled it at Alan. “You touch me again, spaghetti-brain, and you’re going to wish you were frozen!”

  Fuming, I sat down again. How had I overlooked the fact that both Alan Gray and Cary Retlin were on this little Halloween jaunt? Trouble, trouble, everywhere, I thought glumly.

  And more trouble.

  “Alan, give the spaghetti to Eileen. Maybe she can cast a spell on it and turn it into a worm. After all, she did say one of her ancestors was tried in Salem for being a witch,” Cokie Mason’s unpleasant voice called out.

  More snickers.

  In the grand tradition of cowardly bullies everywhere, Cokie Mason, student at SMS most likely to succeed at being hated by everyone with brains or heart, had decided to pick on someone weaker: Eileen Murphy. Not only was Eileen at an age disadvantage, since she is a sixth-grader and Cokie is an eighth-grader, but Eileen has not yet developed any, well, social skills. She ducks her head when she talks to you, never looking you directly in the eye. Or she stares at you intensely, making you uneasy. She probably was telling the truth about having had an ancestor tried as a witch. But if you’re going to go around telling people things like that, you have to be prepared to be teased, and to give as good as you get if you don’t want to be teased forever.

  Eileen gulped and ducked and stammered and insisted that she wasn’t a witch. Not the most effective response.

  Especially since her fashion sense appeared to be about on par with her social skills: She was wearing a big, loose, dingy, black outfit — making her look a little bit like the stereotypical pictures of witches on broomsticks.

  Then I heard the voice of Cokie’s sidekick, Grace Blume. “Yeah, Eileen, go on. Show us how a real witch acts.”

  Laughter now. “I’m not a witch,” said a small, intense voice.

  “Yeah,” said Alan Gray, “leave her alone.”

  Good for Alan, I thought, surprised. But his next words spoiled the effect. “Eileen didn’t even bring her broomstick!”

  Abby had straightened in her seat, an angry spark in her eye. I was taking a deep breath, about to let Cokie have it, but just then Ms. Garcia, demonstrating the sixth sense that some teachers have, stood up and looked back over the bus.

  “We’re almost there, everybody. Don’t stand up, but please do start getting organized.”

  Cokie made a dive for her purse and pulled out a mirror and some lipstick. Grace did the same. I sourly hoped that the mirrors would crack, but of course they didn’t.

  Alan oozed down in his seat when Ms. Garcia sent a sharp glance in his direction.

  Eileen turned her face to the window, and the moment passed.

  But I continued to brood.

  Trouble, I thought. Trouble.

  But I’d better begin at the beginning. Since Kristy is the president and founder of the BSC, as well as being one of my two best friends, I’ll start with her.

  Kristy is thirteen years old and an eighth-grader at Stoneybrook Middle School, like most of the members of the BSC. Kristy’s family is a very large and blended one: three adults — her mother; her stepfather, Watson Brewer; and her maternal grandmother, Nannie — and seven children. The children are Kristy; her two older brothers, Charlie and Sam; her seven-year-old brother, David Michael; her adopted baby sister, Emily Michelle, who was born in Vietnam; her stepsister, Karen, who is seven; and her stepbrother, Andrew, who is four. (Karen and Andrew are Watson’s children from his first marriage. They live at Kristy’s house part-time.) She also has one puppy, Shannon, a Bernese Mountain dog; one cranky cat, Boo-Boo; other assorted smaller pets; and one ghost (at least, that’s what Karen insists — that is the ghost of one of Watson’s ancestors, Ben Brewer, lives in his own room on the third floor).

  Fortunately, Kristy lives in a mansion, so there is room enough for everyone, even the ghost of Ben Brewer. But before her mom married Watson, the five Thomases lived in a house that was pretty small for three boys and one girl and one adult. (That house was next door to my old one, and across the
street from Claudia Kishi’s.) Mr. Thomas lived there for a while, too, but he left when David Michael was a baby.

  So Kristy had to learn to be organized and responsible early on, which is one of the reasons she’s a good baby-sitter and a good club president.

  Another reason she is the perfect BSC president is that the club was her idea. You might say that David Michael is the reason that the BSC exists. Kristy came up with the idea for the club one afternoon as she listened to her mother call one sitter after another, trying to find a baby-sitter for David Michael. If only she could just dial one number and reach several sitters at once, Kristy thought.

  And that’s how it all started.

  It was clearly an idea whose time had come, because now, not much later, we have all the baby-sitting jobs we can handle, even with seven regular members and two associates. We almost never have to hand out fliers or put up signs to advertise the way we did in the beginning. Most of our business comes from satisfied customers who tell other parents about us.

  We meet every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from five-thirty to six. Clients know they can reach us then to set up baby-sitting jobs. We meet in Claudia’s room because she has her own phone line. That way we don’t tie up someone else’s phone. Claudia is the BSC’s vice-president.

  I am the club secretary and am responsible for keeping all the appointments in the club record book. That way we never forget who is supposed to be baby-sitting where, or who can’t take a job because of a prior commitment. I don’t mean to brag, but I have never, ever made a scheduling mistake, and I do a good job of keeping the record book (which also has a list of all of our clients’ names, addresses, and phone numbers, plus other important information) up-to-date.

  We also keep a club notebook. In it, we write up every single baby-sitting job we go on. And we all read the notebook at least once a week. That way, we keep up with our clients — who has developed an allergy to peanut butter, for example, or who is in a practical-joke phase.

  A third volume recently joined our BSC bookshelf: the mystery notebook. Kristy started that when we were being stalked by this maniac while we were snowed in … well, I won’t go into that here. But we realized that we have been in the middle of quite a few mysteries, and we needed a central place in which to keep track of our clues and solutions. So Mal dug through the club notebook and wrote up everything she could find about our previous mysteries. If we ever run into another mystery, we’ll know where to put our notes.