Kristy and the Missing Child 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

  Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  “Atta boy, that’s right, pitch ’er in there, atta boy — yes!” I yelled that last word. “All right!” I said. “That was definitely a strike. I think you’re getting the idea, Jake.”

  “Really, Kristy?” he asked. “Am I really getting better?” He looked pleased.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “In fact, I think you’ll be a good relief pitcher one of these days.”

  Jake beamed. Patsy and Laurel threw down their gloves (they’d been playing catch while Jake and I worked on his pitching) and ran to hug him. “Yay, Jake!” said Laurel.

  “Yay!” echoed Patsy. She looked happy for Jake, but she also looked a little bewildered. “Kristy,” she asked me, “what is a relief pitcher, anyway?”

  “Silly,” said Laurel. “Don’t you know anything? The relief pitcher is the guy who makes it all better. Like when Mommy says, ‘Oh, what a relief!’ when the plumber comes to fix a leak or something.”

  I laughed. Laurel has a funny way of putting things. But in a way, she was right. A relief pitcher is the guy who makes it all better. He or she comes into the game when the starting pitcher can’t hack it anymore and, hopefully, wins the game.

  How do I know all this stuff? Well, because I love baseball. I have two older brothers, so I grew up learning about sports. And now I coach my own softball team! It’s not exactly the Mets, but we have fun. Kristy’s Krushers (that’s the name of my team) is made up mostly of kids who are too young — or too scared — to try out for Little League. There are girls and boys on the team, and they range in age from two and a half (can you believe it?) to eight.

  I love coaching, maybe because I love being around kids. I’ve known most of the kids on my team for quite a while — and not just as their coach. I’ve also spent a lot of time baby-sitting for many of them. I love to baby-sit almost as much as I love to play, or watch, or coach sports. I even started a club for baby-sitters — but more about that later.

  Maybe I should introduce myself. You’ve probably already figured out my name, right? It’s Kristy. Kristy Thomas. I’m thirteen years old and I’m in the eighth grade at Stoneybrook Middle School. Which is in, naturally, a town called Stoneybrook. In Connecticut. And that day I was baby-sitting for the Kuhn kids, who are on my team.

  It was the first time I’d sat for the Kuhns. Until that day, I’d only known them through the team. Jake is a friend of a kid I do sit for a lot, Buddy Barrett. And Buddy was the one who asked the Kuhns to join the team. But until recently, I guess the Kuhns didn’t need a sitter, because Mrs. Kuhn wasn’t working. Mrs. Kuhn has a job now, though — and part of the reason she’s working is because she and Mr. Kuhn have separated. Their divorce was just finalized a little while ago.

  The kids seem to be handling things well. Jake, who’s eight, has a good head on his shoulders. I think he’s a terrific big brother to Laurel, who’s six, and Patsy, who’s only five. A big brother can be a big help when your family is splitting up. Believe me, I know.

  I was lucky enough to have two big brothers when my dad walked out on my family. That was years ago. Charlie and Sam were great back then, and they’re great now, even though they tease me unmercifully whenever they get the chance. Charlie’s seventeen and Sam is fifteen. I also have a little brother named David Michael. He’s seven, and he barely remembers our father because he was only a baby when Dad left.

  For a long time, that was my family. Mom, Charlie, Sam, David Michael, and me. Then Mom met this guy named Watson Brewer, and she married him. I wasn’t crazy about him at first, even though he is a millionaire, but now I really like him. Watson had also been married once before, and he has two children, Karen (she’s seven) and Andrew (he’s four). They’re both Krushers, too. They live with us every other weekend and for two weeks in the summer. The rest of the time they live with their mother and stepfather.

  Aren’t families complicated these days?

  And I haven’t even told you quite how complicated my family really is! See, after Mom married Watson and we moved into his house (which I hated at first because it was all the way across town from our old house and old neighborhood), the two of them decided to adopt a baby together. And that’s how Emily Michelle came to live with us. She’s two and a half, she was born in Vietnam, and she’s about the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. She’s also a handful, which is why Nannie, my grandmother, came to live with us, too. Besides the humans in our family, we’ve also got a dog, a cat, and two goldfish.

  You’re probably wondering how we all fit into one house. Well, there’s plenty of room, because Watson’s house is actually a mansion. Really! I wasn’t kidding when I said he was a millionaire.

  Anyway, we live together happily most of the time. Of course, we fight occasionally, like every family, but underneath it all, we love each other. I’m lucky to have such a neat family.

  Jake and Laurel and Patsy are lucky, too, even though they may not feel lucky right now. They didn’t want their parents to get a divorce, and I know they’re hurting. But the good thing is that their parents are acting like civilized human beings while they go about dissolving their marriage. Although they are trying to work out custody of the kids (Mrs. Kuhn has custody for now, but Mr. Kuhn wants to get joint custody), they aren’t bad-mouthing each other, and they haven’t turned into nasty, hateful people. They are still friendly to each other, and they both care a lot about the kids.

  How do I know all this? Well, some of it is stuff Mrs. Kuhn told me, and some of it I know from hearing other adults in the neighborhood talk (everybody likes the Kuhns, and they miss Mr. Kuhn now that he’s moved to Texas), and some of it I can just tell by being with the kids. They seem as happy and as well-adjusted as ever.

  There are rough spots, though.

  For example, Jake had been pretty unhappy when I first arrived at the Kuhns’ that day. “Mom’s so unfair,” he said to me as soon as she’d pulled out of the driveway. “Dad wanted to take me all the way to Europe, and she won’t let me go!”

  “Wow!” I said. “To Europe? That’s a pretty big trip!”

  “That’s what Mom said,” replied Jake. “She said that it was too far, and that two weeks was too long for me to be out of school. But Dad says that without me his business trip is going to be boring, boring, boring.”

  “Well, I’m sure he’ll take you somewhere else another time,” I said. I couldn’t believe that Jake had actually had the chance to go to Europe. When I was his age, the farthest I’d ever been was Stamford. (That’s the closest city to Stoneybrook.)

  “That’s what Mom said,” said Jake again, with a sigh. “She also said I’d have plenty of other birthdays.”

  “Birthdays?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m going to be nine soon. I’m having this big Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle birthday party. There’s even going to be a real Turtle at it! But Dad can’t come to it.”

  “Oh, will he still be in Europe?” I asked.

  “Nope,” said Jake. “He’ll be back. But he has other stuff to do in Texas. He keeps trying to figure out how he can see me on a day near my birthday, but every time he makes a pla
n it gets messed up. I think his boss is really mean.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said. I thought of all the birthdays I’d spent missing my dad. Once in a while he’d remember to send me a card, but usually he forgot. At least Jake’s dad was trying. “But I’m sure he’ll do everything he can to see you around the time of your birthday.”

  “Yeah,” answered Jake, looking sad. Then he started to tell me all about his party, and before long he was looking a lot less sad. In fact, he looked pretty excited and happy. “… and my friends are each going to get a mask to wear, with the name of their favorite Turtle on it. I get to be Donatello!” he finished, grinning.

  “Terrific!”

  “I just wish Dad could come,” Jake said, wistfully. He couldn’t seem to forget about that.

  “Maybe he will,” said Patsy. She’d been sitting nearby, playing with her Barbie Ferrari. “I saw Daddy yesterday, you know.”

  “Patsy, don’t make up stories,” said Laurel, who had joined us. “You didn’t see Daddy. He lives in Dallas now.”

  “I’m not making up stories,” said Patsy. “He was here. I didn’t really see him, but I saw his car. Maybe he just came to Stoneybrook for the day.” I could tell that she had no idea what “Dallas” meant. After all, she’s only five.

  “You saw his car?” asked Jake.

  Patsy nodded.

  “That’s weird,” said Jake. “Nobody has a car like Dad’s. It’s an old car called a T-Bird, and it’s painted a special green color.”

  “And I saw it,” said Patsy stoutly.

  Jake and Laurel looked at each other and shook their heads. “No way,” said Laurel. But she said it so that Patsy couldn’t hear. I could tell she didn’t want to get into a big argument about it.

  That’s when I decided to see if the kids wanted to practice their softball. I knew that once they got involved in pitching and catching and hitting, they’d forget about everything else for a while. And I was right. The rest of the afternoon flew by. We didn’t talk about anything heavier than how to throw a curve ball, and it ended up being a really nice day. I was glad I’d had a chance to get to know the Kuhn kids off the softball field.

  “You? Failing home ec? I don’t believe it,” I said. I shook my head.

  “Me either,” said Mary Anne. “But just because I like to do needlework and knit, doesn’t mean I can do all that other stuff. I can’t stand sewing, and I can’t cook the way Mrs. Ploof wants me to. What am I going to do?” she wailed.

  Mary Anne Spier is my best friend. We’ve known each other practically forever, and even though we’re opposites in many ways, we seem to have some kind of special chemistry that helps us stick together. That afternoon, we were sitting on Claudia Kishi’s front lawn. Our club meetings are always at Claudia’s house. Mary Anne and I had both gotten there early, and the sun felt so good that neither of us could even think of going inside to wait for everybody else. I picked a blade of grass, stuck it between my thumbs, and blew on it. It made a loud, honking noise, and Mary Anne giggled. She grabbed another piece of grass and blew. Her grass made a high, squeaky noise, and both of us giggled. We sat there for a while longer, trying out different pieces of grass. We didn’t talk, but the silence felt fine. That’s one of the great things about being with your best friend, if you know what I mean.

  As she picked blades of grass and examined them, Mary Anne was probably thinking about how she was going to pull up her home-ec grade. And maybe, as a friend, I should have been trying to help her figure it out. But instead, I was thinking about the BSC. That’s the Baby-sitters Club, of course. The one that was going to be meeting up in Claud’s room in about ten minutes.

  I love to think about the BSC. Why? Well, I guess because it was my idea, and it was one of the best ideas I ever had. I don’t want to sound conceited, but it was. It’s more than just a club; it’s a successful business. And all the people in it are terrific. I don’t know what I’d do without the BSC.

  I think the club works so well because of the way we set it up. We meet on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 5:30 to 6:00. Any parent who needs a sitter can call during that time, and they’ll be sure to find one. Simple, right? Our clients think so. They are incredibly happy to have seven reliable sitters a phone call away. We hardly ever have to distribute flyers or advertise, since we have plenty of business. Many of our clients have been using our club for quite a while now, and we’ve gotten to know their kids pretty well. We keep up-to-date with what’s going on with them by writing in and reading the club notebook, where all the members record the details of each job they go on.

  Our club is organized so that everyone in it has a job to fill. I’m president, since the club was my idea. I have to admit that I love being president. I guess it satisfies the part of me that’s kind of bossy. But it’s not as if I order everybody around. We have equal say in any decisions.

  Our vice-president is Claudia Kishi. As I said, we hold our meetings in her bedroom, which is why she gets to be vice-president. We meet in her room because she has her own phone with a private line — an essential ingredient to our club’s success. Claudia is terrific. She’s Japanese-American, as you might have guessed from her name, and she’s totally gorgeous and exotic-looking, from her long black hair to her almond-shaped eyes to the tips of her gold lamé high-tops. Claud is a wild dresser. And not just in relation to me, either. (I wear jeans and a turtleneck most days. Clothes aren’t important to me.) Claudia is the first to spot — or even make up — new trends.

  Claudia’s a really talented artist. And art is a top priority with her, unlike schoolwork. Claud’s smart, don’t get me wrong. (Even if she isn’t a bona fide genius like her older sister Janine.) But she just doesn’t seem to care too much about her grades.

  Luckily, Claud doesn’t have a club job that requires good math skills. But her best friend Stacey McGill does. Stacey’s our treasurer, and she’s as good at math as Claud is at art. She keeps track of every penny we each earn, and she also collects dues and keeps a record of how much money we have in the treasury. Then she doles it out as needed, whether it’s for transportation (we pay my brother to drive me to meetings, since I live so far away now), a pizza party, or some other special event. We also use the money to buy things for our Kid-Kits, which are boxes full of toys and games. We’ve decorated our Kid-Kits to look really cool, and kids we sit for are always thrilled when we bring them along.

  It’s easy to see why Claudia and Stacey are best friends. Like Claudia, Stacey loves to “shop till she drops.” She is a very cool, very sophisticated dresser. She has blonde hair that she gets permed once in a while, pierced ears, and the biggest collection of nail-polish colors I’ve ever seen. It’s almost as if Stacey can’t help being sophisticated; she grew up in New York City, the Big Apple. I think she’s on a different level from the rest of us Stoneybrook girls.

  But Stacey’s life hasn’t been easy. First of all, she’s moved a few times in the last few years: once because her Dad got a job in Stoneybrook (that’s when she first moved here), once because he got transferred back to New York City, and once because her parents got a divorce and Stacey and her mom returned to Stoneybrook. It’s enough to make you dizzy! But Stacey has handled it well.

  There’s something else she handles well: her diabetes. Stacey has a pretty severe form of the disease, and she really has to take care of herself. Having diabetes means that her body doesn’t make this stuff called insulin, which most of our bodies use all the time in order to process sugar and carbohydrates. So Stacey has to a) be very, very careful about what she eats (no sweets!) and b) give herself shots of insulin every single day. I don’t know how she does it. I’m sure I’d be whining and complaining all the time, but you never hear a peep out of Stacey. In a way, I think having diabetes has made her more mature than the rest of us.

  Our club’s secretary is — guess who — my best friend Mary Anne. Her job is to keep track of every appointment we line up: where it is, when it is, who ha
s the job — everything. The record book she keeps is incredibly neat and organized, like Mary Anne herself. She has to be organized, since her position requires her to keep track of our schedules and let us know which of us is free for which jobs.

  Besides being organized, Mary Anne is sensitive (she cries easily), romantic (she’s the only one in our club who has a steady boyfriend), and shy. You’ve probably already figured out that I am none of those things — that’s what I meant about us being opposites. But we’re alike in some ways, too: We’re both pretty short for our age, we both have brown hair and brown eyes, and we’re both very loyal friends.

  In fact, Mary Anne is a loyal best friend to two people — me and another girl in our club, Dawn Schafer. Actually, Mary Anne and Dawn are more than best friends. They’re stepsisters! See, Mary Anne’s father was a widower for a very long time, since her mother died soon after Mary Anne was born. Mr. Spier did his best to raise Mary Anne by himself. He did a pretty good job, too, except that he went a little overboard in the rules department. Mary Anne was still being treated like a fourth-grader when she was in seventh grade, as far as curfews and clothes and things like that.

  Anyway, by the time Mary Anne was older, Mr. Spier started to relax a little. Maybe it was because he fell in love. The woman he fell in love with was Dawn’s mother, who had actually been an old flame of Mr. Spier’s way back in high school. She’d lived in California for a long time, where she’d gotten married, had two kids, and then gotten divorced. When she moved back to Stoneybrook, they clicked again, and the rest is history.

  One of Mrs. Schafer’s two kids is Dawn, our club’s alternate officer. (The other is Jeff, Dawn’s younger brother.) What’s an alternate officer? Well, it’s like a substitute teacher. If any member can’t make it to a meeting, Dawn is prepared to do her job.

  We call Dawn our California girl, since that’s where she came from. Dawn has long blonde hair, blue eyes, a laid-back personality, and casual clothes. No matter how long she lives in Stoneybrook, Dawn will probably always wish she were on a beach, looking at the Pacific Ocean. Dawn’s a real individual. She eats health food while the rest of us (except Stacey) eat junk, she has two holes pierced in each ear, and doesn’t care what anybody else thinks of her. I know I’ll never be that cool!