BSC in the USA Read online

  Special thanks to

  Bonnie Bryant, Clifton Lewis,

  Peter Rogers, and Janet Vultee

  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

  Acknowledgments

  Also Available

  Copyright

  “Not bad,” Dad said, eating his western omelette, “considering it was made on this side of the country.”

  “Mmmm,” agreed Mary Anne.

  “Thank you,” said Richard.

  “Needs salt,” grumped Jeff.

  Nothing, said Mom.

  We all chewed. The stove clock clicked to 9:35.

  Dad smiled and took another bite. “Yup. It’s about as western as cactus.”

  “Daaaaad,” I said.

  Dad laughed. “I didn’t mean tastewise!”

  Mom put her napkin down. “Will you excuse me, please?”

  Ugh.

  Breakfast was not off to a good start.

  I had been so excited about seeing my dad. This was his very first visit to Stoneybrook. When I saw the humongous old RV pull into our driveway that morning, I was practically screaming with joy.

  Now, in the middle of breakfast, I felt horrible.

  The chemistry was off. Way off. Dad’s sense of humor wasn’t working. The atmosphere in the kitchen was about as cheery as a hospital waiting room.

  Divorce sure does weird things to people.

  Before that day, Richard and Dad had never met. Also, Mom and Dad have stayed on opposite ends of the country since their divorce. They have not even been in the same state together, let alone the same room. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent in an airplane shuttling between the two of them.

  Where do I live? Palo City, California, with Dad. I used to live here, in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. This summer, I was just visiting.

  Confusing? It’s not. Just the simple story of Bicoastal Dawn.

  You see, I was born and raised in Palo City. But after my parents split up, Mom decided to move with Jeff and me back to her hometown, which happens to be Stoneybrook. She wanted to be near her fond memories — and her parents, who still live here.

  From the very start, Jeff couldn’t make the adjustment. He was miserable. Eventually Mom let him move back with Dad. We were sad to see him go, but we knew he’d be happier. I was pretty homesick for California, too, but I had something Jeff didn’t have. The Baby-sitters Club.

  The BSC members are my absolute best East Coast friends. The club meets three times a week (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from five-thirty until six) in Claudia Kishi’s bedroom, to answer calls from local parents who need sitters. When I lived in Stoneybrook, I was the BSC’s alternate officer. I took over the duties of the president, vice-president, secretary, or treasurer whenever any of them was absent.

  If I hadn’t joined the BSC, I might not have gained my stepfamily.

  Soon after I arrived here, I became close to Mary Anne. She introduced me to the BSC. Meantime, we both discovered a deep, dark secret our parents shared. They had been in serious LUV in high school! But my grandparents had dashed their romance. They thought Richard wasn’t good enough for their daughter, so they pressured Mom to break up with him and go away to college. It was bye-bye, Stoneybrook, and hello, heartbreak. (Sob, sob.)

  Well, both of them recovered. Mom married Dad, of course, and had Jeff and me. Richard married, too, but Mrs. Spier died when Mary Anne was a baby. Richard was devastated. He became super-protective of Mary Anne and raised her very strictly, insisting she follow lots of rules. She had to wear little-girl clothes and pigtails right up until seventh grade.

  By the time I met Mary Anne, Richard had loosened up a bit. (At least Mary Anne said so. He still seemed stuffy to me.) When we found out their secret, zoom — Dawn and Mary Anne, Matchmakers Inc., sprang into action! And boy, did those old sparks fly. (Personally, I wouldn’t have predicted it. Richard’s a nice guy but super-organized and conservative; Mom is funny, absentminded, and full of life. Oh, well, I guess opposites attract.)

  Anyway, Mary Anne and Richard moved into our house, this incredibly cool two-hundred-year-old farmhouse with a hidden passageway. Life was perfect.

  Sort of.

  Unfortunately, my homesickness really started kicking in. The more I visited Dad and Jeff, the more I knew I had to move back to California. Believe me, leaving Mary Anne and Mom was not easy, but we’ve dealt well with the separation.

  Two lives, two coasts. Both fabulous. I always feel a little split, but I consider myself very lucky.

  In Life One (Palo City), I have a new stepmom. Her name’s Carol, and she’s kind of a blabbermouth, but we get along okay. (She couldn’t take our trip because of her job.) I also have a circle of fantastic friends. My absolute closest one is Sunny Winslow. We grew up together. She and I and two other girls (Jill Henderson and Maggie Blume) started our own baby-sitting organization, the We Kids Club. It’s much more casual than the BSC — picture poolside meetings with a cell phone and a big spread of natural snacks. Yes, natural. We’re all super-conscious about healthy eating and the environment.

  As you can imagine, being bicoastal means my life is full of tearful farewells and reunions. But none had been quite as tense as this one.

  Dad was eyeing Mom as she ran to the bathroom. “Was it something I said?” he asked.

  Richard put his napkin on the table. “I’ll check on her.”

  Off he went.

  Munch, munch, chew, chew, sip, sip.

  “So!” Dad blurted out. “Did everyone pick out a special place to visit on our little cross-country cruise?”

  Gulp. Dad had asked us about this already. I’d planned to study a map of the U.S. and come up with a suggestion, but had I done that? Noooo.

  “Hawaii!” Jeff blurted out.

  “Uh, stick to the mainland, please,” Dad said.

  “I want to repel!” Jeff announced.

  “You do repel already,” I remarked.

  Jeff stuck out his tongue. “It’s a rock-climbing word.”

  “Rappel,” Dad said. “Maybe a lesson in some national park out West?”

  “All riiiight!” Jeff whooped.

  Where to go…. My mind was racing.

  I thought about a book I’d been reading. A ghost story about an abandoned gold-mining town out West.

  “A ghost town!” I blurted out. “That’s where I want to go.”

  “Whaaat?” Jeff said. “That’s dumb. How are we going to find one?”

  “Look for a ghost and follow it,” said Dad with a straight face. “Mary Anne?”

  Mary Anne was pushing her omelette around her plate, deep in thought. “I’m not sure yet, either. Sorry.”

  “Don’t make it someplace like a fabric store,” Jeff murmured.

  “Jeff, that did it!” I picked up a bagel and aimed.

  “Yikes!” Jeff was off like a shot. He nearly collided with Mom and Richard, who were walking back toward the kitche
n.

  “Duck!” Jeff yelled.

  “Unidentified flying bagel!” Dad exclaimed.

  Whirrrrr — splat! The aliens crash-landed in a panful of soapy water in the sink.

  Richard snorted a laugh.

  Mary Anne cracked up. So did Jeff.

  The poor little bagel was floating in the suds like a shrunken inner tube.

  I could see Mom’s shoulders loosening up. She shook her head and started to chuckle.

  Suddenly I relaxed. Mom would survive just fine.

  I was feeling better and better about our trip. What an adventure! Finally I’d be crossing the USA on the road and seeing some of those places I always fly over.

  Too bad I’d never looked for ghosts through my jumbo-jet windows.

  But I was determined to find some.

  “Love meeee tenderrrrr …” warbled Abby Stevenson in her best Elvis Presley imitation. “Pack theese baaags …”

  “Oww-oww-owwwwww!” howled David Michael Thomas.

  “Don’t be rude,” scolded Karen Brewer.

  Abby took David Michael in her arms and began dancing him around the RV. “Neverrr let me go-o-o-o …” she sang.

  “EWWWWWWWW!” David Michael shot away as if Abby were covered with lice.

  David Michael is my little brother. Karen is my stepsister. They’re both seven. I also have two older brothers, Charlie Thomas (who’s seventeen) and Sam Thomas (fifteen), a four-year-old stepbrother named Andrew Brewer, and a two-and-a-half-year-old adopted sister named Emily Michelle Thomas Brewer. My family is B&B. Big and blended. We live in a mansion in Stoneybrook.

  My stepfather, Watson Brewer, is a millionaire. He works at home as a consultant, and he can take time off whenever he wants. Those are three reasons why he was able to rent the RV for this trip.

  I was so happy he did. Too bad my whole family couldn’t go. Sam and Charlie were at camp. Emily Michelle was staying home with my grandmother, Nannie, who lives with us.

  Now, at the curb in front of Claudia’s house, Watson and Mom were loading suitcases into the RV cargo hold. All my other BSC friends were milling around, jabbering away.

  “We’re already running out of room,” Watson remarked.

  “Oh?” said Mr. Schafer. “I was hoping you’d take some of Claudia’s luggage.”

  Claudia was standing with her family near Mr. Schafer’s RV, looking sheepish. Around her were three bulging suitcases the size of small hippos.

  “We warned you, Claudia,” said her sister, Janine.

  “I could leave behind a down jacket,” Claudia suggested.

  “You brought a down jacket?” Abby asked.

  “Two,” Claudia said, “because you never know how cold it’ll be. We are going north. Anyway, one is my Eddie Bauer basic red, for casual cold, but the other is more a dinner-out, full-length one, just in case….”

  Mr. and Mrs. Kishi were already rolling the suitcases back toward the house.

  Jessi Ramsey, out of pure excitement, was doing ballet leaps around the RV. Mallory Pike was digging into her luggage, looking for something. Stacey McGill was combing her hair in the side mirror. Mary Anne and her boyfriend, Logan, were holding hands and being all gooey-eyed with each other. David Michael was giggling and making kissy noises.

  I was glad it wasn’t too early. The neighbors would have been throwing things at us.

  “I’m thirsty!” cried Andrew from inside our vehicle.

  “But you just drank apple juice,” retorted Mom.

  “Anybody see my Misty book?” Mallory called out. “I put it down on top of my suitcase.”

  “Check the floor of the car!” Stacey shouted.

  “It’s not a car,” Jeff corrected her. “It’s an RV.”

  “What does RV stand for, anyway?” Mary Anne asked.

  “Ridiculous Vehicle,” Watson said, looking up at the two enormous wheeled monsters parked at Claudia’s curb.

  “When are we going to leave?” demanded Jeff.

  “I’m still thirsty!” Andrew screamed.

  Utter, total chaos. A person could hardly hear herself think.

  I tried to tune them out. No goofing around for me. We hadn’t finished our planning, and somebody had to concentrate on it. Three-thousand-plus miles, two RVs, fifteen people with fifteen different destinations — it was an organizational nightmare.

  I was holding a clipboard, staring at the trip lineup. Something was not right.

  “We’re unbalanced,” I said.

  Mr. Schafer looked forlornly at the cargo hold. “I know.”

  “Not suitcase unbalanced,” I continued, “people unbalanced. Nine in our RV, but only six in yours.”

  Watson’s ears perked up. “This RV fits only seven comfortably, eight in a pinch.”

  “Can we switch somebody?” Mr. Schafer asked.

  “We divided up the norths and souths,” I said. “But there are some undecideds.”

  “Mr. Schafer, how about two suitcases and a backpack?” Claudia shouted from her front door.

  “Andrew spilled his apple juice!” cried Karen from inside the RV.

  Zoom. Off went the two dads to do damage control.

  Time to switch into problem mode.

  I, Kristy Thomas, am a problem specialist. When other people shrink away, I hop into action.

  If you think I’m exaggerating, ask any of the girls crowding into the RVs. We all belong to the Baby-sitters Club. Who invented the Baby-sitters Club? Me.

  The BSC was a solution to a problem.

  One day, back before Mom met Watson, she was trying to find a sitter for David Michael. I couldn’t baby-sit that evening, and neither could Charlie or Sam. My dad was out of the picture. He had run away from my family soon after David Michael was born. (That’s right, run away. How many times has he visited? Once. And I hear from him once or twice a year if I’m lucky. The postmark of his last letter was from a place called Sausalito, wherever that is.) Anyway, poor Mom phoned all over town and couldn’t line up a single sitter.

  The concept hit me: a regular group of sitters, using a central phone number. Simple, right? It had Duh written all over it. (Most Great Ideas do.) Zing. The BSC was born. We decided to use Claudia’s room as headquarters because she has a private phone line. We started with four members, but now we have ten — seven regulars; two associates, who help us out when we’re overloaded; and one honorary member (Dawn, who lives in California).

  Needless to say, tons of Stoneybrook parents have become our clients, and they love us. We’re all great with kids, we’re super-reliable and friendly, we’re prompt, and we often bring Kid-Kits to our jobs. Kid-Kits are boxes of old toys, puzzles, books, and odds and ends. (Pretty basic stuff, but kids adore them.)

  Success does have its own problems. We’re usually so busy that we can’t guarantee the same sitter for the same family each time. Kristy the problem specialist to the rescue! I set up something called the BSC notebook. In it, we write a description of each job, including any new information the next sitter might need to know — house rules, bedtimes, fears, habits, and so on.

  We’re really more like a tightly knit, well-managed company than a club. We collect dues. We have rules and officers. I am president, which means I run the meetings. I also dream up new ideas, not only for club publicity but for the enjoyment of our clients’ kids (we call them our charges).

  Claudia’s our vice-president, mainly because she hosts meetings. She’s also a junk food maniac, which means our meetings are major pig-outs. Her parents are super-strict about nutrition, but Claudia has lots of junk food hiding places, especially among her art supplies. Claudia loves to draw, paint, sculpt, and make jewelry. She dresses artistically, too — her outfits are put together from funky stuff she buys in thrift shops. She’s also, in my opinion, drop-dead stunning, with jet black hair and dark, almond-shaped eyes (she’s Japanese-American).

  Claudia is nothing like the rest of the Kishi family. They all dress in the world’s most conservative clothes a
nd have zero interest in art. Mr. Kishi’s a high-powered investment banker, Mrs. Kishi’s a librarian, and Janine’s a genius high school student who takes college courses. Claudia, on the other hand, cannot write a sentence without a spelling error. Her grades were so low she was sent back to seventh grade (Mary Anne, Stacey, Abby, Dawn, and I are in eighth). Fortunately, she’s doing just fine now.

  Mary Anne, my best friend in the world, is the BSC secretary. She’s in charge of the record book, which contains our official calendar. When a client calls with a job request, Mary Anne knows at a glance who’s available. She records every single job plus all our conflicts: doctor appointments, family trips, and after-school activities. In the back of the book she keeps a client list that includes names, addresses, rates paid, and basic information about our charges.

  Mary Anne, as you can imagine, is extremely organized. Also sweet and shy. She’s the world’s most sensitive listener, and she cries at the slightest sad thing.

  Mary Anne and I grew up next door to each other. Kids used to think we were related. Even now we look somewhat alike — we’re both about five feet tall, with dark brown eyes and hair. But Mary Anne has short hair and kind of a preppy wardrobe. (Me? Ponytail, jeans, T-shirts all the way.)

  Stacey says I have fashion-blindness. She tracks clothing trends the way Watson tracks the stock market. (Personally, both things make me snoozy.) One of her favorite clothing colors is black. According to her, it sets off her blonde hair. Besides, she was born and raised in New York City, and she says native New Yorkers wear black all year long. Uh-huh. Maybe they change whenever I visit, because I always notice lots of different-colored outfits. (I love going to NYC. Stacey’s divorced dad lives there. At least her father keeps in touch. Hrrmmmph.)

  As BSC treasurer, Stacey collects weekly dues and pays monthly expenses: Claudia’s phone bill, gas money for my private chauffeur (my brother Charlie, who drives Abby and me to meetings), and supplies for Kid-Kits. Stacey keeps close track of the treasury. She’s a real math whiz. Her favorite occasion is a surplus … then it’s pizza party time!

  Pizza is one of the few kinds of junk food Stacey can eat. She has diabetes. That means her body cannot process sugars well. If she eats candy she could become ill, even go into a coma. As long as Stacey watches her diet very, very carefully, has meals at regular intervals, and gives herself daily injections of insulin, she can lead a normal life. (I know, the injection part sounds gross, but Stacey insists it’s about as painful as brushing her teeth.)