Baby-Sitters at Shadow Lake Read online

  For my friends

  Gladys and Keisha

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  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

  “Aunt Faith’s suggestion,” said Watson, my stepfather, “is that our family spend some time at the cabin this summer, to see how we like it, and to see if we might want it one day.”

  “All right!” I cried.

  “Are we really going?” asked Charlie. (He’s my oldest brother.)

  “How come we never heard about this cabin before?” asked Sam. (He’s my next oldest brother.)

  “Why is it called Shadow Lake?” asked Karen. (She’s my stepsister.) “That sounds spooky.”

  Watson had called a family meeting. It was a summery Friday evening, and my entire family had gathered in our backyard. Most of us were sitting on the grass. The others were sitting on lounge chairs.

  My family is on the large side. Not size-wise, numbers-wise. There are ten of us: Mom; Watson; Nannie (Mom’s mother); Charlie and Sam, who are seventeen and fifteen; my younger brother, David Michael, who’s almost eight; Karen, who’s seven; Andrew, my stepbrother, who’s four; Emily Michelle, my adopted sister (she’s two and a half, and she came from Vietnam); and me. I am Kristy Thomas. My full name is Kristin Amanda Thomas. I’m thirteen, and I’m an eighth-grader at Stoneybrook Middle School here in Stoneybrook, Connecticut.

  Watson tried to answer the questions we were throwing at him. “I don’t know yet if we’re going to Shadow Lake,” he said to Charlie. “That’s mostly why I called this meeting. To decide.”

  He turned to Karen. (Karen is his daughter from his first marriage. Karen and Andrew also live in Stoneybrook, but mostly with their mother. Every other weekend, and on some holidays and vacations they live with us, though. It is a good thing Watson’s house is actually a mansion, with plenty of room for everyone.) “I’m not sure how Shadow Lake got its name, Karen,” Watson continued. “But there’s nothing scary about the place, so you don’t have to worry.”

  “Where is Shadow Lake, honey?” asked my mother.

  “In the mountains of western Massachusetts. One of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Anyway, that’s what I thought when I was twelve. I haven’t been there since. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Aunt Faith and Uncle Pierson in almost twenty years. Not since I was a very young man.”

  “What’s the cabin like?” Nannie wanted to know.

  “It’s like a house,” answered Watson, smiling. “I mean, it’s large. If I remember correctly, it must be able to sleep twenty-five people. Maybe more. Two of the bedrooms are like dorms. Wall-to-wall bunk beds. The cabin sits right on the shore of the lake. A porch runs all the way around the cabin, and the place is surrounded by trees. It’s really something.”

  “Oh, Watson, please. You have to let your aunt and uncle leave the cabin to you!” I exclaimed.

  Watson looked serious. “I don’t know. It is a big responsibility. But a visit there might help make up my mind. How would you feel about spending two weeks at the cabin this summer? When Karen and Andrew can come with us?”

  I don’t think I need to tell you what we thought of that idea. My brothers and sisters and I cheered, and Karen raised her fists and hissed, “Yes!” Then she added, “Can we invite friends?”

  “Friends?” repeated Watson. “I hadn’t thought about that.” He glanced at Mom, and they held a silent discussion with their eyes. “Sure. You can invite some friends,” said Watson finally. “Within reason.” (More cheering.) “Keep in mind, though, that taking this vacation does not mean we’re taking the cabin” were Watson’s last words at that fateful Friday family meeting.

  Well, we would see about that, I thought. I was already thinking of ways to convince Watson to take the cabin. I was positive Shadow Lake was a wonderful place. So I decided to keep a diary of our trip. After the trip, I would give the diary to Watson to remind him of our fabulous vacation. And of how much we loved the cabin.

  That was the first entry in my trip diary. I intended to sound as enthusiastic and as positive as possible. I also intended to ask my brothers and sisters and friends to write in the diary as well, so that Watson would know I wasn’t the only one having fun at the cabin on Shadow Lake.

  Wait till you hear who was coming along on our vacation. Twenty people. (And I thought my family was big.) David Michael, Karen, and I had invited ten friends among us. (Charlie and Sam weren’t interested in asking friends. They just wanted to “scope out the chicks at the lake” — in Charlie’s words. And concentrate on water sports. And Andrew and Emily are too little to invite friends. I mean, too young. Actually, I mean their friends are too young to come on a vacation with someone else’s family.)

  Anyway, Karen had invited her two best friends, Nancy Dawes and Hannie Papadakis. The girls are in the same class in school. They call themselves the Three Musketeers. David Michael had also invited two of his good friends, Nicky Pike and Linny Papadakis. (In case you’re wondering, Linny is Hannie’s older brother.) However, unlike the Three Musketeers, who are best friends, Linny and Nicky barely knew each other at all before the trip.

  Also in case you’re wondering, yes I invited six friends to come on the trip to Shadow Lake. How did I get away with that? Well, my friends and I offered to baby-sit free of charge for the little kids, all eight of them, during the vacation. And Mom and Watson took us up on the offer. They know my friends and I are good sitters. After all, we run a business called the Baby-sitters Club.

  * * *

  “Okay, you guys. Let’s have some order,” I said. It was the Wednesday afternoon meeting of the Baby-sitters Club (or the BSC). It was also a summertime meeting. School had ended. We were a little giddy with excitement over the big stretch of warm weather and freedom that lay in front of us. Not to mention our trip.

  The meeting, as usual, was held in Claudia Kishi’s bedroom. Claud is the vice-president of the BSC. (I’m the president. That’s why I get to call the meetings to order. One day, I may buy a gavel for this purpose. For the time being, I rely on my set of excellent lungs.)

  The other people present at the meeting were Mary Anne Spier, Dawn Schafer, Stacey McGill, Jessi Ramsey, Mallory Pike, Logan Bruno, and Shannon Kilbourne. Mary Anne is the club secretary and my oldest and best friend in the world, even though we are not much alike. I’m loud and love to talk. Mary Anne is quiet and shy. I’m awkward around boys (most boys, that is), while Mary Anne has a steady boyfriend — Logan!

  Dawn Schafer is one of Mary Anne’s two best friends (I’m the other, of course), as well as her stepsister. Mr. Spier married Mrs. Schafer not long ago. Dawn moved here from California in the middle of seventh grade. She’s wonderful with kids.

  Stacey McGill, club treasurer, is also new (sort of) in Stoneybrook. She moved here from New York City at the beginning of seventh grade. Like Dawn and me, she comes from a divorced family, only her mo
m hasn’t gotten remarried yet. Stacey’s best friend is Claud. The two of them are extremely flashy dressers. You’d never know they’re the same age as Mary Anne and Dawn and I. They look years older.

  On that particular day, Claud was wearing a pink tank top over a white tank top and a pair of neon pink-and-black bicycle shorts. Also, she was wearing three pairs of flop socks, arranged so that her ankles looked like multicolored ice cream cones. Her sneakers were Day-Glo yellow.

  Stacey was wearing a simple (for her) outfit — black leggings, a long black T-shirt with brilliant starfish swooping across the front, black flop socks, and high-tops.

  “Doesn’t black absorb heat?” I asked Stacey. “Isn’t that why people wear a lot of white in the summertime? Because it reflects the sunlight or something? You must be boiling.”

  “Yeah, but I look good,” she replied, and everyone laughed. Sometimes Stacey says things like that just to annoy me, since I couldn’t care less about clothes. Mostly, I wear old jeans and turtleneck shirts and stuff.

  Claud unearthed a handful of candy bars and a box of Mallomars from this pile of junk in a corner of her room. Her room is usually a royal mess. (Even so, it’s our club headquarters, since Claud is the only one of us with her own phone and her own phone number, which are valuable assets for our business.) Claud’s room is messy for two reasons. One, she’s a slob. (Well, she is.) Two, she’s a pack rat. Claud is an excellent artist, and she stashes her supplies all over her room. Also, she’s addicted to junk food and Nancy Drew mysteries. Since her parents don’t approve of either habit, Claud hides treats and books everywhere. Then she forbids anyone in her family to help her clean her room. Her secrets are (fairly) safe.

  Everybody dove for the junk food. Except for Dawn and Stacey. Dawn only eats healthy stuff. (She actually doesn’t like candy.) And Stacey can’t eat sugar because she has a disease called diabetes. She has to eat healthy stuff. But she’d love to pig out on candy sometimes. She’s pretty good about her diet, though.

  Jessi Ramsey is also careful about what she eats, but she does allow herself treats from time to time. (For instance, at the moment she was eating a Mallomar.) The reason she’s careful about what she eats, despite the fact that she’s thin with these loooong legs, is she’s a dancer. A ballet dancer. And an awesome one. Practically professional. She even takes lessons at a special school in Stamford, which is the nearest big city to Stoneybrook.

  Jessi’s best friend is Mallory Pike, often called Mal. Mal has seven younger brothers and sisters. Three of them are identical triplets (boys). And another one is Nicky, my brother’s friend, who would be going to Shadow Lake with us. Mal has reddish, very curly hair, and she wears braces and glasses. (At least the braces are the clear kind that don’t show too much.) She wishes she would hurry and grow up. Mal and Jessi are younger than the other BSC members. Most of us are thirteen and in eighth grade. But they are eleven and in sixth grade at SMS. They are very good for each other. Jessi moved to Stoneybrook from New Jersey at a time when Mal needed a best friend. And of course Jessi just plain needed friends, since she was new in town. FYI (that stands for For Your Information), Jessi is black and Mal is white, but skin color doesn’t matter to my friends and me. If someone was purple and friendly and a good sitter, we would probably like her, and maybe ask her to take on baby-sitting jobs sometimes.

  That’s what Logan and Shannon do, by the way. They are associate members of the BSC. Usually, they don’t attend meetings. We just call them when we need them. But summertime had arrived and everyone was feeling a bit more relaxed.

  In case you’re confused, let me tell you how our club works. My friends and I (but not Logan and Shannon) meet three times a week to answer Claud’s phone. Parents all over Stoneybrook know when we meet and they call us at those times to line us up for jobs. Have I mentioned that we are all (including Logan and Shannon) excellent baby-sitters? Well, we are. (I don’t mean to brag; this is the truth.) We’ve had quite a bit of experience, so parents like to hire us. And we love to be hired. We earn pretty good money, we get to spend time with kids, and we have fun.

  * * *

  It was about 5:45 on that Wednesday afternoon. Our meeting was half over. We had given more jobs than usual to Logan and Shannon. (I think I forgot to tell you that Shannon lives across the street from me in the neighborhood to which my family moved after Mom married Watson Brewer.) The reason we had given so much work to our associate club members was that the rest of us were leaving for Shadow Lake on Saturday, so we wouldn’t be available for two weeks. Logan and Shannon would both be around for one more week, though. After that, Logan was going to baseball camp, and Shannon was going to the camp she always goes to, Camp Eerie, to be a CIT. (In case you don’t know, a CIT is a Counselor in Training.)

  Ring, ring!

  Stacey reached around Claudia and grabbed for the phone. “Hello?” she said. “Baby-sitters Club…. Hi, Mr. Marshall, this is Stacey.” She paused, listening to our client. When she hung up, she said, “The Marshalls need a sitter for tomorrow afternoon. That’s short notice. Who can take it, Mary Anne?”

  Mary Anne, our secretary, looked at the appointment pages in our club record book. “Mal can,” she said. Stacey called Mr. Marshall back to tell him to expect Mallory the next day.

  “That may be my last sitting job until after we get back from Shadow Lake,” said Mal, looking a little wistful.

  “Kristy, why does the lake have that name?” Dawn asked me.

  I shrugged. “I don’t think Watson said.”

  “Well, I bet I’ll find a mystery up there,” she went on. Dawn likes mysteries as much as Claud does, only she doesn’t stick to Nancy Drew. She likes all mysteries, especially ghost stories. I knew she was hoping to stumble into some haunting tale.

  At six o’clock, I stretched and stood up. “Meeting adjourned,” I announced. “See you guys again on Friday — our last meeting before vacation begins.” And then, even though I love to work and to stay busy, I couldn’t help singing, “V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N … in the summertime!”

  Once, the eighth-graders at SMS went on a field trip to Stamford. We left from the school parking lot and we rode in a line of buses carrying dozens of other students and teachers. On Saturday morning, Kristy’s driveway looked a little like that parking lot. Watson’s van was in the shop, so we needed three cars to transport everyone to Shadow Lake. Watson was driving his car, Kristy’s mom was driving her car, and Nannie (everyone calls her that) was driving her car, which is named the Pink Clinker because it’s sort of old, and very pink. Also, it’s clinky.

  Early on Saturday morning, my mom drove Mary Anne and me to Kristy’s house. As we pulled into the drive, we saw those three cars. All their doors were wide open, and so were the trunks of the Pink Clinker and Watson’s car. Kristy’s mom’s car, which is a station wagon, is equipped with a luggage rack. Mary Anne and I arrived just in time to hear Charlie Thomas say, “Oh, come on, Mom. We can fit these two suitcases in the rack.”

  “We could fit them in, but I think the roof of the car would collapse. I bet we’ve already piled two tons of stuff up there.”

  “Well, where else am I going to put them?”

  “In the trunk of Watson’s car?”

  “It’s stuffed.”

  “In the backseat of Watson’s car?”

  “Then there wouldn’t be room for Karen…. Hey! Maybe that isn’t a bad idea after all. Karen, you —”

  “Daddy!” shrieked Karen. “Charlie’s making me stay behind.”

  “Oh, I am not,” muttered Charlie.

  In case you couldn’t tell, Karen is a little over-excitable.

  Mary Anne took a look at the chaos and said, “There’s still time to turn around. Want to go home, Dawn?”

  “And miss this adventure? Not on your life.”

  My sister and I said good-bye to Mom, who drove off waving. Then we ran to Kristy. She greeted us with, “I hope you guys don’t have much luggage. We practically need a moving van.”<
br />
  “We don’t,” I answered, “but what about everyone else? Are Nicky and Mal here? Or Jessi? Or Claud?”

  “No. You guys are the first.”

  Watson, Kristy’s mom, and Charlie had to pack, unpack, and repack the cars twice before they could figure out how to jam in all the baggage and all the people — plus Boo-Boo and Shannon. Boo-Boo is Watson’s ragged old tomcat, and Shannon is David Michael’s puppy. She’s a Bernese mountain dog. I mean, she will be one day. I’d had no idea that they were coming to the lake with us, but I was glad they were. At any rate, I was glad Shannon was. Boo-Boo doesn’t give two hoots about most people.

  “Is everybody comfortable?” asked Watson.

  It was later in the morning, and Stacey and the Three Musketeers and I had piled into his car like clowns. (You know, those little circus cars? The teeny-tiny ones? Their doors open and around thirty clowns tumble out.) I wasn’t exactly comfortable, but I was okay.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “No!” cried Karen. “I am not comfortable, Daddy. Hannie and Nancy are squishing me back here.”

  “Pssst! Stacey! Pssst!” Sam was tapping at Stacey’s window. He motioned for her to roll it down. When she did, he leaned in and whispered to her (not very quietly, obviously, since I could hear him), “You look ravishing this morning, dahling, simply ravishing.”

  Stacey didn’t answer. She made a face at Sam and rolled up her window. Then she said to me, “He is such a pest. He’s been bugging me ever since I got here. He’s like one of those little fruit flies. He keeps hovering around me, getting in my face, and I can’t seem to slap him away or anything. Maybe if I said, ‘Shoo! Shoo, Sam!’”

  I giggled. “Somehow I don’t think that would work.”

  This is how we were seated in the car. Front seat: Watson, me in the middle, Stacey by the window. Backseat: Karen, Hannie, Nancy. Ideally, either Stacey or I should have sat in the back with two of the girls, but the Three Musketeers flat-out refused to be separated. I wasn’t sure why. However, I took advantage of the situation to ask Watson about Shadow Lake.