Kristy and the Walking Disaster Read online

  This book is for the members

  of the Lunch Club

  Contents

  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

  Letter from Ann M. Martin

  About the Author

  Scrapbook

  Copyright

  “We’re here! We’re here!”

  The front door to my house burst open and in barged Karen and Andrew. Karen and Andrew are my stepsister and stepbrother. Karen is six and Andrew is four, and Karen was the one doing the yelling. Andrew is sort of quiet and shy. In fact, he’s very quiet and shy. He’s the opposite of Karen. It’s hard to believe they’re brother and sister.

  “Hi, you guys!” I called. I was on the upstairs landing, looking down. I ran to greet them. “I’m so glad you’re here early. I’m glad your mom had to go out.”

  “Me too!” exclaimed Karen. She slung her knapsack on the floor.

  Andrew put his down more gently. “Me too,” he whispered.

  I hugged Andrew and Karen, and then Karen ran off to check on things — her room, Shannon (our puppy), and Boo-Boo (our cat).

  Andrew glanced at me and said, “Maybe David Michael wants to play catch.” He looked terribly hopeful.

  “He might,” I said. “He’s out in the backyard. Why don’t you go see.”

  Are you confused yet? I’ll stop here so I can introduce myself and explain who all these people are. My name is Kristy Thomas. I’m thirteen and in the eighth grade. One of the most important things to know about me is that I am the president, founder, and creator of a business called the Baby-sitters Club.

  David Michael is my brother. He’s seven. I have two other brothers. They’re in high school. Sam is fifteen and Charlie is seventeen. Up until not long ago my three brothers and I lived with our mother in a small house across town here in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. (Our parents are divorced.) Then my mom met this guy, Watson Brewer, a divorced millionaire. Practically before we knew it, she had married him and he had moved us into his house — which is a mansion.

  Karen and Andrew are Watson’s children. They live with us every other weekend and for two weeks during the summer. The rest of the time they live with their mother and stepfather.

  To be honest, I didn’t like Watson much at first. Oh, all right. I hated him. I didn’t want anything to do with him, even though he likes baseball as much as I do. I even refused to meet his kids. You know what brought us together? The Baby-sitters Club. Once, in an emergency, I got a job sitting for Karen and Andrew. By the time the job was over, I thought they were the greatest kids in the world. Now I am so, so glad they’re my steps.

  It was a Friday afternoon, almost five o’clock. Mom and Watson were both at work. Sam was around somewhere. He was probably doing his homework. He likes to get it out of the way on Fridays so he can turn into a couch potato for the rest of the weekend. Charlie was out, but I was waiting for him to come home. Three times a week he drives me to and from meetings of the Baby-sitters Club, which are held from five-thirty until six o’clock in my old neighborhood on the other side of Stoneybrook.

  I decided I better go check on the little kids. I never know what Karen might be up to. She’s not naughty, but she’s fearless and has a wild imagination. (Watson calls it “fertile,” I guess meaning that any idea could grow there.)

  Trying to keep track of all the people (not to mention animals) in my house is not easy, especially when Karen and Andrew are over. Can you believe that my mom has been talking about wanting another kid? I can’t. I love children, but there’s plenty of confusion at our house as it is. Besides, my mother is at least thirty-seven.

  I found Karen, Andrew, and David Michael in the backyard. They were trying to play three-man softball.

  “This is so dumb!” David Michael was saying. (He was only saying that because he had just missed the ball.)

  “David Michael,” I said, “watch the ball when it’s being pitched. Don’t look at your bat. I know you want to connect the two of them, but believe me, you won’t hit the ball if you don’t look at it.”

  Karen pitched the ball again and David Michael watched it like a hawk. He swung. Crack! The ball sailed across the yard.

  “All right! Home run!” I yelled.

  I just love sports.

  “Boy, thanks, Kristy!” exclaimed my brother. “That was a good tip…. I sure wish I could play softball or baseball on a real team, with a coach and everything.”

  “Me too,” said Karen and Andrew.

  “Hey, Kristy!” someone yelled.

  “Coming!” I shouted back. It was Charlie. He was home and ready to drive me to my club meeting.

  “I gotta go, you guys. Behave yourselves, okay? Sam’s home and Mom and Watson will be here soon. We’ll talk about softball later.”

  I ran to our front drive and jumped into the car, next to Charlie.

  “Ready to go visit your little friends?” he teased me.

  I scowled. They are not little friends, and Charlie knows it. They are Claudia Kishi, Mary Anne Spier, Dawn Schafer, Mallory Pike, and Jessi Ramsey, and they are all different and special. And none of them is little. Claudia, Mary Anne, and Dawn are thirteen, like me. Jessi and Mal are eleven and in the sixth grade.

  I used to live next door to Mary Anne (she’s my best friend) and across the street from Claudia. Us thirteen-year-olds are eighth-graders in Stoneybrook Middle School. (Most of the kids in my new neighborhood go to private school, but Mom let my brothers and me stay in our regular public schools.)

  Mary Anne Spier is the most sensitive person I know. Sometimes she’s too sensitive. She’ll cry over the slightest thing. And she’s shy and quiet, like Andrew. But once she’s your friend, you’ve got a friend for life. She is very loyal. Maybe that’s part of the reason Mary Anne was the first one of us to have a steady boyfriend. His name is Logan Bruno. Mary Anne lives with her dad and her kitten, Tigger. Her mom died a long time ago, so long ago that Mary Anne doesn’t even remember her.

  Even though I have a big mouth and I’m far from shy, Mary Anne and I are alike in some ways. For one thing, we look alike. We both have brown eyes and brown hair and are short. I’m the shortest kid in our grade, believe it or not, but Mary Anne has grown slightly. For another thing, we don’t care much about clothes. Truthfully, I don’t care a thing about clothes. My friends tease me because I always wear a turtleneck, jeans, a sweater, and sneakers. (Well, not in the summer, of course.) And Mary Anne used to have to wear this babyish stuff that her father picked out for her, but now he’s not so strict and lets Mary Anne choose her own clothes, so Mary Anne is more interested in what she wears.

  Boy, are Mary Anne and I different from Claudia Kishi! Claud is super-sophisticated — and totally great-looking. She’s Japanese-American and gorgeous, with long, long silky, jet-black hair; dark, almond-shaped eyes; and a complexion that’s to die for. She’s funny and talented — you should see her artwork — and she practically has boys drooling over her, but she doesn’t have a steady boyfriend like Mary Anne does. One thing about Claudia that’s a problem is that she’s a terrible student. To make this worse, her older sister Janine is a true genius. Janine is in high school, but she already takes college courses.

  Claudia and Janine live with their parents and their gra
ndmother Mimi. Claudia’s special likes are: junk food, mysteries (especially Nancy Drew mysteries), and, of course, her art. Her artistic flair runs over into her clothes. You should see how she dresses — wild! Baggy jeans, skintight pants, miniskirts, odd layers of things, bright colors, and weird jewelry. Also, she fixes her hair differently every day, and she does things like paint her toenails with sparkles. Once, she went to school with glitter in her hair.

  Dawn Schafer, who is Mary Anne’s other best friend, is originally from California. She and her mom and younger brother Jeff moved here when us club members were halfway through seventh grade. They moved because her folks got divorced, and Mrs. Schafer had grown up here in Stoneybrook. A sad thing is that Jeff was so unhappy that not long ago he moved back to California to live with his father. Now Dawn’s family is divided in half — and separated by a continent. In a way, this is like my own family, since my dad took off for California years ago and I never see him, but I feel luckier than Dawn. I have a new family now.

  Dawn is really great, even though sometimes I’m a little jealous of her since she’s so close to Mary Anne. But Dawn is independent. She “does her own thing” and couldn’t care less what anyone else thinks. She’s super-organized, a health-food nut, and has her own style of dress. I think of it as “California casual.” Also, Dawn has the palest blue eyes and the longest, blondest hair I’ve ever seen.

  Now — about our two younger members, Mallory Pike and Jessi Ramsey. They joined the club awhile ago after one of our original members, Stacey McGill, had to move away. (I’ll tell you more about Stacey later, I promise.) Mal joined first. She’s the oldest of the eight Pike kids. Our club sits for the Pikes a lot. Mallory had always been a big help to us sitters, so now that she’s eleven, she’s allowed to sit in the afternoons and on weekends. She’s great with kids! She’s patient and practical. She thinks her parents treat her like a baby, though. She desperately wants contacts instead of glasses, but she’s getting braces instead. She wishes her hair were straighter. She wishes a lot of things. Mal loves reading, writing (poetry and stories), drawing, and horses.

  Jessi (Jessica) Ramsey is Mal’s friend. Her family moved to Stoneybrook pretty recently, and both Jessi and Mal were in the market for a best friend. When they found each other — POW! They have so much in common. They have the same interests (plus Jessi is a talented ballet dancer), they both think their parents treat them like babies, and they both come from really great families, although Jessi’s is much smaller than Mal’s. Apart from Jessi and her parents, there are just her eight-year-old sister Becca (short for Rebecca) and her baby brother Squirt, whose real name is John Philip Ramsey, Jr. Here’s the one big difference between Mal and Jessi. Mal is white and Jessi is black. That hasn’t mattered to either of them, but being black in Stoneybrook can be difficult. Let’s just say that some people here didn’t exactly make the Ramseys feel welcome at first, but things are improving. Jessi is adjusting — and she’s a great addition to our club!

  So. These complicated people are the “little friends” Charlie mentioned. The more I thought about them, the more I looked forward to seeing them. I always look forward to club meetings.

  When Charlie pulled into Claudia Kishi’s driveway (our meetings are always held in Claud’s room) I leaped out of the car. I couldn’t wait to get things started.

  “Bye, Charlie!” I called to him. “Thanks! See you in half an hour!”

  “Bye, kiddo. Have fun!”

  Have fun? No problem! We always do.

  “Claud? Is that you?” I asked.

  Claudia’s grandmother Mimi had let me in and told me to go up to Claudia’s room. So I had — and now all I could see was a pair of legs sticking out from behind an armchair.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” said a muffled voice.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Looking for my Cheese Doodles. I know they’re around here somewhere … but not under this chair, I guess. Look what I did find, though.”

  Claudia’s legs disappeared. A hand clutched the back of the chair. Then she stood up. She was holding a paintbrush. “I’ve been looking for this. I wonder how it got under the chair. But where are the Cheese Doodles?”

  I giggled. Claud is just like a squirrel. She hides food — then forgets where she hid it.

  “I’ll look under your bed for you,” I volunteered.

  I flopped onto my stomach, scrunched underneath the bed, and poked around in the art supplies Claudia keeps there. “Jackpot!” I exclaimed. “Here are the Cheese Doodles and a whole pack of those mini candy bars.”

  “Oh, goody!” said Claud. Even though our meetings are held just before dinner, Claudia always provides us with snacks, since we’re starving by five-thirty. Well, she provides most of us with snacks. Dawn won’t touch much of Claud’s junk food.

  “Hi, you guys!” Mary Anne came in just as I was crawling out from under the bed. “I brought Tigger over. I hope you don’t mind. He needed a change of scenery.” Mary Anne set her gray kitten on the floor. Tigger immediately found a piece of ribbon and began batting it around.

  Dawn and Mal showed up next, and Jessi appeared last. She usually does. She’s very busy in the afternoons, between ballet classes and a steady sitting job.

  My friends were all crawling around on the floor playing with Tigger, so I called the meeting to order.

  “Any club business?” I said loudly.

  At the sound of my voice, everyone scrambled to their usual places — Claudia, Mary Anne, and Dawn on Claudia’s bed, and Mal and Jessi on the floor. I always sit in Claud’s director’s chair. And I wear a visor.

  I am the president and I must look like I mean business.

  “The treasury is getting low,” spoke up Dawn, our treasurer. “But when I collect dues next week, I think we’ll be okay.”

  Maybe I better stop for a moment and tell you how our club runs.

  As I’ve said, I’m the club president. This is because the idea for the club was mine. I got it way back at the beginning of seventh grade when my mom and my brothers and I were still living next door to Mary Anne. Mom was just getting to know Watson then. Anyway, one evening, Mom realized she needed a sitter for David Michael. Sam and Charlie and I were all going to be busy. So Mom had to find someone else. I watched her make call after call. And as I was watching, it occurred to me that Mom could save herself a lot of time if she could call one number and reach several sitters at once.

  That was it! A brilliant idea! I did some baby-sitting in my neighborhood then. So did Mary Anne and Claudia. We decided to start a baby-sitting club. We also decided we should have a fourth member. That was when Claudia introduced us to Stacey McGill, a new friend of hers who had moved to Stoneybrook from New York City. Stacey had lots of experience and was a terrific sitter, too. We asked her to join us, we began advertising, and just like that we had a baby-sitting business.

  We decided that if we were going to be serious about our business, then we had better run it professionally. First, we agreed to hold regular club meetings three times a week. We told our clients they could reach us at Claudia’s number on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Frdays from five-thirty until six. (Claudia has her own phone and personal, private phone number.) One of us was certain to be free to take any job that came in.

  Then we voted ourselves officers of the club. I was made the president … for obvious reasons.

  Claud was made the vice president, since we would always be meeting in her room and using her phone. Plus, people would probably be calling the club number even when we weren’t meeting, and Claudia would have to deal with that extra work.

  Mary Anne, who’s the neatest and most organized of the four original club members, was named secretary. Boy, does she have a lot of work to do. It’s her job to line up sitting appointments, to keep all our schedules straight (such as when Claudia goes to art lessons or when Jessi has ballet classes), and to keep the club record book up to date. The record book is crucial (that’s a really g
ood word, meaning ‘very, very important’) to the running of the club. In it, Mary Anne keeps track of all our clients and their addresses and phone numbers. And on the appointment calendar pages she schedules our sitting jobs. (The treasurer also uses the record book, but I’ll get to that in a minute.) Mary Anne is a wonder. I don’t think she’s slipped up yet. None of us has ever been booked for two jobs at the same time or anything like that.

  Last but not least, we made Stacey McGill our treasurer. It was her job to keep track of how much money each of us earns (just for our own information), to mark it down in the record book, and to collect dues for our treasury. What do we use our treasury money for? Two main things. 1. Entertainment, such as club sleepovers and pizza parties. 2. Funds for supplying our Kid-Kits.

  The Kid-Kits were my idea. I thought that a good way to entertain the kids we sit for would be with a box of fun. So we each decorated a cardboard carton and filled it with our old games, books, and toys. Then we bought some stuff like coloring books, activity books, and crayons. We take the Kid-Kits on our sitting jobs so the kids can play with them and not be bored. We use the treasury money to replace things that get used up.

  How did Dawn, Jessi, and Mal join the club? Well, Dawn joined not long after she moved here from California. She and Mary Anne had become friends quickly, our business was growing, and we needed extra help. So Dawn became our alternate officer. That meant that she could take over the duties of any other member if someone had to miss a meeting. That didn’t last long, though. Unfortunately, Stacey had to move back to New York City. (This was especially unfortunate since she and Claudia had become best friends, and now they really miss each other.)

  Anyway, after Stacey left, two things happened. Dawn became our new treasurer — and we realized we needed lots more help. Our club was doing a ton of business. (Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. But we did have a problem.) We’d already signed up two associate members, kids who don’t come to meetings, but who are good sitters we can call on in a pinch. They are Shannon Kilbourne, who lives across the street from me in my new neighborhood — and Logan Bruno, Mary Anne’s boyfriend! But they weren’t enough. We needed a regular member to replace Stacey. My friends and I thought and thought. We liked Mallory Pike, whom we already knew is good with kids, even if she is younger than the rest of us, but the problem was that her parents don’t allow her to sit at night, except at her own house. Finally, we took on Mal and her friend Jessi. We figured that if they could take over a lot of our afternoon jobs, the rest of us could handle the nighttime stuff. So far, it’s working just fine. Jessi and Mal are our junior officers.