Stacey's Mistake Read online

  The secretary of the Baby-sitters Club is Mary Anne Spier, and she has a big job. She’s the one who has to keep the club record book up to date. Kristy insists that the club members, in order to run the business professionally, write a summary of every job they go on. The summaries are recorded in the club notebook. Mary Anne also has to keep up the record book. The most important pages in the record book make up the appointment calendar. There, Mary Anne schedules the sitting jobs. She is careful and neat and rarely makes a mistake.

  Although they’re best friends, Mary Anne and Kristy are very different. They may both be fairly small for their age (and they even look alike with their brown hair and brown eyes), but the similarities end there. Kristy is loud and sort of cynical; Mary Anne is quiet and shy, dreamy and sensitive (she cries easily). She may even be a little romantic. She’s the only one of us to have a steady boyfriend. (His name is Logan Bruno.) And her family is certainly different from Kristy’s. While Kristy’s was big even before Mrs. Thomas married Watson Brewer, Mary Anne has just her dad and her kitten, Tigger. Mrs. Spier died when Mary Anne was really young. Mr. Spier used to be incredibly strict with Mary Anne, but over the past year, he’s loosened up a lot. Now Mary Anne has stopped wearing the jumpers and kilts and loafers her father used to choose for her, and has started wearing more trendy clothes. She’s branched out in terms of friends, too. She and Dawn are very close, and then there’s Logan. Mary Anne would never have had a boyfriend last year….

  The other person coming to New York was Dawn Schafer. Dawn is now the treasurer, which used to be my job. Dawn had been a sort of substitute officer (we called her an alternate officer) before I moved, so she easily filled my position. (In case you’re wondering, when I left the club, the girls replaced me with two sixth-graders, junior officers named Mallory Pike and Jessi Ramsey. They weren’t coming to visit because I didn’t know Mal that well and I didn’t know Jessi at all. Plus, their parents wouldn’t have let them come.) The treasurer’s job is to keep track of the money the club members earn, and to collect weekly dues, which are spent on club supplies and stuff.

  Dawn was not an original member of the club. She moved to Connecticut from California about four months after Kristy started the club. She moved because her parents got a divorce, so this past year has been a wild one for Dawn, too. Besides having to adjust to life without her father, she had to get used to the East Coast, especially to cold weather. She had to start at a new school in the middle of a year, and make new friends, and her mom had to find a job. Then, not long ago, Dawn’s younger brother decided he just couldn’t handle that new life, and he moved back to California and Mr. Schafer. Dawn misses her brother a lot, but she seems happy enough. She’s very close to her mother. Besides — she’s got the Baby-sitters Club!

  Dawn is a real individual. She’s a health-food freak. She does things her own way and doesn’t care what people think of her. I guess that means she has a lot of self-confidence. And she sure stands out in a crowd. Her hair falls all the way to her waist and is so blonde it’s almost white. Her eyes are a dear, pale blue. I remember feeling practically speechless the first time I saw her.

  The more I thought about my friends, the more eager I became to see them. But the taxi was just crawling along. We seemed to be approaching a traffic jam at Columbus Circle. There was nothing to do but settle back and wait.

  So I did. When we finally reached Grand Central, I paid the cabbie and scrambled out of the taxi.

  In a few minutes, the members of the Baby-sitters Club would be reunited!

  Dear Karen and Andrew,

  Hi, you guys! How was your weekend? Did you have fun with your mom? I’m on the train to New York with my friends. What a time we’re having. There’s a car on the train where you can get snacks and sodas and stuff. We’ve been there twice already. Our seats are great. We feel like we’re on a plane. There are lights overhead that you can turn on and off, and the seats move back and forth. When we get to Grand Central Station in New York City, we’ll meet Stacey!

  I love you!

  — Kristy!

  Meet Stacey? Ha. Kristy showed me that postcard and I’m sure my friends meant to meet me as planned — but it didn’t quite work out that way.

  I practically killed myself getting inside the station and rushing to the information booth, which was where we were supposed to meet. I made a point of getting there five minutes ahead of time, just in case their train was early. (An early train is a real miracle.) Their train was due at 11:25. I reached the booth at 11:20.

  You can’t miss the booth. It’s in the middle of the main room at Grand Central, and says INFORMATION as plain as day. You can’t miss the main room, either. All these constellations and things are painted on the ceiling. It’s beautiful and unusual.

  I stood around the booth, alternately watching the people and watching the clock.

  Eleven twenty-five, 11:30, 11:40.

  Where were my friends? I began to feel nervous. Maybe something had happened to them. Maybe their train was late. Or maybe they hadn’t come after all. I considered calling Mom and asking her if they had tried to reach me at home. Right away, I decided not to do that. If they hadn’t called, Mom would probably alert the police.

  I waited five more minutes, then turned around and asked a woman in the information booth if there were any reports of delayed trains.

  The woman shook her head. Then she asked, “Which train are you waiting for?”

  I told her.

  “Nope,” she said, frowning. “That was right on time.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Were you supposed to meet someone?”

  I nodded. “My friends. We were supposed to meet right here. They’ve never been to New York alone before.”

  “This is a big station. I’m sure they’re around somewhere,” said the woman kindly: “They probably just got mixed up. Or maybe they discovered all the stores here.”

  As I’ve said, it would be hard not to find the main room and the information booth, but it was possible. For all I knew, my friends were wandering around underground, in the subway tunnels or something.

  (If they were shopping, I would kill them.)

  I tried to figure out what to do next. I thanked the woman and stepped away from the booth. I looked out at the room. It was crowded, but not too crowded. My friends definitely were not there. I was just about to ask the woman if she could page them, when I heard, “Stacey!”

  It was Claudia’s voice, but I couldn’t see her.

  “Stacey!” she called again.

  I turned around. My friends were struggling down the steps that lead from one of the outside entrances to the station. Where on earth had they been?

  “Where on earth have you been?” I cried as I dashed to them. Since I already sounded like my mother, I went ahead and added, “I was worried sick!”

  “We’re sorry, we’re sorry,” Claudia replied breathlessly. She had a suitcase the size of a boxcar with her.

  For a moment, I forgot about the botched-up plans. I just looked at those four familiar faces rushing toward me. There was Mary Anne, grinning and looking excited beyond belief; Kristy with a smile a mile wide; Dawn, who seemed to be trying to cover up sheer terror with a tight-lipped smile; and Claudia, who managed to appear both happy to see me and ready to strangle her suitcase.

  We met at the bottom of the marble stairs and all tried to hug each other at once.

  “Stacey, your hair! It looks fantastic!” exclaimed Claud.

  “We’ve been wandering around, oh, every- where!” said Dawn.

  “Mary Anne, I love your shirt!” I told her.

  “I can’t believe I’m here!” she replied.

  “What’s to eat?” asked Kristy.

  “Where have you been?” I asked again.

  I led my friends away from the stairs and they put their things down. Kristy and Dawn were each carrying a knapsack. Mary Anne was carrying a small duffel bag. But Claudia had that boxcar.

&
nbsp; “What’s in that?” I wanted to know.

  “What should I answer first?” Claud replied. “‘Where have you been?’ or ‘What’s in that?’”

  “‘What’s in that?’”

  We were all giggling. This was like old times. But I have to admit that I felt sort of … conspicuous. My friends were making a lot of noise, there was Claudia’s suitcase, Kristy was wearing a baseball cap with a picture of a collie on it, Dawn was looking around as if she expected someone to murder us any second, and Mary Anne had just pulled a giant map and guidebook to the city out of her purse.

  “Put that away!” I whispered loudly to her. “You look like a tourist.”

  “Well, I am one.”

  “But I’m not. Come on. Put it away. We don’t want people to think we don’t know where we’re going. That makes us easy targets.”

  “For what?” asked Dawn nervously.

  “For — never mind,” I said, feeling exasperated. What was with Dawn anyway? She’s usually so cool.

  “I thought you wanted to know what was in my suitcase,” said Claudia.

  “I do,” I told her.

  “My clothes,” she replied.

  “For how long? The next two years?”

  “No,” she said testily. “The next two days.”

  I should have known. Once, my friends and I went on a trip to the Bahamas and Disney World. Claudia brought almost her whole closet with her.

  “And where were you guys?” I asked.

  Kristy took over. “I’m not sure,” she replied honestly. “When we got off the train, we just kept following people, and after we went up this escalator, we walked through a building and found ourselves outside.”

  I didn’t say anything, but to get to the escalators they had to have been in the main room — which meant they walked right near the information booth. And what possessed them to go on an escalator anyway? I hadn’t said anything about going on an escalator. Oh, well. It was over now. And we were together.

  I drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, smiled, and said, “So what do you want to do first?”

  “Well,” Mary Anne spoke up instantly, “I’d love to see Central Park. It’s eight hundred and forty-three acres of fun. Or maybe we could go to South Street Seaport, located in the Wall Street area of lower Manhattan and featuring nineteenth-century buildings, three piers, and a maritime museum.” Mary Anne grinned smugly. She looked quite proud of herself.

  How did she do that? I wondered. She was a walking guidebook.

  Kristy noticed the look on my face and said, “I don’t get it, either. She talked like that during the entire train trip, and I never even saw the guidebook.”

  Mary Anne made a face at Kristy. “Maybe we should just go eat lunch,” she suggested. “How about the Hard Rock Cafe? It features all kinds of —”

  “The Hard Rock Cafe?” repeated Dawn. “Is that in a safe neighborhood?”

  I looked at Dawn curiously. Where was all that self-confidence? “Dawn? You okay?” I asked her.

  “Oh, sure. It’s just that I’ve never been to New York before,” she reminded me. “And it’s not as if I lived in a city when we were in California. We lived outside of Anaheim — in this teeny little suburb. It just happened to be near Disneyland and some other fun places. But last night? I was listening to the news and I heard about these two murders in New York, and then this building collapsed and crushed someone.”

  “And then,” added Kristy, “someone fell down an open manhole and was attacked and eaten by alligators and sewer rats.”

  “Really?” said Dawn, her eyes widening.

  “I’m making it up!” cried Kristy.

  “You are? But I’ve heard that there are alligators in the sewers. And pickpockets —”

  “In the sewers?” asked Kristy.

  “No. On the streets. And bag ladies and chain snatchers and purse snatchers and rats and cockroaches.”

  Uh-oh.

  “How about lunch?” I said. “You guys must be starving. I think the Hard Rock Cafe is a good suggestion. We can hop on a bus —”

  “With this?” asked Claudia, pointing to her suitcase.

  I groaned. The suitcase probably wouldn’t fit on a bus, or through the front door of the Hard Rock Cafe for that matter. “I guess we’ll have to go back to my apartment first and drop that off,” I said. “Of course, it’s entirely out of the way.”

  Claudia looked all huffy. “Couldn’t we leave it somewhere?” she asked. “In a locker or something?”

  “Not if you want to get it back,” I told her. “We’ll have to hail a cab, have the driver put that thing in the trunk, which by the way means we’ll have to give the driver a huge tip, take it to my building, and then take a bus back to the restaurant.”

  “I’ll pay for the cab,” said Claudia contritely. She reached out for a handle on the end of her suitcase and began pulling it toward the stairs. The suitcase was on little wheels. I wanted to die. How embarrassing. Why hadn’t I noticed the wheels before? Only grandmothers pull around suitcases on wheels.

  Somehow we managed to get up the stairs and out of the building. No sooner had we walked out the door than Dawn screamed.

  “What? What is it?” I asked.

  “Th-that!” Dawn was pointing to a pile of garbage — and a pink tail.

  The tail moved. It was attached to a tiny mouse.

  Kristy started to laugh, and Mary Anne poked her.

  I ignored all of them and hailed a cab.

  The cabbie (who was very nice) loaded Claudia’s suitcase into the trunk, and then my friends and I piled into the cab. They squished into the backseat and I sat up front with Philippe (the driver). When we got to my building, the doormen were kind enough to let us leave the suitcase behind the front desk, so at least we didn’t have to go upstairs. Then Kristy, Mary Anne, and Dawn decided to leave their knapsacks and the duffel bag behind, too, which made sense.

  At last we were on our way to the Hard Rock Cafe.

  Dear Jeff,

  Is New York ever scary. I’m not sure you’d like it here. It’s all cramped and crowded. That’s what happens when you try to cram eight million people into such a small area. To make up for it, New Yorkers just keep building taller skyscrapers. Fifty years from now, people will probably have apartments on the three-hundredth floor. Today I saw a gigantic rat, and a person without a home who picked through a garbage can until she found half a hamburger. She ate it without even washing it off.

  Your terrified sister,

  Dawn

  “Oh, my lord!” cried Claudia. “Look at that! Look at that!”

  We had reached the Hard Rock Cafe and were standing outside. I have to admit that the front of the restaurant is pretty spectacular. There’s this wild Cadillac (just half of it) suspended over the entrance, and the license plate reads “God is my co-pilot.”

  It is extremely cool.

  But I wished my friends weren’t quite so loud in their admiration of the Cadillac. They were making a lot of noise again and sounded like tourists.

  “Did you make a reservation?” asked Mary Anne.

  I shook my head. “You can’t. They don’t take reservations.”

  “Oh, I hope we can get in,” said Kristy, still gazing at the Cadillac.

  “We’ll get in,” I told her. “But we might have a little wait. If this were the weekend, though, we’d probably have to wait in a forty-minute line outside. Come on.”

  “Forty minutes,” I heard Dawn mutter in amazement as my friends followed me inside.

  I approached the man who was behind a desk near the doorway and said, “Five for lunch, please.”

  “Oh, you sound so grown-up!” squealed Mary Anne.

  (I wanted to kill her.)

  “That’ll be about five minutes,” said the man. “Why don’t you just step aside, and someone will seat you shortly.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  The five of us stood around and gazed at the restaurant. There
’s an awful lot to see.

  “It’s everything I dreamed it would be,” said Mary Anne with a sigh.

  Claudia and I glanced at each other and smiled.

  The restaurant is fun to look around. First of all, it’s huge. Second, it’s a sort of shrine to rock music. There’s all this memorabilia hanging on the walls. Things like the Talking Heads’ guitars and a poster of David Byrne. Mostly there are a lot of guitars. And signs. Signs everywhere. We were standing right underneath one that said THIS IS NOT HERE. (Kristy started giggling.) Another said WHO DO YOU LOVE? Another said LOVE ALL SERVE ALL. And everywhere — on the menus, the walls — were the words SAVE THE PLANET.

  “It’s kind of nineteen sixties, isn’t it?” commented Dawn.

  “Actually,” began Mary Anne, “the Hard Rock Café — and I might add that there are Hard Rock Cafes located in Dallas, London, Tokyo, Stockholm —”

  I don’t know what point Mary Anne was about to make, but luckily she was interrupted by a man who showed us to a table. He seated us right under this glass case which held a wild pair of black-and-white checked platform boots. Under the boots was a brass plaque that read CHUBBY CHECKER.

  “Chubby Checker?” Dawn said as we sat down.

  Every last one of us shrugged, even Mary Anne, although I’d been certain she was going to open her mouth and say something like, “Chubby Checker. Didn’t you know? That was a group that used to sing backup for Elvis Presley in nineteen fifty-six,” or something.

  But she didn’t. Instead, a young woman whose nametag said Meddows came over and handed us our menus.