Claudia and the Great Search Read online

  A little while ago, Mr. Spier began to loosen up even more. That was because he began dating again — and he was dating the mother of Dawn Schafer, another BSC member! See, a long time ago Mrs. Schafer and Mr. Spier had gone to Stoneybrook High together. Then Mrs. Schafer (who was Sharon Porter at the time) went off to college in California, where she met and married Mr. Schafer. Together they had Dawn and her younger brother, Jeff, before they got divorced. After the divorce, Mrs. Schafer moved back to Stoneybrook, her hometown, with Dawn and Jeff. Dawn and Mary Anne became best friends (Mary Anne has two best friends), and then Mrs. Schafer remet Mr. Spier, they began dating, and finally … they got married! So now Mary Anne and Dawn are best friends, club members, and stepsisters. As far as Mary Anne is concerned, the only bad thing about all this is that she, her father, and her kitten, Tigger, had to move out of the house in which Mary Anne had grown up, and into Dawn’s house because it’s bigger. But she’s getting used to things.

  I should probably tell you about Dawn next, since you already know a little about her. Dawn is our California girl. Having grown up out there, she likes (and misses) the hot weather and sunshine, and had a hard time adjusting to our Connecticut winters. Dawn also likes health food (her whole family does), and would rather eat tofu and broccoli than an ice-cream sundae. And she loves ghost stories and haunted houses and mysteries, which is pretty interesting considering that the colonial farmhouse she moved into in Stoneybrook has an honest-to-goodness secret passage (one end of it is in Dawn’s bedroom), and there’s an outside chance that the house, or at least the passage, is haunted.

  If Kristy and Mary Anne are on the pretty side, then Dawn is out-and-out gorgeous. Her hair is incredibly long and incredibly blonde (it’s practically white), and her eyes are a piercing blue. She’s thin, and a terrific dresser, although her style is different from that of any other BSC member. We call it California casual — loose clothes, bright colors, trendy but not outrageous. Dawn is an individual and does pretty much whatever she pleases (without hurting anyone’s feelings). Her clothes are unique, she’s got two holes pierced in each ear, and she doesn’t care (much) what other people think of her. She just sort of goes her own way. I tend to think of Dawn as strong, like Kristy, but one thing really tore her apart. That was when her brother, Jeff, moved back to California to live with their father. He’d never been happy in Connecticut, had never adjusted like Dawn had. Dawn knew it was the right thing for him, but she misses him a lot, and now her family is broken in two and separated by three thousand miles. She does like having a stepfather, though, and she especially likes her stepsister, so things have been better for Dawn lately.

  My best friend in the whole world is Stacey McGill. Stacey is an only child who grew up in big, exciting New York City. But she and her parents moved to Stoneybrook at the beginning of seventh grade because the company her father works for transferred him to Connecticut. Stacey and I became best friends very quickly. She was my first best friend! But she had been here for just a year when her father was transferred back to New York. I was almost as sad then as I was when Mimi died. However, the McGills had been in New York again for less than a year when Stacey’s parents decided to divorce — and Mrs. McGill decided to move back to Stoneybrook, which she had loved. Stacey was allowed to choose whether to live here with her mother or in New York with her father, and she finally settled on Stoneybrook. Boy, am I glad to have Stacey back, even though I’m really sorry about the reason she’s here. I know she misses her father terribly, even though she’s allowed to visit him any time she wants (except on school days). She hated having to choose between her parents.

  As best friends, Stacey and I are much more alike than Kristy and Mary Anne or Dawn and Mary Anne are. We’re both sophisticated and mature for thirteen (I guess that sounds a little stuck-up, but I really think it’s true), and we’re both very into clothes and style. We have pierced ears (Stacey has one hole in each ear, and I have one hole in one ear and two in the other), we’re both wild dressers, and Stacey even gets to perm her blonde hair every now and then. Stacey is always trying out new things like painting designs on her nails or putting glitter in her hair.

  Stacey is funny, sweet, and a much better student than I am. In math, she’s nearly a genius, although I hate to use that word. But she has one problem. She’s diabetic. This doesn’t bother any of us club members, of course, but it does worry us sometimes. Stacey has gotten awfully thin lately, she has to give herself daily injections of something called insulin, and she has to stay on a strict, and I mean strict, diet. See, diabetes is a disease in which an organ called the pancreas doesn’t make enough of a hormone, insulin, to control the blood sugar in someone’s body. (Ew, biology.) So without the injections and the no-sweets diet to control her blood sugar, Stacey could get really sick. She could even go into a coma. Stacey knows this, so she tries hard to do what her doctors tell her, but in all honesty, there are some days when she just plain doesn’t feel well. Stacey copes, though.

  Before I tell you about the last two club members, Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike, let me finish telling you about me. You’ve already heard about my family, my art, how I feel about school, and how I’m like Stacey. Here are just two more things about me: 1. I love junk food and keep tons of it in my room. 2. Although I don’t really like to read, I do like Nancy Drew mysteries. But I have to keep both the junk food and the mysteries hidden, because my parents don’t approve of either one. They don’t approve of the junk food for obvious reasons, and they don’t approve of Nancy Drew because they think I should be reading “literature.” Mimi used to say, “I don’t care what you read, my Claudia, as long as you read.” I like her way of thinking better than Mom and Dad’s. Anyway, my room can be a surprising place. When you open a drawer or turn over a pillow, you never know if you’re going to find a hidden package of Ring-Dings or maybe a copy of Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion.

  Okay. On to Jessi and Mal. The first thing to know about them is that they’re the younger members of the BSC. While Kristy, Stacey, Mary Anne, Dawn, and I are in eighth grade, they’re in sixth. They’re also best friends with a lot of similarities and a lot of differences. For instance, each of them is the oldest kid in her family, and they both feel that their parents treat them like babies. Eleven is a hard age, I guess. I wouldn’t want to be eleven again. I remember that my mother expected me to be mature then, but also wouldn’t give me many privileges. However, Jessi’s and Mal’s parents did let them get their ears pierced recently. (Kristy and Mary Anne are the only club members who don’t have pierced ears.) But now Mal’s got braces on her teeth, and she wears glasses and isn’t allowed to get contacts yet, plus neither Mal nor Jessi is allowed to baby-sit at night, so they still have a long way to go.

  Both Jessi and Mallory have younger brothers and sisters, but Jessi has just two — her eight-year-old sister, Becca, and her baby brother, who’s nicknamed Squirt — while Mal has seven. And three of her brothers are identical triplets! Also, both girls like to read, especially horse stories, but Jessi’s other interest is ballet, while Mal likes writing and drawing. Jessi is a really talented ballerina. You should see her dance. She takes special classes at a ballet school in Stamford, and she has performed leading roles onstage before lots of people. Mallory is talented, too. She keeps a journal, and is always writing stories and illustrating them. She says she wants to be an author and illustrator of children’s books someday.

  One last difference between the girls. Mal is white and Jessi is black. I don’t see what the big deal is, but when the Ramseys first moved to Stoneybrook (and by the way, they bought Stacey’s house when the McGills went back to New York!), people here gave Jessi’s family a really hard time. Some people wouldn’t let their kids play with Becca, other people avoided the Ramseys. I guess this is because there aren’t many black families in Stoneybrook (Jessi is the only black student in the whole sixth grade), but sheesh. What’s wrong with people? At least things have quieted down. Becca an
d Jessi have friends now, and most of the Ramseys’ neighbors have accepted them, thank goodness.

  * * *

  So those are my friends, the ones I’d see in just a few hours when our first BSC meeting of the week got underway.

  I felt as if I’d been watching clocks all day. First I’d watched the one in science class. Now I was in my room watching my own clock as the digital numbers flipped toward five-thirty. I was waiting for our BSC meeting to begin. The meetings are always held in my room, the official club headquarters.

  While I waited for my friends to arrive, I started thinking about the BSC, so I’ll tell you about our club, how it got started, and how it works. As I said earlier, Kristy is the president and founder of the club. It was one of her big ideas. She got the idea way back at the beginning of seventh grade. In those days, she (and Mary Anne) still lived across the street from me, and Watson Brewer had not yet proposed to Kristy’s mother. Mrs. Thomas was working full-time, and David Michael was just six then, so it was up to Kristy, Sam, and Charlie to take turns watching him in the afternoons. This arrangement was fine until the day came when nobody — not Kristy, not one of her brothers — was free to sit for David Michael. So Mrs. Thomas started calling baby-sitters. Since it was a last-minute situation, she had to make call after call, trying to find someone who wasn’t already busy. Kristy watched her mother doing this and thought, Wouldn’t it be great if a parent could make one call and reach a whole group of baby-sitters at once, instead of having to make so many individual calls? And that was how her great idea was born. She discussed it with Mary Anne and me, since all three of us did some baby-sitting, and then she asked us to form a baby-sitting club with her. Of course, we agreed right away, but we decided three people weren’t enough. I suggested that we invite Stacey McGill to join the club, too. She had just moved here, but she and I were already getting to be friends. Stacey was glad to join the club. She had baby-sat in New York, and she wanted to meet people in Stoneybrook.

  So that was the beginning of the club. We decided to hold our meetings three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons from five-thirty until six. Parents could call us at those times and they would reach four experienced sitters at once. They were bound to get a sitter with just one phone call.

  How did people know about our club and when to call us? We advertised. We sent out dozens of fliers in our neighborhoods, and we even placed an ad in the Stoneybrook News. Sure enough, we got job calls at our first meeting, and business has gotten better and better since then. By the middle of seventh grade, we even needed a new member to help us out, so we asked Dawn (who had just moved here) to join the club. Then when (gulp) Stacey moved away, we replaced her with both Jessi and Mal, but naturally we let Stacey back in the club when she returned to Stoneybrook. Now we have seven members and two associate members, and Kristy says the BSC is big enough.

  We run our club very officially and professionally, thanks mostly to Kristy. Kristy makes us keep a notebook in which we write up every job we take. Then we’re responsible for reading the book once a week. None of us really likes to do this, but we have to admit that knowing what’s going on with the families we sit for and seeing how our friends solve sitting problems is pretty helpful.

  Also, each of us holds a certain position in the club. Kristy is the president, since she started the club, and since she has such great ideas for it. One of her great ideas was Kid-Kits. A Kid-Kit is a decorated box or carton (we each have one) filled with our old toys, books, and games, plus new items such as coloring books and art supplies, that we sometimes take with us on baby-sitting jobs. Kids love them — which makes us popular sitters and really helps our business!

  I’m the vice-president. This is mostly because I have a phone in my room and my own private phone number. We can take calls here without tying up someone else’s line or getting a lot of calls that aren’t for us. That’s why my room is club headquarters.

  Our secretary is Mary Anne. She probably has the biggest job of any of us. It’s up to her to keep the club book in order. The record book (which is entirely different from the notebook) is where we keep track of all important club information: the names and addresses of our clients, the money we earn and how our club dues are spent (that’s really Stacey’s job — she’s the treasurer), and our schedules and appointments for baby-sitting jobs. Scheduling is the biggest of Mary Anne’s duties and she sure is good at it. This is lucky, since originally we just wanted Mary Anne to be the secretary because she had the nicest handwriting of any of us. We had no idea what her job would turn into. Mary Anne has to keep track of my art classes, Jessi’s ballet lessons, Mal’s orthodontist appointments, etc., in addition to scheduling every job that’s called in. Mary Anne is terrific at this. As far as we know, she has not made one mistake. We’re grateful to her for that.

  As I mentioned before, Stacey is the club treasurer. It’s her job to record the money we earn. This is just for our own interest. Each member gets to keep all the money she earns on a job. We don’t try to divide the money up or anything. Stacey is also in charge of collecting our weekly dues each Monday. She just loves this part of her job. Stacey likes having money (even when it’s club money, not her own), and hates parting with it. But she does have to part with it. The dues money goes into the club treasury (a manila envelope) and is spent on various things: paying Charlie to drive Kristy back and forth to BSC meetings now that she lives so far from my neighborhood, paying part of my monthly phone bill, buying items — such as art supplies, soap bubbles, or activity books — for the Kid-Kits, and … fun stuff! We like to have a club sleepover or pizza party every now and then. Since Stacey is so great at math, she makes a very good treasurer.

  Dawn is the club’s alternate officer. That means that she can take over the job of anyone who can’t make a meeting. For instance, if Mary Anne were sick, Dawn could handle the notebook and do the scheduling until Mary Anne felt better. Dawn is like a substitute teacher (except that we don’t throw spitballs behind her back when she’s in charge). In case you’re wondering, Dawn became the treasurer when Stacey moved back to New York, but she gladly turned the job over to Stace again when she returned. Dawn is a good student, but she’s not as quick at math as Stacey is. Besides, she hated collecting dues because we’re all so crabby about parting with even a little of our hard-earned money. At one time or another, Dawn has taken over every job, even Kristy’s. (Our president has only missed one meeting, when her dog Louie was really sick.)

  Jessi and Mallory are the club’s junior officers. They don’t have actual jobs, though. Junior officer means that they aren’t allowed to baby-sit at night (unless they’re sitting for their own brothers and sisters). They can only sit after school and on weekends. This is still a big help. The junior officers free us older members up for evening jobs.

  Last but not least, our club has the two associate members I mentioned earlier — Shannon Kilbourne and Logan Bruno. Shannon is a friend of Kristy’s. She lives across the street from Kristy in her new neighborhood, and she goes to a private school, so nobody but Kristy sees her very often. Logan, as I mentioned, is Mary Anne’s boyfriend. He’s an eighth-grader at SMS with us, and he is sooooo nice. He’s perfect for Mary Anne. He’s funny, sweet, and understands Mary Anne and her moods really well. Logan’s family comes from Louisville, Kentucky, and Logan speaks with this terrific southern accent. Anyway, both Logan and Shannon have done a lot of baby-sitting, so as associate members, they’re our backups. They’re people we can call on just in case the BSC is offered a job that none of us can take. Believe it or not, that does happen sometimes. And when it does, we like to be able to say, “We’re sorry, none of us can take the job, but let us recommend one of our associate members.” Then we call Logan or Shannon — and we don’t have to disappoint our client.

  * * *

  I think that’s everything you need to know about the BSC. It may sound complicated, but it really isn’t. And belonging to the club is tons of fun.
That’s why I couldn’t wait for my friends to arrive on that bleak Monday when Janine won her ten millionth award and I got left in the dust again.

  At 5:20, Kristy arrived. At 5:23, Dawn and Mary Anne arrived. And by 5:29, we had all gathered in my room and taken our usual places. Kristy sat herself in my director’s chair, wearing a visor, a pencil stuck over one ear. Mallory and Jessi sat on the floor, leaning against my bed. Dawn and Mary Anne and I lined ourselves up on my bed, leaning against the wall, and Stacey sat backward in my desk chair, facing into the room, her arms slung over the top rung of the back. (Sometimes Dawn sits in the desk chair and Stacey joins Mary Anne and me on the bed.)

  As soon as my digital clock turned from 5:29 to 5:30, Kristy (who’d been watching that clock like a hawk) said, “Order! Come to order, please!”

  The rest of us stopped talking. Mal and Jessi put down this gum-wrapper chain they’ve been working on since the beginning of time.

  And before Kristy had even finished saying, “Any club business?” Stacey had leaped up, grabbed the club treasury, and was passing it around, saying, “Dues day! Dues day! Fork over!”

  With sighs and groans, my friends and I reached into pockets or change purses, pulled out our dues, and dropped them in the manila envelope. Then Stacey plopped onto the floor, dumped out all the money, counted it up in her head just by looking at it, and announced, “We’re rich!”