Kristy and the Copycat Read online

  We had no idea we’d be so successful when we got started not all that long ago. I was listening to my mother make phone call after phone call one night trying to line up a sitter for David Michael, and I suddenly had this great idea. What if someone could just make one phone call and reach several baby-sitters?

  The baby-sitters I was thinking of were Mary Anne and Claudia Kishi. We were already doing a lot of baby-sitting on our own, so it only seemed logical. But right away we decided that three people weren’t enough to run a business. That’s when Claudia suggested we ask a new friend of hers, Stacey McGill, who had just moved to Stoneybrook from New York, to join us. Stacey agreed.

  We kept getting more and more work. And so not long after that — at Mary Anne’s suggestion — we asked Dawn Schafer to join the BSC, too. Dawn had recently come to Stoneybrook from California and she and Mary Anne had become friends.

  Then, suddenly, Stacey had to move back to New York. That’s when we asked Jessi and Mallory to join us as junior officers. But then Stacey’s parents got divorced and Stacey moved back to Stoneybrook with her mother (her father stayed in New York). And recently, Dawn went out to California for a while to stay with her brother and her father, so Shannon, who was an associate member, took Dawn’s place as alternate officer.

  We’re very organized. We meet at Claudia’s three days a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from 5:30 until 6:00 (Monday is also BSC dues day). Claudia has her own phone line, so that means our clients can call us then and set up appointments without tying up the phone so other people can’t use it.

  We also have a record book, which is Mary Anne’s responsibility (she’s never, ever made a scheduling mistake!) and a notebook, where we each write down what happened at our jobs. That’s how we stay up-to-date on our clients: who’s teething, new kids who have special requirements, things like that. We’re also able to use our different points of view to solve problems — it really helps!

  In fact, as I said, having all those sometimes very different points of view is what I think makes us so successful.

  Take Mary Anne. She’s my best friend and two people couldn’t be more different. We’ve known each other practically all our lives. But I’ve always been part of a large family, while Mary Anne lived alone with her father. Mary Anne’s mother died when she was a baby, and Mr. Spier was very, very strict and very, very careful about how he raised Mary Anne. He treated her like a child even when she wasn’t (she even wore pigtails until recently!). Then Mary Anne had a talk with her father and he realized she was growing up. Now she wears makeup and no more little-kid clothes (or pigtails). She’s even the first one of us to have a steady boyfriend, Logan Bruno. Logan’s a Southerner and Mary Anne thinks he looks just like Cam Geary, her favorite movie star.

  Mary Anne and I both have brown hair and brown eyes and we’re both short (although she’s not as short as I am, since I’m the shortest person in our class). As you know, I’m used to speaking up and being in charge, but Mary Anne is shy and sensitive. On the other hand, she may be even more stubborn than I am. She’s also very perceptive, but she always sees the best in people.

  We wouldn’t be living next door to each other anymore even if my mother hadn’t married Watson. Mary Anne moved, too, when her father remarried — Dawn’s mother!

  It turned out that Mr. Spier and Mrs. Schafer had both grown up in Stoneybrook and known each other in high school (when Mrs. Schafer was Sharon Porter). Then Sharon Porter moved to California and met Dawn’s father and married him and had Dawn and Dawn’s younger brother Jeff. But they got divorced. That’s when Mrs. Schafer moved back to Stoneybrook with Dawn and Jeff and met Mr. Spier again and remarried. Jeff eventually decided to go back to California to live with his father, and Dawn, who missed them, decided not too long ago to go back and stay with them for a while.

  But Mary Anne and Dawn are still best friends as well as sisters.

  I was, I admit, a little jealous when Mary Anne became best friends with Dawn. I didn’t want Mary Anne to have two best friends. But when I got to know Dawn, it wasn’t so hard and I didn’t feel like I had to compete with her for Mary Anne’s friendship after all.

  Dawn doesn’t eat meat (if you haven’t guessed from what Claudia said about worms). Or much sugar. Or junk food. She has long, long, pale blonde hair, blue eyes, two holes pierced in each ear, and is tall and thin. She has strong opinions, but she is pretty easygoing and down-to-earth, which makes her love of ghost stories all the more surprising. Also pretty amazing is the fact that the Spier-Schafer family now lives in a spooky, old farmhouse (Dawn says it’s haunted). It even has a secret passageway that leads from her room to the barn.

  When Dawn left for California, it was hard on all of us, especially Mary Anne. But we understand why she did it. It is hard to be separated from people — and places — that you love. We’re hoping she’ll come back soon, but meanwhile, she’s still a member of the BSC. I guess you could say the BSC has an office in California now.

  Like Dawn, Stacey is tall and thin and she watches what she eats. She has to. Stacey is diabetic. Diabetes is a condition in which your pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin. That means your blood sugar is out of control and could make you faint or even get sick. Stacey has to really be careful about what she eats and she has to give herself a shot of insulin every day. Because of her diabetes, Stacey suffered from overprotective parents, just as Mary Anne did. Stacey had to convince them that she could be responsible and take care of herself. Anyway, that’s why at every meeting of the BSC, Claudia always has junk food — and not-so-junk food, like pretzels or crackers or fruit.

  Anastasia Elizabeth McGill (that’s her real name, but you’d better not call her anything but Stacey!) is a real New Yorker, with a sort of New York look. She’s one of the most fashionable dressers in the club, along with Claudia (although Claudia’s style is different). Today, for example, while the rest of us were in the usual sorts of clothes — jeans, sweaters, big shirts — Stacey had pulled her permed blonde hair back with a leopard-print scarf tied under one ear. She was wearing one of her favorite pairs of earrings, gold leaf-shaped ones. She was also wearing a black wrap long-sleeve top, a short, low-slung brown skirt with a big belt, black tights, and leopard print flats. She looked extremely cool. Which of course she is.

  She’s also extremely good in math, which is why she is the BSC treasurer. In fact she’s a good student — not at all like her best friend, Claudia.

  What can I say about Claudia? She’s as cool as Stacey. But if Stacey’s style is New York, Claudia’s is — planetary. Out of this world. Planet Claudia.

  She’s very artistic and creative and she’s going to be an artist — she’s already won a prize for her work. As you might guess, her eye for color and style shows in the way she dresses. Today she was into big: a big yellow shirt with red X-shaped buttons, enormously baggy white pants, and big red Doc Martens double-laced with black and yellow shoelaces. Her long straight black hair was pulled up on top of her head with more black and yellow shoelaces braided together. Her earrings said “stop” and “go” — “stop” in her left ear and “go” in her right.

  She looked — excellent. Claudia’s Japanese-American and with her long black hair and perfect skin, she’s beautiful. But being beautiful doesn’t mean you can wear anything. At least, not unless you’re Claudia Kishi.

  Claudia’s a bit of a mystery to her family, I think. She has an older sister, Janine, who’s a real, live genius, with the test scores (and the grades — although Janine is in high school, she’s already taking courses at a local college) to prove it. Claudia, on the other hand is sort of an anti-genius when it comes to school. Her spelling, for example, is very creative (although the teachers unfortunately don’t think so) and she’s had to be tutored in some of her subjects. And where Janine reads Big, Serious books, Claud loves Nancy Drew (she keeps those books hidden, too, since her parents sort of equate Nancy Drew with junk food for some weird reason). But Claudia
has earned her family’s respect for her artistic genius. In fact, I think she’s going to be an extremely famous artist someday.

  Two other best friends in the BSC are our junior officers Jessi and Mallory. They’re junior officers because they are the younger club members who can’t sit at night yet (except for their own brothers and sisters). They’re in sixth grade and the rest of us are in eighth grade. We even used to baby-sit for Mal and the other Pike kids (Mal has four younger brothers — three of them are identical triplets — and three younger sisters) before she joined the BSC. Having all those siblings gave Mal a lot of baby-sitting experience and made her a natural for the BSC. In addition to being a BSC junior officer, Mal is also secretary of the sixth-grade class.

  Mal has pale skin (still a little paler than usual — she came down with mono and was out sick for a whole month and only recently could she go back to school and start baby-sitting again), reddish-brown hair, and she wears glasses and braces. She likes to write and draw and would like to be a children’s book writer and illustrator someday.

  It’s not surprising Mal and Jessi are best friends. They have a lot in common. They both love horses and horse stories, they’re both the oldest in their families, and they both have pet hamsters.

  But Jessi’s not into writing or drawing, she’s into dance. She wants to be a professional ballerina and she’s already studying and working hard toward her goal. She takes special dance classes after school in Stamford and she has danced in some big stage performances.

  Jessi’s family is a little smaller than Mal’s — she’s got a younger sister, Becca, who is eight and a half, and the cutest baby brother, John Philip, Jr., whom everyone calls Squirt. There’s also her mother, father, and her aunt Cecelia (like Nannie, she moved in to help out).

  Jessi has brown eyes, brown skin, and carries herself like a dancer, very graceful and upright.

  Shannon Kilbourne is the only BSC member who goes to a private school. She lives across the street from me with her mother and father and her two sisters, Tiffany and Maria. When I first moved into Watson’s I thought the whole neighborhood was pretty snobby and Shannon was the worst. Now we laugh about the misunderstandings and tricks we pulled on each other, and I can’t believe all that ever happened.

  Another important member of Shannon’s household is Astrid. Astrid is a Bernese mountain dog and she’s especially important because she is the mother of our Bernese mountain puppy, Shannon (who is named after Shannon). Shannon gave the puppy to us when our old collie, Louie, died. We still miss Louie, but Shannon (the puppy) is a great dog. So is Shannon. (A great person, I mean.)

  So that’s the BSC.

  I looked around the room and thought, as usual, what a terrific club we were, and then the phone rang.

  I picked it up. “Baby-sitters Club,” I said.

  “Kristy, this is Mrs. Engle.”

  “Oh, hello,” I said. “What can we do for you?”

  I heard the smile in her voice as she answered. “Karen and Andrew need a baby-sitter this Saturday afternoon.”

  “This Saturday afternoon? I’ll check our schedule and call you back.”

  Mary Anne already had the appointment book open when I hung up the phone.

  “Jessi, it’s you, me, or Mal,” she said.

  “You’ll have to count us out,” said Jessi. “Mal and I are working on a science project that afternoon.”

  “The behavior and care of horses?” teased Shannon.

  Mal shook her head regretfully. “No. The teacher assigned, ‘Light and the Color Spectrum.’ ”

  “Speaking of projects, Karen’s got one of her own right now,” I said. “She’s going through a phase, I guess: She really, really wants to be thirteen instead of seven.”

  “Tell her being a grown-up is tough,” said Claudia.

  “Yeah,” said Mal. “Look at our science project!”

  We all laughed and Mary Anne said, “Okay, I’ll take it, then.” She carefully wrote her name in the book as I picked up the phone to call Karen’s mother back.

  We had practically a record-breaking afternoon, so many jobs that we had to call up Logan and schedule him for two of them. I was actually glad when the phone stopped ringing at five minutes to six.

  “Whew,” said Stacey, echoing my thoughts.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Claudia passed the Gummi Worms and pretzels around again. “We need to build our strength back up,” she told us solemnly. “It’s carbo-loading. Like athletes do, you know.”

  “Speaking of athletes,” I said. “I keep thinking about the SMS tryouts for the softball team.”

  “I think you should go for it, Kristy,” said Claudia.

  “I don’t see how I could. I’ve been thinking and thinking about it, and I just can’t play softball on the team, baby-sit, keep up with my homework, and coach the Krushers.”

  “You couldn’t organize your schedule to make it work?” asked Jessi.

  “Remember when I ran for class president?” I asked.

  “And dropped out because it was too much, even for the world’s most organized person,” said Stacey. “We remember. You did the right thing.”

  “Well, if I couldn’t add being class president to my schedule, I couldn’t add softball. Not without dropping something else.”

  “Drop homework!” suggested Claudia and we all laughed.

  “I wish I could. But the only thing I could really drop would be the Krushers. And I’d hate to. I mean, I don’t think I could let them down that way.”

  “You wouldn’t have to drop them,” said Stacey. “Let someone else coach them during your softball season. Then you can come back and take over.”

  “But who? Who would coach the Krushers?” I asked.

  The room was silent for a minute. Then Stacey and Claudia looked at each other and said, together, “We would!”

  I almost laughed. But I caught myself just in time. I also didn’t open my big mouth and say what I was thinking, which was, “You’re kidding.”

  Because after a moment I realized that they weren’t. Stacey and Claudia had just volunteered to take over coaching the Krushers!

  I tried to imagine what that would be like, and failed. I mean, I knew that Stacey and Claudia knew something about softball from coming to the Krusher practices with baby-sitting charges and from cheering us on at our games. But it was hard to reconcile the image of the two most fashionable girls at SMS with the image of a Krusher softball practice: running bases, fielding balls, pitching, talking strategy.

  Realizing that if I let the silence go on any longer, it would be rude, I swallowed and said weakly, “Well, I don’t know. It’s a lot of work.”

  Fortunately, Jessi came to my rescue. “Why don’t you just try out for the softball team, Kristy. See if you make it. Then decide what to do.”

  “Well,” I said again. Then, “Okay. That’s it. That’s what I’ll do. If I make the team, we’ll go from there.”

  “You’ll make it,” said Claudia confidently. “And we’ll be the new Krusher co-coaches! Right, Stace?”

  “Right,” said Stacey. “And not only will the Krushers be the best kids’ softball team in Stoneybrook. But they’ll have a whole new style to go with it!”

  “Eeeuw,” said Stacey. “What are you doing?”

  I looked down at my lunch tray. I had blueberry pie, two helpings of macaroni and cheese, and two rolls.

  “What do you mean, what am I doing?”

  Stacey sat down across from me and said, “Well, I don’t think that’s what anyone would call a balanced meal. What happened to vegetables? Or, for that matter, fruit?”

  “I’m carbo-loading,” I said. “These are all high-carbohydrate foods.”

  “It’s true,” said Claudia unexpectedly. “You know, the night before the Boston Marathon, they always serve a traditional pasta dinner.”

  “And for your information, the pie counts as fruit,” I said. I studied my plate for a moment and added, “Y
ou know, you could also think of macaroni and cheese as worms. Worms are probably very high in protein …”

  “Ugh!” That was Mary Anne.

  “Dead worms,” I said, digging in.

  “Kristy!” wailed Mary Anne, turning a little green.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Sorry. It’s only macaroni. I think. This is the SMS cafeteria, after all.”

  We — Mary Anne, Stacey, Claudia, Logan and I — were having lunch in the SMS cafeteria. And the SMS cafeteria often serves that universal lunchroom gourmet item, mystery meat. But although the mystery meat doesn’t bother me, I was avoiding it today. I really was (sort of) trying to carbo-load, for the SMS softball tryouts that afternoon.

  “So, does anybody know anything about the SMS softball team, besides the fact that they made it to the regional finals last year?” I asked.

  “Coach Wu is one of the toughest coaches at SMS,” said Logan. “Maybe in the whole state. She’s the one who suggested the speed workouts to our coach.” He made a wry face. “They’re killer.”

  “Great,” I said. Not enthusiastically. My vision of me at the plate, about to sock a home run out of the park, was fading fast.

  “Kristy,” said Stacey. “You’re tough. You’re pretty fast. And you’re a good player. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

  “Maybe,” I said. (I was worried.)

  “If it were easy, and you made the team, it wouldn’t mean as much,” Mary Anne pointed out.

  I thought about that for a moment. “True,” I said. I dug into my macaroni worms. No, I didn’t want it to be easy. Well, not too easy. But I didn’t want it to be too hard, either. I decided to eat everything on my plate, down to the last carbo. Because it sounded like I was going to need all the help I could get.

  I spent the rest of the day worrying about tryouts and checking on my trusty softball glove, which was in my regular locker. I’d left all my other gear in my gym locker, but I kind of wanted to keep my glove nearby, for luck. It made me less nervous.

  And I was nervous. In spite of my friends’ confidence in me, I wasn’t all that sure I had a chance to make the team. I didn’t know how good everybody else who was trying out was. Knowing the team had made it to the regionals and realizing just how tough Coach Wu was supposed to be didn’t help.