Stacey's Emergency Read online

  Mary Anne grew up next door to Kristy. (She’s moved, too, though. I’ll explain in a minute.) But her home life was certainly different from Kristy’s. It was quiet (no brothers leaping around), just Mary Anne and her dad. Mary Anne’s mom died when Mary Anne was quite little. She barely remembers her mother. Mary Anne was raised by Mr. Spier, who was awfully strict with her. Not that he’s mean, but he does have this thing about orderliness and neatness and organization. Also, I think he wanted to prove to everyone that he could raise a little girl all by himself just fine. So he invented these rules for Mary Anne and practically took over her life. When I first met Mary Anne she seemed like such a little girl, even though she’s my age. That changed when Mary Anne was able to show her father that she was as mature as the rest of her friends. Then he loosened up on her, and Mary Anne loosened up, too.

  Midway through seventh grade, a new girl, Dawn Schafer, moved to Stoneybrook — all the way from California. Dawn, a member of the BSC now, had moved here with her mother and younger brother, Jeff, after her parents had gotten divorced. (Sound familiar?) Her mom had chosen Stoneybrook because she grew up here and Dawn’s grandparents still live here. Our California girl has the most amazingly blonde hair I’ve ever seen. And it’s long. Her eyes are a sparkly blue, and, well, she’s striking-looking. Dawn hates the cold Connecticut winters, loves the warm summers and health food, and is into exercising. Also, she has always liked ghost stories. This is interesting, considering that Dawn’s mother bought an old (colonial) farmhouse, which has a secret passage that just may be haunted. (We’re not sure.) Dawn is self-assured and an individualist. She doesn’t care much what other people think about her. And she dresses in her own casual-trendy, one-of-a-kind style.

  Anyway, shortly after Dawn moved here, she and Mary Anne became friends. Now they’re stepsisters. How did that happen? Well, Dawn and Mary Anne are partially responsible. They were looking through some old Stoneybrook High yearbooks and discovered that Mary Anne’s father and Dawn’s mother had been high-school sweethearts. But after graduation, they went in different directions. So Dawn and Mary Anne found a way for their parents to meet again, Mrs. Schafer and Mr. Spier began dating, and after what seemed like forever, they got married! Then Mary Anne, her father, and her kitten, Tigger, moved into Dawn’s house. (Jeff wasn’t there, though. He had never adjusted to his new life and had returned to California to live with his dad.) Now Dawn and Mary Anne are living under the same roof, which has been difficult sometimes, but mostly just fine.

  While Claudia, Kristy, Mary Anne, Dawn, and I are all thirteen and in eighth grade, the two other BSC members are eleven and in sixth grade. Their names are Jessi (short for Jessica) Ramsey and Mallory (usually known as Mal) Pike. And they are best friends, too. (I think it’s interesting that there are so many pairs of best friends in the BSC, yet we get along well as a group.) Anyway, Jessi and Mal are both the oldest kids in their families, they love to read (especially horse stories, and especially the ones by Marguerite Henry), they also like to write (Mallory more so than Jessi), and they both feel that their parents treat them like infants, even though they are old enough to baby-sit, and old enough for plenty of other things. I remember being eleven. It wasn’t a great age.

  Jessi comes from a pretty average family. She lives with her parents, her Aunt Cecelia, her eight-year-old sister, Becca (Charlotte Johanssen’s best friend), and her baby brother, Squirt. Guess where her family lives. In my old house! The one I lived in before we went back to New York and my parents got divorced. (Jessi’s family moved here from New Jersey.) Jessi is a really talented ballet dancer. I’ve seen her perform. She’s used to dancing onstage in front of big audiences, and she takes lessons at a school in Stamford that she had to audition for just to be allowed to enroll. Jessi has long dark eyelashes, big brown eyes, legs that go on forever, and chocolatey brown skin.

  Mal, on the other hand, comes from a huge family. She has seven younger brothers and sisters, three of whom are identical triplets (boys). Mal’s passion is writing. Also drawing. She’d like to write and illustrate children’s books one day. Mal is not feeling too pretty at the moment. She’s got wavy red hair (her hair and face are pretty), but she’s also got glasses and braces. Her braces, at least, are the clear plastic kind, so they don’t show up too much. Mal’s parents will not let her wear contacts instead of glasses. They did, however, finally let her get her ears pierced (the Ramseys let Jessi do the same), so there’s hope. Besides, the braces will come off eventually.

  So there you are. Those are my friends: Kristy, Dawn, Mallory, Jessi, Mary Anne, and Claudia, my best friend, with whom I needed to talk pretty desperately. She lives not far from Charlotte, and I was hoping she’d be at home.

  Claudia was at home and we had a nice talk. There’s something comforting about Claud’s room, as well as about Claudia herself. Maybe that’s one reason the Baby-sitters Club meets there.

  I guess now I ought to tell you just what the BSC is, since I’ve mentioned it several times. The club was Kristy’s idea. She got it back at the beginning of seventh grade, when her mom was first dating Watson, and just after I’d moved to Stoneybrook (for the first time). In those days (they seem so long ago, but they really weren’t), Kristy and Mary Anne still lived next door to each other and across the street from Claud. And Kristy and her older brothers were responsible for taking turns watching David Michael after school. That was a good arrangement — as long as one of them was free each afternoon. Of course, they weren’t always free. And one evening, when Kristy, Sam, and Charlie had realized that they were all busy the next day, Kristy sat eating pizza and watching her mom make one phone call after another, trying to line up a baby-sitter for David Michael. Unfortunately, David Michael was watching, too, and Kristy felt sorry for him. (David Michael knew he was the source of some sort of trouble.) Too bad, thought Kristy, that her mom couldn’t make just one phone call and reach a whole lot of sitters at once. And that was when she got one of the great ideas she’s famous for. She and her friends could start a baby-sitting business! If they met somewhere a few times a week, parents could call them and, just as Kristy had imagined, reach several sitters at the same time. Somebody was bound to be free (and get a job), and the parent would be satisfied. So Kristy called Claud and Mary Anne, and they decided to start the Baby-sitters Club.

  Right away, the girls realized that a fourth member would be a good idea. Claud suggested me, since she and I were already getting to know each other and I’d done a lot of sitting in New York. And so the BSC was ready and running. Well, almost. We had to do a lot of work in the beginning. First, we planned to meet three afternoons each week in Claud’s room (she has her own phone); on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from five-thirty until six. Parents could call us on Claud’s line during those times and reach four experienced baby-sitters. But how would they know about our meetings?

  “We’ll advertise,” said Kristy.

  So we advertised. We told practically everyone about the BSC. We sent out fliers. We even placed an ad in the Stoneybrook News. And when we held our first official meeting, we actually got job calls. After that, the calls kept coming, and they haven’t stopped. In fact, we started getting so many that the club had to expand. Dawn joined us after she moved to Connecticut. Then, when I had to go back to New York, Kristy asked both Jessi and Mal to join. And then I returned. I was allowed back into the club. I became the seventh member, and I think I’ll be the last. (Unless someone else has to leave.) Claudia’s bedroom can’t hold more than seven people. Well, comfortably. We’d have to figure out how to drape new people around the ceiling.

  The BSC is run very efficiently. Kristy makes sure of that. She’s our president. The rest of us are officers, too, and we each have our own job or function. Kristy is president because the club was her idea. That makes sense. Also, Kristy is the kind of person who’s good at running things. And with the great ideas she’s always getting, she keeps coming up with new ways to promote the club, to a
ttract more clients, or to run the club even more efficiently. (Sometimes she goes overboard, but the rest of us let her know right away.)

  Claudia is the vice-president. She should be, since the members of the club swarm into her bedroom three times a week, eat her junk food, and tie up her phone. Also, parents sometimes call Claud’s line during nonmeeting times, and Claudia has to deal with those job appointments on her own.

  The secretary of the club is Mary Anne. She’s neat and organized — thank goodness. Sometimes I think she works harder than anyone else at a meeting. Her job is to keep the record book up-to-date and in order. The record book was one of Kristy’s ideas. In it, Mary Anne keeps track of our clients — their names, addresses, phone numbers, rates paid, and special information about their children. More important, she schedules every baby-sitting job that comes in. That means that she has to know all of our schedules — when Jessi has ballet lessons or Claud has an art class or Mal has an orthodontist appointment. I don’t think Mary Anne has ever made a scheduling boo-boo.

  I am the club treasurer. Not to brag, but I happen to be very good at math. It just comes easily to me. I can add up numbers in a flash — in my head. My job is to collect the club dues from every member each Monday, to put the money in our treasury (a manila envelope), and then to dole out the money as it’s needed. What do we use the money for? Lots of things. To help Claud pay her monthly phone bill, to pay Charlie Thomas to drive Kristy back and forth to meetings now that she lives too far away to get to Claud’s on her own, to fund an occasional club party, and to restock the Kid-Kits when we run out of things such as crayons or stickers. Remember my Kid-Kit? Well, we each have one. They’re great baby-sitting tools. We don’t bring them along every time we sit, but pretty often. The kids love them, so their parents see happy faces when they come home — and then they’re more apt to turn to the BSC the next time they need a sitter.

  Dawn’s position is alternate officer of the BSC. That means that she can take over the job of anyone who misses a meeting. And that means that Dawn has to be familiar with the duties of each officer. I know that sounds difficult, but it isn’t really that bad. Anyway, the BSC members don’t miss meetings very often. So Dawn answers the telephone a lot.

  Jessi and Mallory are junior officers. This is because they are eleven and not allowed to sit at night unless they’re taking care of their own brothers and sisters. They are a huge help, though. By taking over a lot of the afternoon jobs, they free up us older members for the nighttime jobs.

  Hmm. Let me see. A couple of other things about the workings of the BSC …

  Just in case a call should come in that none of us can take (and that does happen every now and then), Kristy signed on two associate members of the club. These are reliable sitters who don’t go to meetings, but whom we can call on in a pinch so that we won’t have to disappoint our clients. Our associate members are Shannon Kilbourne, a friend of Kristy’s in her new neighborhood, and Logan Bruno. He’s the guy Mary Anne used to go steady with!

  Finally, another of Kristy’s ideas was to keep a club notebook. The notebook is more like a diary. In it, each member is responsible for writing up every job she goes on. Then we’re supposed to read the notebook once a week to catch up on what’s happening with our clients, and also to see how our friends have handled sticky sitting situations. No one likes writing in the notebook much (except Mallory), but we have to agree that it’s pretty helpful.

  * * *

  “Ahem!”

  It was later in the afternoon. Claud and I had finished our talk, and now all of my friends and I had gathered together. Kristy was sitting straight and tall (well, as tall as she could make herself) in Claudia’s director’s chair. She was wearing her presidential visor and, as usual, a pencil was stuck over one ear.

  “Ahem!” Kristy cleared her throat again loudly. She did not have a cold. She was signaling to the rest of us that it was 5:31 according to Claud’s digital alarm clock, the official BSC timepiece, and reminding us that she’d called the day’s meeting to order a full minute earlier.

  What were the rest of us doing? Jessi and Mal were sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed and playing with these paper fortune-telling things they’d made (that, for some reason, they called Cootie Catchers). They kept opening and closing them and reciting, “Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. Catch a tiger by the toe. If he roars then let him go. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. My mother said to pick just one, and this … is … it!” Then they’d read a fortune written under a flap of paper. (Cootie Catchers are hard to explain.) Claudia, Mary Anne, and I were lined up on Claud’s bed, leaning against the wall. And Dawn was straddling Claud’s desk chair, sitting in it backward, her chin resting on the top rung.

  Claud had unearthed some packages of Ring-Dings and was passing them around. The smell of chocolate was driving me crazy. At least I wasn’t the only one not eating them, though. Dawn wouldn’t touch them. She nibbled at some crackers instead. I did, too, but the crackers didn’t begin to quiet the rumbling in my very hungry stomach — too hungry for that time of day. A Ring-Ding or two might have taken care of things.

  Anyway when Kristy began her throat-clearing, we sat at attention. And just in time. The phone rang. Dawn answered it.

  “Hello, Baby-sitters Club … Hi, Dr. Johanssen … Next Tuesday? I’ll have Mary Anne check. I’ll get right back to you…. Okay. ’Bye.” Dawn hung up and faced the rest of us. “Sitter for Charlotte next Tuesday night from seven till ten.”

  While Mary Anne looked at the appointment pages in the record book, Jessi and Mal let out groans. A nighttime sitting job. Neither of them could take it. They were disappointed.

  “Okay,” said Mary Anne, glancing up. “Stacey, Kristy, and Dawn are free.”

  “I’ve got a history test the next day,” said Dawn. “I better stay at home where I can really concentrate while I’m studying.”

  “You take the job then, Stace,” said Kristy. “You live much closer to Char.”

  So I got the job. Mary Anne penciled it into the record book, and Dawn phoned Dr. Johanssen to tell her who the sitter would be. That’s how we always schedule jobs. Diplomatically. (Okay, usually. But we hardly ever have fights at meetings.)

  The rest of the half hour passed busily. The phone rang a lot. (Twice, though, the calls were from Sam Thomas, goofing on us.) At six o’clock, Kristy jumped to her feet, announcing, “Meeting adjourned!”

  We all stood up. Mal and Jessi took out their Cootie Catchers again. Kristy looked out the window to see if Charlie had arrived to pick her up. Dawn and Mary Anne hurried toward the door, and Claudia followed them. It was her turn to help with dinner that night.

  Since no one was watching, I stuck my hand in the dresser drawer where I’d seen Claudia rehide the Ring-Dings.

  I pulled out a package and snuck it into my purse.

  Ring, ring.

  I could hear the telephone in my mother’s room. Why doesn’t she answer it? I wondered, feeling cranky. Then I remembered that Mom had run over to the Pikes’. (Mallory’s house is behind ours. Her back windows face our back windows.) Mom had said she’d be home in fifteen or twenty minutes.

  So I would have to get the phone.

  “Yuck,” I said as I sat up. It was a Wednesday evening. I was lying on my bed, trying to find the energy to start my homework. I hadn’t found it yet.

  Ring, ring!

  The telephone actually sounded impatient. I struggled to my feet and hurried into Mom’s room.

  “Hello?” I said, placing the receiver to my ear.

  “Hi, Boontsie.” It was Dad, using his awful baby name for me.

  “Hi, Dad!” I tried to sound perky rather than dead tired.

  “How are you doing? Are you ready for the weekend?”

  “Sure,” I replied. The upcoming weekend was a Dad Weekend. (I had conveniently forgotten to call my doctor.) I would leave for New York on Friday afternoon, missing a BSC meeting. (Dawn would get to be the treasurer that day.
)

  “What train are you taking?” asked Dad.

  “The one that gets in at six-oh-four,” I replied.

  “Great. I’ll meet you at the Information Booth at Grand Central then.”

  “Oh, Dad. You don’t have to meet me,” I said. (We have this discussion practically every time I go to New York.) “I can get a cab to your apartment.”

  “You won’t have time. I made six-thirty dinner reservations.”

  “But I’ll have all my stuff with me,” I pointed out, trying not to whine. “I don’t want to lug it around some restaurant.”

  “Don’t worry. You can check your things with our coats. Then we’ll have a nice leisurely dinner before we go home.”

  “Okay.” Inwardly I sighed. I had a feeling that Dad had made lots of plans for the weekend. Sometimes that’s okay. But not when I’m so tired. And not when I have a mountain of homework to catch up on. I’d been planning to do some of it in New York. Oh, well. I could work on the train. (I’d be spending three and a half or four hours on the train that weekend.)

  Dad did have a lot of plans. It turned out that he’d bought tickets to a Broadway musical for Saturday night. He knew about special exhibits at practically every museum in New York. And he’d made reservations for about sixteen hundred meals. (I don’t think my father ever cooks for himself. His refrigerator looks like a hole: empty.)

  “Will I get to see Laine sometime?” I asked.

  “Sure. She can come to the MoMA with us.” (The MoMA is the Museum of Modern Art. It is not Laine’s favorite place.)

  “Dad? Maybe we could skip the MoMA on Saturday afternoon? Then Laine could come over and we could just hang out and talk.”

  “Is that really how you want to spend Saturday?” asked Dad.

  “Just the afternoon.” I yawned.

  “You sound awfully tired, honey.”