Stacey and the Stolen Hearts Read online

  “I know, I know,” said Abby, smiling at Jackie fondly. She knows Jackie can’t help it. We all do. Our nickname for him is the Walking Disaster. He’s a great kid, but make sure you put away the good china if he ever comes to dinner at your house.

  Jamie Newton, one of my favorite younger kids, was the last to arrive. “Are we having cupcakes?” he asked as Mary Anne helped him with his jacket.

  She laughed and nodded. “Pink ones, with hearts on them,” she said. “We’ll serve them in a little while. Now, wouldn’t you like to come over to my table and make a card for Lucy?” Mary Anne had set up a table for the youngest kids, stocked with blunt scissors, oversized crayons, and plenty of Elmer’s glue.

  Lucy is Jamie’s baby sister, and he’s very caught up in his role as big brother. “I’ll make her one with kittens on it,” he said as he took Mary Anne’s hand and allowed himself to be led to a chair. “She loves kittens. Especially gray ones.”

  “Like my kitten, Tigger?” Mary Anne asked. “Maybe I’ll make a card for him. Wouldn’t that be silly?”

  Jamie giggled as he took a seat between Archie and Marnie.

  Meanwhile, at the older-kids’ table, Sara was spreading purple glitter thickly over an orange heart. “I’m tired of pink and red,” she explained to Abby, who was running the table. “Don’t you think this is more creative?”

  “Absolutely,” said Abby. “I think I’ll make a green-and-yellow frog-shaped valentine for my sister. She loves frogs.”

  “Who doesn’t?” asked Adam, who was creating a gory valentine featuring blood and guts.

  Abby looked at it and knew it must be for one of his brothers. Only another of the triplets would appreciate such a masterpiece.

  At the crafts table, Claudia had her hands full. Literally. Making papier-mâché can be a messy business. But the kids, who included Becca, Charlotte, James, Buddy, Jake, and Margo, didn’t seem to mind. They picked up pieces of paper, dipped them into the bowl of paste Claudia had mixed, and applied them to heart-shaped forms she’d made ahead of time.

  As I walked by, I saw Margo and James dip at the same time. Their hands touched — and both of them pulled back. Then they looked at each other and smiled. “What’s your favorite color?” Margo asked James.

  “Blue,” he answered shyly. I saw that famous Hobart blush rising on his cheeks.

  “Good,” said Margo. “Then that’s what color I’ll paint this. It’s going to be for you.”

  James gulped. “It is?” he asked. Suddenly, he stopped looking shy. Instead, he looked ecstatic. “What’s your favorite?” he asked Margo.

  I didn’t stick around to hear her answer. I was on my way to a table in a corner of the smaller room, one we’d set up without telling Ms. Feld what it was for. Mal and Jessi were running it, helping kids create a huge valentine for Ms. Feld and her staff. Every one of our charges loves the library, and this was their chance to let the librarians know how much they are appreciated.

  As I walked by, Shea was drawing a dragon on one side of the giant heart while Laurel wrote a note on the other. The valentine was already covered with messages and pictures, and I knew Ms. Feld would love it.

  The most touching scene of the Valentine’s Day festival was one I didn’t witness. Mary Anne told us about it later as we left the library.

  “Mathew was so sweet,” she said. “He caught me when I was alone, near the end of the festival. I was cleaning up after the little kids while Kristy kept an eye on them. Mathew came up to me in this really hesitant way and handed me a valentine he’d made. ‘It’s for you,’ he said. It was the sweetest card I’ve ever been given. And as I looked it over, he asked me if I’d be his valentine. Of course I said yes, but I also felt I had to point out that Logan was going to be my valentine too. I was worried that Mathew would be heartbroken, but he seemed happy that I’d said yes, even if he did have to share me. He told me that was fine, and — get this — that all his friends said I was too old for him anyway.”

  We cracked up. It was a perfect story to end a perfect party. Mathew wasn’t the only kid who’d gone home happy that day. Every one of our guests had left with a stomach full of treats, a handful of valentines, and good feelings about one another. What could be better?

  “S-Stacey! What are you doing here?”

  Alan’s face was white. He was obviously surprised to see me. And I couldn’t blame him. After all, it’s not often that I stop by Alan Gray’s house on a Thursday night.

  I’d walked over to the Grays’ as soon as the festival was over. I hadn’t told my friends where I was going. So far, I was working on a hunch. I wanted to see for myself whether I was right.

  I’d been putting the pieces together ever since I’d left Cary’s basement lair. My guess was that Alan had stolen the valentine-grams, and that the people he’d pranked were the people who had pranked him. In other words, when he looked over the prank valentine-grams that had been sent to him, he’d recognized Cokie’s handwriting and Jacqui’s and Rose Marie’s and Jim Poirier’s. Then he’d done his best to repay the favor by pranking each of them in return, in front of the whole school.

  Alan had outdone himself this time. In fact, I thought he’d finally gone too far with one of his practical jokes. He’d made people really angry, including me. And the more I thought about it, the angrier I grew. How dare he put me — and everybody else — through all this?

  I planned to confront him immediately and force him to confess. And apologize. Then I’d make him help me figure out how to clean up the mess he’d made of things.

  Now I stood facing him, just inside the front door of his house. We were in an entry room with a bench on either side, coathooks along the walls, and a jumble of dog leashes and boots all over the floor. I could hear the sound of a TV coming from the living room. If his parents were home, they were probably watching it. Good. That gave me the chance to speak privately with Alan. I took a seat on one bench and gestured to Alan to sit on the other. He sat.

  “Alan, I came to talk about the valentine-grams,” I began.

  Alan’s face grew even whiter. “What — why —?” he spluttered.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen Alan Gray so off guard. The grin was gone. The devil-may-care attitude was history. And his eyes, which normally gleam mischievously, looked wary.

  Suddenly, I remembered some of the things Cary had said that afternoon. I tried to imagine what it might feel like to be Alan. To be a person who plays the fool every day and shrugs it off when people tell him he’s a dweeb. I couldn’t move past that image of Alan as the SMS Court Jester. It was difficult to think of his having feelings. It was hard to picture his actually liking a girl, and even harder to imagine her liking him back.

  But doesn’t a jester deserve love as much as the next person?

  I felt myself softening. “I want to know if you know anything about the missing valentine-grams,” I said.

  He didn’t say a thing. He just shook his head no.

  Alan Gray couldn’t even come up with a joke for the occasion. I was stunned.

  Now, here’s the part I can’t quite explain. I’m still not sure what came over me. But, without really knowing why, I decided to give Alan a way out.

  “Here’s the thing, Alan,” I said, leaning toward him just a little and lowering my voice. “I happen to know who stole the valentine-grams. And I know who helped him with the pranks. But right now, my biggest concern isn’t punishing those people. My biggest concern is that I want those valentine-grams back. By tomorrow. So that they can be given out, along with the candy, just the way Pete and I planned.”

  I looked at Alan to make sure he was hearing what I said. He was definitely paying attention.

  “If that doesn’t happen,” I continued, “I just might have to tell Mr. Kingbridge what I know.”

  I glanced at Alan again. The color was coming back into his face, and he was beginning to look the tiniest bit more like himself. I almost expected him to grin or make some snide remar
k. If he had, the deal would have been off in a New York minute. I would have hauled him straight into the principal’s office first thing in the morning.

  But he didn’t. He just nodded. “There may be something I can do,” he said. Oooh, he was cagey. He hadn’t admitted a thing. But I could tell I’d gotten through to him.

  “Terrific,” I said, jumping to my feet. “Then, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.” I was out the door before he’d even stood up.

  * * *

  Friday morning. Valentine’s Day had arrived. Would Alan come through? I wasn’t sure I could trust him. More than anything, I wanted to be able to deliver those valentine-grams.

  I dressed carefully that morning in a pink sweater, white miniskirt, and heart-shaped earrings. And I kept my fingers crossed all the way to school.

  Guess what was sitting outside the door of my homeroom when I arrived? A big cardboard box with my name in huge red letters on it. And guess what was inside the box?

  The valentine-gram bag.

  Yesss! I grabbed the bag, asked my homeroom teacher for permission to leave, and headed out to round up the other eighth-grade officers. Pete was amazed. “Where did you find this?” he demanded, pointing at the bag.

  “Outside my homeroom,” I answered casually.

  “But who put it there? Who took it in the first place?” I think he could tell that I knew more than I was letting on.

  I just shrugged. “All I know is that I’m glad to see it back,” I said. “Now, let’s put together these packages and start delivering them!”

  We sat down at a table in the library and quickly paired a bag of candy hearts with each valentine-gram. As we worked, I noticed that there wasn’t one valentine-gram addressed to Alan — or to Cary, for that matter. I also noticed that several of the valentine-grams looked as if they’d been opened and resealed.

  But you know what? By then it didn’t matter.

  And it didn’t matter to anyone else either. By the end of homeroom, we’d managed to fan out and deliver every last valentine-gram. And throughout the rest of the day, I noticed a lot of happy faces in the halls.

  My friends and I compared notes at lunchtime, over the cafeteria staff’s idea of a perfect Valentine’s Day lunch: spaghetti with red sauce, beet salad, and raspberry Jell-O for dessert.

  “I saw Cokie and Brent gazing into each other’s eyes between second and third period,” reported Kristy. “It was one of the grossest sights I’ve even seen, and that includes the time Boo-Boo threw up a half-digested mouse.” (Boo-Boo is Watson’s old cat.)

  “Oh, ew,” said Mary Anne. She pushed her plate away.

  “That’s what I said when I saw Cokie and Brent,” replied Kristy.

  “Well, Brian and Rose Marie may not be quite as lovey-dovey as that,” Claudia said. She didn’t seem fazed by Kristy’s gross-out, maybe because she wasn’t eating a school lunch. Instead, she was munching on a chocolate-covered granola bar. “But at least they’re talking again. I saw them together near his locker. I have a feeling this mess might have brought them closer.”

  “You know what’s funny?” asked Abby. “I saw Sabrina — Miss Perfect Nose herself — holding hands with Jim Poirier.”

  “And I saw Pete helping Emily Bernstein open her locker when it was stuck,” I added.

  “That’s so sweet!” said Mary Anne. I noticed a valentine-gram from Logan tucked into her notebook and guessed she’d be saving it forever.

  “Awww,” said Kristy. “A happy ending.” She pretended to wipe her eyes.

  But she was right. Even Robert and I had been a part of the happy ending. I’d written a quick valentine-gram to him as I was packaging the rest, telling him I hoped we could be friends again. And he’d slipped me a note just before lunch that said he’d like that very much. He’d seemed quite a bit happier the last few days. Maybe having Jacqui out of the picture had had a good effect.

  I never did find out which girl Alan had sent the valentine-gram to, but you know what? I wish him well. I hope he can find the courage to let her know he likes her, and I hope he finds out she likes him too.

  So, that’s the story of my Valentine’s Day disaster. And now that I think about it, maybe it wasn’t such a disaster after all. Everything had worked out all right in the end.

  And I was on my way to enjoy my own Valentine’s Day with Ethan.

  Still, I thought, leaning back against the headrest as the train pulled into Grand Central Station, I will never understand Valentine’s Day!

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Ellen Miles

  for her help in

  preparing this manuscript.

  About the Author

  ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.

  There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.

  Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.

  Copyright © 1998 by Ann M. Martin

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First edition, February 1998

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-87441-0