Mind Your Own Business Kristy! Page 8

  “I still haven’t heard an apology about the car,” I grumbled. “Or the concert.”

  Angelica sighed. “All right, I’m sorry about them, too. My parents are going to pay for the damage, okay? And I wish I could do something about the concert, but the tickets were free anyway, right? So it’s not like you lost any money.”

  Some apology.

  I wanted to knock her off her bike. I wanted to stuff pebbles down her designer shirt. Rip up her note. But I, Kristy Thomas, was above that.

  After all, David Michael was there and I needed to set a good example.

  Besides, I could tell from her cold, threatening tone of voice that the envelope didn’t exactly contain a love note.

  And that was just fine with me.

  I grabbed it from her hand. “Okay. I’ll give it to him.”

  “Thanks.” Angelica pushed off on her pedal and glided down the street.

  “She’s mean,” David Michael said. “But that’s okay. So are you.”

  I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it.

  Watson arrived about a minute later, full of his own apologies — about being late. But at least his apologies came with a bag of tortilla chips.

  As we munched and talked, I eyed Angelica’s envelope. Through it I could see computer print. Not handwriting.

  Formal.

  Something that took extra effort.

  What could that mean? A plea for forgiveness? A declaration of love? A homework assignment?

  I was dying to hold it up to the light and read it.

  But I was good. I knew it was none of my business. It was totally between Charlie and Angelica.

  When we arrived home, I marched straight to Charlie’s room. He was lying on his bed with his door open, listening to music.

  I held out the envelope. “This is from Angelica. Want me to read it first, so you know if it’s bad or good news?”

  Charlie’s expression was dull and a little swollen, as if he’d just awakened. “Nah, I’ll look at it.”

  He took it from me and ripped it open. “Probably sending me her speeding ticket.”

  Lying down on his back, he scanned the letter. I turned to leave. But Charlie began reading aloud.

  “ ‘Dear Charles …’ ” Charlie gave kind of a laughing snort. “Charles?”

  “That doesn’t sound too promising,” I remarked.

  “ ‘I haven’t called you because I’m really upset,’ ” Charlie went on reading. “ ‘I didn’t want to cry and yell over the phone, so I figured I’d write instead. First of all, I’m sorry for what I did. It was stupid.’ ”

  “ ‘Stupid’ doesn’t come close,” I murmured.

  “ ‘My parents are so mad at me. They don’t want me to see you ever again. They said it was totally unlike me to do what I did. They think you were a bad influence —’ ”

  “You were a bad influence on her?” I blurted out.

  “Will you stop interrupting?” Charlie said. He cleared his throat and went on. “ ‘I argued with them a lot. But then I thought about it. My last boyfriend had a car, too, and I never tried to drive it. Well, he was a great driver, that was the main reason. But even if I asked, no way would he have let me. He was this super-mature type. We actually had a lot in common. I think we broke up because we were almost exactly alike. Then I met you. You were so different — like a big kid. I needed that for a while. But I have this weakness — I let other people’s personalities rub off on me. So what I’m saying is, I think my parents were right. I need to move on, Charlie. I need to find someone on my wavelength. Hope you’re not mad at me. Ciao, Angelica.’ ”

  The words hung in the air, like a bad stink. Charlie fell silent, staring dully at the paper.

  “What a conceited creep,” I finally said. “She thinks she is so superior.”

  Charlie let the letter fall to the floor. He grabbed a baseball cap from his night table. Then he lay back and put it over his face. “Leave her alone. Maybe she’s right.”

  “Oh, sure. You forced her to drive your car, right? You made her crack up Watson’s car. As if!”

  “I don’t mean that part, Kristy. She admitted she was wrong. I mean the other stuff. The immaturity. Face it, I am like a big kid.”

  “Well, that’s true,” I teased.

  “I spend my whole spring break playing softball with my little sister and her littler friends. And I like it. I mean, I could be playing baseball with kids my own age. I could be doing what normal seventeen-year-olds are doing — looking at colleges, thinking about their futures. At my age, you’re supposed to know what you want to do with your life. I don’t.”

  “Isn’t that what college is for? To help you decide what you want to do?”

  “I look at those stupid brochures, and it’s like, ‘Huh?’ They all look the same.”

  “You just need to organize them, that’s all —”

  Charlie peered out from under his cap. “Now you sound like Sarah! She sits around for hours, ranking the colleges. She uses about ten different categories. I can’t do that. It’s like homework. The whole idea puts me to sleep. You have to want to go to college, Kristy. You have to be ready. Mature. Not like me.”

  Whoa. I never thought I’d hear my brother talking about his personal problems to me. Plus, I always thought he was so mature. I didn’t know he felt like this.

  I was tongue-tied. What could I say? My Idea Machine works great for middle-school problems, but it kind of sputters and dies when it comes to stuff like this.

  “Well, I think you’re mature,” I said. (I know, big help.)

  Charlie laughed scornfully. “Right. You can’t even count on me for your Klinic. I’m less reliable than the kids. They show up every day. They don’t just walk away from practice whenever they want.”

  “Well, wait until they have boyfriends and girlfriends —”

  “Remember what you told me the other day when I left Klinic? You told me I was just like Dad.”

  I cringed. I wanted to kick myself for saying that.

  “Charlie, I was angry. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Well, guess what? You were right. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. It’s all in the genes, I know it. If Dad were a musician, I’d probably be in a rock band. If Dad were a writer, I’d be working on the school newspaper. But what is Dad? Immature and messed up. I’m going to be a big grown-up baby the rest of my life. That’s it. Done deal. Can’t change it.”

  “Stop it! You’re nothing like Dad!”

  “Yeah, right —”

  “Charlie, do you remember what happened after Dad left?”

  “Duh. No, I forgot the worst day of my entire life. Of course I remember.”

  “To me, it was like the end of the world. Meltdown. The sky is falling. I’d never cried so hard.”

  “You’d never cried until then,” Charlie said with a little chuckle.

  “Mom was a basket case.”

  Charlie nodded. “She was hit the worst. David Michael had colic. Sam was totally out of it. How many times did he ask, ‘When’s Dad coming home?’ Seven zillion? I can’t believe Mom didn’t slug him.”

  “You managed okay.”

  “On the outside, sure. Someone had to. I couldn’t just let the family fly apart.”

  “You were only ten then. And you were making all the decisions.”

  Charlie laughed. “One time the bank called about the mortgage payment, and I made Mom teach me how to write a check.”

  “I remember you waking up in the middle of the night to feed David Michael.”

  “I had to. Mom was exhausted.”

  “Mom says she doesn’t know how we would have survived without you.”

  “I didn’t even think about stuff like that. I was just trying to make up for Dad being away.”

  “Pretty mature for a ten-year-old.”

  “I guess.”

  “Do you really think you’ve changed that much?”

  “Why should I —”

  Charlie
cut himself off. It was as if a stopper had been shoved into his mouth.

  We sat there for a long while, without saying a word.

  “Look, Charlie,” I said. “I don’t know what to say about colleges. I wish I did. But I can tell you one thing. Whenever I’m stuck with a big problem, if I’m losing my temper or feeling pressured or just at wit’s end, one question pops into my mind.”

  Charlie smiled. “Where’s the ice cream?”

  “No,” I replied. “Every single time, I ask myself, ‘What would Charlie do about this?’ And usually I come up with the right answer.”

  I turned to leave. I thought I saw Charlie’s eyes moistening. I wasn’t sure, though. Because mine were.

  “That’s it, Nina. Now, just lift up your back elbow a teeny bit.”

  Nina Marshall shyly obeyed the suggestion. Her knees were bent slightly, her back was tilted forward, her legs planted wide apart. For the first time, she looked like a real honest-to-goodness player.

  She’d never followed my instructions like that.

  But then again, I’m not Jack Brewster.

  Yes, the great day had arrived. The Krushers’ brush with fame.

  Practice had never been so crowded. For one thing, every single father had shown up (that was a Krusher first). Some brought friends. I didn’t recognize half the adults there. I had to ask them to back away from Jack Brewster so the kids could ask him for autographs.

  Word must have leaked out among SMS students, because a whole gang of them had gathered, too. Alan Gray had brought a stack of index cards for autographs. Brewster had signed about three before I caught Alan and chased him away. (I heard him yelling, “Get yer autographs, five dollars each!” The dork.)

  Oh. Guess who had called me the night before, all buddy-buddy? Bart Taylor. It was a “Hi-is-it-true-about-Jack-Brewster?” kind of call.

  I guess he’d canceled his clinic for the day. Because he and his whole team showed up to watch ours. Hmmm …

  The Krushers, needless to say, were ecstatic. The Barretts and Kuhns had fresh haircuts for the event. Linny and Matt wore brand-new baseball cleats. Seven Krushers had scrawled Brewster’s uniform number, 41, on their T-shirts. (Jamie wrote 14, but he’s learning.)

  As for Jack Brewster, he was nothing like what I expected him to be.

  I had this mental image of him from the old videos. Young, lean, and fierce-looking. A black mustache, rock-solid jaw, and dark sunglasses.

  Well, the mustache was gone. So was most of the hair, and what was left was grayish. The fierce expression had melted into a craggy, kind smile. He looked like … an uncle.

  And he paid as much attention to the smallest Krusher as he did to the biggest.

  Nina swung the bat and almost fell over. But she hit the ball up the first-base line.

  “Fantastic!” Jack Brewster exclaimed. “Give that girl a contract!”

  Nina was beaming. “My mommy wears contracts, but she changes to glasses at night.”

  “Me, too,” Jack Brewster said with a laugh. “Well, we’ve all batted around now, so let’s have a fielding practice! Charlie, you hit. Kristy pitches and Sarah catches.”

  All this time, Charlie had stayed to the left of Jack Brewster. Mainly because he was nervous about being near Sarah, who was on Brewster’s right.

  No, Charlie still hadn’t talked to her.

  Sigh. Maybe he wasn’t as mature as I’d thought. (Well, at least he wasn’t moping about Angelica anymore. And he’d been looking at college brochures again over breakfast.)

  Jack Brewster assigned positions to the Krushers. Charlie took some practice swings in the on-deck circle, not looking at Sarah, who was catching my warm-up pitches.

  “Okay, batter up!” shouted Jack Brewster.

  I lobbed a pitch to Charlie. He took a huge swing, but the ball bounced weakly to second base.

  Laurel picked it up and threw to first.

  “Great throw!” Jack Brewster shouted. (Laurel looked as if she’d just met Santa Claus.)

  “Charlie,” Jack Brewster said softly, “your wrists are quick, but you need to work on follow-through. Kind of the opposite of Sarah’s problem. Sarah, would you stand behind Charlie and take him through the last part of the swing?”

  Sarah stood up from her crouch. Looking cautious and uncertain, she stood behind Charlie. Then she reached around, taking his forearms.

  Slowly she helped him through his swing, leveling out the last part of it. I thought for sure Charlie would be embarrassed.

  But I could see the corners of his lips turn upward into a smile. Just like Sarah’s.

  Come to think of it, Jack Brewster was smiling, too.

  I may be wrong, but I think he knew something.

  I think Sarah had talked to him.

  Which was just fine with me.

  And, clearly, with Charlie, too.

  * * *

  Dear Reader,

  Mind Your Own Business, Kristy! takes place during spring vacation. Kristy’s family isn’t going away, so Kristy plans Krusher Klinic for her softball team. When I was growing up, my family often visited our relatives over spring vacation. Sometimes we visited Louisville, Kentucky, to visit my father’s family. And sometimes we went to Florida to visit my mother’s parents. The trips were always lots of fun. My Florida grandparents lived across the street from a big lake. My sister and I could go fishing from their dock. Best of all, we kept our eyes peeled for alligators. They really did live in the lake!

  Mom’s parents lived in Winter Park, which is very near Disney World. My sister and I had visited Disneyland when I was thirteen, and we loved it. Unfortunately for me, Disney World wasn’t completed until I was in college. So I didn’t get to visit it until I was an adult, and I was researching Baby-sitters on Board!, the first BSC Super Special. What a fun reason to visit Disney World for the first time.

  Happy reading,

  * * *

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Peter Lerangis

  for his 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 © 1997 by Ann M. Martin

  Cover art by Hodges Soileau

  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, April 1997

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-79315-5

 

 

  Ann M. Martin, Mind Your Own Business, Kristy!

 

 

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