Abby's Lucky Thirteen Page 8

  Our grandmothers stood up and walked toward us. “Yay, Grandmother Ruth and Gram Elsie!” shouted Kristy, Stacey, and Claudia. After lighting the candle, my grandmothers showered us with hugs and kisses, and then returned to their seats. One by one we lit the candles honoring our family and friends, remembering both silly and serious things. Soon we came to candle eleven.

  “This candle is for new friendship,” I announced. “Would the members of the Baby-sitters Club please come forward? As so many clients have said before, I couldn’t have made it without you.” Anna asked her friends to come up, too.

  As our friends walked toward us I noticed Mallory and Mary Anne blushing furiously. Mary Anne stayed close to Logan, Kristy practically strutted, Jessi, Shannon, and Stacey stayed cool, and Claudia grinned. We all smiled for the camera as we lit the candle together.

  Only three candles left after that. We thanked Mom for all she had done and lit the next candle with her.

  “The next candle, candle number thirteen, is for our father,” said Anna.

  “Who is here with us today,” I added.

  We were silent for a moment, all of us remembering. Then Anna, my mother, and I lit the thirteenth candle.

  Now there was one candle left. It was the candle for good luck.

  “For Anna,” I said.

  “For Abby,” she said.

  “For our family,” we said together.

  And the photographer, who’d been lurking and flashing his camera, popped up again and blinded us with another flash.

  And then the food. It was terrific. A lot of it was breakfast food (by special request) and all of it was delicious. We had chopped liver and pickled herring and lox and bagels, roast chicken, slices of tomato and cucumber, pickles and whitefish salad and lox salad, and for dessert, besides the cake, rugelach, an incredible little pastry rolled up with nuts and chocolate, and best of all, my mother’s special chocolate babka, a truly amazing cake.

  We ate and talked and played with the kids and I felt as if I were floating. I had made it. All those months of work and study had paid off. I felt grownup and like a giddy little kid at the same time.

  Once again I found myself standing back to look at my friends, my family. And I thought of my father and knew that he would be pleased and proud. And because I was thinking of him, it was as if he were there.

  We’d come a long way. A long way from Long Island to Stoneybrook. A great distance from the year our father had died, when the world had been such a bad place to live in.

  I will miss my father always. But I could remember him, too. As if he were here. Now.

  I had put my childhood behind me. But the world was a big place and full of all kinds of things, good and bad. I liked that, I decided. It gave me plenty of room to grow.

  Although we hadn’t really planned it, we ended up having a sleepover after the party on Saturday night. Anna’s friend Lauren from the orchestra stayed over, and Shannon, who had become friends with Anna, too, and every member of the BSC except Logan. We all crammed into our two rooms, and talked and talked and talked.

  We made predictions about who we would be when we grew up. We wrote them down and folded them up and I put them in an old piggy bank, the kind you have to break to open.

  “Okay,” I intoned solemnly. “When we meet for our twentieth high school reunion —”

  “Eww! No way I’ll ever be that old!” shrieked Shannon.

  “Our twentieth high school reunion,” I repeated, “we’ll open this and see if it came true.”

  “Excellent,” said Claudia. “Are there any more of those Anna and Abby cakes left?”

  We all laughed, and ate midnight snacks (and found Mom still up with our grandparents, talking over coffee in the kitchen). Then we played silly games such as gossip and truth or dare.

  And the BSC presented me with one final, perfect gift: a memory glass filled with layers of salt and pepper like sand, and mementoes of the day; a bit of a streamer, a spring of baby’s breath from the flowers, a soccer napkin (clean) with everybody’s name on it, my place card, and the melted friendship candle from the cake, all sealed with a melted soccer candle from one of the tables.

  I could have stayed up all night, but slowly people began falling asleep, until only I was awake. I listened to Kristy shift and mumble in her sleeping bag on the floor, and heard a faint snore from somewhere else. I turned off my bedside light. A faint tracing of moonlight shone through the window.

  I leaned over to look out. It was a clear, perfect night. Below, the white folds of the tent billowed slightly. Above, every star looked distinct and bright.

  Suddenly I yawned so hard that my jaws cracked. What a long, strange trip it had been, I thought, remembering the Grateful Dead song that my mom liked so much.

  I lay down on my bed and pulled up the covers. A long, strange trip. A good one.

  So far.

  I touched the necklace and fell asleep.

  * * *

  The caterers had done a massive cleanup job after the party. That meant we had plenty of room for creative breakfast-making the next morning. So we went for broke, from cereal to animal-shaped pancakes for the little kids who came over with their parents to say good-bye.

  Aunt Judith and Uncle Saul left early, and stopped only long enough for Uncle Saul to fill his travel coffee mug.

  Aunt Esther and Uncle Mort were going back with Grandfather David and Grandmother Ruth, so Cousin Micah dropped them off before he left with Aaron, Bette, and Jonathan. He was getting an early start, too.

  Cousin Jean didn’t have as far to go, so she stuck around for brunch, and helped us make funny-face pancakes for Amy and Sheila — and ourselves.

  We all yawned a lot, grownups and baby-sitters. Then people began to slip away, one by one.

  Gram and Grandpa were the last to go. I didn’t want them to. I had a sudden rush of homesickness for Long Island. There, Gram and Grandpa hadn’t been so far away.

  I didn’t like that they seemed smaller each time I saw them.

  I hugged them both hard as if I could hold them there forever.

  But in the end, I had to let them go.

  We stood on the front steps, Anna and Mom and I, and waved good-bye. Then, in slow motion, we headed inside.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon straightening up, looking over our gifts, and even writing a few thank-you notes.

  I was glad to have something to keep me busy. I had a lot to think about, a lot to remember. But it was too soon.

  By seven p.m., I was yawning hugely.

  Don’t tell anybody this, but by eight-thirty, I was in bed. Anna came in to sit by my feet. The diamond glinted on the chain around her neck.

  “I’ll never, ever forget this weekend,” she said. “I wonder if someday I’ll have a daughter and help her celebrate her Bat Mitzvah.”

  “It could happen,” I said. Then I added, “Wow, that would make me an aunt.”

  “Or you could have a daughter, too,” Anna pointed out.

  “Nah,” I said, grinning. “Daughters are too much work.”

  We both laughed. Then Anna yawned, which made me yawn.

  “Stop that,” I ordered. “Don’t you know yawning is contagious?”

  “Then go to sleep,” said Anna. “I’m going to.” She got up. “Good night, Ms. Abigail Stevenson.”

  “Good night, Ms. Anna Stevenson,” I answered.

  I liked being called Ms. Being grown-up was going to be pretty decent, I decided. Maybe, as I had more practice at it, I wouldn’t have such hard weeks, like the one before. Maybe, with practice, I could tell right away how to make the right decision and avoid the wrong one.

  Looking back on everything that had happened, I felt older and wiser and more adult.

  “Ms. Abigail Stevenson,” I said aloud in the dark. “Ms. Abigail Avigail Stevenson.” Then I grinned. “But you can call me Abby.”

  * * *

  Dear Reader,

  Abby’s Lucky Thirteen is the second
book narrated by our newest BSC member, Abby Stevenson. Abby is a lot of fun to write about because she’s so passionate, and she’s so different from the other club members. And I was also particularly happy to write about this very important time in her life, her Bat Mitzvah.

  Although I like Abby’s personality, I’m much more like her twin, Anna. Becoming a Bat Mitzvah is highly important to Anna, but she’s terrified of giving a speech — one of the most important parts of the ceremony. I hate speaking in public, too. And I always thought that as I grew older it might become easier, but it never did. Even now when I’m on tour, I love meeting kids individually and signing books for them, but I never give talks. Stage fright has been such a big problem for me that I even wrote a book about it. And guess what the title is: Stage Fright!

  Happy reading,

  * * *

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Nola Thacker

  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 © 1996 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 1996

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-79222-6