Claudia and the Great Search Page 9

  Oh, my lord! Emily had answered the phone. “Emily? It’s Claudia.”

  “Hi, Ko-ee.”

  “Hi!” I put my hand over the receiver. “You guys! You won’t believe this. Emily answered the phone!”

  Kristy looked shocked. Then she grinned. “Let me talk to her.”

  I handed her the phone. “Hi, Emily! It’s me, Kristy.” Kristy paused, smiling. Then she looked at the rest of us and announced, “Emily just said, ‘Heyyo.’”

  Well, of course when that happened, everyone else wanted to talk to Emily on the phone. It wasn’t until the last of us had gotten off that I said to Kristy, who was holding the receiver, “Do you think your mother’s there? Someone must have helped Emily get to the phone, and I still need to talk to your mom to set up the next tutoring session.”

  Kristy giggled. “I forgot about that.” After asking Emily about five times if she could please talk to Mommy, she finally reached Nannie, who said that Kristy’s mom wasn’t home but that she’d call me that evening.

  It was after six by then, so my friends left. I stayed in my bedroom. I sat at my desk and stared up at the photos of Mimi and me. “I can’t believe I thought I was adopted,” I said to Mimi’s picture. “But you have to admit, the clues were there. And Emily Michelle and I do have a lot in common. But I am so, so, so glad I’m your real granddaughter. I mean, your family-related-blood kind of granddaughter. And I’m glad Mom and Dad are my birth parents. I’m even glad Janine is my natural sister. Really. I am.”

  I stood up, turned off my light and walked down the hall to Janine’s room. “Let’s make dinner together tonight,” I said to her. “We’ll surprise Mom and Dad. It’ll be fun.”

  Janine looked at me in surprise. Then she said, “Okay.” But first she had to save some material on her disks and switch off her computer. When that was done, she smiled at me.

  My sister and I went downstairs together.

  * * *

  Dear Reader,

  My sister and I are very good friends now, but when we were growing up, like Claudia and Janine, we couldn’t have been more different. I excelled in school, and Jane excelled at sports. She was outgoing, and I was shy. I took piano lessons and art classes, while Jane took acting and appeared in plays. We didn’t even look alike — I looked like my father, and Jane looked like my mother. But what I realized later is that there are all different kinds of families. And the biggest thing about any family is not how similar the members are, but how they celebrate their differences.

  Happy reading,

  * * *

  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 © 1990 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.

  First edition, March 1996

  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.

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-63312-3