Stacey's Big Crush Read online

  “Beeeeeaaahhh!” Elvira trotted out from behind the picnic table. She stopped when she saw Mrs. Stone. For a moment I thought she’d turn and run.

  Instead, she bleated again and sprinted into Mrs. Stone’s arms. Mr. Stone stepped out of the car and stood next to his wife. He was a heavy-set man with a receding hairline and a big smile. “Oh, she got so big!” he said.

  “What kinds of yummy food have they been feeding you?” Mrs. Stone asked.

  You don’t want to know, I thought.

  Mrs. Stone looked around at the gathering. “How sweet of you all to show up! And what a wonderful banner. I don’t know how to thank you, Mary Anne and Dawn. Was she any trouble?”

  Mary Anne valiantly attempted to answer the question. “N —” Sniff, sniff. “N —” Sniff, sniff. “N —”

  “Not at all,” Dawn said. “She charmed the whole neighborhood.”

  Mr. Stone chuckled. “I don’t doubt it. She probably ate everybody’s trash, too.”

  We howled at that.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Charlotte wander into the yard. I turned and gestured for her to come over.

  “Well, thanks again,” Mrs. Stone said. “And you are all invited to come to the farm any time to visit Elvira and the other animals.”

  As the Stones walked back to the car, we shouted good-bye. They loaded Elvira and her belongings into the back and drove away.

  Mary Anne was a basket case. I noticed she’d already made a huge dent in Logan’s tissue box.

  I didn’t blame her. As I watched the pickup putter down the street with Elvira’s little pointy head sticking out the back, I felt pretty choked up, too.

  Charlotte stuck her hand in mine. “Guess what, Stacey?” she said with a big grin.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Bruce Cominsky doesn’t bother me anymore.”

  “Congratulations. What happened?”

  “I guess I’ve been running from him so long he just gave up. Now he has a crush on Diane Dumschat.”

  “You mean, as in, ‘Ew, Dumschat’?”

  “Yeah!”

  I laughed. “Go figure.”

  “What?” Charlotte said, wrinkling her brow.

  “Boys are hard to figure out.”

  “No, they’re not. They’re just dumb. It’s stupid to even think about them.”

  Good point. I wish I could have thought of that a few weeks ago.

  Charlotte ran off to play, and I said my good-byes. I had promised to help Mom around the house.

  Claudia walked home with me. She could sense I was sad. We hadn’t talked since the dance, so I filled her in on all the gory details.

  When I finished, she shook her head and said, “You know, you didn’t do a thing wrong, Stacey.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “Of course not. You couldn’t help it. You can’t stop your feelings from happening.”

  I looked at the ground. “I think I loved him, Claud. I really do.”

  Claudia fell silent for a moment. “Well, at least you did something about it. You told him how you felt. It would have been worse if you had kept it in.”

  “Ohhh, why does love have to be like that? Horrible if you keep it in, awful if you let it out.”

  “Not always, Stacey,” Claudia said gently. “People do fall in love together. It happens to almost everyone sooner or later. It just didn’t happen that way for you this time.”

  I sighed. “I guess sometimes love hurts.”

  “Yeah,” Claudia said with a nod. “I guess so.”

  We walked the rest of the way home without saying another word.

  * * *

  Dear Reader,

  In Stacey’s Big Crush, Stacey gets a huge crush on Wes, who is student-teaching her math class. When I was growing up, I had a number of student teachers. Then, when I was in college, I became a student teacher myself. At Smith College, I did my student teaching at the Campus School. This is a private elementary school located on the college campus. The first semester, I taught in the three-year-old class at the preschool. The second semester, I taught in the kindergarten. I thought that after I graduated, I would teach preschoolers. As it turned out, my one and only teaching job was in a fourth/fifth grade class. It wasn’t what I had planned on, but I thoroughly enjoyed that year of teaching, partly because I got to use children’s literature in the classroom. During the year, I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, A Bear Called Paddington, and A Wrinkle in Time, among others, to my students. The kids enjoyed this activity, and I really enjoyed it, so much so that at the end of the school year, I decided to enter the children’s publishing field instead of returning to teaching. And I’ve been involved in books and kids ever since!

  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 © 1993 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, June 1993

  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 978-0-545-76811-5