Kristy and the Mystery Train

  Diabetes is a condition in which your body doesn’t make enough of a necessary substance called insulin. Practically speaking, it means that your blood sugar has to be carefully controlled. Stacey has to be extremely careful about what she eats, and she has to give herself insulin injections every day. If she doesn’t, she could become very sick.

  Maybe because she’s from New York, and maybe because she has had to deal with diabetes, Stacey is a little more mature than the rest of us. She’s also one of the most fashionable members of the BSC. Today, for example, while I was in my standard uniform of jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers, and Abby, Mary Anne, Jessi, and Mallory were all sporting casual looks involving shorts or jeans, Stacey was wearing an oversized butter-colored linen shirt that matched her hair, which was pulled back into a sleek French braid. Her baggy chino shorts were rolled up to exactly the same length on each leg, above the knee. Her sandals had cork soles, which made her look even taller and more elegant.

  Claudia and Stacey are best friends, and Claudia is very trendy, too. But as with our other best-friend pairs, Stacey and Claud have plenty of differences. Claudia’s look is less New York elegant and more funky-artistic.

  That’s because Claudia is an artist. Unlike Stacey, who is good at all subjects, not just math, Claudia thinks school is basic torture and she doesn’t do well in it at all. What she does excel in is art. She’s already won prizes for her work, and she plans to be a professional artist someday.

  Claudia’s artistic eye shows in the ways she combines colors and shapes in her clothes. Today she was in bright mode: red shorts, a purple crop top over a longer red-and-white-striped muscle shirt, purple socks, and red high-tops laced with red-and-white-striped shoelaces. Her hair was pulled up to one side with a knot of red and purple scrunchies, and her earrings were shiny red apples.

  Not everyone could have looked good in that. But Claudia, with her long black hair, perfect creamy skin, and dark almond-shaped eyes (she’s Japanese-American), looked terrific.

  One more difference between Stacey and Claudia: Claudia is a junk-food gourmet. She keeps all kinds of bad goodies hidden strategically around her room, where her parents can’t find them (they don’t want her to eat junk food, and they don’t want her to read Nancy Drew books for some reason, so she hides those, too). Claudia always shares her hidden treats with us at BSC meetings, along with pretzels and popcorn and other healthier snacks for Stacey.

  Two other best friends in the BSC are Mallory and Jessi. As junior officers, they concentrate on daytime sitting jobs. That’s because they are both eleven and in sixth grade, so they aren’t allowed to sit at night yet, except for their own brothers and sisters.

  Mallory has had plenty of baby-sitting experience. The oldest of eight children, she has four brothers (including Nicky), three of whom are identical triplets, and three sisters (including Claire).

  Like all of her sisters and brothers, Mallory has pale skin, blue eyes, and hair in the chestnut brown range, although in Mal’s case it is more of a reddish brown. To her eternal despair she wears glasses and braces. She wants to lose the braces (but her parents and her dentist won’t let her) and is saving her money for contact lenses. She likes to write and draw and wants to be a children’s book author and illustrator someday. And she loves horses and horse stories, interests she shares with Jessi.

  Jessi and Mal have other things in common, too: Like Mal, Jessi is the oldest kid in her family. And both girls have pet hamsters.

  But Jessi is from a smaller family. She has one younger sister, Becca, and one baby brother, John Philip, Jr. (nicknamed Squirt), plus her mother, father, and her aunt Cecelia (who helps take care of the family). And Jessi’s ambition is to be a professional ballerina. She takes special dance classes after school in Stamford, gets up every morning at 5:29 exactly to practice on the barre set up in her basement, and has already danced important roles in several ballets. Although Jessi was dressed as casually as all of us except Claudia and Stacey, her clothes definitely gave away clues about her interest in ballet. She was wearing an old, faded pink leotard that made her brown skin and brown eyes glow, and her black hair was pulled back into a dancer’s bun. She carries herself like a dancer, too — very gracefully and with perfect posture.

  Our newest member, Abby, is not yet close to anyone in particular, although, of course, we are all friends. She and her mother and twin sister, Anna, moved here after Mrs. Stevenson earned a big promotion at her job in New York City. Abby’s father was killed in a car wreck a few years ago. She hardly ever talks about him.

  But don’t make the mistake of thinking Abby is quiet or shy. The opposite is true. She is very opinionated. I noticed this right away, when she started challenging everything I said. Okay, maybe she didn’t challenge everything, but the point is, Abby is not shy about sharing her thoughts.

  I don’t always agree with her, and she and I don’t always get along. But I respect Abby, and I like her. And we do have some things in common. For example, we are both sports fans, big time. I can watch any game, anytime, anywhere. And I like to play softball so much that I tried out for, and made, the SMS girls’ softball team.

  If it’s possible, Abby is even more athletic than I am, hard as that is to admit. She is a little taller than I am, with brown hair and brown eyes. Sometimes she wears glasses and sometimes she wears contacts, depending on her mood. She’s a soccer fanatic who can tell you the names of every single player on the U.S. women’s soccer team. Plus, she’s a player. She was captain of her team back on Long Island, and she joins every pickup game she sees.

  Abby never walks when she can jog. Even when it’s not soccer season, she’s in training, “just in case.” She’s recently added a new item to the list of sports she admires (although she hasn’t taken it up yet): swimming. That’s because some Olympic swimmers have asthma and allergies, just as Abby does.

  Abby is allergic to all kinds of things, from milk to cat litter. And she always carries two inhalers with her (one over-the-counter, one prescription), in case she has an asthma attack. But as you might guess, she doesn’t let her asthma or her allergies slow her down.

  And nothing could slow down Abby’s sense of humor. She loves jokes and makes the most awful puns in the world, sometimes so quickly that she’s begun a new joke before I’ve figured out the last one.

  Another BSC jock is Logan, which is one of the reasons he’s an associate member instead of a full-time one. He’s a good enough student, but basically, as far as he’s concerned, school means sports: baseball, football, volleyball, track, you name it. With all those practices and games, he doesn’t have a whole lot of extra time for baby-sitting. Some people have been deceived by Logan’s soft Southern accent and good manners — and his membership in the BSC — into thinking they can push him around. Wrong. Logan stands up for what he believes in.

  Shannon is the only member of the BSC who doesn’t go to SMS. She’s a student at a private school in Stoneybrook, and although she’s as busy as Logan, her involvement in school activities is more academic. She’s in tons of clubs, including the French club, she’s the only eighth-grader in the astronomy club, and she earns practically straight A’s. When I first moved to this neighborhood and met Shannon (she lives across the street), I thought she was a big snob (she didn’t think much of me, either). But after we got to know each other, we became friends. In fact, Shannon’s dog, Astrid, who is a Bernese mountain dog, is the mother of our puppy, Shannon. David Michael named Shannon the puppy after Shannon our neighbor and associate BSC member.

  So there you have the BSC. If you’d walked into Claudia’s room just then, you’d have seen Claudia tearing into a bag of chips, Mary Anne with the club record book open on her lap, and Jessi and Mallory sitting on the floor, staring at Abby and me. Stacey was smoothing some stray hairs into her French braid, while glancing from me to Abby with one eyebrow raised. I was in the director’s chair, where I always sit during BSC meetings, and Abby was propped against the dresser,
her arms folded, watching everyone else watch us.

  “News? What news?” demanded Claudia.

  “You’ll never guess who showed up at Krushers practice today,” I said.

  “Kristy!” wailed Mary Anne. “That’s not fair.”

  “We’ll give you a clue,” Abby said. “He may not be an all-star, but you could definitely call him a star.”

  “Babe Ruth?” Claudia guessed.

  “Babe Ruth is dead!” I exclaimed.

  “I know. So he can’t be an all-star, but you could still call him a star, right?” said Claudia.

  “She’s right,” Mallory pointed out.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you. It’s —”

  Just then the phone rang. I scooped it up, unable to resist the temptation to prolong the suspense a little more. “Baby-sitters Club.”

  “May I please speak to Kristy Thomas?” said a voice I’d heard before. I couldn’t quite place it, but the next words solved that mystery. “This is Mr. Masters, Derek’s father.”

  “Oh! Hi! This is Kristy,” I said, sounding a lot calmer than I suddenly felt.

  “Kristy. How are you? I’m glad I reached you.” Mr. Masters went on to explain why he had called.

  I listened closely, said “okay” a couple of times, and then hung up the phone in a daze.

  “What?” Claudia practically screamed.

  “Check the book,” I told Mary Anne. “See if we have three people who can take a job with nine kids for a three-day train ride from Boston, Massachusetts, to Charleston, South Carolina, beginning this Friday.”

  “Derek Masters,” Abby guessed, looking smug.

  “WHAT?!” Claudia did scream that time. So did everyone else. It took awhile for things to settle down enough for me to explain.

  I generously let Abby tell how Derek had shown up at practice and invited Nicky to join him on the “Mystery Train” ride to promote his new movie.

  Then I said, “But what Derek doesn’t know is that Mr. Masters has decided that Derek can have not only Nicky and Greg, but four other friends on the train. As a surprise, Mr. Masters is going to invite four more of Derek’s friends to go on the train ride. Plus, Derek’s brother Todd, and Todd’s best friend will be along. Mr. Masters, who is also an executive producer for the film, is going to be too busy to keep an eye on all nine kids, and Mrs. Masters can’t go at all, so Mr. Masters needs three sitters.”

  Trying to act calm and professional, Mary Anne flipped the pages of the record book. She sighed and looked up. “Jessi, Claud, Mal, and I have a previous engagement,” she said.

  Claudia groaned. “I know. Helping with the opening of the summer season at Greenbrook.” The Greenbrook Club used to be a ritzy, exclusive country club. It recently reopened, with far more welcoming policies toward the general public.

  Mal shrugged philosophically. “I have a feeling my parents wouldn’t have let me be a baby-sitter on a long-distance train ride.”

  “Same here,” Jessi said.

  Still in her professional mode, Mary Anne poised her pencil above the page. “That leaves Kristy, Stacey, and Abby, and possibly Shannon. Logan is at baseball camp this week.”

  “Well, if Mom and Watson say yes, count me in,” I said.

  “Ditto my parents,” said Stacey.

  “I can do it,” said Abby. No one asked her if she had to check with her mom. Abby has a lot more freedom and independence than the rest of us. She’d ask her mom, of course, but it would be almost more of a formality than a request for permission to go.

  “Good,” said Mary Anne. She wrote our names down, along with the information Mr. Masters had given me.

  At the same time, Mallory reached into her backpack. “The Mystery Train,” she said, pulling out another notebook. “Do you think I need to start a section in the mystery notebook for it?”

  “Oh, come on, Mal. They’re only calling it the Mystery Train because the movie is a mystery,” I said.

  “Seriously,” said Claudia. “Just because Derek led us into one mystery, doesn’t mean he’s going to get us into another. Right?”

  “What is this Derek-mystery connection? You guys have talked about this before, but no one’s ever explained,” Abby said.

  “It’s all written up here,” said Mallory. “The mystery of Kristy and the vampires.” She patted the notebook and handed it over to Abby.

  “Read all about it,” Jessi joked. “Read how the vampires came to our little town. And more.”

  “But seriously, folks,” I said, as the phone rang again. “I don’t think we have to worry about any kind of mystery. Anyway, the train ride will be exciting enough without one.”

  It turned out that I was right about the train ride being exciting.

  But was I ever wrong about not having a mystery on board!

  “Mallory would have liked to see Louisa May Alcott’s house,” Stacey said, studying the Boston guidebook. “Alcott wrote Little Women, you know.”

  “There’s an aquarium,” suggested Nicky.

  Mom said, “Don’t forget the Children’s Museum.”

  “No!” said Linny Papadakis and Buddy Barrett. Buddy added, “It’s too much like school.”

  I met my mother’s eyes across the fancy table and we both smiled. I like going to museums now and seeing historic sites. I’ve liked it ever since we took a class trip to Salem, Massachusetts, where we studied the witch hunts that took place in Colonial America — and found ourselves involved in a creepy mystery.

  See what a little interest in history can lead to?

  But I didn’t say that aloud. Nicky and Derek’s other Stoneybrook friends, Buddy Barrett, James Hobart, Linny, and David Michael, were already excited enough without the mention of crimes and mysteries. As a matter of fact, I thought that David Michael’s uncharacteristic silence just now was due to excitement.

  David Michael is friends with Derek, but he isn’t Derek’s best friend. I suspected that Mr. Masters had included David Michael in the invitation as much for my sake as for my brother’s. On the other hand, since Derek spends much of his time in California, on the set of his television series, he doesn’t have that many close friends in Stoneybrook. So it worked out well.

  We’d arrived in Boston on Friday evening. “We” was Stacey, Abby, me, Mom, Watson, Nicky, Linny, Buddy, James, and David Michael. Mr. Masters had put us all up at a swank hotel overlooking Boston Harbor. Although we had arrived late, we were too excited to settle in right away, so Mom and Watson had gone with us to explore the Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market area nearby. Looking up at Faneuil Hall Marketplace while people swarmed around us, it was hard to imagine this two-story, bronze-domed building as the “Cradle of Liberty” described in the guidebooks. But it had been exactly that. Mass meetings of patriots had convened there during the pre-revolutionary period. Now it, along with two other restored buildings, housed what seemed like hundreds of shops and restaurants.

  Stacey plunged into one shop after another while we trailed along, taking in the sights, followed by the boys, who were practically spinning in circles trying to see everything at once. But then the door of a restaurant opened, swamping us with delicious aromas, and we realized how hungry we were. We chose a seafood restaurant and pigged out on chowder and seafood. After that, it was easy for Mom and Watson to persuade the boys — and us — that it was time to go back to the hotel and get some sleep.

  I woke up early the next morning to … Abby breath. She was standing next to my bed, in the bedroom we baby-sitters were sharing. (The five boys had the room next to us, connected to our room by a door, which we’d left open. Beyond their door, another door opened into Mom and Watson’s room.) But Abby wasn’t just standing. She was also leaning over and staring at me.

  “Wh-at?” I muttered groggily. I wasn’t used to staying up so late, or to eating quite so many clams for dinner, I had to admit.

  “This hotel happens to have an excellent exercise room with a sauna and a masseuse,” Abby informed me in an urgent whisper, in o
rder not to wake Stacey. “You do want to check them out, don’t you?”

  As my eyes began to focus, I realized that Abby was already dressed in her sweats and sneaks. I also recognized the rays coming in the window as very early sunlight.

  But I wasn’t about to admit to Abby that I wanted to sleep. She’d never let me hear the end of it. “Give me a minute,” I muttered and staggered out of bed.

  It was an excellent exercise room. Abby did sets of weights while I put in some miles, alternating between the NordicTrack and the treadmill. We even hung around in the sauna, which we had all to ourselves — not surprisingly, considering it was practically dawn. However, the masseuse was not yet on duty, much to my secret relief.

  Now everybody was up and dressed and sitting at the breakfast table with Mom and Watson. We were trying to decide what to do with the time we had free before going to the train station. The early morning workout hadn’t tired me out after all, I realized. I was full of energy and very hungry.

  Looking at the Fearsome Five (as I had secretly dubbed them), I could see that they, too, had recovered from the exhaustion of the previous evening. With a long train ride ahead, what they needed was a little workout of their own.

  “What about a walking tour?” I suggested. “I saw a sign in the lobby for one that meets in about twenty minutes. It’ll be over by eleven, and we’ll have plenty of time to meet the train at one.”

  “I’d like that,” said James. “We’ve even heard about Boston in Australia.”

  “It’s a nice little town,” said Stacey.

  I’d call Boston a pretty big town myself, but for Stacey, even Boston is small, compared to her hometown.

  We walked the walk — all the way through Boston, it seemed to me, although according to our maps, we only went through Boston Common (which the guide called “The Common”), the Public Garden, and Beacon Hill. We learned that The Common is forty-eight acres and was set aside in 1634 as a cow pasture and training field, and is available still for the same purposes by law. We didn’t see any cows, though.