Graduation Day

  It was a small mean thought, but there it was in my head.

  I pushed it away.

  Because the BSC is where I found all my best friends when I first moved to Stoneybrook. I will admit that Claud and I have had some bad times, friendship-wise. Still … Claudia, Kristy, Mary Anne, Jessi, Mallory, Abby, Dawn. We were brought together by the BSC. And a lot of memories have been created because of the BSC.

  Maybe it isn’t so minor league after all.

  Kristy was just completing her hand-doodle, which had turned into a dragon, when Mary Anne burst through the door and flung herself onto the bed.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said. “Am I late?” She looked at Claud’s clock. Then she grinned smugly. “Five twenty-nine,” she announced. “Safe.”

  Kristy put down the green marker. “Close call,” she said. “Okay. This meeting of the Baby-sitters Club will now come to order. Any new business?”

  “You mean baby-sitting business?” asked Claudia. “Because if not, can I just say that my graduation cap —”

  She stopped speaking when she saw Kristy giving her a Look from the director’s chair, where she was perched with a pencil over one ear. “Yes, I mean baby-sitting business,” said Kristy. She looked around at each of us.

  To tell the truth, as much as I LOVE the BSC, as many things as it’s brought me, as much fun as I’ve had being a part of it … I know it is more important to Kristy than it is to me or to any of the rest of us. And Kristy looked so earnest now, in her chair with the pencil over her ear, a notebook open in her lap, that I tried desperately to think of something that might qualify as new baby-sitting business.

  “Um,” I said, thinking, “um, you should all know that … that Charlotte is going to get an award at her end-of-school assembly.” (This was true, and it wasn’t bad, as club business goes.) “It’s a writing award, and she’s really proud, but she’s too shy to say anything. Um, Dr. Johanssen told me so I could congratulate Charlotte, and you guys might want to congratulate her too. Since she won’t tell you about it herself.”

  “A writing award. Very cool,” said Mary Anne.

  “Definitely,” Kristy agreed.

  “Can you believe that Charlotte will be in fourth grade next year?” Claud asked.

  “The kids we’ve been baby-sitting for are growing up so fast!” exclaimed Mary Anne.

  “You sound like my mother,” I said. “When she’s talking about me.”

  “Can we get back to club busi —” Kristy was saying when the phone rang. She grabbed it. “Hello, Baby-sitters Club,” she said. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Pike…. Monday? This Monday? … That’s not such short notice. Don’t worry. Let me call you right back. Mary Anne will check our schedule.”

  By the time Kristy had hung up the phone, Mary Anne had opened our club record book and was checking the appointment pages. “What time Monday?” she asked Kristy.

  “Right after school. It’s for all the Pikes, but Mal will be home to be the other sitter.”

  There are so many Pike kids — eight, including Mallory, who’s the oldest and an honorary BSC member — that we need two sitters at their house if we’re going to baby-sit for all her brothers and sisters. We don’t feel comfortable with just one sitter for more than four kids. This is one of the many sensible BSC rules that Kristy has insisted upon.

  It was great to have Mal around again. She now goes to a private school in Massachusetts, but her school term had already ended, and she was home for the summer.

  “Actually,” said Mary Anne, “it looks like I’m the only one free. Mal and I can take the job together.”

  “Great,” Kristy said, and phoned Mrs. Pike back.

  A few other calls came in before the meeting ended. Once upon a time, when my friends and I were a little younger, a little more into baby-sitting, and a little less busy with sports and other activities, the BSC was a much bigger deal. We had more members because we needed them. Sitting jobs were called in almost as fast as we could fill them. The pace has slowed since we scaled the club back awhile ago, and I have to admit I’m relieved. I don’t think Kristy is, though. I think she misses it.

  The numbers on Claudia’s clock flipped over to 6:00, and Mary Anne, Kristy, and I stood up.

  “Want to stay for dinner?” Claud asked me as I was about to leave.

  “Sure.”

  It was a nice, simple invitation — one that in the past I wouldn’t have thought twice about, because it would have been so normal. Now I marveled at its normalcy. Every day that passed meant we were a little farther from our big fight and closer to the way our friendship used to be.

  I was glad. I didn’t want to graduate from SMS with any bad feelings about my friends.

  June 3 7:38:52 P.M.

  INSTANT MESSAGE

  CKishi: Hey stace whats going on.

  NYCGirl: Hi, Claud! Just checking my e-mail. What are you doing?

  CKishi: Your going to think I’m crazy starting a assinment on sat. night but I decided to start my letter to myself.

  NYCGirl: Great! How’s it going?

  CKishi: Its hard!!!!! Have you started yours yet.

  NYCGirl: Not yet. Just thinking about it.

  CKishi: I was porcri prok prokras putting mine off by reading my e-mail but I guess I’ll go back to it now

  NYCGirl: Ciao, then. Later.

  CKishi: Later

  Why was it so hard to write a letter to myself? It was a perfectly good Saturday night, one with a lot of excellent TV shows that I had been planning to watch as soon as I had written down a few ideas for my letter. But the hours were slipping by and I still had no idea where my letter was going. (The best of the TV shows had already ended.)

  I had started by making a list of people who are or who have been important to me. Mom, Dad, Janine, Mimi, Peaches, Russ, Lynn, Kristy, Stacey, Mary Anne, Dawn, Jessi, Abby, Mal, Alan, Jamie and Lucy Newton … This was nice, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Plus, the list was getting out of hand. I had included Peaches, Russ, and Lynn. Should I add the rest of my relatives too? Alan made me think of past boyfriends and I wondered whether to put all of them down. The Newton kids made me think of the rest of our sitting charges, and I actually did start to list them, then realized how long the list was getting. I hadn’t even written down the names of my art teachers or of artists I admire.

  I threw the list of people away and started writing down important events in my life. There was Mimi’s funeral; the day Lynn was born; the day I met Stacey; my big fight with Stacey; my first art class; the day I was told I would have to repeat seventh grade; my sixth birthday party, when the guests didn’t show up; and the time I went to the beach with Kristy’s family and lost David Michael. But were any of these defining events? (What exactly was a defining event?)

  I threw the list of events away too and turned my thoughts back to the people in my family. My mom and dad. My sister, Janine. Hmm. Janine is a genius. I have grown up with a genius (while I am far from a genius myself, at least where schoolwork is concerned). Is that defining? Then, of course, there is Mimi. My wonderful grandmother. I had been as close to Mimi as I was to anyone else in my family — to anyone else in the world. And then she was gone. I still miss Mimi. I miss her every day. In the very beginning, just after she died, I couldn’t even figure out how not to think about her. Finally, I began working on a portrait of her, and I found other ways to keep her memory in my life without being overtaken by sadness. So Mimi’s death was definitely a defining event.

  “Dear Me,” I wrote. Well, that sounded awfully funny. “Dear You,” I tried. And then, “Dear Claudia.”

  Okay. I had the beginning of my letter.

  Great. I had been sitting in my room for two hours, missing good TV shows, and all I had come up with was “Dear Claudia.” Anyone could have written that.

  My mind wandered. Maybe my phone would ring. A little chat with Stacey might perk me up. Funny. A year ago a little chat with Stacey would definitely have perked me up. I wouldn?
??t even have had to think about it. But Stacey and I are still dancing around each other a little, just the teensiest bit uncertain about our friendship. I mean, the friendship is still there, but it has changed. I hate to say this, but I feel as if I don’t trust her one hundred percent anymore. And I can’t believe that the reason we had a fight in the first place was over a boy. But it did happen.

  Speaking of boys, maybe Alan would call. Alan can always make me laugh. It’s such a shame that the rest of my friends don’t like him much. I do understand that he’s been a major pain since forever (I used to be one of the ones who thought he was a major pain), but he really isn’t like that anymore. At least not around me.

  Hmm. I wonder if in four years Alan and I will still be going out. Four years sounds like a lot of time to go out with the same person. In four years I’ll be almost eighteen. On the other hand, I’ve been friends with some people for a lot longer than four years. Now, why is it that four years sounds long when I’m thinking in terms of Alan Gray, but not so long when I’m thinking in terms of Kristy or Mary Anne?

  I turned back to my letter. I changed the font on my computer and wrote “Dear Claudia” instead.

  Okay. Good job, Claud.

  I had basically accomplished nothing.

  At long last, the phone actually rang.

  “Hello?” I said.

  Kristy used to make me answer my phone, “Hello, Baby-sitters Club,” even when we weren’t having a meeting, but I had finally told her that I wasn’t going to do that anymore. I have a feeling that when I get to SHS next fall I probably will answer the phone in a whole new way.

  When I get to SHS? Let’s face it, I mean, IF I get to SHS. I am hanging on to eighth grade by a thread. I have JUST managed to make it this far. I have gone back to seventh grade, worked with tutors, spent countless hours in the resource room, and I’m not sure what will happen if I don’t pass all my final exams.

  “Hello?” I said again when I heard nothing on the other end of the phone.

  “Um … is this Elio’s?”

  “Elio’s?” I repeated.

  “Sorry, I think I have the wrong number.” Clunk. The caller hung up.

  I looked at my pitiful letter to myself. Then I looked at the stack of books and papers that I should have been studying in order to pass my exams.

  If I flunked and had to spend another year at SMS while my friends went on to SHS, I would … I would … Well, I wasn’t sure what I would do, but it wouldn’t be anything good.

  “Mary Anne!” shrieked Claire at the top of her lungs when she answered my knock at the Pikes’ door. She sounded as if she hadn’t seen me in years.

  “Hi, Claire,” I replied. I tried to take off my drippy coat and boots without leaving puddles in the Pikes’ front hallway. “Maybe I should stick these back outside,” I said.

  “No, they’ll get all wet.”

  I looked at Claire. “They’re already all wet,” I pointed out.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Mal appeared. “Hi, Mary Anne. Put your boots on this newspaper and hang your coat over here. Don’t worry about a little water. You think with seven kids coming home from school this afternoon the house stayed dry?”

  Mal led me into her cheerful, slightly chaotic house. I like to visit the Pikes, but it would make me crazy to live here. I knew, though, that her home and family were what Mal missed most when she was away at school.

  Claire, who’s five, ran ahead of Mal and me into the kitchen, where her sisters — Margo (seven) and Vanessa(nine) — were having a snack.

  “Where are the boys?” I asked.

  Mal pointed her thumb downstairs. “Rec room,” she said. “Not sure what they’re doing, but they’re quiet.”

  I made a face. Quiet isn’t necessarily a good thing. The Pike boys — eight-year-old Nicky and the ten-year-old triplets, Byron, Adam, and Jordan — can get into an awful lot of trouble whether they’re being noisy or quiet. But when I peeked at them I saw that they were reading comic books.

  When the girls finished their snacks they joined the boys and their stack of comics. Not ten minutes later I heard Claire say, “I’m bored.” This didn’t worry me until I heard Nicky and Adam say the same thing.

  “Okay.” I jumped to my feet and peered outside. Still raining. Uh-oh. “How about a game of Clue?” I suggested.

  “No, that’s too hard for me,” said Claire.

  “How about making —”

  Jordan cut Mal off before she could even finish her sentence. “No crafts,” he said firmly.

  I’m not sure now why I did this, but for some reason I found myself telling the kids about the letters my classmates and I were writing.

  Claire looked puzzled. “But what kinds of things are you telling yourself?” she wanted to know.

  “Things I’ll want to read about in four years.”

  “Are you writing about things you’re doing now?” said Byron. “Things that are happening now?”

  “Those are the kinds of things you would put in a time capsule,” spoke up Vanessa.

  “What’s a time capsule?” asked Margo.

  “A time capsule is … ” I looked helplessly at Mal. How do you describe a time capsule?

  Mal spoke thoughtfully. “When people make a time capsule,” she began, “they collect things that are representative of a place or time — things that show what it is like — and they put them in a box or something and then bury the box. Sometime in the future the box is opened, and the people who look at the things inside feel like they’re looking into the past.”

  “What do you mean, things that show what something is like?” asked Nicky.

  “Well, if we were making a Pike time capsule we might put one of Vanessa’s poems in it, since she writes so much poetry,” said Mal. “Or we could put in a photo of our house or a report card one of you guys brings home — anything that’s about us right now. Then when we looked at the things in the future they would show us what the past was like.”

  “Cool,” said Byron.

  “Let’s do it! Let’s make a Pike time capsule,” said Vanessa. She was practically quivering with excitement.

  “Yeah!” cried the other kids.

  “How do we start?” asked Margo.

  “Let’s start by making a list of things we could put in it,” said Mal.

  So Mal got out a pad of paper and a pen, and her brothers and sisters began tossing out ideas. But my thoughts had gone off in a different direction. Suddenly I had a great plan, almost Kristy-like in its brilliance. I couldn’t wait until our BSC meeting that afternoon to tell everyone about it.

  At exactly 5:27, Stacey and Claud and I heard thundering on the Kishis’ stairs, and a moment later Mary Anne rushed into Claud’s bedroom, followed by Mallory.

  “Mal!” Stacey exclaimed.

  “I thought I’d come to the meeting, since Mary Anne was on her way here after she left my house. I hope you don’t mind, Kristy.”

  “No, this is great,” I said, missing the days when seven or eight of us used to be crowded into the room.

  “Plus, I got an idea this afternoon, and Mal can help me explain it,” said Mary Anne.

  “Cool. What’s your idea?” asked Claud.

  “Ahem,” I said.

  “Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Kristy.” Claud settled herself on the bed and gave me her full attention.

  “Thank you. Okay. This meeting of the Baby-sitters Club will now come to order. Any new business?”

  Mal’s hand shot in the air. “I have news!”

  “My idea?” said Mary Anne, looking wounded.

  “No. I wouldn’t tell them your idea. I have news about Jessi. I didn’t say anything this afternoon,” Mal went on, glancing at Mary Anne, “because I was hoping I could tell everyone at once. At the meeting.”

  “But wait. Any actual club business?” I asked. “Schedule changes? Problems?” No one spoke. “Okay. Mal? Your news. And then you can tell us your idea, Mary Anne.”

  “My
news,” Mal began, sounding important, “is that Jessi and a couple of other students at her dance school have been selected to join a dance company that is going to go on a world tour this summer. Can you imagine? A world tour. They’re going to go to eight countries.” (Jessi, who’s a sixth-grader like Mal, is an extremely talented ballet dancer. She studies at a special school in Stamford and has already appeared in lots of productions. In fact, the reason she dropped out of the BSC was because she had been accepted into an intensive program at the dance school.)

  “Oh. My. God,” said Stacey. “This is so cool.”

  “What an opportunity,” I said.

  And then we all began talking at once. When we settled down, I turned to Mary Anne. “Okay. Now tell us about your idea.”

  “Well,” said Mary Anne, “Mal and I were sitting at her house this afternoon, as you know, and the kids were bored because they were cooped up inside, so I told them about the letters we’re writing to ourselves, and somehow we started talking about time capsules —”

  “And now my brothers and sisters want to make a Pike time capsule.” Mal couldn’t help interrupting.

  “So they started planning that,” Mary Anne went on, “but I thought — why not make a bigger time capsule? One that all our sitting charges could contribute to? A time capsule for our neighborhood in Stoneybrook.”

  “Oh! What a cool idea!” I cried. “Let’s see. We should plan a meeting for all the kids who want to be involved.”

  “Yeah. We’ll have to explain to them what a time capsule is,” said Mary Anne.

  “My brothers and sisters didn’t quite understand at first,” Mal added.

  “Okay. That’s easy,” I said. “All right. Let me think. The things they put in the capsule could be about the world today, or about Stoneybrook, or the neighborhood, or even their families. Anything that will make a picture of our neighborhood right now.”

  “They should probably write up explanations of the things they contribute to the capsule,” Claudia spoke up.