Graduation Day

  Even better, as far as I was concerned, was that Logan and I didn’t feel we had to avoid each other anymore. In fact, when I spotted him in the hall just before lunch we waved and called hi.

  When the final bell rang that day, Kristy found me signing another yearbook. “I’ll walk home with you,” she said.

  “Cool. Dawn can help us dig up the capsule.”

  Kristy made a face.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said. “It isn’t that bad, Kristy. Nobody else is going to want anything from the time capsule. All we have to do is open it, take Ba-ba out, close it up again, and bury it. This time it really won’t be opened for seven years.”

  “I guess.”

  Kristy’s mood improved on our walk home because she was excited about seeing Dawn.

  “Plus, now Dawn can look in the capsule,” I pointed out. (Dawn had mailed an envelope to me to put in the time capsule since she wasn’t going to be at the official burial.)

  “True,” said Kristy.

  Kristy and Dawn had a happy reunion when we reached my house. They hugged and laughed, and Dawn said she couldn’t wait to see us graduate the next day.

  “You’re going to get to see the time capsule too,” I told her, and explained what had happened.

  Ten minutes later, Mallory showed up with Claire, Nicky, and Vanessa. Mal and Dawn had a happy reunion of their own.

  Then Nicky said gleefully, “I want to see if worms are crawling all over Ba-ba.”

  Claire burst into tears, and Mal put an arm around her. “It’s a sealed metal container, Nicky,” she said. “There won’t be any worms in it now, and there won’t be any worms in it seven years from now.”

  “Oh.” Nicky looked disappointed.

  “All right, let’s get going,” said Kristy.

  “Hurry!” cried Claire.

  Mal, Dawn, Kristy, and I set to work with shovels and trowels, and a few minutes later the tin box was in view. We hauled it out of the ground and Kristy stood over it, shaking her head. Finally she announced, “The unofficial opening of the Stoneybrook time capsule.” She pried off the lid and pawed through the contents until she spotted Ba-ba’s ears. Then she reached in, pulled her out, and handed her to Claire, who hugged Ba-ba to her chest.

  “Thank you,” said Mal.

  “You’re welcome.” Kristy put the lid back on the tin and returned the tin to the hole. “Now,” she said, standing up and brushing dirt off the knees of her jeans, “the people of Stoneybrook once again bury their time capsule, and this time it really, really, REALLY is not going to be opened for seven years.”

  When the box had completely disappeared under the earth Kristy looked at the plot of loose soil and said, “We ought to make a marker to put here so we know exactly where the capsule is buried. That might be a nice project for the summer.”

  A marker was a nice idea, but how could Kristy even think about such things when graduation was … the next day? I watched Mal and the Pikes amble home, Claire still clutching Ba-ba, and I turned to Kristy and Dawn. I pictured my friends and myself in our caps and gowns. I imagined the events the next day would bring. We would become SMS graduates. Middle school would be over. We would be on our way to high school.

  From: ckishi

  Subject: GARDUATION!

  To: NYCGirl

  Date: Thursday, June 22

  Time: 9:09:53 P.M.

  Stacey can you beleive it I am going to graduate with you guys after all.!! All I have to do is pass sumer school and I have passed summer school before. Also I pased all my other finales so I realy didnt do so badly. And now on to tomorrow I am SOOOOOOOO excited. Actual garduation! And then the party here. Oh you know what I am just way too exited to finish this e-mail. I have to call you. I am going to call you right now.

  It was a little too much for me. Considering the incredibly bad start the day had gotten off to, I had not had high hopes for much of anything. In the past, meetings between my parents and my teachers have led to horrifying turns of events. When I headed off to SMS on Thursday morning, knowing Mom and Dad would soon be doing the same thing, I fully expected them (or my guidance counselor or somebody) to inform me later that I was going to have to repeat eighth grade. If that had happened, well, I just wasn’t sure what my response would have been. I think I might have had a tantrum right there in the hallway. All day long I was on pins and needles. From 10:00 until 11:00, the time of the Meeting About Me, I kept an eye out for my parents. I didn’t see them, though, and by the beginning of the last period of the day I hadn’t heard anything from anyone. I was so nervous that my skin began to itch and I wished I could crawl out of it.

  You can imagine my reaction when I heard my name called over the loudspeaker, summoning me to the office. I practically ran there. I was so desperate for news then that I almost didn’t care whether it was good or bad. (Well, not really, but you know what I mean.) Anyway, I bolted into the office and was greeted there by my guidance counselor. And guess what, I may have flunked my science final, but I was going to be allowed to graduate with my friends. I’d have to take science in summer school, though, and my diploma would be a blank piece of paper. But I didn’t care. That blank will be replaced with the real thing when I pass the summer-school course. (Of course, if I don’t pass it I really will have to repeat eighth grade, but I am going to do everything I can think of to pass it. I KNOW I’ll be going to SHS in September with my friends.)

  So … how did I spend the rest of the afternoon? Shopping. I’d been too superstitious to buy anything for the party until I knew whether I’d be graduating myself. Now I had a million things to do. Which was good, because I was becoming overly excited about graduation, and planning the party kept my mind off of it.

  The next thing I knew, it was Friday morning. The eighth-graders didn’t have to go to school until two-thirty — half an hour before graduation. Janine was at school, Mom and Dad were at work, Stacey and her mom had decided to go to the hairdresser together, Mary Anne was busy with Dawn … I was on my own, but I had things to do. I cleaned up my room, then decorated it for the party. And slowly the morning passed. Mom came home from work early to help me get ready for the ceremony, and at 2:20 we were in the car on the way to SMS.

  Mom asked me a hundred questions. Did I know where to meet her and Dad and Janine after graduation? (Yes.) Was I ready for the party? (Yes.) Had I called Peaches to tell her where she and Russ should meet Mom and Dad? (Yes.) Had I remembered my cap and gown? (Yes. Duh.)

  I couldn’t wait to get out of the car. We found a mob scene at school. The parking lot was full — of cars and of people.

  “How am I going to find Stacey?” I wailed. And like magic, she materialized at my elbow then.

  “Oh, my lord, I am so nervous!” she cried.

  “Me too!” Suddenly we were hugging each other. “Do you remember where we’re supposed to go now?”

  “The gym,” she replied. “Come on.”

  “ ’Bye, Mom,” I said. “Go get good seats. We’ll see you later.”

  Stacey and I, clutching the boxes containing our caps and gowns, made our way to the gym. We were unbelievably keyed up. So was everyone we passed.

  “An hour from now we’ll be graduates!”

  “SHS, here we come!”

  “We’re almost out of here!”

  When we reached the gym, Stacey and I looked around for Kristy, Abby, and Mary Anne. We wouldn’t be sitting together during graduation since we would be seated alphabetically, but we had agreed to meet in the gym anyway. That was where we would put on our caps and gowns, and where we would line up to march to the playing fields for the ceremony.

  “There’s Abby,” said Stacey.

  “There are Kristy and Mary Anne,” I said.

  The five of us drew into a knot and hugged one another.

  “Come on,” said Mary Anne. “We better get ready.”

  We put on our gowns and adjusted our caps and tassels.

  “We get to keep the tassels,
you know,” said Abby. “Look. They have little gold SMS charms on them.”

  “May I have your attention?” A voice boomed through a megaphone. The gym fell silent. “Time to line up. Alphabetically, please. Try to remember who you were standing next to when we rehearsed this yesterday.”

  “Well, this is it,” I said to my friends. “We’ll meet up afterward, okay?”

  Unexpectedly, Kristy burst into tears.

  She started a chain reaction.

  “Not now, you guys,” said Abby, searching for a tissue. “We have to pull ourselves together. We don’t want to look all blotchy when we get our diplomas.”

  After a lot of sniffling and hugging we calmed down. We found our places in a line of blue robes that wound around the gym. From outside came the sound of our school band tuning up (minus all its eighth-grade members, of course), and before I knew it, I was marching through the halls of SMS. We left the building through a side door and snaked around to the back of the school. Before us was a sea of folding chairs. Every single one of them was filled and a small crowd of people was standing behind them. My classmates were filing onto risers. I followed Stephanie Kingsley to our spot in the third row. Then I turned and faced the audience. I tried to find my family, but the crowd was too big.

  When the last of my classmates was in place, the music stopped and our principal, Mr. Taylor, stepped up to the podium and made a brief speech. This was followed by several more speeches — our class officers spoke, and Emily Bernstein gave the valedictory address.

  And then … at last …

  “It is now time to award the diplomas,” said Mr. Taylor when he had returned to the mike.

  My classmates began to file off of the bleachers. As each one reached the podium, Mr. Kingbridge announced his or her name and Mr. Taylor handed out the diploma. When my name was called I heard a shout from the audience (my parents? shouting with relief?) and I grabbed my cap off of my head and waved it in the air. I had done it! I had graduated! (Sort of.)

  The ceremony flew by. Before I knew it, my classmates and I were standing in our spots on the bleachers again. After a moment of silence, Mr. Taylor looked at us, each holding a diploma, and said proudly, “Ladies and gentlemen, our graduates.”

  I have never in my life heard such cheering and clapping. Every single one of us was grinning. I was still grinning a few minutes later when my friends and I had filed off of the bleachers once again, this time to find our friends and families in the crowd.

  “Claudia! Claudia!”

  I heard someone shout my name. Then I was being wrapped in a hug. Mary Anne.

  She started to cry, of course, and so did I.

  The next half an hour was complete pandemonium. I found my parents and I remember introducing them to Samantha, when she and Mr. McGill were walking around looking for Stacey. Jessi and Mal were there. And at one point or another I think I saw every member of every one of my friends’ families.

  Eventually we started taking pictures.

  “Photo op!” Abby cried. “First the graduates.”

  Snap. Someone took a picture of Mary Anne, Kristy, Abby, Stacey, and me.

  Snap. A picture of me with Mom, Dad, Janine, Peaches, Russ, and Lynn.

  Snap. A picture of Kristy and her huge family.

  Snap. A (harmonious) picture of Stacey and her parents and Samantha.

  “Okay, now all the BSC members!” called Kristy.

  Snap. A picture of Kristy, Stacey, Jessi, Abby, Dawn, Mary Anne, Mal, and me.

  I think the picture-taking could have gone on for quite some time, but eventually I began to feel overwhelmed by the crowd. I drew Kristy aside. “Don’t you guys want to go to my house now?”

  Kristy looked a little overwhelmed herself. “Definitely,” she said.

  “Come on, everybody.” I rounded up Abby, Mal, Mary Anne, Dawn, Jessi, and Stacey.

  “Wait,” said Kristy as we were getting ready to leave. “I think we need one more picture of the eight of us. The BSC members — without our caps and gowns, though.”

  “Why?” asked Dawn.

  “Because I want one picture to remind me of us as we used to be,” said Kristy. “Before some of us graduated and everything changed.”

  A pause. Then, “Okay,” I said. “Hey, Janine! One more picture!”

  Snap.

  When I looked at that picture later, after Janine had had her film developed, I saw one of the most somber pictures ever taken of the eight of us. But I framed it and put it on my desk.

  My friends and I were driven to Claudia’s in two cars. Charlie drove Stacey, Abby, Jessi, and me there in the Junk Bucket. And Claudia’s uncle Russ and her aunt Peaches, who have a van, dropped off Claud and the others.

  “Okay, PAAAAARTY!!” cried Claudia as we met on her front lawn. The rest of us began to cheer and whistle. Even me. I hadn’t expected to feel excited, exactly. But I found that I did. Everyone else’s excitement was contagious.

  “Whoooooo, we did it!” cried Stacey.

  “I can’t believe you guys get to go on to high school next year,” said Jessi enviously.

  “Oh, look who’s talking. The person who’s going to travel the world this summer!” said Dawn.

  “But I’ll be left all alone at SMS,” Jessi complained.

  Mal put her arm around her. “You’ll survive. At least you won’t be a lowly sixth-grader anymore. Seventh grade is much cooler.”

  “Well, I still can’t wait for high school,” said Jessi.

  “It’s going to be pretty exciting,” said Mary Anne.

  “Yeah, older guys,” said Claudia.

  “Better dances,” said Stacey.

  “Better everything, I bet,” added Mary Anne.

  Claud wanted to start the party. “Let’s go inside, you guys,” she said, opening her front door. “Come on upstairs.”

  We trooped up the stairs to Claud’s room. I tried to pretend we were about to begin a BSC meeting, just like one of the ones we would have held a few months ago. But when I saw the inside of Claud’s room that idea flew out the window. Claud had turned it into a graduation fantasyland. Bunches of balloons were tied everywhere. Streamers crisscrossed the ceiling. A HAPPY GRADUATION! sign was strung up over her bed. (Well, actually, the sign said, HAPPY GRADUATION!) The desk was covered with a paper cloth decorated with caps and gowns and diplomas, and strewn with sequins and glitter. On it Claud was setting out sodas and a bowl of punch and plates of cookies and chips and popcorn and veggies and even tiny chocolate diplomas.

  “Pop one of the balloons,” Claud directed me, handing me a pin.

  Popping balloons has never been one of my favorite activities, but I obeyed and was showered with more sequins and glitter.

  “Cool!” exclaimed Mal. “How did you do that?”

  Claud just shrugged and grinned, while the rest of us set to work popping balloons. Soon we were covered with glitter. We were shaking it out of our hair and brushing it off of our clothes.

  “Look at us!” I exclaimed.

  “We are … the Baby-sitters Club!” cried Mary Anne.

  We abandoned the pins and flopped on Claud’s bed and the floor.

  “Remember the time Jackie got a raisin stuck up his nose?” Stacey suddenly said.

  My friends and I began to laugh.

  “And he got his arm stuck in his pants drawer?” I added.

  “Remember when he hit the home run that broke a window at Stoneybrook Elementary?” said Mal.

  “Think of all the stuff that’s happened since we formed the Baby-sitters Club,” said Claud.

  “Yeah, Lucy Newton was born,” said Dawn.

  “We learned sign language so we could communicate with Matt Braddock,” said Jessi.

  “Dawn and I became stepsisters!” exclaimed Mary Anne.

  “Yeah, a lot of non-baby-sitting stuff has happened too,” said Dawn.

  “Tons,” agreed Stacey. “I don’t think I would have gotten through most of it without you guys.”

>   “I know I wouldn’t have,” said Mary Anne.

  “Yes, you would have,” said Abby.

  “Not as well. You guys are the best friends in the world.” Mary Anne’s eyes filled with tears.

  “We’ve had a lot of fights, though,” I pointed out.

  “Being friends doesn’t mean we can’t fight,” said Stacey. She glanced ever so briefly at Claudia. Then she added, “Actually, you just never know about fighting and getting along. Did you guys see Mom and Dad and Samantha all together this afternoon? I nearly fainted.”

  “That was kind of amazing,” agreed Jessi.

  “Remember how mad you were when I decided to go to Riverbend?” Mal said to Jessi.

  “I’ll never forget it.”

  “Remember the fight Dawn and I had after Dad and Sharon got married?” Mary Anne spoke up.

  “Sometimes fighting makes friendships stronger,” said Stacey.

  “Does everyone here think we’ll still be friends when we’re grown-up?” Claudia asked.

  “Oh, please, do we have to talk about that?” I said. “I don’t want to think about us not being friends.”

  Mary Anne was sprawled on the bed with a fistful of popcorn. “Well, I want to tell you what I think anyway,” she said. “Because it might make you feel better, Kristy. See, to be honest, I’m not sure that when we’re grown-up we’ll be exactly the kind of friends we are now —”

  “Well, that is exactly what I don’t want to hear,” I interrupted.

  “Shh, just listen,” said Mary Anne impatiently. “But,” she went on, “I do think we’ll always be friends. You know, my dad has friends from his childhood. They may not be his best, best friends, but they are people he knew in elementary school — there’s even one person he knew in preschool — and they still write letters to each other, and send e-mail and Christmas cards, and meet up sometimes.”

  “My mom’s best friend now,” said Jessi, “was her best friend from when she was growing up. They’ve been best friends since they were four years old.”