“Yeah, Mom?” I replied.
“You better go to bed now,” she said. “We won’t be sleeping in tomorrow morning. We want to leave early and beat the traffic.”
“Okay. ’Night, Mom.”
The members of the BSC tiptoed back to the girls’ dorm, checked on the little kids, then fell asleep.
Not surprisingly, Emily Michelle was the first one awake on Saturday morning. And she made sure I was the second one awake. I had been deeply involved in this dream about Stacey and Sam (they were getting married, but Sam was late to his own wedding because he was busy making goof calls from a pay phone in front of the church) when I felt a hand patting my face. “Morning! Morning! Morning!” a little voice said over and over.
I opened my eyes. Emily was sitting at the head of my bed. She removed a pacifier from her mouth and grinned at me.
I smiled back, but I took away the pacifier. “Now where did you get that?” I asked her. “That’s for emergencies, like when you start to cry in the middle of the supermarket.”
Emily continued to smile.
“We might as well get up,” I said. I peered at my watch, squinting my eyes. “Eight-thirty-five!” I exclaimed. “Oh, no! Yikes! Thanks for waking me up, Em.”
I flew to Mom and Watson’s room and rapped on their door. “It’s after eight-thirty!” I called to them. Then I woke up everyone else. Half an hour later we were starting to load up the cars, and half an hour after that, we were eating a quick breakfast on the porch.
“I wish we didn’t have to leave,” said Karen pitifully.
“Me, too,” agreed Andrew. “We have to say good-bye to Shadow Lake.”
“How very, very sad,” added Nancy dramatically.
Mallory swatted at a bug, missed it, and reached for the Raid.
“Don’t spray that in here!” shrieked Dawn. “Not while we’re eating!”
“And don’t do that in here, either,” I said to Stacey and Sam. They were sitting side by side, holding hands. They were also eating breakfast. (Note that Sam, who is right-handed, was eating left-handed, since his right hand was laced through Stacey’s left hand. They could not even let go long enough to eat.)
Watson ignored my comment. “This has been a nice vacation,” he said, setting aside a cantaloupe rind.
Of course, everyone began thanking him and Mom for it. Except me. I said, “Watson, have you made a decision about the cabin yet?”
Slowly Watson shook his head.
I was appalled. “You mean you don’t want it? After all this?”
“No,” he answered. “I just haven’t made up my mind yet.”
I let out a breath. “Oh,” I said. Well, why hadn’t he? “Please, please say yes to your aunt and uncle,” I begged.
“I need to think about it a little more. Shadow Lake is fun, but now I see exactly how big a responsibility the cabin — and the boat and the dock — would be.”
“I want to come back here and go swimming again,” said Karen.
“I still want to build a fort in the woods,” said David Michael.
“Boot!” cried Emily Michelle.
“Also, Shadow Lake’s mystery isn’t solved,” added Dawn. “We can’t just leave it hanging. That’ll drive me crazy.”
“This place is so romantic,” whispered Stacey.
“I’ll make a decision in a week,” said Watson.
* * *
Not much later we were caught up in all the last-minute chores that must be done before leaving a house empty. We collected the garbage. We cleaned out the refrigerator.
“Hey, here’s an ant!” cried Claudia.
“In the refrigerator?” asked my mother, horrified. “Is it alive?”
“Nope. Dead.” Claud examined another shelf. She opened a plastic container. “Hey, here’s a moldy yogurt. And the mold is red!”
Mom switched Claud to the job of cleaning the grill, and took over the refrigerator herself. At the same time she told the little kids to please check the bedrooms again and make sure they hadn’t left anything behind. The kids grumbled, but soon we heard cries of, “Here’s my rock collection! I almost forgot it!” (That was Nicky.) And, “Whoa, here’s that bird’s nest I found!” (Hannie.) And, “How did my bathing suit get under my bed?” (Karen.) For awhile, the kids were busy running these items out to the cars, where Watson and Nannie tried to find places to pack them. I think that, if cars could bulge, ours would have.
Finally the last window had been closed and the last bureau drawer checked. Mom stepped onto the porch and locked the front door behind her. “I know we’ve left something behind,” she said.
We piled into the cars. Watson had suggested that we return to Stoneybrook in the same cars in which we’d driven to Shadow Lake. This was a good idea, in theory, but right away, Sam insisted on riding in the same car with Stacey, and Andrew said he would not ride with Emily Michelle since she had gotten carsick before.
“I do not like people barfing in my lap,” he said.
Neither did Stacey, which meant she couldn’t ride in Emily’s car. And the Three Musketeers refused to be split up. Getting the twenty of us divided into the three cars was like piecing together a living jigsaw puzzle, but finally we managed it to everyone’s satisfaction.
We drove off, first through the woods, then by the big boat dock and the stores, and finally turning onto the highway.
Emily Michelle, who was now sitting next to me (I was equipped with several garbage bags), frowned and said, “Way go?” which means, “Where are we going?”
“We’re going home,” I told her.
“Mrow,” said Boo-Boo from his carrying case.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” said Linny.
And David Michael said, “Hey! I left my remote-control car in our fort!”
Whew. The front lawn of my house was as crowded as an airport. Here’s who had turned up to welcome home their kids: Stacey’s mom, Mr. and Mrs. Kishi, Dawn’s mother and Mary Anne’s father, Jessi’s parents, Becca and Squirt, all the rest of the Pikes, Mr. and Mrs. Dawes, and Mr. and Mrs. Papadakis with Sari.
Nicky tried to open the door to the station wagon before Mom had even stopped the car. “Watch it!” I cried.
He held out for exactly three more seconds, then burst outside and into the arms of his mother and his father at the same time. A few moments later, everyone was hugging. Emily Michelle, still sleepy from the car ride, was caught up in the emotion of the moment, and ran to the nearest pair of open arms (Mr. Ramsey’s) for a hug. Then she glanced up, realized she was looking into the face of someone she barely knew, and burst into tears. (Luckily, Mr. Ramsey’s feelings weren’t hurt.)
* * *
Over the next few days, I finished getting the trip diary ready to present to Watson, and my friends wrote letters and postcards.
One week after we returned from the lake, the trip diary was finished. I even typed it. I used our computer. I printed it out in red ink to make sure it would catch Watson’s eye. Claudia and Mallory did some illustrations that we slipped among the diary pages, and then Mary Anne and I made a cover for the diary. We titled the diary: SUMMER TRIP — SHADOW LAKE. The book was thick. I was pretty proud of the finished product.
“How do you think I should present this to Watson?” I asked Mary Anne as we admired our work.
“Wrap it up,” she replied. “Give it to him after dinner tonight.”
And that is just what I did. When I handed it to him, I said, “Watson, this is for you from all of us. Sam and Charlie and David Michael and Emily and Andrew and Karen and I — plus our friends. I’ll be honest. I’m giving this to you partly to say, ‘See how much we love the cabin? We would like for it to stay in the family,’ but mostly to say, ‘We had a fantastic trip. Thank you for a wonderful vacation. We’ll always remember it, and we want you to remember it, too!’”
Watson read the entire diary that evening. Then he sat at his desk and wrote this letter:
Watson called me his da
ughter! I think that’s even better than being able to look forward to more vacations at the lake.
Before I went to bed that night I left a note for Watson on his pillow. It read:
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 © 1992 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, July 1992
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 978-0-545-63263-8
Ann M. Martin, Baby-Sitters at Shadow Lake
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