Laine cleared her throat. “Um,” she began, “nothing like this has ever happened to me. Mom and Dad have never had a huge fight. They argue sometimes, but mostly they get along really well. They spend time together whenever they can, and every now and then I’ll catch them exchanging these really private looks that tell me they’re still in love with each other. Just like they probably did when they were younger and first got married.”
“You know what?” I whispered. “I’m not sure my parents are in love anymore. I mean —”
“Oh, they must be,” Laine interrupted. “They’ve just hit a bad patch. That’s what my aunt would say. You’ll see. Everything will be fine soon.”
“Yeah. Of course. You’re right. I’m sure of it,” I replied. “This was probably just a worse fight than usual.”
“What started it?” asked Laine. “Do you know?”
“I’m not sure,” I replied. “But when I got to our door, Dad was shouting about these huge bills he was getting for the jewelry Mom charges. And believe me, it isn’t costume jewelry. It’s really nice stuff. Like from the antique collection at Altman’s, or from Tiffany’s. What Dad said is true. Mom does shop too much. And she spends too much money on things we don’t need. And what Mom said is true, too. She’s bored. She does miss having Dad around. He really has become a workaholic. You know, I think everything would seem less awful if Mom and Dad were being ridiculous; if they were tossing silly insults at each other or saying things that weren’t true.”
Laine was toying with one of her earrings. She kept taking it out of her ear, then putting it back in. “I don’t know what to say to you,” she told me.
I was beginning to cry again. “That’s okay.”
We both sat there for a few moments. I looked at my watch. It was ten of six. Mom and Dad probably weren’t worried about me yet. The Walkers hadn’t been sure how long they’d be at the gallery, so at breakfast that morning I’d said I’d be home around six. Mom and I knew that meant anywhere from five-thirty till six-thirty.
I sighed. “Laine?” I said in a weary voice.
“Yeah?”
“I’m scared. I’m really scared.”
“Maybe,” Laine began uncertainly, “you should call Claudia.”
“Claudia’s parents hardly ever fight,” I told her.
“But you might feel better if you talked to — to your other best friend.”
I managed a tiny smile. “Maybe,” I replied. “The Baby-sitters Club is having a meeting right now. I could talk to Dawn and Mary Anne and everybody!” I began to feel better even before Laine handed me her phone.
Before I tell you about my phone call to Claudia, maybe I better tell you a little more about the club and the girls in it. And the best place to start is with Kristy Thomas, I think. That’s because Kristy is the president and founder of the club. It was her idea and she made it happen. See, Kristy has three brothers. Two of them are older (they go to high school), and one of them is much younger. A year or so ago, when David Michael, the little one, was just six, I had recently moved to Stoneybrook. Kristy and I were twelve and beginning seventh grade. At that time, the three older Thomas kids were in charge of taking care of David Michael most afternoons. But a day came when none of them was free to watch him, so Mrs. Thomas got on the phone and made call after call, trying to find a sitter. While that was going on, Kristy got one of the brilliant ideas she’s famous for. What a waste of time, she thought, that her mom had to make so many calls. It would be much more efficient if a parent could make just one call and reach a bunch of baby-sitters at once. So Kristy got together with her good friends Mary Anne Spier and Claudia Kishi (Kristy lived in their neighborhood then — next door to Mary Anne and across the street from Claud), and they decided to form the Baby-sitters Club. One of the very first things they agreed on was that they needed at least one more member, so Claudia suggested me. Claud and I were just getting to know each other in school, and I’d done my share of baby-sitting here in New York before we moved. The girls accepted me into the club, and after a very casual election, Kristy became the president (that was only fair), Claudia became the vice-president, Mary Anne became the secretary, and I became the treasurer.
The four of us agreed to meet three afternoons a week from five-thirty until six. Parents could call us during those times to line up sitters. How would they know they could reach us then? Because Big-Idea Kristy organized an advertising campaign. By the time we held our first meeting, people had heard about us. We got job calls right away.
I think one reason the club is so successful is because of the businesslike way in which Kristy insists that it run. The club members keep a record book and a notebook. The record book is where important information is noted, and where Mary Anne, the secretary, schedules jobs for the club members. The notebook is more like a diary. In it, each member is responsible for writing up every single job she goes on. And once a week, she’s responsible for reading about the experiences the others have had. Hardly anyone likes writing in the book, but we all agreed that knowing what was going on with the families we sat for was really helpful.
Now let me tell you more about the girls in the club, and how the club grew from four members to seven (if you count me as a branch member). I’ll start with Kristy again. Boy, are Kristy and I different from each other. If it weren’t for the club, I bet we wouldn’t have become friends. Kristy is a tomboy. She loves sports, she doesn’t care about clothes, and she’s athletic and wiry and the shortest kid in her class. She’s also, as I’ve said, full of big ideas — and she usually manages to pull them off. Kristy can be immature and a loudmouth, but she’s also funny, a good friend, and an excellent baby-sitter. She’s great with kids.
Kristy’s home life has not always been easy. Her father ran out on her family when David Michael was pretty little, and her mom had to work hard to keep the rest of the Thomases together. But she managed. And then, around the time the club was starting up, Mrs. Thomas met and fell in love with Watson Brewer, this divorced millionaire. Watson has two adorable children, Andrew and Karen, who live with their mother most of the time and who were three and five then, but Kristy wouldn’t have anything to do with them or Watson. She wanted her life to stay the way it was. It didn’t, though. The next summer, after school had ended, Kristy’s mother and Watson got married and the Thomases moved into the Brewer mansion across town. And recently, the Brewers adopted a little girl, so on the weekends when Karen and Andrew are visiting their father, the house is pretty full. Somehow, Kristy adjusted to everything.
Claudia Kishi, my Connecticut best friend, is the vice-president of the club. She has her own personal phone and private number, so her room has always been an excellent place to hold club meetings. Claudia and I are alike in several major ways, which is probably why we first became friends. For one thing, we are both pretty sophisticated, almost as sophisticated as Laine. (I hope that doesn’t sound stuck-up. It’s just the truth.) For another, we like fashion and clothes and dressing in wild outfits. I think Claud is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen. She’s Japanese-American, and has long silky black hair, dark almond-shaped eyes, and a complexion that’s to die for. I don’t know how she manages that great complexion, considering all the junk food she eats. She’s lucky her complexion is good and that she’s so slender. If she got pimply and overweight, it would be a dead giveaway that she’s hiding all that stuff in her room that she’s not supposed to eat — Ring-Dings, Ding-Dongs, Ho-Hos, potato chips, candy, and more. Her parents don’t approve of Claud’s junk-food addiction, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s just an interesting habit of hers.
The other things you should know about her are that she’s a gifted artist, she likes to read Nancy Drew mysteries, and she’s a terrible student. The bad-student thing is unfortunate for two reasons. One, Claud has a perfectly good mind; she just doesn’t apply herself in school. Two, her older sister Janine is a genius. She’s so smart that even though she’s still in high
school, she’s already taking courses at Stoneybrook’s community college.
Although Claud loves her parents and her sister, she’s had a rough time lately. Recently, her grandmother Mimi died. Claudia and Mimi had been extremely close. For Claudia, losing Mimi was like losing one of her parents. But she’s dealing with it pretty well.
The club secretary is Mary Anne Spier. Mary Anne is more like Kristy than Claudia or me, although she’s not exactly like any club member. She’s like Kristy in that she actually looks like her — brown hair, brown eyes, very short. And for the longest time, she cared absolutely zero about clothes. No, wait. That’s not true. She dressed like a baby, but that was because her father made her dress that way, not because she didn’t care. See, Mr. Spier has raised Mary Anne alone ever since Mrs. Spier died, which was when Mary Anne was very little. And for the longest time, he thought that the best way to raise a daughter alone was to be really strict with her. He made up all these rules for Mary Anne, like she had to wear her hair in braids and she couldn’t talk on the phone after dinner unless it was about homework. Lately, though, Mr. Spier has loosened up. He’s relaxed his rules, and Mary Anne can wear the clothes she likes and fix her hair however she wants.
Oddly enough, Mary Anne is the only one of the club members with a steady boyfriend. His name is Logan Bruno and he’s one of the nicest people I know. He’s an associate member of the club. That means he doesn’t attend meetings, but he can be called on to take a job if one is offered to the club that none of the other members can take. That happens sometimes. (There’s one other associate club member, by the way. She’s a friend of Kristy’s, named Shannon Kilbourne.)
Mary Anne and her dad live in the house across from Claudia’s with their kitten, Tigger. And I have to add that, despite her problems, Mary Anne is the most sincere, compassionate person I know, and a good listener. She’s also a big crier and very romantic. She’s best friends both with Kristy and with Dawn Schafer.
When did Dawn join the club? Good question. Dawn came along soon after she moved to Stoneybrook, at a time when the club was expanding and needed a fifth member. Dawn moved to Connecticut from California with her mother and her brother Jeff, because Mrs. Schafer grew up there and her parents still lived there. The move was difficult for Dawn, but even more difficult for Jeff. He never adjusted and finally went back to California to live with his dad. So Dawn’s family is split in half.
Like Kristy, Dawn seems to have adjusted, though. She may look fragile, with her long pale blonde hair and her bright blue eyes, but she’s tough. And she’s a real individual. She dresses the way she pleases (I think of her style as California casual), eats only healthy foods (none of Claud’s junk food and no meat), and doesn’t care what people think of her. Two interesting things about Dawn: one, she lives in a really old house with a secret passage in it that just might be haunted and two, her mom and Mary Anne’s dad have been going out on lots of dates!
Dawn joined the club as an alternate officer, meaning she could take over the job of any club member who couldn’t make a meeting, but when I moved back to New York, Dawn became the treasurer.
Something else happened when I moved back to New York. The club’s business had been growing and growing, so Kristy decided I would have to be replaced. She ended up replacing me with two people — Mallory Pike and Jessi Ramsey. That’s because Mal and Jessi are two years younger than the rest of us. They’re in sixth grade, and not allowed to sit at night unless it’s for their own younger brothers and sisters. But they’re good sitters, so Kristy figured that if they could take on a lot of the afternoon jobs, the others would be freed up for evening jobs. So far, the junior officers seem to be working out just fine.
Mallory is somebody the club used to sit for. Believe it or not, she has seven younger brothers and sisters — and three of the boys are identical triplets! Mal is wonderful at keeping a level head and staying calm during emergencies. I guess she learned those things just from being the oldest of eight kids.
Mallory is really neat. She loves to read, write, and draw, and is thinking of becoming an author and illustrator of children’s books one day. She has one big problem, though. She thinks her parents treat her like a baby. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. I think Mal has just reached that difficult age when she feels more grown-up than her parents think she is. Mal really had to work to convince Mr. and Mrs. Pike to allow her to get her ears pierced and her long curly hair cut. And they put their foot down (feet down?) when Mal asked for contacts instead of the glasses she wears. Plus, now she has to get braces. I wish Mal felt better about the way she looks, but as she once said, being eleven is a real trial. Mal copes as best she can.
One thing that helped Mal a lot was making her first best friend. Guess who her best friend is — Jessi Ramsey. Mal and Jessi found each other when they both needed a best friend pretty badly. Mal was going through a hard time trying to grow up, and Jessi and her family had moved to Stoneybrook (right into my old house!) from a little town in New Jersey after the company for which Mr. Ramsey works transferred him to their Stamford, Connecticut, office. Boy, did Jessi have a hard time adjusting to the move. The Ramseys are black, and their neighborhood in New Jersey was pretty integrated. So was the school that Jessi and her younger sister Becca had gone to. But Stoneybrook is almost all white. There are only a few black kids in Stoneybrook Middle School, and none except for Jessi in the sixth grade. I have to say that the people of Stoneybrook did not exactly accept the Ramseys right away. They didn’t look closely enough to see what a nice family they are. They only saw their dark skin. (Well, that was at first. Things are better now.) But in the beginning, it would have helped if they’d kept their minds open. If they had, they would have found two parents who care about their kids very much. They would have found Becca, who is eight and extremely shy, but a loyal friend and a good student. They would have found Squirt, the baby of the family, who is adorable. His real name is John Philip Ramsey, Jr., but when he was born, he was so tiny that the nurses in the hospital nicknamed him Squirt. (He’s caught up to other babies his age now.) And they would have found Jessi. Jessi loves kids, horses, and dancing. She’s a great baby-sitter, she and Mal read horse stories nonstop (especially the ones by Marguerite Henry), and boy, can Jessi dance. Jessi has taken ballet forever. When her family moved to Connecticut, she was accepted by this really good dancing school in Stamford where she goes for lessons twice a week. She has these long, long legs and she practices, practices, practices. She has even danced onstage in front of big audiences.
So those were the people I knew I’d be reaching when I picked up the phone in Laine’s room — Claudia, Kristy, Mary Anne, Dawn, Mal, and Jessi. Some of them were closer friends than others, but they were all my friends.
The phone rang twice.
A familiar voice answered it.
“Hello, Claud?” I said.
I was a little nervous about calling right in the middle of a BSC meeting. Kristy likes the meetings to be strictly meetings — since they are only half an hour long — and she doesn’t like to tie up the phone with nonclub business. But nobody seemed to mind my call too much (especially not Claudia).
“Stacey?” Claudia replied, after I’d said hello.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
Right away, Claudia’s emotional antennae must have gone up. Mary Anne’s are always up (that’s why she’s so sensitive to people), but Claud’s come up instantly when someone she cares about is having a hard time. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Can you talk for a minute? I know I called during a meeting, but …”
“Just a sec,” said Claudia hurriedly.
I heard some funny sounds. First a muffled one that was probably Claud putting her hand over the receiver, then some scufflings and murmurings that were probably Claudia and Kristy arguing over whether to allow a personal call during a meeting. Claudia won quickly.
“Hi, Stace,” she said, a bit b
reathlessly. “Okay, go ahead. What’s wrong?”
“Well,” I began, “it’s — it’s my parents.” This was hard to talk about over the phone. I wished my friends were right there with me.
“Your parents?” Claudia repeated. “Is one of them sick or something?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that.” (I knew Claud was thinking of Mimi, the hospital, and the funeral.) “It’s just that they fight so much. And the fights are getting bigger. Today I came home and Dad was already there and I stood out in the hallway and listened to them yell at each other. They were yelling awful things, Claud.”
“What kinds of things?” she whispered.
I told her about the jewelry bills and Mom calling Dad a workaholic and everything else I could remember.
“Gosh,” said Claudia when I’d finished. “That sounds serious.”
“I know,” I replied. I could feel the tears starting again, but I don’t like to cry over the phone, so I put a stop to them.
“I’m not sure what to say,” Claud went on. “My parents have never had a fight like that. They always just try to discuss things. You know what? Maybe you should talk to Dawn. Her parents fought a lot before she left California. Nobody else’s parents have big problems.” Claudia paused. “What?” she said to somebody in the background. Then, “Oh.” She got back on the phone. “Kristy says to tell you that when her real father was living with them the Thomases fought an awful lot, but Kristy was too little to remember much of it. Here, let me put Dawn on.”
There were more scufflings and murmurings in the background, and I pictured Kristy looking at Claud’s clock and tapping her fingers on the arm of the director’s chair I was sure she was sitting in. (She always sits in the director’s chair, wearing a visor.) But after just a moment, Dawn was on the phone.