At our Friday meeting BSC might as well have stood for the Bawlers and Snifflers Club. We could barely answer the phone. Claudia must have told four different parents she had a cold.
On our final bike ride home, I thought Mary Anne and I would both topple over. It’s hard to see the street when your eyes are wet.
Between last-minute packing and shopping, Friday night and Saturday blazed by. Late in the afternoon, the doorbell rang. I ran to open it, with Mary Anne behind me.
Jessi, Mal, Kristy, Stacey, and Claudia were standing on the porch. They were dressed beautifully, holding out a wrapped present.
“Ohhhh, you didn’t,” I said. (Honestly, I don’t know how a person’s body can keep producing so many tears. I thought mine would have been used up by then, but noooooo.)
“We did,” Claudia said.
“Should I open it?” I asked.
“Yes,” Mal said. “You’ll need it on the plane.”
I ripped open the wrapping and the box. Inside was a gorgeous, leather-bound book of blank pages.
I gasped. “I love it!” I said.
“It’s a journal,” Mallory explained. “So you can write down everything that happens.”
“And then show us,” Stacey added.
“We figured you might get rusty while you were away from the BSC notebook,” Kristy said.
“Oh, thanks! I will miss you guys — so —” I couldn’t finish. I just threw my arms open and everyone fell into them. We must have stood there for twenty minutes, crying and hugging and I’ll-miss-youing.
When they left, I felt a huge tug in my stomach. But I had to think of the flight then.
Mom, Richard, Mary Anne, and I loaded into the car around four o’clock and drove to the Rosebud Cafe for dinner. Logan was working, which was wonderful. I would have felt silly crying in front of a strange busboy.
Dinner was fun, but I think we were all a little nervous about getting stuck in a traffic jam on the way to the airport. I gulped down my ravioli (which, of course, I later regretted).
We reached the airport with plenty of time to spare, which turned out to be a bad idea. Mary Anne and I blubbered uncontrollably. Then Mom and I held onto each other as if we were permanently stuck.
You know what she whispered in my ear? Not “Write,” or “Brush your teeth,” or “Get good grades,” or anything like that.
She said, “Let Daddy love you as much as I do.”
I had to get on the plane fast before I dissolved into one huge tear.
* * *
The entire week flashed through my mind in the time it took the captain to finish his speech. As the “Fasten Your Seatbelt” sign came on, I looked out the window again.
Mom and Richard and Mary Anne were not there anymore. I turned to my book and began writing:
I was a little surprised I’d written the word home. I crossed it out and wrote in California.
But neither one seemed exactly right. I stopped writing and stared at the words for a long time.
Then I made a decision. I’d leave it. After all, it didn’t really matter. I could always go back and change it if I wanted.
Six months was a long time.
* * *
Dear Reader,
In Dawn’s Big Move, Dawn has to make a very important decision. It isn’t easy for her. Her mind is telling her one thing, and her heart is telling her another. In the end, she decides to go where her heart leads her. One of the biggest decisions I ever had to make was where to go to college. To begin with, my guidance counselor had looked at my SAT scores and told me they were low, so there were very few colleges I would be able to get into. My parents looked at my grades and my activities, and decided that was ridiculous. Together, we visited thirteen colleges, and I applied to five. I was accepted at all of them, including two of the top women’s colleges in the country, Smith and Mount Holyoke. I knew I wanted to go to one of these colleges, and I liked both of them very much, but I liked Smith a little better. However, my mother had gone to Mount Holyoke. I agonized over this decision for days. I knew my mother would be happy if I went to Mount Holyoke, and I didn’t want to disappoint her. However, my heart was telling me to go to Smith. In the end, that was the decision I made — and it was the best decision of my life!
Happy reading,
* * *
The author gratefully acknowledges
Peter Lerangis
for his help in
preparing this manuscript.
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 © 1993 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, September 1993
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 978-0-545-76815-3
Ann M. Martin, Dawn's Big Move
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