Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Letter from Ann M. Martin
Acknowledgment
About the Author
Scrapbook
Also Available
Copyright
You remember in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy clicks her heels together three times and says “There’s no place like home”? I was thinking about that on one of those cool days which was perfect for running around and playing shrieking-shouting-laughing-jumping games; which is what my brother David Michael and my stepbrother Andrew, my stepsister Karen and my adopted sister Emily Michelle were doing, along with Shannon, our Bernese mountain dog puppy. I was sitting under a tree, watching the kids.
Perfect weather aside, it was a typical Saturday on a typical weekend for my family. My mother was running errands while my stepfather Watson, and Nannie, my grandmother, had left in Nannie’s car (the Pink Clinker — it’s painted pink) to go scope out a sale at the local gardening center. My brother Sam, who is fifteen, was at his part-time job delivering groceries for the A&P. And my other brother, Charlie, had taken his car, the Junk Bucket (you can guess why it’s named that!) to the garage for a tune-up.
As I watched the kids, Karen held the ball up above her head and said to Shannon, “Okay, Shannon, can you say ball?”
Shannon promptly sat down, her furry tail sweeping arcs in the leaves on the ground.
“Ball, Shannon,” Karen coaxed her.
I wasn’t too surprised that Karen was urging a dog to talk. She has a very vivid imagination.
“Ball,” said Karen again.
Shannon barked.
“Good dog,” cried Karen, which made Shannon jump up and bark some more.
“Okay, okay,” Karen told Shannon. “We’ll keep playing.”
As Karen threw the ball to David Michael and the game of keep-the-ball-away-from-Shannon started again, I had to laugh at my own thoughts. It might be a typical weekend for me and my family, but I bet it would sound pretty wild to some people. There truly was no place like home — our home, especially!
And since it isn’t exactly typical, I guess I’d better explain a little more about it.
I’m Kristy Thomas. I live in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, where I go to Stoneybrook Middle School, coach a softball team called the Krushers, and am president of the Baby-sitters Club (more about that later). My father walked out on my family when I was just a little kid and lives in California now. We don’t hear from him much anymore.
But then my mom got married again, to my stepfather, Watson Brewer. Watson is rich, really rich, and we live in a huge house — a mansion, in fact. That sounds weird all by itself, at least to me, but it’s not too bad. I admit I didn’t want to move at first. But I also have to admit that having all the extra space is nice. In our old house, for example, my brothers Sam and Charlie had to share a room while David Michael’s room was the size of a closet.
But a mansion like Watson’s is big enough for everyone to have his or her own room — even though we are filling up the rooms pretty fast, as you can see. Watson’s two kids, Karen, who is seven, and Andrew, who is almost five, spend every other weekend with us, plus some holidays and two weeks in the summer. Then there’s Emily Michelle, who’s our adopted sister. (She’s two and a half and is from Vietnam.) Plus there’s Nannie, who’s Mom’s mom. Watson and Mom asked her to come live with us to help out with Emily while the rest of us are at work or at school. So Nannie did.
Of course, Shannon doesn’t have her own room (although she does spend a lot of time in David Michael’s room!), but she’s part of the family. Shannon came to live with us after our collie Louie died. Louie was David Michael’s special dog, and we all still miss him. But Shannon’s pretty special, too.
And I better not forget Boo-Boo, Watson’s big old gray cat with yellow eyes (who has very definite opinions and doesn’t mind letting you know them) or the goldfish, Crystal Light the Second and Goldfishie, who belong to Karen and Andrew.
“Okay,” Karen announced. “We’re going to play ‘Where’s the ball?’ David Michael, you cover Shannon’s eyes with your hands and then we’ll hide the ball and see if she can find it.”
David Michael covered Shannon’s eyes (which is not easy with a big, squirming ball of fur like Shannon) while Emily Michelle and Andrew watched. Emily looked on with that sort of benign attention of two-and-a-half year olds, Andrew more seriously. Andrew’s not crazy about dogs, although he liked Louie and he likes Shannon, too.
Karen ran over to the picnic table and put the ball in the notch of the table legs, then ran back to David Michael and Shannon.
“Now,” she said.
David Michael let go of Shannon, who bounced up expectantly.
Karen held out her hands. “Where’s your ball, Shannon?” she asked.
Shannon cocked her head, then looked at everyone else.
David Michael and Andrew held out their empty hands to show they didn’t have the ball either.
“Where’s your ball, Shannon?” David Michael repeated. “Find your ball.”
“Ball!” said Emily Michelle and then threw up her hands. She teetered for a minute, then, with a surprised look on her face, sat down hard.
I jumped up, but before I could run to her, Shannon licked Emily Michelle’s face and sat down with her.
“Ball!” said Emily Michelle again, and everyone started laughing, including Emily.
Then David Michael helped her up and Karen said, “We need to give Shannon a hint. Shannon, table.”
I almost started laughing again at the serious expression on Karen’s face, and the goofy one on Shannon’s as she cocked her head at what Karen said. But I was distracted when I heard voices nearby.
A moment later, I saw Linny and Hannie Papadakis, who live across the street from us and one house down. Linny, who is nine, is David Michael’s good friend. Hannie (that’s short for Hannah) is seven and goes to school at Stoneybrook Academy where she and Karen are in the same class. Hannie is one of Karen’s best friends, along with Nancy Dawes, who lives next door to Karen at her mother’s house. Karen, Hannie, and Nancy call themselves the Three Musketeers.
“Hi!” I called.
“Hannie, hi!” called Karen, swooping out of the game and running to her friend.
“Guess what,” Hannie said breathlessly.
“You won a trip to the moon!” replied Karen instantly.
I tried hard to keep a straight face. It was just like Karen to answer Hannie that way. I mean, most of the time, when people say, “Guess what,” you’re expected to reply, “What?” But not Karen.
“No,” said Hannie. “We —”
“Someone left a basket of nine kittens on your doorstep and you get to keep them all,” said Karen.
“No!” cried Hannie impatiently.
By this time, everyone else had joined Hannie and Karen, even Emily Michelle, who was holding on to David Michael’s pants leg.
“You —” Karen began again.
Seeing Hannie’s look of annoyance, I said gently, “Wait a minute, Karen. I think Hannie and Linny have some news for us.”
“We’re going to become a foster family!” Linny burst out.
“Wow,” said Karen. Then she frowned.
“What’s
a foster family?” said Andrew.
“Is it a family made of adopted people?” guessed David Michael.
“Not exactly,” I said. “Foster families are families that sort of temporarily adopt children.”
“Not like Emily Michelle,” said Karen, still frowning. “She’s ours always.”
Hearing her name, Emily smiled.
“That’s right. This is a different kind of arrangement, a special one, like staying with relatives for a while.”
Karen’s frown cleared. “Like being a Two-Two?” That’s what Karen calls Andrew and herself, because they have two houses and two families and two of almost everything.
“A little like that,” I said. “A foster family is a family a kid can stay with when his own parents can’t take care of him. After he stays with his foster family for a while, he can go back to his own family, or to relatives, or even to a brand new family, like Emily Michelle did — one that is going to adopt him.”
“Neat. Do you get to pick who stays at your house, Hannie?” asked Karen. “Pick a girl. Then we can be the Four Musketeers, maybe.”
“I think you should pick a boy,” said David Michael instantly.
“I don’t think we get to pick,” said Linny.
“Well, I hope your new foster brother is a boy, anyway,” said David Michael. “So does Andrew. Don’t you, Andrew?”
Andrew nodded.
Hannie shook her head. “Well, we want a foster sister.”
“Right,” agreed Karen.
Just then Shannon came crashing into the middle of us.
“She found her ball!” said David Michael. “Good girl. Good girl, Shannon. Come on, Linny. Shannon knows a new trick. I’ll show it to you.”
“Can you stay?” Karen asked Hannie.
“For a little while,” said Hannie. “Let’s call Nancy and see if she can come over. Is that all right, Kristy?”
“Sure,” I said. While the girls were in the house making arrangements for Nancy to come over, I began to follow Emily Michelle on a tour of the yard. She would bend over, inspect something, pick it up, then give it to me. We collected two rocks, a yellow leaf with black spots, an old blackened walnut that the squirrels had missed (or not wanted) and one of those little plastic tags that you stick in the ground to label plants. This one said pansies.
Karen and Hannie came back outside and made a beeline for a pile of wooden crates by the gardening shed. They began separating the crates, and had just finished when a car pulled into the driveway. Mr. Dawes was dropping Nancy off. Karen ran to her and led her to the shed, talking excitedly.
“Wow, neat,” I heard Nancy say admiringly as they went by.
I followed Emily Michelle around to the back of the shed, convinced her she didn’t want to inspect a partially opened bag of cow manure any more closely, and helped her collect another plant label (sweet alyssum). When we rounded the corner, I saw that the Three Musketeers had started stacking the crates up in two parallel lines. The back line was against the side of the shed.
“So what’re you building?” I asked.
“A playhouse,” said Hannie, her face red from bending over to lift the crates.
“The inside of the crates are going to be shelves,” explained Karen.
“We’re going to decorate the playhouse,” Nancy added.
“Flowerpots!” cried Karen, and she and Nancy began to wrestle with a giant empty flowerpot at the side of the shed.
Just then David Michael careened to a stop, holding Shannon’s ball a safe distance above his head. “What kind of house are you guys building?”
I looked at David Michael with new respect. How had he known, right away, that the Three Musketeers were building a house?
“A playhouse,” said Karen. She and Hannie began to wrestle the flowerpot into an upside-down position.
“You should make a fort,” David Michael said.
“A playhouse,” said Karen firmly.
“A fort would be better,” said Linny.
“How do you know?” asked Hannie.
“Yeah,” said Karen. “And besides, we’re going to fix this up extra special.”
“Yeah,” echoed Hannie.
David Michael looked at Linny and Linny shrugged and held his hands out, palms up, and he shrugged, just like I’d seen Mr. Papadakis do.
“Just wait,” said Karen. “When we’re finished, everybody will want to see the most beautiful playhouse in the world.”
The boys ignored the girls.
“Okay, Shannon,” said David Michael. “Go out for a thirty-yard pass.”
Linny began to run across the yard and soon they were all off playing keep-away from Shannon again.
Taking Emily Michelle’s hand, I walked a little closer to the building site.
“Look,” I told her. “This is going to be a playhouse.”
Emily Michelle looked. I’m not sure what she saw.
“Can Emily Michelle and I watch you work?” I asked.
“May you,” said Karen firmly. She is very particular about some things, like spelling and rules.
“May we?” I asked.
“Certainly,” said Karen grandly.
“Great,” I said. “And you know what? I think when your playhouse is finished, you should have a housewarming party and invite everyone to see it.”
“What’s a housewarming?” asked Karen.
“It’s a party you have to celebrate a new house or home,” I said. “A special new-house party.”
“Okay,” said Karen.
“Maybe,” said Hannie.
I pulled Emily Michelle onto my lap and she leaned against me quietly. It was getting late. Soon Mom and Watson and Nannie would be back. Probably Sam and Charlie would be, too. Then it would be time for dinner and we would talk about what we’d done all day and — I smiled — we’d hear how smart Shannon was and all about Karen’s new playhouse and about the Papadakises’ news, too. I wondered what it would be like to be a foster kid. I didn’t think it could be easy, even if you went to stay with a warm, fun family like the Papadakises.
I couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to have a home, or to be between homes.
No place like home, I thought, and hugged Emily Michelle gently.
Claudia Kishi was under her bed. Only her purple-and-white-striped stocking feet showed — sort of like when the house fell on the witch after the tornado in The Wizard of Oz.
Only Claudia’s not a witch from Oz. She’s the vice-president of the Baby-sitters Club and a major junk food fan.
“I know they’re here,” she said. “I know … ha!”
A moment later she backed out from under the bed holding a bag of yogurt raisins. From various hiding places around her room she’d also produced a bag of sourdough pretzels, a half-bag of Mallomars (we’d worked on those at the last meeting), and a box of Frosted Flakes.
“Frosted Flakes?” Dawn Schafer said, wrinkling her nose. “Claud, those are practically all sugar. And they’re cereal. For breakfast.”
“They’re good,” answered Claudia happily, settling down on her bed with the yogurt raisins. “Try them.”
Dawn, who was sitting on the floor next to the bed, shook her head. (Dawn is a health food fan as much as Claudia is a junk food fan.) “The pretzels,” she said and, taking some, passed them to Stacey McGill.
Stacey took a couple of pretzels. She’d brought an apple with her, too. Dawn gave the apple an approving look.
“I’ll try some Frosted Flakes,” said Mallory. She was also sitting on the floor, along with her best friend, Jessica Ramsey.
Since I’d eaten some of the Mallomars at the last meeting, I decided to stick with them. I took one out of the bag, passed the bag to Mary Anne Spier who was sitting in the chair next to the telephone, held the Mallomar up, and said, “This meeting of the Baby-sitters Club will now come to order.”
Remember I told you I was the president of a baby-sitting club? Well, it was Monday and we were at one of our re
gular club meetings, which we hold every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 5:30 until 6:00 at Claudia Kishi’s house. In addition to being the BSC vice-president, Claudia is also the only member who has her own private phone line. That’s important, because we use the phone a lot to schedule baby-sitting jobs.
I’m the president of the Baby-sitters Club because I thought of the idea, which came to me one night back before Mom married Watson. My mother kept calling people and calling people, trying to find a baby-sitter for David Michael, and I suddenly thought, What if Mom could make just one call and reach several baby-sitters all at once?
At the time, the baby-sitters I was thinking of were me, Mary Anne, and Claudia, since we were already doing a lot of baby-sitting. Then Claudia suggested that if three people were not enough, we could ask Stacey to join us. Stacey had just moved to Stoneybrook from New York, and she and Claudia had become friends. Stacey agreed, so with me as president, Claudia as vice-president, Mary Anne as secretary, and Stacey as treasurer, we were on our way. In fact, through hard work, good recommendations, and some advertising, we soon had more baby-sitting jobs than we could manage. That was when Dawn, who had just moved to Stoneybrook from California, became the fifth Baby-sitters Club member and the alternate officer.
But right after that Stacey had to move back to New York and we needed more baby-sitters, so Jessica Ramsey and Mallory Pike joined us as junior officers. Then Stacey’s parents got divorced and she returned to Stoneybrook with her mother. (Her dad stayed in the city.) Now there are seven BSC members (who are also officers) plus two associate members, Logan Bruno (who is Mary Anne’s friend and boyfriend) and Shannon Kilbourne, who lives across the street from me. The associate members don’t attend meetings, but they are good sitters who can help us out in a pinch.
We also keep a notebook, where we each write down what happened at our jobs. That’s how we stay up-to-date on what’s happening with our clients. We also learn from each other’s experiences. Different points of view often help solve problems that we might not be able to solve by ourselves.
Maybe that’s one of the reasons we are such a successful club and business — we are so different from each other.
For example, Claudia Kishi is one of the most creative people I know. She’s going to be an artist, and her eye for color and style shows in the way she dresses. It’s always distinctive and funky. Today she was wearing purple-and-white-striped tights, Doc Martens (except she’d taken them off to sit on the bed), a short black ruffly skirt that looked like it was part of a women’s Olympic figure-skater’s costume, a purple cropped sweater with silver button covers on the back buttons, and a scrunchy black velvet hat decorated with purple and red velvet flowers. Claudia’s Japanese-American, and with her long black hair and her perfect skin and dark eyes, she’s beautiful. Still, being beautiful doesn’t mean you can always wear the kinds of clothes Claudia wears. But Claudia can.