The last day of school came and went, too, and before I knew it, I was home that afternoon, hugging a garbage bag full of junk I’d cleaned out of my locker.
It was one week and one day before the wedding. Mom had decided to take the following week off from work to get ready for the big day. To make up for it, she’d said she would have to work extra hard ahead of time.
So when I came home to find Mom sitting at our kitchen table looking hysterical, I was especially surprised.
“Mom!” I exclaimed. “Today was your last day at the office before the wedding. I thought you’d be there forever. How come you’re home already?” I began checking the contents of the refrigerator.
Sam appeared in the kitchen doorway. “That’s a touchy question, Kristy. I just asked her the same thing, and you know what she said?”
“What?” I asked. I took an orange out of the fridge.
“I can’t repeat it in mixed company.”
I stuck my tongue out at Sam. But his comment rated a smile from my mother.
“Oh, Sam, it wasn’t that bad,” said Mom.
“Don’t tell me,” I said, suddenly inspired. “Let me take a guess. The wedding’s in five days and we’re moving in two weeks.”
“No,” said Mom with another smile.
“The wedding’s tomorrow and we’re moving on Wednesday?”
“No.”
“The wedding’s in five minutes and we’re moving tonight?”
“No. But how about this? Lisa and Seth”
(they’re Watson’s ex-wife and her new husband) “called Watson to say that they’re going to England for most of next week, and leaving Karen and Andrew with Watson.”
“So?” said Sam and I.
“And Aunt Colleen and Uncle Wallace decided to come down on Sunday to help me with the wedding next week.”
“Goody,” I said. Colleen and Wallace are my favorite aunt and uncle.
“They’re bringing Ashley, Berk, Grace, and Peter with them.”
“Oh.” (They’re my cousins.)
“And Aunt Theo and Uncle Neal also called to let me know they’re arriving on Sunday to help with the wedding. They’re bringing Emma, Beth, and Luke.”
“Oh.” (More cousins.)
“And—” Mom went on.
“Uh-oh,” said Sam and I at the same time.
“Tom Fielding, Watson’s best friend—they haven’t seen each other in a couple of years—is coming Saturday evening. With his wife, and Katherine, Patrick, Maura, and Tony.
I think.”
“More kids?” I asked.
Mom nodded.
“Where,” I said cautiously, “are all these people going to stay?”
“Our relatives are staying at the Ramada Inn in Shelbyville, and Watson’s friends are staying with him.” Mom paused. “However,” she continued, “the adults are all going to be helping at the Brewers’ during the day next week. That means that thirteen children are going to be running around, too. Fourteen, if I have to bring David Michael with me.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Holy …” Sam started to say, and then trailed off. “Fourteen? Are you sure?”
I counted them off. “Ashley, Berk, Grace, Peter, Emma, Beth, Luke, Andrew, Karen, David Michael, and—who are Watson’s friend’s kids?”
“Katherine, Patrick, Maura, and Tony,” said Mom.
“Yup. That’s fourteen.”
Sam let out a low whistle.
“Next week,” said my mother, “I need adults to help me cook, arrange flowers, set up chairs, shop, and do about a hundred other things. I do not need fourteen children underfoot.”
Mom buried her head in her hands. “I will never pull this wedding off. Never. We’re not going to get a thing done. We’ll spend all next week breaking up fights over Tinkertoys and deciding who gets the last cookie.”
In a flash, a brilliant idea came to me. (My best ideas come in flashes.)
“Hey, Mom, today was the last day of school,” I pointed out.
“Oh, I know, honey. I’m sorry. How was it? How was your report card?”
“I got straight A’s again, but that’s not what I mean. I mean that school’s over. Starting right now, I have nothing to do—except baby-sit.”
“Kristy, you’re a good, responsible babysitter, but even you can’t take care of fourteen children.”
“No, but the Baby-sitters Club can. There are five of us. The kids could come over here during the day.”
“Oh, brother!” exclaimed Sam. It was his turn to sit down and bury his head in his hands.
“That way,” I said, “the adults could work at the Brewers’ without any interruptions.”
“Well, Kristy,” said Mom, “that might be the solution.”
“I have to check with the other club members, of course, and we might have to cancel some appointments, but I think we could do it. Would you really hire the whole Baby-sitters Club for the whole week?”
“I really would. And if the girls would really sit from nine to five Monday through Friday, Watson and I would really pay the club, let’s see …” (Mom did some fast mental arithmetic) “… a thousand dollars.”
“What!” exploded Sam.
“That comes to two hundred dollars for each of you for the week.”
My jaw almost fell off. Two hundred dollars in just one week!
“Mom, I’ll give you a bargain,” said Sam. “For just eight hundred dollars, I’ll take care of the kids.”
“All fourteen of them? No way. Besides, I believe you already have a summer job.”
“I know, I know.” Sam was going to deliver groceries for the A&P. He had done it the summer before. It didn’t pay too badly, but a thousand dollars was an awful lot of money, even divided five ways. No wonder Sam was jealous.
“Kristy! Kristy!”
David Michael came crashing through the front door and into the kitchen. He was loaded down with rolled-up artwork, his lunch box, a shopping bag, and an envelope holding old papers and work sheets. “Oh, Mom, you’re home already. Hey, guess what, everybody!” He dropped all his stuff on the floor, jumped over it, and thrust a piece of paper across the table at us.
Mom took it. I peered at it. A large gold star was glued to the top.
“‘Citizenship Award,’” Mom read. “‘This certifies that David Michael Thomas has been chosen best citizen of the year in Mr. Bowman’s room, by his peers.’”
“That means the other kids,” David Michael explained.
“Duh,” said Sam. (Mom hushed him with one look.)
She turned to David Michael. “Honey, congratulations!” she said. “We’ll have to frame this.”
“They voted on me,” David Michael told us breathlessly, “and Mr. Bowman wrote my name on the blank and gave it to me and said I should be proud. Can we put this with the other awards?”
(There’s this wall in the den that’s covered with awards Charlie and Sam and I have won. There’s also a table filled with trophies. Until today, David Michael didn’t have any awards or trophies, so this was a big deal for him.)
“Of course,” said Mom. “As soon as it’s framed.”
Mom began helping David Michael put away all the junk he’d brought home from school. Sam and I drifted onto the back porch.
“You know,” I said, stretching out in a wicker chair and putting my feet up on the table, “in about two weeks, there isn’t going to be an awards wall anymore. Everything will be packed away for the move.”
“Yeah, I thought of that,” said Sam. He eased himself into a lawn chair and ran his fingers through his curly hair. “Poor kid.” (I guessed he meant David Michael.)
“Do you think Mom’ll put up our awards wall and the trophy table at Watson’s?” I asked.
Sam shrugged.
“Hey, Sam, um … what do you think about going to the Brewers’? I mean, I know you like Watson, but … it’s just … everything’s going to be so different.”
“I don’t mind.
I don’t have to change schools. That’s really important. None of us has to change schools. Did you know that Mom and Watson have to pay to let you stay at Stoneybrook Middle School instead of switching to Kelsey Middle School?”
“You’re kidding. How come?”
“Because Kelsey is closer to Watson’s, so technically you should go there when you change school districts. But the officials make an exception if you pay a fee. Mom has to pay for David Michael to stay at Stoneybrook Elementary School, too. It doesn’t make any difference to Charlie and me, though, since there’s only one high school.”
“I didn’t know all this,” I said.
“Mom and Watson are trying to make the move as easy on us as possible.”
“I guess so. But, Sam, we still aren’t Watson’s kids, you and Charlie and David Michael and I. Even though we’ll be living over there, we won’t be his kids. Just his stepkids.”
“What are you getting at, Kristy?”
“Well, for instance, if Watson was my real father, and he was still a millionaire, I could ask him for, I don’t know, a big-screen TV for my bedroom. But since he’ll only be my step, can I ask him for anything? I mean, say I need to borrow a couple of dollars and Mom’s not around. Could I ask Watson? Mom said something about Watson not having to be responsible for our college educations.”
“There’s a big difference between four college tuitions and two dollars,” said Sam.
“I know. But there’s a big difference between four tuitions and a big-screen TV, too, and I wouldn’t ask him for a big-screen TV. Where do you draw the line? In what ways is he our father?”
“Those are heavy questions,” said another voice. Charlie had come home. He joined Sam and me on the porch.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” I told them. “You know how I don’t like guessing games. Well, I don’t like surprises, either. I like to know what’s going to happen.”
“But no one knows what’s going to happen, Kristy,” said Charlie, the voice of reason. “Even Mom and Watson don’t really know what to expect.”
“I feel like we’re in a movie,” I said.
“The Bride of Frankenstein?” asked Sam.
“No, not The Bride of Frankenstein.” I stuck my tongue out at Sam. Fifteen-year-old brothers are a real drag. It’s too bad boys can’t skip from fourteen right to sixteen or seventeen.
“I Married a Witch?” Sam guessed.
“No! It’s just … well … think about it. Mom and Dad get divorced, Mom meets new guy, new guy has two kids, new guy turns out to be millionaire, Mom and new guy get married, we move to mansion. But that doesn’t mean it has a happy ending.”
“Yeah, stay tuned for Part Two,” said Charlie. “I know what you mean. It’s hard to believe.”
“And scary.”
“But,” said Sam, turning serious, “we can make it work.”
“You think so?” I asked hopefully. I looked at my brothers.
They nodded.
“Then stay tuned for Part Two!” I said.
The next day, I called the first emergency meeting of the Baby-sitters Club that we’d had in a long time. It wasn’t easy keeping my news a secret, but I managed not to say a word about the fourteen children or the huge amount of money until Mary Anne, Claudia, Stacey, Dawn, and I had gathered in Claudia’s room.
“What’s this all about?” asked Stacey. She was lying on her back across Claudia’s bed with her head hanging over the side, brushing her hair.
“Yeah, an emergency on the first day of summer vacation?” said Claudia from the end of her bed, where she was leafing through a fashion magazine.
“Well, maybe it’s not a true emergency,” I said, “but it’s very important and we have to take care of it right away.”
“Did something happen?” asked Dawn.
“Just this,” I said. “You all know that the wedding is a week from today.”
“Oh, and I can’t wait!” exclaimed Mary Anne. “I know exactly what I’m going to wear.”
“I’m dying to see your bridesmaid gown,” added Stacey.
The wedding was going to be on the big side. Mom and Watson had each asked a lot of guests, and they had let my brothers and me invite some people, too. Of course, my guests were the Spiers, the Kishis, the McGills, and the Schafers. They were all going to be there.
“Well, anyway, it’s in a week,” I said again. “And since Mom has so much to do and so little time to do it in, my relatives and some friends of Watson’s decided to give her a hand.”
“That’s nice,” said Stacey.
“It is,” I agreed, “except that they all live out of town and they’re all arriving by Monday—with their kids. Mom realized that while the adults are working on the wedding this week, there are going to be fourteen children who need looking after.”
“Fourteen!” exclaimed Claudia. “Yup. Seven of my cousins, four kids who belong to Watson’s friend, plus Karen, Andrew, and David Michael. At first, Mom thought the kids would just have to hang around Watson’s while the adults are working, but she knows they’re going to be in the way. So I sort of made a suggestion.”
“What?” asked Dawn suspiciously.
“I suggested that the kids come over to my house every day this week and we’ll baby-sit for them. That way the grown-ups will be able to get their work done.”
“Us? Take care of fourteen children?” squeaked Mary Anne.
“Mom said that if we baby-sit for them from nine to five every day, she and Watson will pay us each … two hundred dollars.”
I looked around the room, expecting something to happen. I thought for sure someone would screech or gasp or fall off the bed.
Nothing.
I gave them a few moments to recover. Then I broke the stunned silence by saying, “That’s a thousand dollars all together.”
Finally, I got a reaction.
In a teeny-tiny voice, Claudia said, “Two hundred dollars? With two hundred dollars, I could buy about a year’s supply of peppermints.”
Everyone began to laugh.
“You could buy more Twinkies than you could imagine,” said Stacey.
“Or a million jawbreakers,” I said with a giggle.
“A billion packs of gum,” suggested Dawn.
“A zillion cartons of ice cream,” said Mary Anne.
“Ice cream,” said Claudia, “is one thing I’ve never been able to hide in my room.”
There was another pause.
“You’re serious about this, right?” Dawn asked me.
“Of course I’m serious,” I replied. “Mom’s in a real bind. We didn’t figure on this happening. And with everyone coming from out of town …” I shrugged. “We have to do something.”
“And your mom thinks we can handle it?” Mary Anne ventured timidly.
“Yes. So do I,” I said. “It works out to two or three kids for each of us. We can do that easily.”
“But fourteen at once,” said Mary Anne.
“Two hundred dollars each,” Claudia reminded her.
“What do you say?” I asked the members of the group.
I looked at Claudia. She nodded emphatically. I looked at Dawn and Stacey. They nodded, too.
“Mary Anne?” I asked.
She hesitated. Then she nodded as well.
“All right!” I cried. “Now look, you guys, we have some work to do. Nine to five means all day, every day next week. A couple of times I’m going to have to leave for dress fittings and wedding things, but otherwise we’ll have to stay at my house with the kids. We better see if we have any jobs lined up next week. Mary Anne, can you check our calendar?”
Mary Anne opened the record book to the appointment section. “Let’s see,” she said. “This isn’t too bad. Kristy, you’re supposed to sit for Jamie Newton on Tuesday. I’m supposed to sit for Jenny Prezzioso Wednesday evening. I can still do that, I guess. Stacey, you’re supposed to sit for Charlotte on Thursday, and we have several things lined up for David M
ichael and for Karen and Andrew, but those aren’t a problem because we’re going to be sitting for them anyway.”
“Hmm,” I said. “It isn’t very good business, but we’ll have to call the Newtons and the Johanssens and cancel. Unless …” I went on thoughtfully.
“What?” asked Dawn.
“Maybe the kids could just come over to my house. What difference will one more make when we’re already watching fourteen?”
“That’s true,” said Stacey.
I picked up the phone. “I’ll call Mrs. Newton,” I said, “then you call Dr. Johanssen, Stace.”
I explained the situation to Mrs. Newton, who was not only understanding but enthusiastic. She said she thought the experience would be good for Jamie. He was starting nursery school in the fall and needed to get used to other children.
Then Stacey called Charlotte’s mother. “Dr. Johanssen?” she said. “Hi, it’s Stacey. Listen, I’m calling about next Thursday. I—what? … Oh—Oh, sure…. No, it’s no problem. Not at all. I’ll see you some other time. Say hi to Charlotte. Okay…. Okay…. Bye.” She turned to us with a smile. “Well, I got out of that one. Dr. Johanssen was just about to call us to cancel. Her schedule at the hospital got switched around, so she doesn’t need me on Thursday.”
“Great!” I said. “Does anyone have anything else to cancel? Dentist appointments? Claudia, art classes?”
They shook their heads.
“All right,” I went on, “now we better do some planning for next week. First, let me tell you about the kids—their ages and stuff.”
“I’m going to take notes while you talk,” Mary Anne spoke up.
“Good idea. Okay, we’ll start with my cousins. First, there are the Millers—Ashley, Berk, Grace, and Peter. Ashley is … I think she just turned nine. Berk’s about six.”
“Boy or girl?” Mary Anne interrupted.
“Boy,” I answered. “Grace is five, and Peter’s three.”
“Okay,” said Mary Anne.
“Then there are the Meiners. Luke is ten, Emma is eight, I think, and Beth is about a year old.”
“Okay.”
“And then there are those kids of Watson’s friend. I don’t know anything about them. Maybe I better call Watson,” I said.
I dialed Watson’s number.