Like Claud, Stacey is a real fashion plate. She dresses wildly, wears lots of jewelry (her ears are pierced; so are Claudia’s), and her mom lets her get her blonde hair permed. Stacey grew up in New York City. In fact, like Dawn, she didn’t move to Stoneybrook until seventh grade. Recently, her parents got divorced, which has been tough on Stace. Now she lives with her mom, while her dad is back in NYC. Stacey has no brothers or sisters. Also no pets. She’s funny, outgoing, caring, wonderful with children, and a teensy bit boy crazy. I really admire Stacey. She’s been through a lot, and her troubles seem to make her a stronger person. Apart from the divorce, Stacey has to cope with a medical problem. She has a disease called diabetes. Her body can’t break down sugar the way most people’s bodies can, so she has to monitor her diet extra carefully (no sweets or desserts), test her blood several times each day, and (this is the gross part) give herself injections of insulin. Even so, Stacey winds up in the hospital from time to time, but she always bounces back and is usually pretty cheerful.
What happens if Stacey or one of the other club officers has to miss a meeting? No problem. Dawn takes over for that person. As alternative officer, that’s her job. She has to know everything about running the club, but that’s easy for Dawn Schafer, since she’s almost as organized and neat as my father is.
Dawn is also very much an individual, which is one of the reasons she became the second of my two best friends. I like her independence, even though I eventually learned that individuality plus independence does not necessarily equal self-confidence. Dawn has some chinks in her armor just like everyone else. In general, though, she’s easygoing and not likely to be swayed by what other people are doing or thinking.
Dawn has the most amazing hair I have ever seen. It’s at least as long as Claud’s, just as silky, but as light as Claud’s is dark. It’s nearly white, sort of the color of sweet corn. Dawn’s eyes are blue and sparkly, she’s tall and thin, and her clothes are as individual as her personality is. She wears what she feels like wearing and manages to look trendy and casual at the same time. Her mom is not at all strict about what Dawn wears — which may explain why Dawn’s ears are double-pierced, so she can wear two pairs of earrings at the same time, although she often wears four non-matching earrings!
Dawn, Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and I are eighth-graders at SMS. The other two main members are eleven-year-old sixth-graders at SMS. They are Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike, our junior officers. “Junior” just means that their parents will allow them to baby-sit only after school or on weekend days; not at night unless they’re sitting for their own brothers and sisters. Mal and Jessi are another pair of best friends, and I can see why they are drawn together. Each is the oldest kid in her family: Jessi has a younger sister and a baby brother, and Mal has seven younger sisters and brothers. Each loves kids and is a terrific baby-sitter. And each feels that her parents treat her like an infant. They were finally allowed to have their ears pierced (only one hole per ear, of course), but Mal, who wears glasses, is not permitted to get contacts, and both have to dress kind of like … oh, like me, for instance. On the tame side.
Mal and Jessi adore reading, especially horse stories, but other than that, their interests are pretty different.
Jessi is a ballet dancer, a good one. She takes lessons at a special dance school in Stamford (the city nearest to Stoneybrook). In the mornings, she wakes up early to practice at the barre in her basement, and she has performed in lots of big productions. I think she will be a star one day.
Mal, on the other hand, likes to write and draw. She makes up stories and illustrates them. Also, she keeps journals. I bet she will become a children’s book author.
In terms of looks, Jessi and Mal are pretty different, too. Jessi’s skin is a deep brown, her hair is black, and she has the long legs a dancer needs. Mal is white, her curly hair is red, and she’d give just about anything to get rid of her glasses. Also her braces, even though they’re the clear kind and don’t show up too much.
Ring, ring!
“I’ll get it!” cried Claudia.
Stacey had finished collecting the dues, and now the phone was ringing with what was probably our first job call of the day.
Claud grabbed the receiver. “Hello, Baby-sitters Club.” She listened for a moment. “Yes? … Oh, hi, Mrs. Salem,” she said. (We met Mrs. Salem when we were taking an infant-care class. She and her husband have twin babies, a boy and a girl.) “Sure, sure,” Claud was saying. “Okay, I’ll call you back in a few minutes. ’Bye.” Claudia hung up the phone and turned to me. “That was Mrs. Salem. She needs a sitter for Ricky and Rose next Tuesday afternoon. Who’s free?”
I think I forgot to mention that I am the secretary of the BSC. I’m in charge of the club record book. (Guess who thought of keeping a record book.) I write down any important BSC information and I schedule all of our jobs.
I looked at the page for the following Tuesday. “Hey, guess what. I’m the only one free,” I said. “And I’d love to sit for the twins. Babies. I can’t wait!”
Claud phoned Mrs. Salem to give her the good news.
“Do you, Mary Anne Spier, take this man to be your husband?”
“I do.”
“And do you, Logan Bruno, take this woman to be your wife?”
“I do.”
“I now pronounce you husband and wife, for as long as you are members of my Modern Living class.”
I had never been so embarrassed. It was the second session of Modern Living, and everyone in our class had to pair up and get married. At least Mrs. Boyden hadn’t asked Logan to kiss me.
Why were we getting married? Good question. I’ll give you Mrs. Boyden’s answer. “Class,” she had said during our first session, “you are in eighth grade. Most of you are thirteen years old now. Some of you are fourteen, a few of you are twelve. Despite how old or young you may feel, the truth is that you are now biologically capable of becoming parents, or you will be soon. How many think you are capable of parenting, of being part of a couple, or of living on your own?”
I didn’t know about living on my own or getting married, but I certainly knew everything about taking care of kids.
So I raised my hand.
I didn’t realize Mrs. Boyden would call on me. I’d thought she was just asking for a show of hands. But she said, “Mary Anne?”
“Yes?” I replied. “Oh. Um, well, I baby-sit all the time,” I said, my face flushing. “I can change diapers and everything.”
Mrs. Boyden had not seemed too impressed. She had just nodded. And then she had started talking about getting married. “The best way to experience adult life is to live it,” she said. “That’s why you are going to pair up, get married, and stay married until this class is over. You may choose your partners if you wish. I will assign partners to those students who do not choose their own.”
Nearby, someone whispered, “Like getting married to someone you see three times a week is realistic.”
I had glanced at Logan then, who was sitting on my other side. He’d smiled at me. We were going to “get married.” It was an exciting prospect. I knew we were ready to take the big step. Well, I thought we were. Okay, I wasn’t sure at all, but I definitely wanted to find out. Especially if it meant we could spend more time together.
Our class had spent the rest of that first session talking about stuff like how old our parents were when they got married, and what being married really means. I had dared to raise my hand to contribute to the conversation, but only after Shawna Riverson had said, “I think getting married really means that you have, like, a plastic bride and groom on your wedding cake, not those little bride and groom mice or something. Or maybe you could have, like, a giant plastic wedding bell and some bluebirds or something.”
The class snickered, and even Mrs. Boyden looked surprised.
Well, after a comment like that, nothing I said could sound any more stupid. So I raised my hand. “I think marriage really means commitment. It means you
love your husband or wife so much that when you have a problem, you try to work it out so you can stay together.”
“You are definitely on the right track,” Mrs. Boyden said to me. “Thank you, Mary Anne. Class, there’s a little more to marriage than the wedding. That’s just the first day.”
Even so, we had our shot at weddings in the very next session of Modern Living. “Are all of you engaged to be married?” asked Mrs. Boyden at the beginning of class.
Four boys raised their hands. “We aren’t,” they said, looking disgusted. And Gordon Brown added, “There are nine girls and thirteen boys in this class, Mrs. Boyden. All the girls have been taken.”
“We have not been ‘taken’!” cried Erica Blumberg. “We are not pieces of property. You can’t claim us.”
“Sheesh,” said Gordon. “All right, the girls have all been used up.”
Erica’s face practically turned purple. “We are not hot water, either. We aren’t some commodity. You can’t use us up.”
“Commodity?” I heard Shawna whisper. “Doesn’t she mean condiment?” Shawna looked really pleased with herself.
“Okay, okay, kids. Please calm down,” said Mrs. Boyden, holding her hands in the air. “We’ll discuss this some other time. Gordon, you’re right. Two of our couples will consist of boys only. How do you want to handle that?”
“I am not going to be a girl,” said Howie Johnson.
“Well, neither am I,” said Gordon and the other boys.
“Do they have to decide ahead of time who’s the wife and who’s the husband?” asked Logan. “Maybe they could decide later. Maybe they wouldn’t even have to tell us their decisions.”
Mrs. Boyden opened her mouth to say something, but before she could start speaking, Howie said, “Yeah, yeah. We’ll decide later.”
“Okay,” replied our teacher, in that tone of voice grown-ups use when they mean, “If that’s the way you want it, but I think it’s a pretty poor idea. I guess you’ll just have to find out for yourselves.”
The girls and the remaining boys had paired up by themselves. Mrs. Boyden created two couples out of the other four boys because they refused to do it for themselves. Then the marriage ceremonies began, and soon I was Logan Bruno’s wife and he was my husband and I was being silently thankful that we didn’t have to kiss in front of our entire Modern Living class, not to mention in front of Mrs. Boyden.
“From now on,” said our teacher, when the weddings were over, “when you are in class, you will sit together as couples. In fact, when you are in class you will be couples, and I’ll expect you to think and behave as such. You may be asked to be couples outside of class,” she added, and her words sounded somehow ominous. (I glanced at my “husband,” and he shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “That doesn’t make a difference to us. You and I are already a couple.”)
Guess what Mrs. Boyden assigned us for homework. She asked each couple to get together, discuss money and finances, and decide whether they could be a financially independent couple.
“Huh?” said Shawna. “You mean like really rich?”
“No, not independently wealthy,” said Mrs. Boyden patiently. “Financially independent. Could you support yourselves? Could you live in your own place and buy groceries and clothes and pay your electricity bill and phone bill and taxes and so forth?”
“Don’t all married couples support themselves and pay their bills?” asked Gordon. “Don’t all families?”
“No,” our teacher replied. “Most do, I suppose, but it doesn’t happen by magic. You don’t get married and suddenly come into money. So your homework is to figure out how you would fare if tomorrow, say, you were married and on your own.” She paused, then she smiled and added, “Actually you are married and on your own. How are you going to do?”
* * *
Logan and I found out that afternoon. I went to my husband’s house as soon as school let out. The house didn’t feel like my husband’s, though, since my husband’s younger brother and sister and mother were also there. Kerry, who’s nine, and Hunter, who’s five and has terrible allergies, were in the kitchen with us, waiting for Mrs. Bruno to take a bag of popcorn out of the microwave.
“Put it idto two bowls, Bobby,” said Hunter stuffily to his mother. “If you do’t, thed Kerry hogs it. She eats faster thad be.”
“I do not!” exclaimed Kerry.
At that moment, the doorbell rang and so did the phone. Mrs. Bruno reached for the phone, and Kerry ran for the door.
“Dear,” Logan said to me, “I apologize for the noise here today. Let’s go work in the dining room. We can close the doors.”
“All right, sweetheart,” I answered, grinning.
“Ew!” cried Hunter. “Dear! Sweetheart! You guys sound like you’re barried or subthig.” He sniffed loudly.
“We are,” replied Logan. “Hunter, this is your sister-in-law.”
I was eager to get to work. “Come along, honey,” I said to Logan.
We closed ourselves into the dining room. We were equipped for an afternoon of work — newspaper, writing pad, pens, calculator, a bag of cookies, and a Thermos of iced tea.
“Let’s see,” I said, when we’d seated ourselves at the table and spread out our things. “First we’ll need a place to live.”
“Right.” Logan opened the paper to the ads for apartments for rent. “We’ll have to start small,” he said. “We probably won’t be able to afford a house right away. How many bedrooms do you want?”
“I think two will be enough at first. One for us, one for guests.”
“Okay … two-bedroom apartments. Here’s one. The rent is … oh, my lord, it’s two thousand dollars a month!”
“Two thousand?” I repeated. “What does the apartment come with? Fourteen bathrooms and a private plane?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s in a really fancy complex. There must be cheaper apartments. Or maybe two thousand was a misprint. Maybe a zero was added by accident.”
But it wasn’t a misprint. The rent for the cheapest two-bedroom apartment we saw advertised was eight hundred dollars a month.
“We’d have to earn nine thousand, six hundred dollars a year just to pay our rent,” I said. “How much money do you earn each year, Logan?”
Logan estimated how much money he earned baby-sitting and doing odd jobs. I estimated how much money I earned baby-sitting. We added the figures together. Then we stared at each other with our mouths open.
“We couldn’t even pay a month’s rent,” said Logan.
“Let’s look at smaller apartments,” I suggested. “We could live in a studio for a few years. That would be okay.”
“Only if we found one that rented for, like, thirty cents a month. Remember, we have to buy food and clothes.”
“And pay all those bills and taxes and stuff,” I added.
Then Logan said, “Just for laughs, let’s turn to the ads and see if there are any really big sales at the grocery store.”
There were. But we also saw that steak cost a fortune, even on sale. “So we won’t eat meat,” said Logan. “It’s not good for you anyway.”
“I don’t think we’ll eat much of anything,” I replied. “Everything is expensive. Even junk food.”
“There’s just one solution,” said Logan.
“What?”
“We’ll have to live at home. We are not financially independent.”
“Whose home?” I asked.
“Mine. I’m the husband.”
“So what? I’m the wife and there’s more room at my house.”
“But I don’t want to live with your dad. He would watch me all the time.”
“Well, I don’t want to live with my nine-year-old sister-in-law and my five-year-old brother-in-law. Anyway, I want us to have our own place. I want to hang curtains and paint cupboards.”
“I don’t think they let you do that if you aren’t paying rent,” said Logan. “We haven’t found one of those thirty-cents-a-month places yet.”
I sighed. “I know. But there is more room at my house.”
“Yeah. You’re right. Okay. We’ll live in your bedroom.”
Logan and I wrote up our findings. I knew Logan would be embarrassed to admit in front of the other guys in our class that he’d be living in a girl’s bedroom, but that was our only solution. And no matter how silly we found Modern Living, we wanted to do well in the course.
The Salems’ house was quiet.
“Ricky and Rose are asleep,” said their mother. She sounded sort of relieved. Also, she looked sort of tired.
“Is anything wrong?” I asked.
“Oh, not really. It’s just, you know, twins.”
That didn’t worry me much. Especially considering that the BSC once sat for fourteen children for a week. And that I’ve baby-sat for Mal’s brothers and sisters tons of times and even gone on family vacations with the Pikes, as a mother’s helper.
I had arrived at the Salems’ house for my afternoon baby-sitting job. School had just ended. I’d gone to my job directly from school. Now I was standing with Mrs. Salem in the kitchen.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s see. The twins will probably wake up in about half an hour. They’ll be hungry then. Their bottles are ready to go. After they’ve eaten, you can take them for a walk. The stroller’s in the garage. They should probably wear sweaters. The emergency phone numbers are here on the refrigerator …”
Mrs. Salem is so organized. That’s one reason my friends and I like to take care of Ricky and Rose. We haven’t had too many opportunities, though. The Salems wouldn’t let us baby-sit until the twins reached six months. But now they call us fairly regularly.