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
How should you feel about an ex-boyfriend? That’s the question I asked myself as I sat in math class, staring at the back of Robert’s head.
Robert Brewster is my ex-boyfriend. Which, of course, means that you could call me, Stacey McGill, Robert’s ex-girlfriend.
Not that being his ex is how I define myself. I’m much more than that.
For starters, I’m my parents’ daughter. Even though they’re divorced, I’ll never stop being their number-one kid.
I’m also a New Yorker, born and raised (at least at first) in New York City. Now I live in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, with Mom. But I spend plenty of city weekends with Dad, who still lives in New York.
I’m a friend. Claudia Kishi is my closest friend. And I’m part of a great group of friends who all belong to the Baby-sitters Club (also known as the BSC). I’ll tell you more about them later, since they’re a huge part of my life.
I could add I’m a diabetic, although I don’t usually think of myself that way. I’m simply a person who has this crummy illness called diabetes to deal with. Being diabetic means my body can’t regulate the amount of sugar in my blood. In order to stay healthy, I have to eat properly, never let myself get too hungry, avoid sweets, and give myself insulin injections every day. It’s a pain, but it’s not the end of the world. It’s just one part of my life. I do what I have to do and get on with the other parts.
Who else am I? I’m a student — an eighth-grader at Stoneybrook Middle School (SMS), to be exact. My favorite and best subject is math, but I do pretty well in my other classes too.
I suppose I should mention that I’m a girlfriend. I’ve been dating this great guy in New York City, named Ethan. He’s an art student and totally cool. I met him around the time Robert and I broke up. To be completely honest, that was around the time Robert dumped me. No one likes to think of herself as someone who was dumped. But that’s what happened. He did it in a really awful way too. He started seeing another girl, Andi Gentile, before he broke up with me. He didn’t even have the nerve to tell me. I had to find out about it from other people. It was a pretty awful time for me. Even now, I don’t like to remember it. Meeting Ethan then helped a lot, though. A whole lot.
As it turned out, it wasn’t long before I was feeling totally great. Robert, on the other hand, was down in the dumps, because soon Andi broke up with him. So, here I had this interesting, sensitive, fun (not to mention awesomely handsome) new boyfriend. And Robert had nobody.
Naturally, I felt the urge to say, “Ha-ha, serves you right.” But somehow I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t even think it for long. Robert seemed so upset that I felt sorry for him. He had been through two breakups in a short time. It made sense that he’d feel down. The problem was that Robert stayed down. After awhile, most people pull themselves together. They cheer up, move on. They become involved with someone new, or just date different people for a while. Robert hadn’t even tried to date anyone since Andi broke up with him. And a lot of girls would love to go out with him.
Robert’s cute, with wavy hair, great dimples, and a knockout smile. His broad shoulders and dark eyes first attracted me to him, but later I fell for all of him. He’s nice, and smart too. And he used to be a lot of fun. But after Andi broke up with him, Robert stayed bummed. He didn’t give any other girls a chance to get close to him. He wasn’t dating. And he was cutting his guy friends out of his life. Even his friend Alex. They used to be very close.
I can understand why Robert might want some distance between himself and his old friends. They weren’t exactly my favorite people. I thought they were cool when I first met them. I soon learned, though, that drinking, smoking, shoplifting, and thinking everything is dumb don’t make you cool. When I remember that I blew off my true, loyal, BSC friends for those idiots, I feel so embarrassed. I did, though. I quit the club and everything. Luckily for me, I quickly saw my new “friends” for what they really are. And, luckier still, my true friends forgave me and let me rejoin the BSC.
I was staring at Robert’s head and thinking about these things when our teacher, Mr. Zizmore, called on Robert. “If y equals a thousand, then what is the value of x? Mr. Brewster?”
Robert looked up, dazed, as if Mr. Zizmore’s voice had called him back from somewhere very far away. “Uh … sorry … I … could you repeat the question, please?”
Mr. Z. sighed, very annoyed, and repeated it.
Robert gaped at him. “I guess … I … um,” he mumbled. He let his breath out in a whoosh of defeat. “I … I have no clue.”
A girl across the room giggled at that, probably just because she felt uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable too. Embarrassed for Robert. He isn’t bad at math. He should have known that answer. It was as if he just couldn’t make his brain think about it.
Mr. Zizmore turned his gaze on me. “What’s the answer, Stacey?”
Despite thinking about Robert, I’d been half listening. I knew the answer. But I was torn. I wanted to say I didn’t know, so Robert wouldn’t look quite so bad. I couldn’t, though. Acting dumb isn’t my style. “Two thousand,” I replied, sure I was correct.
Mr. Z. turned and wrote two thousand on the board.
Robert swiveled in his seat and looked at me. He rolled his eyes and forced a smile. I rolled my eyes and shrugged in reply. That body-language conversation meant the following: Robert: Wow, that was dumb of me. Me: Oh, well. That’s life.
For that moment, I felt as if nothing bad had ever happened between me and Robert. This was almost the way things used to be, natural and easy. As if we’d never broken up.
It wasn’t the same, though. Not exactly. For one thing, I wasn’t in love with him anymore. And, for another, Robert never used to be in such a fog.
What was going on with him?
It was Andi — of all people — who had first mentioned to me that something was wrong with Robert. This was around Valentine’s Day, almost three months ago. I suppose she spoke to me because she figured I knew Robert better than almost anyone else did. She was worried and wanted me to find out what was wrong with him.
I’d discussed it with him. He’d admitted he was feeling bored and out of touch with his friends. At that time, I had high hopes that once he’d talked about his feelings, he’d bounce back.
I never bothered to find out if I’d been right about that. After February, Robert and I went our separate ways again. I was involved with Ethan, and the BSC. He was busy doing … whatever. I didn’t actually know. Baseball season had started, and Robert is on the team. I suppose I assumed he was busy with that.
But now I felt bad about all the time I’d let pass without even talking to Robert.
Which brought me back to my original question. How should you feel about your ex-boyfriend?
Even though he’d broken up with me, I wasn’t mad at him. I never really had been. At first I was too upset to be angry. Then, once we spoke about it, I saw that he couldn’t control how he felt. He was happier when he was with Andi. There was nothing he could do about that. I’d started having feelings for Ethan, so, even thou
gh I was angry at Robert for lying and sneaking around, I understood how it could happen.
Then we tried being friends. That didn’t really work. We both felt awkward. But we were friendly to each other. We always said hi and a few words. Still, there was this boyfriend-girlfriend history between us.
It’s hard to be just friends after you’ve kissed a guy.
I still cared about Robert, though. As a person. He’s a good guy, and we’d once been close. I ought to check in with him, I thought, and see how he was doing.
I decided I’d call him that night. Right after my BSC meeting. Or after I finished my homework. Or dinner. Or … whenever. But soon. Definitely soon.
Robert was still on my mind when I hurried into Claudia’s bedroom at exactly 5:26 that afternoon. How did I know what time it was, exactly? Easy. I always check Claudia’s digital clock the moment I step into her room for a Baby-sitters Club meeting. I think we all do. Kristy expects meetings to start at 5:30, and she becomes majorly annoyed if anyone is even a minute late.
Kristy Thomas is president of the BSC. We members sometimes gripe about all her rules. But we also know that it’s because of them that the club runs so well and is such a success.
Kristy was the one who came up with the idea for the club. It happened one day when her mother was phoning a zillion people, trying to find a baby-sitter for Kristy’s little brother. Kristy had a brainstorm. What if her mother could call just one number and reach a bunch of baby-sitters? Her mother would have loved that. She would have loved it so much that she’d call that number every time she needed a sitter.
So we started the Baby-sitters Club with four sitters. Kristy, her best friend Mary Anne Spier, Claudia, and me. Instant success. Before too long, we were up to seven sitters, with two backup sitters (we call them associates). We still, to this day, sometimes have more jobs than we can handle.
It’s such a simple idea, really. We meet every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon from five-thirty until six in Claudia’s bedroom. (Claudia’s room was the natural choice since she’s the only one of us with her own private phone line.) During those times, clients know they can reach us to set up sitting appointments.
Simple.
But brilliant.
As I said, thanks to Kristy, everything runs like clockwork. When the phone rings, the person sitting nearest to it answers. She takes all the information — time of the job, the number of kids, etc. — then hangs up. Mary Anne, our secretary, checks the club record book, sees who is available, and assigns the job. We call the client back and say who will be sitting.
Kristy devised this system. She also came up with the idea for the record book. It contains all our schedules. If I have a Pep Squad meeting after school, or I’m spending the weekend in Manhattan, it’s in there.
Another of Kristy’s great ideas: Kid-Kits. Each of us has her own Kid-Kit — a box filled with coloring books, crayons, crafts materials, and hand-me-down books and toys. We don’t bring them on every job. But if it’s the first time sitting for a new client, or a kid is sick or upset for some reason, we bring them. They’ve helped to make us extremely popular sitters.
The club notebook is another of Kristy’s ideas. After every job, we write about the experience. Not everyone enjoys doing this, but we all know the notebook is helpful. You can learn a lot about what to expect on a job by reading through the notebook and discovering what other sitters have experienced at that house.
Even when we’re not answering the phone, there’s plenty to do at meetings. My job as club treasurer is to collect dues. Everyone grumbles, but we need the money. We use it to pay part of Claudia’s phone bill. We restock Kid-Kits. And we pay Kristy’s oldest brother to drive Kristy and Abby to meetings, since they live in a different part of town.
Who is Abby? Well, maybe this would be a good time to stop and tell you something about all of our members.
Here goes. I’ll leave Abby for last since she was the last to join. And since Claudia’s my best friend, I’ll begin with her.
How can I describe Claudia?
It’s impossible, so forget it.
Just kidding.
But Claudia is unusual. For starters, she’s unusually beautiful. She’s Japanese-American, with long, silky black hair and almond-shaped eyes. Considering that she adores junk food — practically lives on it — it’s almost a miracle that she has gorgeous skin and a great figure.
You only have to look at her to see that she’s a highly creative individual. Her clothes and accessories reflect that. Today, for instance, she was dressed entirely in animal prints. She was wearing a long-sleeved zebra-print leotard under leopard-print overall shorts. A tiger-stripe scarf was tied around her neck and her hair was caught up into a ponytail with a lizard-print scrunchie. Her earrings were two orange-spotted giraffes.
Not only did this outfit look awesome on Claudia, but she made a lot of it herself. She painted the leopard spots onto a pair of beige overalls. She used black fabric paint to create the zebra stripes on a white leotard. She made the scrunchie from lizard-print fabric, and she sculpted the giraffes from clay and painted them. Claudia is a very talented artist. She paints, sculpts, draws, silk-screens, you name it. If it involves art, Claudia’s there.
The downside of her involvement in art is her uninvolvement in school. She’d always rather be doing artwork than schoolwork. Her schoolwork has been so poor that she recently spent some time back in seventh grade. I’m happy to report that she caught up and has returned to eighth grade now. (I don’t think her spelling will ever improve, though.)
Claudia’s terrible school performance was particularly shocking to her parents because Claudia’s older sister (and only sibling), Janine, is a genius. No kidding. At times, Mr. and Mrs. Kishi can’t believe their two daughters are so different. I believe they’re not that different. I think the Kishis have two geniuses in their family — and one of them is a creative genius. That’s Claudia, of course.
Maybe we should call ourselves the Genius Club. I know it sounds conceited, but Kristy Thomas certainly could qualify as a business genius. How many other thirteen-year-olds do you know who’ve formed and run a successful business? I can picture her on the cover of some business magazine. The headline would read, “The Little Giant of Industry.”
I say “little giant” because Kristy is petite. She’s the shortest girl in the eighth grade. But she makes a big impression wherever she goes. There are several reasons for that. One of them is that she’s not shy about speaking her mind. You always know what Kristy is thinking, because she tells you. Another reason is that she’s such a take-charge, can-do person. If something needs doing, she’ll jump in and do it. Truly, she’s the most dynamic person I’ve ever met.
She’s also very down-to-earth. You’d never guess she lives in a mansion and that her stepfather is a millionaire. It’s true, though. Kristy’s birth father walked out on the family not long after Kristy’s younger brother, David Michael, was born. He just up and left Kristy’s mom to support four kids on her own. (Kristy also has two older brothers, Sam and Charlie.) It was really tough for them for a while, but Kristy’s mom was tough too. She supported all of them on her own. Then she met and married Watson.
Kristy’s family moved across town to the fanciest part of Stoneybrook, where the houses are gigantic. (Up until then, they’d lived across the street from Claudia.) It was a good thing too. They needed a big house for their new blended family. Watson’s two kids from his first marriage, Karen (who’s seven) and Andrew (who’s four), live with them for part of the year. Watson and Kristy’s mom also adopted a little girl from Vietnam. Emily Michelle is two and a half now. Then Kristy’s grandmother, Nannie, came to live with them. Add to that assorted dogs, a cat, fish, a hermit crab, and a rat, and you have a really full house.
Let’s see. What other geniuses do we have? Mary Anne would be our organizational genius. She’s been club secretary from the start, and in all that time she has never — not ever — mad
e a mistake in the record book. She’s never booked a sitter who was busy with something else and never assigned two sitters to the same job (unless the job called for two sitters). Plus, she divides the jobs up with complete fairness so that everyone works an equal amount.
Mary Anne is sweet and extremely sensitive. She cries easily. Not only does she cry at sad things, she even cries when something is touching, or happy, or very beautiful. She’s also a great listener. She’s quiet and shy, though not so much with people she knows well.
She hasn’t had the easiest life. Her mother died when Mary Anne was a baby. Mary Anne lived with her grandparents for a while after that, but then her father raised her. His idea of being a good parent was to be strict. He had a million rules for everything. Mary Anne had to fight for every little freedom she got. When he remarried, though, he loosened up quite a bit. Mary Anne was allowed to wear more fashionable clothes and to get a short haircut instead of wearing the babyish braids her dad used to insist on.
The woman Mr. Spier married was Sharon Schafer, the mother of one of our other members, Dawn Schafer. Dawn and Mary Anne were friends who became stepsisters. Unfortunately, Dawn decided she wanted to return to California, where she grew up, and where her brother was living with their father and his new wife. This was a real jolt to Mary Anne, as well as to the rest of us. But we’ve adjusted, though we do miss Dawn. We’ve made her our honorary member. She visits as often as she can, and whenever she’s here, she comes to meetings and takes some sitting jobs.
One special person who helped Mary Anne feel less lonely after Dawn left was Logan Bruno, Mary Anne’s boyfriend. He’s a terrific guy, and he’s one of our associate members. We call him when we have a job none of us can fill. If he’s not busy playing football, volleyball, or baseball, he’ll take the job. (He’s our sports genius. Kristy and Abby are athletic too, but they have other genius titles. Just one title per genius.)
Our second associate member is Shannon Kilbourne, one of Kristy’s neighbors. She might be just a plain genius. She’s a member of the Honor Society at Stoneybrook Day, the private school she attends. Like Logan, she takes our overflow jobs but rarely comes to meetings.