For Alexandra, Taylor, and Daniel
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
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
“Girl, what are you doing?”
Uh-oh. I had thought I was alone in the hallway. Instead I was caught red-handed by a classmate of mine, Sanjita Batts. Actually, red-toed was more like it. I confess, I was walking to my Short Takes class en pointe.
That is ballet terminology for “on the tips of your toes.” And I mean the very tips. It’s hard to do, especially for a sixth-grader like me.
Walking en pointe looks beautiful on stage. But in the hallway of Stoneybrook Middle School, it looks … well, dumb.
So why was I doing it? Because I, Jessica Ramsey, am a dance fanatic. I love ballet and I want to be a professional dancer someday. Even if it means having mangled toes the rest of my life. (Have you ever seen a ballerina’s feet? They’re frightening.)
“Just practicing,” I said, lowering myself to a normal walking position.
“Don’t stop.” Sanji had a mischievous glint in her eye. “You should walk into class like that!”
“No way!” I replied.
“Seriously! Can you imagine the look on Mr. Trout’s face?”
I couldn’t help giggling. We have a new Short Takes teacher every term, and our latest one, Mr. Trout, was kind of a nerd.
Every student at Stoneybrook Middle School has Short Takes for one period a day. It’s a special program of revolving courses. No, the room does not turn in a slow circle like one of those fancy hotel restaurants. What I mean is, every grading period we get a new subject and a new teacher. What kind of subjects? Unusual ones, like Stress Reduction for Teens; or Project Work, in which we all had to take after-school jobs in the community (I worked in a movie theater).
Our current class was called Software from Scratch, which was really another way of saying Computer Programming.
Computer programs are a little like dances. On the outside they both look fun and easy. But behind every graceful ballet is a lot of sweating and grunting and muscle strain and step-by-step memorizing. And behind every cool graphics program is a million or so lines of gobbledygook.
That’s what our Short Takes class was about. Creating the gobbledygook.
Yawn. Give me an hour a day of dance warmups anytime.
As Sanjita and I headed to class, we heard the loud clattering of high heels from around the corner ahead of us.
“Quick,” Sanji whispered. “Dolly One or Two?”
“Um … Two,” I said.
I was wrong. Ms. Bernhardt, otherwise known as Dolly One, bounced around the corner toward us. Her thick blonde hair looked as if it were doing jumping jacks on her head.
Dolly Two is another teacher, Ms. Vandela. The two Dollies, as you can guess, look alike. They’re short and big-chested. They both have huge smiles and Major Hair that cascades in ringlets over their shoulders. They also wear tons of makeup. You’ve probably already figured out how they got their nicknames. Right. They’re both Dolly Parton clones — and Dolly Parton fans, so they don’t mind their nicknames at all. (In case you don’t know, Dolly Parton is a famous country-western singer who fits the above description.)
“Hi, girls!” Dolly One chirped as she bustled by with a clipboard. “I’m posting sign-up sheets for the Follies.”
“Already?” Sanji asked.
“It’s springtime, darling,” Dolly One replied. “Now, I want both of you to think about signing up. We want to get a good cross section of the school!”
“Okay,” Sanji said.
I should explain something. Sanjita is Puerto Rican and I am African-American. Stoneybrook is a mostly white town. What Dolly One meant by cross section was “not only white students.”
Now, I knew she was only trying to be fair. She’s a nice person, and she wanted to make sure Sanji and I didn’t feel excluded. But statements like that make me feel funny. They remind me how different I am in some people’s eyes.
I didn’t always feel so different. In Oakley, New Jersey, where I grew up, people of all colors lived together and no one made a big deal about it. But when my family moved to Stoneybrook before sixth grade started, boy, were we in for a shock. Some people were really cold to us, as if we didn’t belong. Others seemed afraid to be near us. Kids acted hostile to me in school. It was awful for awhile. Fortunately, things have improved a lot since then. Stoneybrook has turned out to be a great place, and I made a bunch of the best friends in the world when I joined the Baby-sitters Club (which I’ll tell you about later).
Anyway, I was dying to find out about the show. As Ms. Bernhardt clickety-clacked down the hallway, I asked Sanjita, “What are the Follies?”
“You know, the Sixth-Grade Follies?” Sanji said. “Where the sixth-graders make up songs and skits and stuff? SMS has one every year.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t live here last year.”
“Well, it’s sooo hilarious. My big sister was in last year’s. The students write the whole show. You get to do imitations and make fun of teachers, students, the school — everything.” Then she laughed and added, “Probably even walk on your toes, if you want.”
“Are you going to sign up?” I asked.
“No way. I get stage fright. You?”
“I might.”
Might? Whoa. An end-of-the-year show, all original stuff — it sounded perfect. I love to make people laugh. I was the comedy highlight of a school production of Peter Pan (well, I was). And with my dance experience, maybe I’d be able to choreograph and perform.
I was flying high as we walked into our Short Takes class.
Mr. Trout was scribbling something on the blackboard. His eyes darted toward Sanji and me.
“Hello, Mr. Trout,” Sanji said in a voice that was so friendly it sounded phony.
He looked back at the board, adjusted his glasses, and grunted a soft “Hi.”
Sanji glanced at me, rolled her eyes, and giggled. We both sat down as the bell rang.
To my right, John Rosen and Mark O’Connell were playing tic-tac-toe, passing a sheet of paper back and forth. To my left, Sandra Hart was reading a comic book. A spitball flew across the room and landed in Renee Johnson’s hair. Two boys burst out laughing.
“Ewww!” Renee shouted. “That’s disgusting! Mr. Trout, Craig and George are throwing spitballs.”
Mr. Trout turned around. Instead of looking angry or annoyed, he looked … lost. If you didn’t know he was a teacher, you’d think he was scared that Craig and George would scold him. “Uh, that’s enough, now,” he said, twirling the chalk in his fingers. “Okay?”
The two boys just giggled again. The rest of my classmates were barely holding in their laughter. Sanjita’s hand was over her mouth and she was turning purple.
I admit, I had the urge to laugh, too. You have to picture Mr. Trout. He’s about six feet tall and extremely skinny, with this waxy black hair combed in a style right out of the 1970s. His pants are too big and always bagging over his Hush Puppies. He alternates two tweed jackets from day-to-day, which he wears over old tattersall shirts that have plastic pocket protectors.
What’s worse, sometimes he pronounces his r’s a little like w’s. Just slightly, though, and only when he’s extremely nervous.
But the way some kids were acting, you’d think he was Elmer Fudd.
“All right, can anyone come to the board and write the last lines of this program?” Mr. Trout asked.
From the back of the class, I could hear Maria Fazio whisper, “Wite the wast wines of this pwogwam?”
A few kids around her cracked up. John and Mark snickered and kept playing tic-tac-toe. Sandra buried her face in her comic book. Sanjita let out a big yawn. No one volunteered.
I couldn’t believe how rude they all were. Any other teacher would have yelled, or made a joke like “Don’t all speak up at once,” or called on someone to answer the question.
Not Mr. Trout. He just fidgeted and looked helpless.
My good mood was taking a nosedive. His nervousness was making me nervous. I wanted to raise my hand, but I would have looked so dorky.
As the class began settling down, Sanjita passed me a note that looked like this:
I tried to stifle a laugh. It came out sounding like a pig snort. Very elegant.
Well, needless to say, the class went by slowly. Fortunately, though, everyone settled down. And I managed to stay awake right till the end.
Short Takes is my third-period class. Five periods later, school was over. But before leaving, I had to make two stops. The first was the main hallway, where I signed my name on the Follies sheet. (At the bottom was an announcement that the first planning meeting would be on Thursday, only three days away.)
As I was writing, I heard a familiar voice say, “Ooh, you’re going to be in the show! Great! You will be sooo funny!”
“Hi, Mal!” I replied.
Mallory Pike is my very best friend ever. We can talk about anything. (Plus she laughs at all my jokes.) She’s the only person I know who’s as crazy about horse stories as I am. Marguerite Henry books, The Black Stallion series, The Saddle Club — we’ve read them all. Someday we’ll be talking about her own books, guaranteed. She is an incredibly talented writer and illustrator.
“Are you going to sign up?” I asked.
“I’ll just watch,” she said.
Mal doesn’t like performing. During a school production of Peter Pan, she was in charge of costumes. She also just recovered from a case of mono, so I guess she wanted to take it easy.
Together we walked to my second stop, the front steps of the school. That’s where our BSC friends always meet to chat at the end of the day.
We walked into a very serious conversation between Claudia Kishi and Kristy Thomas.
“I would never do it,” Kristy was saying, arms folded tightly. “Not in a million years.”
“I would,” Claudia replied. “I mean, I might. Just for fun.”
“Fun? It would be permanent, Claud. No going back. What happens years from now, when you have to look for a job?”
Claudia laughed. “You don’t wear it. Who’s going to know?”
“What if they just happen to look up your nostrils?” Kristy asked.
“Gross, Kristy.”
I couldn’t help barging in. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Nose rings,” Kristy replied. “Can you believe it? Claud wants to have her nose pierced.”
“Kristy, I didn’t say I wanted to,” Claudia insisted. “All I said was nose jewelry looks cool.”
“Oh, yeah, great,” Kristy replied, “if you want to look like Elsie the Cow.”
Claudia rolled her eyes. “You get the side of your nose pierced, not the middle.”
“Who looks like Elsie the Cow?”
We all turned at the sound of Mary Anne Spier’s voice. She was walking toward us with Stacey McGill. “No one,” I said. “Yet.”
“Mooooo,” moaned Claudia. She had taken off one of her clip-on earrings and somehow clasped it onto her nose.
We all burst out laughing. Claudia quickly took the earring off and wrinkled her nose. “Yeow, that hurts. I changed my mind.”
“Good,” Kristy said. She looked at her watch, then at the line of buses out front. “Oops. See you guys later!”
“ ’Bye!” we all called out as she sprinted for her bus.
Stoneybrook is part suburban, part rural, and part ritzy. Most of us live in the suburban part, within walking distance from the school, but Kristy lives in a mansion, way across town on the ritzy side. (Kristy, however, is about as unritzy as can be. Her stepfather is a millionaire, which is a long story I’ll leave for later.)
The rest of us began walking home, discussing nose jewelry. I think it’s great, but let’s face it, it takes awhile for some African styles to catch on. Claudia was really the only other one who liked the idea. Stacey admitted it looked okay, but only on other people.
When I got home, my aunt Cecelia was out front, looking very cross. (She’s my dad’s sister, and she lives with us.) My sister, Becca, who’s eight, was running around from behind the house.
“I can’t find him, Aunt Cecelia,” Becca said.
“Oh my lord, that boy will be the death of me!” Aunt Cecelia replied. “John Philip! Where are you?”
“Squirt!” Becca called out.
John Philip and Squirt are the same person, my baby brother. He popped out from behind a rhododendron bush, yelling, “Worrrr!”
“Aaah! A dinosaur!” Becca squealed.
Squirt shrieked with excitement. Then he raised his hands over his head and repeated, “Worrrr!” (That’s his way of roaring.)
My brother is a toddler. He is the cutest child alive. Aunt Cecelia is about fifty or so. Cute is not the word I’d use to describe her. Severe, maybe. She moved in with us to take care of Squirt when my mom went back to work. Boy, was it hard to get used to her. She’s loosened up since then, but she can still be a pain sometimes. The strange thing is, my dad is about the most easygoing man in the world. Oh, well, I guess Aunt Cecelia has enough sourness for two people.
She was scowling at Squirt, her hands firmly on her hips. “Young man, I do not want to see you hiding behind those bushes again.”
“He can’t understand you, Aunt Cecelia,” I volunteered.
“Dess-seee!” Squirt shrieked, toddling toward me with wide open arms.
“Hi, Squirt! Hi, everyone!” I called out.
“Oh, he most certainly can!” Aunt Cecelia replied. “They understand much more than you think!” Then, as an afterthought, she added, “Hello, Jessica.”
I scooped up Squirt and nuzzled him on his belly. He giggled uncontrollably and then said, “Ah-den!” (That’s again in his private language, which we call Squirt-glish.)
“Sandwich!” Becca yelled. She wrapped her arms around me, trapping our brother between us. “We’re the bread and Squirt is the peanut butter!”
That made Squirt wriggle and giggle. Aunt Cecelia shook her head and said, “Honestly, you girls spoil him.”
But I could see the sides of her mouth curling up into a smile.
Squirt squirmed out from between the pieces of bread and screamed, “Duck, duck, doose!”
Well, we played that about a hundred times. Then we played hide-and-seek, but Squirt kept hiding in the same two places. Afterward he wanted to be lifted up like a “heckopper” (helicopter). That’s when Aunt Cecelia gave up.
By five o’clock we were still playing. Well, Squirt was. I was exhausted.
Honk! Honk!
Daddy’s car pulled into the driveway. He had picked up Mama, and they were both giving us these huge smiles from the front seat.
“Day-eee! Mummumm!” Squirt began running toward the car.
“Careful!” Aunt Cecelia called out from the front porch.
Squirt fell forward on the lawn. He immediately sat up and stared at his hands, which were covered with freshly cut grass.
“Blind-side tackle!” Daddy bellowed as he got out of the car. He fell to the ground and wrestled with Squirt, who screamed with joy.
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bsp; Becca and I joined the pileup. Mama leaned over us and managed to kiss us all.
“John! Your shirt!” Aunt Cecelia warned.
Daddy sat up. Blades of grass clung to his white shirt, along with thin green stains.
He pretended to be shocked and looked around at all of us. “Who did this to me? Do you realize how much work Aunt Cecelia is going to have to do? Arrrrgh!”
He sprang to his feet and began chasing us around the yard.
Among our shrieks and giggles, I could hear Aunt Cecelia’s voice saying, “How much work who’s going to do?”
I thought Mama was going to die laughing.
Welcome to the Ramsey family.
“Remember Mr. Steinmetz?” Claudia asked.
Kristy and Mary Anne howled. “He was a custodian,” Mary Anne explained, “who had a missing front tooth.”
“Every time he said an S, he whistled,” Kristy went on. “Like, Misshhhhter Shhhtein-metshhh — oh, I can’t do it.”
“But Alan Gray could!” Claudia chimed in.
Kristy mumbled, “That’s the one thing he’s good for.” (Alan Gray is Eighth-Grade Enemy Number One.)
“Well, he did the funniest imitation,” Mary Anne said. “I thought I’d never stop laughing — but I felt so awful!”
“Oh, Mr. Steinmetz didn’t mind,” Kristy reminded her. “He laughed so hard he almost keeled over on the floor.”
It was 5:28 that Monday afternoon, the day I’d signed up for the Follies. Our Baby-sitters Club meeting was about to begin, and guess what we were talking about?
The Follies of two years ago. I had walked into Claudia’s bedroom (the BSC headquarters) talking about our Follies with Mallory. That was when Kristy, Claudia, and Mary Anne started telling us their experiences.
Those three, by the way, are part of The Big Four, the first BSC members. (The Fourth is Stacey.)
Actually the club began with the Big One, Kristy.
Okay, I said I’d tell you all about the BSC, so here goes:
A History of the Baby-sitters Club
by Jessica Ramsey
It was a dark and stormy night in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. Time and time again, a telephone receiver slammed in the Thomas house. “Woe is me,” cried Mrs. Thomas, “for I cannot find a suitable person to watch over my youngest offspring, and my three eldest are unavailable tonight.”