Ann Martin - The Truth About Stacey

ness. (I don't know if that's how they thought of what they were doing, but it's how I thought of it. At any rate, they were big copycats in the first place, for starting a club so much like ours and giving it a name so close to ours.)

But I'm getting off the track. On Tuesday morning, the Baby-sitters Club walked to school as a group, which was nice, because in the beginning, the club kept separating into two and two—Kristy and Mary Anne, Claudia and me. But that started to change when Kristy became a little interested in boys, and I wanted to have more than one close friend. Anyway, we arrived at school and guess what was there to meet us?The Baby-sitters Agency.Everywhere. Michelle and Liz were trying to recruit more sitters to call on when job requests came in.

Liz was standing on the front steps of the school handing out her agency balloons along with fliers. Mary Anne managed to get a flier — not from Liz but from a boy who was about to toss his ina garbage can. It was a different flier from the one Claudia's sister had brought to us.

"Look at this," said Mary Anne. She read aloud from the flier." 'Want to earn fast money the easy way?' "

"Fast money!" cried Kristy indignantly."The easy way! Liz must be crazy.Really. That girl isn't playing with a full deck."

"Wait, wait. Let's hear this," I said."Go on, Mary Anne."

We were standing in a tense bunch, huddled together a few yards away from Liz. I could feel Liz's triumphant eyes on us, but I didn't give her the satisfaction of turning around.

" "Join the Baby-sitters Agency/ " Mary Anne continued." You do the work, but we do the hardest part of the job. Let the agency find jobs for you!'"

The flier went on to explain how the agency worked, which was just about the way Kristy had guessed when she'd made her fake phone call, looking for a sitter for "Harry Kane." We had to admit that the fliers made the agency look pretty tempting. All you had to do was join — then sit back and wait for Liz or Michelle to hand you a job. Of course, you didn't get to keep all the money you earned. You had to turn some of it over to the agency (that was how Liz and Michelle made money when they weren't sitting), but we thought that a lot of kids would find that a small price to pay for the extra jobs they'd get through the agency.

"Boy," said Mary Anne. She scrunched up

theflier and threw it in the trash can. "The agency is probably going to have a million eighth-graders working for it."

"Yeah," said Claudia glumly, kicking a pebble with the toe of her sneaker. "For all we know, Liz and Michelle have someone recruiting sitters over at the high school, too. They could be getting twelfth-graders. I bet a senior in high school could stay out until two in the morning — or even spend the night."

"Or sit for a whole darned weekend," I said.

"But how does the agency know what kind of sitter they're giving their clients?" asked Mary Anne. "They could give someone a really irresponsible kid who just wants to make a few bucks."

"Right," said Kristy, "but why should Liz and Michelle care, as long as they get their cut of the money earned?"

We walked dejectedly into the building, carefully not looking at Liz as we went by her. I remembered something my father had said to me the year before. He'd said it when I was in the hospital after one of the times I'd gone into insulin shock in school — in the cafeteria, where absolutely everyone had seen me fall forward into a bowl of tomato soup — and had been taken away in an ambulance. "Stacey,

lookat it this way, honey. The worst has happened/' he'd told me. "Now things can only get better." It was a good philosophy, and I'd repeated it to myself many times since then.

"Well, you guys," I said to the members of the Baby-sitters Club as we entered the school building, "look at it this way. The worst has happened. Now things can only get better."

"Wrong," said Kristy flatly.

"What?"

"Shesaid'wrong / "Claudiarepeated." Look."

We were rounding a corner. I glanced up. In the main intersection ofStoneybrookMiddle School a counter had been set up. A large sign on the wall behind it screamed: THE BABYSITTERS AGENCY, and in smaller letters: SIGN

UP HERE.

Michelle Patterson and two eighth-grade girls were sitting behind the counter. Each was holding a clipboard and looked very official. A large group of girls from every grade, as well as three boys, were standing around the counter asking questions and talking to Michelle and her helpers. I couldn't tell how many of them were signing up, but it didn't matter.

"I wonder who gave them permission to do

that/' I said.

Claudia shrugged.

"Bathroom," said Kristy urgently. We left the hall and piled into the nearest girls' room, checking to make sure the stalls were empty. Then Kristy, glaring furiously at Claudia and Mary Anne, opened her mouth to speak.

Claudia beat her to it. "Don't say it. I know what you're going to say. Okay. So we were wrong and you were right. What do you want to do about the agency? We'll do anything."

"Anything?" asked Kristy. She looked at each of us in turn.

"Anything," said Claudia.

"Ditto," said Mary Anne.

"Double ditto," I said.

"Great," said Kristy, "becauseI have another idea.A new one."

"Y-you do?" asked Claudia.

Kristy nodded grimly.

Claudia glanced sideways at Mary Anne. She poked at a drop of water on a faucet. "What? I'm afraid to ask."

At that moment, the bell rang.

Kristy rolled her eyes. "No time now. I don't care what any of you is doing after school. I'm calling a triple-emergency club meeting."

"Why not at recess today?" asked Mary Anne.

"Too risky/' replied Kristy." No more club business at school. For all we know, the agency has spies watching us.Anyone sitting this afternoon?"

We shook our heads.

"I haven't even spoken to Dr. or Mr. Jo-hanssenin a week," I murmured.

"I thought as much," said Kristy. "Well, today's my regular afternoon with David Michael, so we'll have to hold the meeting at my house, okay?"

"Okay," we agreed.

The meeting that afternoon was the picture of depression. The Baby-sitters Club sat around Kristy's dining room table while David Michael built a house out of wooden blocks for Louie. Kristy had served herself and Claudia and Mary Anne a snack, and had poured each of us a diet soda, but the food remained untouched. We stared at our hands. Claudia shredded a paper napkin and arranged the strips in a tidy pile. Nobody spoke except Kristy.

"We can talk about my other ideas later," she said, "but the new one is to recruit more members — eighth-graders — for our club. That way we'll have some older sitters, butwe

won'thave to copy the agency by working the way they do." She looked around the table. "Agreed?"

Claudia, Mary Anne, and I nodded silently.

The Baby-sitters Club was going to increase its numbers.

Chapte7.

Thanksgiving vacation was not a lot of fun that year. It came just two days after the Babysitters Club decided to take on new members. I didn't really mind asking other people to join our club — I figured it would be a chance to make more friends — but I didn't like the reason we were adding members. I was hopping mad at Liz and Michelle for hurting our club.

That was pretty much all I could think about on Thursday and Friday of Thanksgiving vacation. We had a four-day weekend, and I spent the first half of it mad at the Baby-sitters Agency.

I spent the second half of it mad at my parents.

For starters, they had said way back over the summer that we could go toNew York for

Thanksgiving, but the weekend before Thanksgiving they had suddenly changed their minds.

"We thought it would be nice to make our first Thanksgiving inConnecticut a true old-fashioned,New England holiday," Mom said. "I'll cook a meal that you can eat" — I scowled — "and we'll spend the day by ourselves. Dad will build a fire in the fireplace. We'll just enjoy beingcozy and together in our new home."