Ann Martin: Mystery At Claudia's House

Our club's treasurer is Stacey McGill, who happens to be my best friend. Stacey is cool. Very cool. She grew up in New York City, and I think she's more sophisticated than anyone else in Stoneybrook. Her outfits are always awesome, and she perms her blonde hair and wears makeup that brings out her big blue eyes.

Stacey's parents got divorced not too long ago, and her dad lives in New York. Stacey visits him as often as she can, but I think she's

glad she decided to live in Stoneybrook with her mom. (Boy, would I hate to have had to make that kind of decision!) I think Stacey has a really good relationship with her mother. Mrs. McGill used to baby Stacey, because Stacey has diabetes. But by now Stacey has proved that she is mature enough to take care of herself.

Diabetes is no joke. It's a serious disease, and Stacey will always have it. It has to do with blood sugar; I've never entirely understood the scientific explanation, but I know that Stacey has to be very careful about what she eats. No sweets. (That would be a total nightmare for me.) Also, she has to give herself a shot every single day. That's because her body doesn't produce the right amount of this stuff which I forget the name of. Anyway, Stacey's very accepting about having diabetes, even though it sometimes makes her really, really sick.

As treasurer of our club, Stacey's main job is to collect dues every Monday. She sometimes has to pry the money out of us, since we allhateto part with our hard-earned cash. She also keeps track of how much money is in the treasury. This is a snap for Stacey. She loves math. (Gag me!)

We use the dues money for a lot of different things. For example, we pay Kristy's brother

to drive her to meetings, since Watson's mansion is way across town. (Kristy used to live across the street from me.) And some of the money goes for supplies for our Kid-Kits. Kid-Kits are another of Kristy's great ideas. They're these boxes we've decorated to look cool, and they're full of stuff that kids love: games and puzzles and stickers and books. We bring them on jobs, and they're always a big hit, especially on rainy days when kids are bored to death with all theirowntoys.

If Stacey can't make a meeting some day, Dawn Schafer can take over her job. In fact, Dawn can take over any job in the club. She's our alternate officer, and she can fill in for anyone. Dawn's great. She's also absolutely gorgeous, but she doesn't even know it. She has this long, long silky blonde hair, and big blue eyes, and this great casual-yet-extremely-stylish way of dressing.

Dawn and her younger brother grew up in California, but when her parents got divorced, her mom decided to move back to Stoneybrook, which was whereshe'dgrown up. Guess what happened to Mrs. Schafer when she came back to Stoneybrook? She met this man she used to date in .high school, fell in love with him again, and married him. And guess who that man was? Incredible but true: It was Mary Anne's father. That's how Mary

Anne acquired a new stepmother and stepsister and stepbrother.

Dawn still misses California sometimes, but now she loves Stoneybrook and considers it her home. Her brother never made that adjustment, though. He went back to California to live with his dad. I know that's hard on Dawn. She misses Jeff a lot.

Kristy and Mary Anne and Stacey and Dawn and I are all thirteen and in the eighth grade, but two members of our club are a little younger. They are our junior officers, Mallory Pike and Jessi Ramsey, who are eleven and in the sixth grade. They're also best friends. Being junior officers means 'that they can't baby-sit on weeknights, unless it's for their own families. Instead, they do a lot of afternoon sitting, which is great since it frees the rest of us up for nights.

Mallory is energetic and smart. She has red hair and wears glasses. She also has braces, which she hates. Mal would love to have her braces removed, dump her glasses for contacts, and get some really funky clothes to wear — but she is only, eleven, and her parents have told her she'll just have to wait. I think Mal, sometimes feels older than her years, because she's the eldest in a family of eight kids and has had a lot of responsibility

for her brothers and sisters. Mal wants to write and illustrate children's books someday, and I think she'll probably do just that. She has a lot of talent.

I've already told you a little about Jessi. Becca is her sister, remember? She also has a baby brother, who is adorable. Like Mal, Jessi is talented; she's a dancer. She's been studying ballet forever, and she's really serious about it. Her parents are totally supportive of her, which is great. Jessi's family also includes an aunt who lives with them.

There are two more members of our club, but they don't come to meetings. They're associate members, who help out when our schedule is overloaded. One is Shannon Kil-bourne, a girl from Kristy's neighborhood. The other is Logan Bruno, who happens to be Mary Anne's boyfriend.

So that's the club. Great idea, great people. There's only one tiny little thing about our club that I don't love. That's the club notebook, another of Kristy's ideas, in which we each have to write up what happens on every job we go on. Then we all read the notebook every week, so we're up to date on what's going on with our clients. Good idea, right? So why don't I like it? Well, since I don't happen to be the world's best speller, sometimes I get a

little embarrassed about how my entries look. But I write in the book anyway, because it z's a good idea. Besides, Kristy insists on it.

Our meeting that day was almost over. In between phone calls and after we'd taken care of club business, I told everyone about how I thought someone had been in my room. Nobody took this seriously; maybe they didn't believe me. After all, my room didn't look all that different tothem.Jessi jokingly suggested that the FBI must be after me for some reason, and Dawn thought maybe it was the work of a ghost. (Shelovesghost stories.) Kristy wanted me to set up an elaborate trap to catch whoevermighthave been in my room, but the others didn't think it was worth the work. I decided they were right. In fact, I decided the whole thing probablyhadbeen in my head.

Just as the meeting was ending, guess who called. Derek Masters' mom! So hewasback in town. Mrs. Masters said she'd be needing sitters quite often, since she and Mr. Masters were very busy managing Derek's career. I have to admit that we squabbled just a little over who would get the first job — everybody was kind of excited about sitting for a STAR — but Kristy was actually the only one free that Friday, which was the day Mrs. Masters was calling about. So she got the job.

After the meeting, I put my room back in

order, checking again to make sure nothing was missing. Nothing was. I figured I had just imagined the whole thing. After all, why would anyone be interested in my makeup and stuff? It didn't make sense.

Chapter 3.

Kristy was a little nervous about being the first to sit for the Masters boys. She hadn't seen Derek for a long time. For all she knew, he might have changed a lot.

"What if he thinks of himself as a big star now?" she'd asked Mary Anne and me at lunch. "After all, his show's more popular than ever now. Maybe he won't even talk to normal people anymore. He probably has a car phone and a swimming pool and all kinds of things out there in Hollywood. He's going to be so bored in Stoneybrook. How'm I supposed to entertain a kid like that? He's probably ten times more sophisticated than I'lleverbe." Kristy sounded so panicked that I was tempted to giggle. I was sitting next to her in the school cafeteria, Mary Anne was across the table, and Stacey, Dawn, and Logan were scattered around us.