Ann Martin - Kristy And The Haunted Mansion

Mary Anne got something else recently, too. A bigger family! Her father met up with an ex-girlfriend from his high school days, fell in love with her again, and married her. Mary Anne acquired a stepmother, a stepbrother, and a stepsister. And the best thing was this: the new stepsister was Dawn Schafer, another member of the BSC and Mary Anne's other best friend. Dawn grew up in California, and only

moved to Stoneybrook when her parents got

divorced and her mother decided to return to

her hometown. The move wasn't easy for

Dawn, but I think meeting Mary Anne and

becoming a member of the BSC made it nicer

for her. Unfortunately, her little brother Jeff

never really made the transition. He ended up

moving back to California to live with his dad.

Dawn is a pretty cool person, and I really

admire her. She's very self-assured. She

doesn't hesitate to speak her mind, yet she

manages to do so without putting her foot in

her mouth the way I so often do. Dawn is

pretty, too, with long blonde hair so light it's

almost white, and big blue eyes, and a way

of dressing that looks comfortable and elegant

at the same time. She has a healthy glow about

her, which is probably due to the fact that she

doesn't eat red meat and she's a health-food

nut.

Dawn is also nutty about ghosts. She can talk forever on the subject of ectoplasm and strange footsteps. And she's convinced that the old, old farmhouse where she and her mom live (and where Mary Anne and her dad now live, too) is haunted. She may be right, since there is a secret passage left over from the days of the Underground Railroad. I could easily imagine that ghosts would love that passage.

Dawn's position in the BSC is alternate officer. That means that she can take over the duties of any other officer who can't come to a meeting.

For example, if Stacey McGill couldn't come one day, Dawn could fill in as treasurer. Stacey doesn't miss many meetings, though. She loves her job as treasurer because: a) she's a math whiz, so it’s easy and fun for her, and b) she loves to collect, count, and hoard money! Sometimes we practically have to beg her to "release the funds" for a pizza bash.

To me, Stacey looks like a model. Honest! She has medium-length blonde hair, which is curly and wild. She gets it permed, I guess, though I never pay too much attention to beauty details like that. Stacey also dresses like a model, in outfits I couldn't even begin to imagine wearing. Like lacy purple leggings with big floral tops, or black miniskirts with little cowboy shoes.

Stacey grew up in New York City, which may explain why she is so sophisticated. She moved to Stoneybrook permanently after her parents got divorced. Stacey lives here with her mother, but she visits her father as often as possible. He still lives in New York. Stacey is an only child, and I think because of that the divorce has been especially hard on her. She often feels pulled back and forth between

her mother and father. For example, recently her mother was very sick with pneumonia and Stacey felt she needed to be with her, but she had also promised to attend a special event with her father in New York. At times like those, Stacey tries to please everyone and ends up pleasing nobody. That can't be easy.

The other thing that makes Stacey's life hard is that she has diabetes. That's a life-long disease in which the body doesn't process sugars correctly. What it means for Stacey is that she has to be very, very careful about what she eats (no sweets) and that she has to give herself shots of insulin (which her body doesn't produce the way it should) every single day. If I had diabetes, I'd probably complain about it to anyone who would listen, but Stacey hardly ever complains. She just deals with it.

Have I made Stacey sound like a hard luck case? She's not. She's full of fun and always ready to jump into whatever's happening. She's a little boy-crazy, wild about shopping, and a great baby-sitter.

Those last three things would also describe Stacey's best friend, Claudia Kishi. Claudia is Japanese-American, and really gorgeous. She has long black hair, almond-shaped brown eyes, and a beautiful complexion. Like Stacey, she's a wild dresser. But while Stacey's outfits tend to be trendy, Claudia's are better described as — well, as creative, I guess. Claudia's a terrific artist, and she applies her artistic ideas to her clothing. She might wear a hand-painted silk scarf to top off a polka-dotted jumpsuit, for example. Or two handmade papier-mâché earrings: that look like little donuts, with a third that looks like a cup of coffee. (Claud has two holes pierced in one ear, and one in the other.)

Claudia is vice-president of the BSC, but just like the vice-president of the country, she doesn't have a lot of official duties. She's vice-president mainly because we use her room — and her phone — for our meetings. Claud has a private line, and without it we wouldn't have a club. We could never tie up anyone else's line the way we do hers. She does have one official duty: answering the phone when clients call outside of meeting hours. And she has one unofficial duty: supplying the refreshments for our meetings.

Claud's unofficial duty is a labor of love, since she is the Junk Food Queen of Stoneybrook. And although Claud isn't very good at memorizing things or taking tests (which is why she doesn't get such great marks at school, unlike her older sister Janine who is a true genius), she knows her junk food. She can tell you the ingredients and special properties of every candy bar on the market. She

can compare and contrast Doritos and Ruffles. And she could pass a cola taste test with flying colors. She just loves junk food, and she always has plenty of it on hand.

You wouldn't see any of the stuff at first if you walked into her room, though. Why? Because she hides it, since her parents don't approve of it They don't approve of her taste in reading, either; Claud loves Nancy Drew books, and her parents would rather see her read books that are a little more challenging. So the Snickers bars can often be found nestled in a sock drawer, next to a well-thumbed mystery.

The other club members serve as our junior officers. While the rest of us are thirteen and in the eighth grade, Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike are eleven and in the sixth grade. They are both great sitters, but neither of them is allowed to sit at night unless she's sitting for her own family. That's why we call them junior officers, and that's why they take a lot of the afternoon jobs.

I can see Jessi and Mallory being friends at eighty-five, just like Mary Anne and me. There they'll be, on the porch. Mal will be sitting in a rocker, writing in her journal. (She wants to be an author-illustrator of children's books, so she's always writing.) And Jessi will be standing near the porch railing with her foot

stretched out on top her advanced years. (She's a dedicated ballet student, and never seems to stop stretching and practicing.)

Mallory has curly red hair, glasses, and braces. She sometimes refers to her glasses and braces as "the bane of her existence," a phrase she picked up somewhere which means, basically, that she hates them. She'd like to get contacts, but her parents say she's too young. Fortunately, her braces are the clear kind, so they don't even show much — a fact she has a hard time believing. Mal comes from a gigantic family. She has seven younger brothers and sisters! (I've already told you about two of them; Nicky, who's a Krasher, and Vanessa, who's a cheerleader for the team.)

Jessi's family is much smaller. She has a younger sister and a baby brother. Also, her aunt lives with the family, just to help out. Jessi is black, with beautiful cocoa-colored skin and these long, long ballet-dancer legs. I'm really glad that both she and Mallory are in the club.