Ann Martin - Good Bye Stacey, Good Bye

that she's much, much more responsible than she used to be. At least, after she sprang this surprise project on Dawn she told her she'd pay her fifty cents per hour extra for her trouble.)

Dawn had to be at the Barretts' house right after school that day in order for Mrs. Barrett to get to her job on time. When she was let inside, she was greeted by an exuberant Buddy and Suzi, a mountain of old toys in the living room, Marnie Barrett (who's only two) squawking in her high chair, Pow (the Barretts' bassett hound) making a mess with dog kibble on the kitchen floor, and Mrs. Barrett dashing for the back door, calling over her shoulder, "You know where the phone numbers are, Dawn. Oh, by the way, I told Buddy and Suzi they could hold a sidewalk sale today. Back at six! 'Bye, kids!"

"Wait a sec!" Dawn cried, chasing after Mrs. Barrett. "What are they selling?"

"All the stuff on the living room floor!" Mrs. Barrett closed the door to the garage after her.

Dawn opened it again. "Is the stuff priced?" she asked.

"No. You can help them with that." Mrs. Barrett climbed into her car.

Dawn ran to the window and knocked on

it. "What are we going to set up the stuff on?"

"Oh. There's a card table in the closet in the front hall." She started the car.

"What shall I do with Mamie?" Dawn shouted.

"Put her in the playpen. It's folded up in the rec room. Have fun!"

Mrs. Barrett backed out of the garage.

"Oh, brother," Dawn said under her breath. She ran back to the living room. Buddy and Suzi were nearly hysterical with excitement.

"It's sidewalk sale day! It's sidewalk sale day!" they kept shouting as they jumped around their pile of toys.

"Let's get started, Dawn!" cried Buddy.

"Wait a sec," said Dawn "Just a minute. Okay?" She put Pow's kibble away and sent Pow outside. Then she lifted Mamie out of her high chair. "Poor Marnie-o," she said. "You're wet. And I bet you'd like to play outside, wouldn't you?"

"No-no," replied Marnie, but she was smiling. She answers every question with no-no.

Dawn changed Marnie and put her playpen in the front yard near the sidewalk. Then she helped Buddy and Suzi set up the card table and lug all their stuff out to it. At last she plopped Marnie in the playpen with a few toys and a graham cracker.

"Okay, guys," she said to Buddy and Suzi. "I guess you're in business." But she knew their sale was doomed from the start.

"What do we do first?" Suzi wondered.

"I think you should sort of arrange the stuff on the table," replied Dawn. "You know, fix it up so it looks like a real store, all nice and neat, and like you'd want to buy something. And arrange it so people can find what they're looking for. Put all the games in one pile, all the trucks together, that sort of thing."

The Barretts busied themselves with their wares while Dawn played "Where is Thumb-kin?" with Marnie.

"Okay," Suzi said a few minutes later. "All finished. Where are our customers?"

They watched a few cars drive by.

"You need a sign, I think," said Dawn.

So Buddy made a sign on a piece of construction paper that read:

0,0

He hung it on the front of the table.

A few more cars drove by. One of them slowed down so the driver could read the sign, but then it sped up and went on.

"Try shouting," suggested Dawn.

The next time a car approached Buddy yelled, "Toy sale! Toy sale! Buy our toys!"

Suzi yelled, "Hey, slow down! Stop! . . . STOP!"

The driver smiled and waved but didn't stop.

"I think the problem is that no one knew about the sale ahead of time," said Dawn.

"We told the Pikes about it," Buddy informed her. And at that moment, three of the Pike kids showed up.

"You want to buy something?" asked Suzi hopefully, hopping from one foot to the other.

"Sure," replied Vanessa Pike. "I've got fifty cents."

"We don't have any money," said Claire, speaking for herself and Margo. "We just want to look."

The Pikes looked over the toy selection. Finally, Vanessa said, "I think I'd like to buy that tow truck. I could give it to Nicky for his birthday. How much is it?"

"Two dollars," said Buddy.

"Five cents," said Suzi.

"How much?" asked Vanessa.

The Barretts shrugged. They turned to Dawn for help.

"I think you should charge ten cents," Dawn

told them. (She'd had a lot of experience pricing things lately.)

"Ten cents?!" cried Buddy.

"It's used," Dawn pointed out. "And it's just a little truck."

The ten-cent truck was the only sale the Barretts made that afternoon. By five o'clock, they were bored and disappointed, and Dawn thought they ought to close up shop. When the last of their toys had been carried back inside, Dawn decided to tell Buddy and Suzi how our yard sale was being organized. She didn't want to sound like an I-told-you-so person, but she thought it might help them to know about the benefits of advertising and planning ahead. Then she even told them that they could set up a booth at my yard sale.

The Barretts were ecstatic, but it turned out that they were actually more interested in the fact that I was moving than in the sale.

"Will you miss Stacey?" Buddy asked Dawn.

"I sure will," she replied. "All her friends will. We're going to give her a big party before she leaves."

"A party! Can we come?" asked Suzi.

It was that simple question — Can we come? — that gave Dawn the idea my friends had been looking for. Suddenly, Dawn knew

just what kind of party to throw me. When she left the Barretts' that evening, she ran home and phoned Kristy right away.

"I've got it!" she cried. "I thought of a special, meaningful, wonderful party for Stacey."

"Thank goodness," said Kristy. "I was really getting worried. Tell me!"

"Well, it involves children," Dawn began, and then she explained her idea.

"Fabulous!" Kristy exclaimed when Dawn was finished. "I'll call Mary Anne, you call Claudia. Then the four of us better get together without Stacey sometime soon. Maybe tomorrow before the club meeting."

"Perfect," said Dawn. She was smiling when she hung up the phone, and she knew Kristy was, too.

o,

Chapter 12.

On Saturday morning I woke up with butterflies in my stomach. I'm not sure how it's possible to feel nervous while you're asleep, but that must have been what was happening, because when I opened my eyes, the butterflies were already there.

It was yard sale day.

I jumped out of bed excitedly. I could see, even without raising the shade, that the sun was shining. My friends and I would just have died if it had been raining and we'd actually had to hold the sale on the rain date.

It was 7:30. The sale was to be held from 10:00 until 4:30. Claudia, Kristy, Mary Anne, and Dawn were going to come over at 8:30 to set everything up. For an hour I raced around the house, getting dressed, eating breakfast, checking on a million things. My parents thought I was going to give myself a heart attack.

"Relax, slow down," said Dad.

"But I just realized something! We don't have any change to start off with! What if the very first customer pays for a fifty-cent toy with a five-dollar bill?"

"Relax. I'll give you ten dollars in change," my father told me. "You can pay me back when the sale's over."

"Oh, thanks!" I cried, and ran down to the basement to look at our junk.

My friends showed up right on time. They were as excited as I was. Mary Anne was wringing her hands. "We only have an hour and a half!" she wailed.

"Cut it out," said Dawn, who was twisting her hair nervously. "I feel like a wind-up toy that someone wound up too tight."

"Okay, you guys. Relax, slow down," I said, echoing my father's words. "Let's get to work."

Everyone drew in deep breaths and let them out slowly.