Ann Martin - Good Bye Stacey, Good Bye

If we hadn't been sitting smack in the center of the Stoneybrook Middle School cafeteria, I'm sure all five of us would have started wailing away. As it was, we were pretty close. Mary Anne (who cries easily) picked up her napkin and kept touching it to the corners of her eyes. Dawn put her fork down and began swallowing hard. Kristy (who rarely cries) bit her lip and stared out the window. I didn't do anything except not look at Claudia, but even so I knew she was not looking at me, too.

After a moment I said, "Your enthusiasm is underwhelming."

That brought a few smiles, at least.

Finally Kristy said, "I just can't believe it. You've only been here for ..."

"A little over a year," I supplied.

Suddenly everyone had questions.

"Where will you go to school?" asked Dawn.

"Are you moving into your old apartment building?" asked Mary Anne.

"Will your parents let you come back here to visit?" asked Kristy.

I answered the questions, plus a few more. Claudia was nearly silent the whole time.

Then Kristy said, "Remember that night you baby-sat for Charlotte and there was a blackout?"

"Oh, yeah!" I replied, almost laughing. "And we heard noises in the basement, only they turned out to be Carrot." (Carrot is Charlotte's dog.)

"And remember when you took Kristy's cousins to the movies and they behaved like monsters?" said Dawn.

"I'll never forget it. What an afternoon."

"And when we were baby-sitting for all the Pike kids at the beach," added Mary Anne, "and we took them to play miniature golf?"

"That was the worst!" I cried. I glanced at Claudia.

"Remember when we met each other?" she managed to say.

"Of course. First day of school last year. I dropped my notebook and you stepped on it."

"By accident," she reminded me. "And then we looked at each other and we were both wearing off-the-shoulder sweat shirts and high-top sneakers."

"I couldn't decide whether to hate you or hope you'd become my best friend," I admitted.

"Same here/' she said.

I looked at my watch. "Uh-oh! I have to go. I have to talk to Mr. Zizmore. He knows I'm moving, and he wants to go over some math with me. I might be able to skip into algebra back at my old school. Well, 'bye!" I jumped up. I just didn't want to face any more comments about leaving the Baby-sitters Club or about what good friends we'd all been. It would be too, too sad. And I couldn't talk to Mr. Zizmore if I was crying.

I didn't find this out until much later when Claudia told me (she tells me everything), but after I left the table, my friends continued to talk about me and the move.

"You know," said Claudia, "we really have to give Stacey a going-away party."

"A spectacular one," added Kristy. "Or at least a special one. Not just the five of us sitting around with soda and potato chips in club headquarters."

"What could we do that would be really special?" mused Mary Anne.

"A surprise party?" suggested Dawn.

"A big party with kids from school?" suggested Kristy, adding tentatively, "Boys . . . ?"

"Maybe," said Claudia, "but I'm not sure how special those ideas are."

"I know/' agreed Kristy. "They're just regular old party ideas."

"We may have a little problem/' Mary Anne spoke up.

"What?" asked Kristy.

"Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'm kind of low on money, and I don't think we should use treasury funds since Stacey contributes to the treasury, and it would be like she was paying for her own party. I've got about five dollars, myself."

"Oh," said Dawn. 'I've got five-fifty."

"I've got six," said Kristy. She looked at Claudia.

"Zero," replied Claud. "I just bought a new pair of sneakers."

"Sixteen-fifty won't go very far if we want to give Stacey a really special party," Dawn pointed out.

"That's not our only problem," said Kristy. "We're forgetting something. What on earth is the club going to do without Stacey? I know it's kind of mean to think about that right now, but it is a problem. A big one."

"Yeah," said Mary Anne slowly.

"I mean, we did all that advertising when school started," Kristy went on. "We got new customers — the Rodowskys, the Papadak-

ises, the Delaneys, and everyone."

"And we depend on Logan and Shannon for help pretty often," added Dawn. "Hey, maybe one of them —"

"No, we've been through that already," Kristy interrupted. "They don't want to be regular members."

My friends grew silent, thinking.

"This is one big problem," said Kristy, heaving a sigh. "Being a member of the club takes up an awful lot of time."

"And we need someone just as responsible as Stacey," said Dawn.

"She is not going to be easy to replace," Kristy remarked. "Not at all. This may be the biggest problem our club has ever faced."

Meanwhile, I was upstairs with Mr. Zizmore. He was patiently explaining a problem to me, and I was patiently not listening. I was thinking of moving, of Claudia, of Laine, of the Jerk Twins, of awful Allison Ritz, of the Baby-sitters Club, of Charlotte Johanssen.

Charlotte. How could I tell her I was leaving? That her favorite person in the world was abandoning her? It wasn't my fault, but she wouldn't care whose fault it was. All she'd care was that I wouldn't be around anymore.

Of course, she had Carrot and all her best

friends, and she liked school. But I couldn't kid myself. She would really miss me. And I would miss her. And telling her I was leaving was going to be very, very hard.

Darn Dad and his stupid old company. They were making life miserable for a whole lot of people.

Chapter 5.

Mary Anne's job sitting for Jeff Schafer started out normally. Mary Anne was prepared for a fairly easy job since Jeff was the only kid to sit for, he's pretty old, and it was a school night, so she figured he'd have homework to keep him busy. She arrived at the Schafers' a little early. The reason Dawn wasn't taking care of her own brother was that she was going out with her mother. The public library was giving a program on old homes and "haunted" houses in Stoneybrok. This sort of thing is fascinating to Dawn. She loves to read ghost stories, and the Schafers' house is really old and even has a true secret passage in it. Of course, Mrs. Schafer and Dawn had asked Jeff to go to the lecture and slide show with them, but he'd refused. So Mary Anne was babysitting.

Ding-dong. Mary Anne could hear the Schafers' bell ringing in the house. It was followed by silence. At the Pikes' it's followed by the sound of a stampede as the eight kids run to the door. At the Perkins' it's followed by the frantic barking of Chewbacca, their dog. But at the Schafers' that night, Mary Anne didn't hear a thing. She was about to ring again when the door was flung open by Dawn.

"Sorry!" she apologized breathlessly. "You're

early! Mom and I were upstairs changing our clothes. Don't ask me why Jeff couldn't come to the door."

"Is he in one of his moods again?" Mary Anne asked warily.

Dawn nodded ruefully. "I guess so." Mary Anne sighed. She knew that Jeff was having problems and had become sort of a handful since school began that fall. See, Dawn's parents got divorced almost a year ago, and Dawn and Jeff and their mom moved to Connecticut last January. (The reason they moved all the way to Stoneybrook from California is that Dawn's mother grew up here.) At first, things seemed to be going pretty smoothly. The Schafers got all the hard stuff out of the way. They found a house they liked, Dawn and Jeff started in their new schools, and finally Mrs. Schafer even got a job. Then, toward the end of the summer, Dawn and Jeff went to California to visit their father for the first time since they'd moved east. Dawn thought the trip went well, but maybe it went too well for Jeff. Not long after they returned to Stoneybrook, Jeff started acting cross and moody. In school he became a troublemaker. And lately he's been talking about moving back to his dad's, if that's possible. Dawn, of course, is