Ann Martin - Dawn On The Coast

Jeff knocked on my door to call me to dinner.

"Hey, Sis," he said. "Get your bod to the table."

How could I get through life without my dopey brother, I wondered. I didn't want to leave Jeff. I didn't want to leave Dad.

Mrs. Bruen had made her usual terrific dinner (fish fillets baked with tomatoes and covered with cheese sauce), and we ate it in the beautiful, clean dining room at a table with a tablecloth and flowers. Everything was arranged nicely, everything was organized. No misplaced purses, no lost keys.

I poured myself some juice from the frosty cold pitcher.

"Broccoli?" Dad asked me.

"Yes, please."

How would I start?

"Dad," I began.

"Yes?"

"I was thinking. ..."

"Yes?"

"Urn . . . Um . . . Hmm. I forgot what I was going to say."

Call me chicken if you want. It was very difficult for me to bring up the subject. We ate awhile, and I let Jeff and Dad talk.

"Aw, come on," Jeff was saying. "All my friends get to watch more television than that."

"Not on school nights," Dad said firmly. "Enjoy this vacation schedule while you can."

"But, Dad ..."

"You heard me," said Dad. "Subject closed."

That quieted Jeff. It also gave me space to try again.

"Dad," I said.

"Yeah?"

"I was thinking. ..."

"Sounds familiar," Dad grinned.

"Yeah, well, I was thinking ... I mean, it's just an idea, but I was wondering if ... well, what I'm thinking is, maybe I want to consider, well, maybe I want to consider staying in California, moving here like Jeff did."

I paused. Nobody said anything.

"It's just that I like it so much here/' I continued. "Everything is just my style. The weather, the kids. I mean, I just got this idea today, but actually maybe it's been brewing all along. I'm not even sure it's what I want. But I'm thinking about it, so I wanted to bring it up."

Dad was watching me closely. Jeff was watching Dad.

Dad let out a big breath. You'd have thought he was the one doing all the talking.

"Well," he said slowly. "It's certainly a possibility."

Jeff tossed his napkin in the air. He'd been waiting for Dad's response.

"Yippee!" he cried.

"Well," Dad sighed again. "There's a lot to think about here."

It suddenly occurred to me that maybe Dad didn't want me. He didn't seem too enthusiastic. But then he burst into a grin, the kind of grin that's unmistakably his.

"Oh, Sunshine," he said. "You know how happy I would be if you were out here?"

"Yippee!" Jeff yelled again.

"Of course," Dad added quickly, "there's a lot of things we have to consider here. There's your mother. ..." There was a long pause.

"And the custody and your school. And, of course, what you really want."

"But it's possible?" I asked.

"Well, from a practical standpoint, yes," Dad said. "You've got your own room here. Mrs. Bruen is already here and working. . . . But from a legal standpoint, I don't know. Your mother has custody, but then, she still has custody of Jeff and here he is. I'd have to talk to her and see, uh, see what we could arrange. Do you want me to call her tonight, just to talk?"

"No!" I was surprised at the strength of my answer.

"Do you want to call her?" Dad asked.

"Not yet," I said. I wasn't ready for that at all. "The first thing is I have to figure things out, decide what I want."

"You're the only one who can decide that, Sunshine," said Dad. "Your mother and I have the legal proceedings to work out, but we've got to know that it's what you want."

"Right," I said.

Dad and I ate the rest of our dinner in relative silence. You wouldn't have noticed the quiet, though. Jeff did a good job of filling that in.

"If you stay here we can go to the beach all the time," he said enthusiastically. "You can

come to my school if I'm in an assembly. I can borrow your Walkman, you can borrow my camera. ..."

Jeff went on like that for the rest of the meal, but I hardly heard him. All the things I had to think about were swimming through my head.

When I finished dinner I went back to my room and closed the door. California, Connecticut. California, Connecticut. I couldn't keep my thoughts straight. I decided to write them down.

I tore a piece of paper off my notepad and drew a line down the middle. At the top of the left half I wrote PROS: CALIFORNIA. At the top of the right I wrote PROS: STONEYBROOK. When I finished my list, this is what I had:

.- flALJRXMJA ?ROS:

Jeff -foe sun!

We VKidsClub

heal toy foods

-the, beach

on eyganized household

clover and "Daffodil -the hids> in

I thought about adding "Disneyland" under "California" but decided against it. It didn't seem like enough of a reason to move from one coast to the other, and besides, the California side already had plenty of entries.

Well then, it seemed pretty clear. California. I guess that's what I wanted. Somehow, though, it didn't seem resolved in my head. I needed to talk about it some more. I couldn't talk about it with Mom, and I'd already talked about it some with Dad. Maybe I should call Sunny? I decided against it. She'd just persuade me to stay. Maybe Mary Anne . . . Of course. She'd said to call.

I wandered out of my room.

"Dad," I called. "Can I call Mary Anne in Connecticut?"

"It's ten o'clock there," he said.

It was late, but it was vacation, so she should still be awake.

"Can I?" I asked again.

"Sure," he said.

The kitchen was now empty, so I set myself up in there. I opened my address book to the "S" page and ran my finger across. Mary Anne's name was the first. She had, after all, been my first Stoneybrook friend.

As I dialed her number, I could almost hear her voice answering the phone. She'd probably

squeal when she heard it was me. Mary Anne was a good choice, I thought. She'd be perfect to talk to in a situation like this. She's the kind of friend who would help me figure out what I wanted. I mean, of course she'd be sad if I wanted to stay in California, but she'd understand.

On the other end, the phone was ringing. Three rings. Four. No one picked up. Maybe they're just pulling into the driveway, I thought. I let it ring more. No one answered. I laid the phone back in its cradle and dropped down in a kitchen chair.

Around me the light was getting softer. The kitchen took on a rosy hue. Ten o'clock in Connecticut. I pictured Mary Anne and her father coming home from wherever they were, turning the lights on in their darkened house. Then I pictured Mom. I wondered what she was doing. Probably she was reading in bed. Or maybe she was out with the Trip-Man. (Horrors!) I wondered what she would say when I told her what I was thinking about. What would she do in that funny old farmhouse all by herself? If only she could move back to California, too.

Of course, I knew that was impossible.

The hard thing was, I found myself realizing that the person I really wanted to be talking

to about all this was Mom. I wanted the two of us to be sitting on my bed, having one of our heart-to-hearts. I wanted her to ask me questions, say wise things. I wanted her to help lead me through all this tangle I seemed to be tied up in.

I started to feel closed in from all the things I had to think about. I went out to the back patio and watched the golden sun fade.

Chapter 12.

I got the postcard from Kristy that Tuesday, when I still hadn't made up my mind what to do. I didn't find out the details until later, but I could picture the scene at the Pike household, where things are always a little wild.

The Pikes, you may remember, have eight kids. And that's just one family, not two combined or anything like that. Because it's such a crowd, Mrs. Pike always gets two sitters whenever she goes out. Now that Mallory, the oldest Pike, is eleven and in the Baby-sitters Club, Mrs. Pike usually uses Mallory plus one other sitter. That day it was Kristy.