Ann Martin: Dawn On The Coast

Dawn on the Coast

Ann M. Martin

Chapter 1.

A trip to the West Coast. It was the highlight of my spring, that's for sure. When I got toCalifornia , I had an absolutely fantastic time. So how come I ended up feeling so confused? Believe me, there's a lot to tell. And I might as well start at the beginning.

First off, you're probably wondering who Sunshine is. Well, that's me. Of course nobody around here calls me Sunshine. Here inConnecticut they call me by my regular name, Dawn Schafer. But not my dad. He started calling me Sunshine when I was little and, unfortunately, it stuck. Maybe he gave me the name because of my long blonde hair. My hair is so light it's almost the color of cornsilk, and it reaches all the way past my waist. Or maybe Dad gave me the name because I love the sun so much. I really do. I love warm weather and the beach.

I guess I'm just aCalifornia girl at heart. After all, that's where I came from. And that Sunday, I was getting to go back for a visit!

I got the postcard from Dad when I came home from school that Thursday afternoon. I still had so much to do, so much to get ready. I dragged my suitcase out of the closet, threw it on the bed, and started to lay out my clothes. I decided to bring my white cotton skirt — I

could wear that with anything. And, of course, my bathing suit (a bikini) and my jeans and sneakers. I wasn't sure about my yellow cotton overalls. And would I really need three sundresses?

Maybe you're wondering why my dad lives inCalifornia and I live inConnecticut . Well, sometimes I wonder, too. Believe me, it's not the way I would've arranged it. But even so, things are working out okay. You see, about a year and a half ago, Mom and Dad got divorced. Dad stayed in our house inCalifornia and Mom moved me and my brother, Jeff, here toStoneybrook,Connecticut . I think Mom wanted to come here because my grandparents live here and it's the town where she grew up. To tell the truth, at first I wasn't the happiest, but then I adjusted. I found myself a best friend, Mary Anne Spier, and I got invited to join the Baby-sitters Club, which is just about the most fun club in the whole wide world.

My brother, Jeff, though, didn't adjust so easily. In fact, he didn't adjust at all. He started getting kind of nasty with me and Mom, and he even started to get in fights at school. It was pretty bad. His teacher kept calling up Mom and I don't think Mom knew what to do. Finally we decided to let Jeff go back toCalifornia for awhile. He really just wanted to

be back with his friends and live with Dad. I don't think Mom was thrilled with the idea, but she figured she had to let Jeff try it for six months.

Me, I didn't like the idea at all. It was bad enough that Mom and Dad had to get divorced. Already our family was split. But when Jeff left Mom and me, too, it felt like Jeff was up and deserting us. And then another part of me thought, hey, why couldn't I be the one to get to move back toCalifornia ?

Now I'm kind of used to the idea. In my head I understand all the reasons why things are the way they are. But sometimes it does seem strange the way the family has divided up. Boys against the girls. Or West Coast against the East Coast. I love Mom, and she and I get to stay together, but of course I love Dad and Jeff, and I miss them sometimes. And I know they miss us, too.

But Mom is the greatest. She and I have gotten a lot closer through all of this and we've made a whole new life for ourselves. We live in an old, old farmhouse that was built in 1795. No kidding. The rooms are really small and the doorways are so short that tall people have to stoop to get through them. Mom says people used to be shorter in the 1700s.

The best thing about our house, though, is

that it has a secret trapdoor in our barn that leads into a long, dark tunnel. You need a flashlight to walk through. The tunnel leads up into our house and conies out . . . right at the wall to my bedroom! The wall has a special latch that springs open to the touch. Talk about exciting. You should've seen the faces on my friends in the Baby-sitters Club when I showed them.

Maybe I should tell you a little bit about the club. There're six of us in it now, and we also have two associate members. What it is is just what it says, a club for baby-sitters. It was Kristy Thomas's great idea. She's our president. She figured that it would be great if there was a club that all the parents in the neighborhood could use whenever they needed a sitter. That way, they'd be pretty sure of getting someone for the job and they'd only have to make one call. Great for them, and great for us, too, since we're all super sitters and we love the work. Leave it to Kristy to come up with a good business idea. And leave it to Kristy to organize the whole thing.

What we do is this: Three times a week we have meetings in the afternoon. We meet at Claudia's house because she has a phone in her room . . . with her very own number! Claudia is Claudia Kishi and she's our vice-

president. Claudia is about as different from Kristy as you can get. Kristy is kind of small for her age and is a real tomboy. She always wears the same thing — jeans, a turtle neck, and sneakers. But not Claudia. You can always count on Claudia to be wearing some really unusual outfit, like a white jumpsuit with a wide purple belt and purple high-top sneakers. Claudia's Japanese-American and she's got beautiful, long, shiny black hair that she fixes differently practically every day. She loves art, too, so she has a really interesting sense of style.

After those two, there's Mary Anne Spier, our club secretary, and, as I said, she's my best friend in Stoneybrook. Mary Anne lives alone with her father because her mother died when she was a baby. Her father's been kind of strict with her and a lot of people think Mary Anne's quiet. It's true, she can be shy sometimes. But wouldn't you know it, she was the first one of us to get a boyfriend!

Speaking of boyfriends, when I first moved to Stoneybrook and became friends with Mary Anne, we found out something really exciting — my mom and Mary Anne's dad used to go out together in high school! Then, for a while, they even started going out together again! Imagine. My mom going with my best

friend's dad. Mary Anne and I were in seventh heaven. We were hoping our parents might even get married to each other. That would've made Mary Anne and me sisters! Now things have cooled off a little, but as Mary Anne says, you never know. . . .

So that's part of the club. Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and I are all in eighth grade, so we are very experienced sitters. We used to have another eighth-grade member, Stacey, but she moved back toNew York City , which was really sad, so we had to get someone to fill Stacey's place in the club. That's where Mallory and Jessi come in. Mallory and Jessi are our sixth-grade members. They can't sit at nighttime, except for their own brothers and sisters, but both of them are really good. We know Mallory really well because we baby-sit for her family, the Pikes. The Pikes have eight kids, and since Mallory is the oldest, she used to help us out.

Jessi is Mallory's friend and she's a newcomer to Stoneybrook. Her family is one of the first black families in the neighborhood, so I think that in the beginning, Jessi felt a little strange. When she first moved here, she wasn't even sure she wanted to continue with her ballet lessons, and she is a really talented ballet dancer — long-legged and graceful.

Wow! When I think about it, I do have a nice bunch of friends in Stoneybrook. As I was packing that day, I also started thinking about my friends inCalifornia . Clover and Daffodil (those are the kids I used to baby-sit for) and, of course, Sunny, who had been my best friend inCalifornia since second grade. That reminded me — I'd better stick suntan lotion in my suitcase. Sunny and I would probably want to go to the beach one day. Then I started making a list of all the other cosmetics and things I would need.