Ann Martin - Baby-Sitters Club 090

I felt alive again.

But our family still wasn't the same.

I looked at the cartons. Before we moved, Mom had sold or given away practically everything. We bought all new furniture, all new everything, even chests of drawers and desks. The interior decorator decorated our big new house and we moved into a completely new life.

I gave one of the cartons a kick. Mistake. The killer dust bunnies attacked me. All of a sudden I was having trouble breathing. I panted a little and took a couple of gulps of air. Then I hauled my inhaler out of my pocket. (Have inhaler, will travel. Actually I have two kinds of inhalers - a prescription one for when my attacks get really bad, and a regular one that you can buy in the drugstore for times like these, when I get a little short of breath.) I held the inhaler to my lips and took a couple of drags on it.

A few minutes later my breathing was back to normal.

I flicked Aretha off. I needed real company, so I decided to plunge into the high seas of Kristy's family. Even if only half of them were around, that would be plenty.

Sure enough, when the door to Kristy's house was opened by her little brother David Michael and his pup, Shannon, the noise rushed out like a tidal wave.

"Hey!" said David Michael. Then he took a deep breath and bellowed, "Kristy!" "Don't yell like that!" Kristy called back.

I started laughing as David Michael shouted, slightly more softly, "Okay. Abby's here!" "Thanks," Kristy replied in her usual firm, commanding tone of voice as she entered the hall. "Hi, Abby!" "What's up?" I asked.

"Pasta jewelry," said Kristy.

"Huh?" "Emily Michelle and Karen and Andrew and I are making jewelry out of pasta." Kristy was referring to her adopted younger sister, Emily Michelle, and her stepsister and stepbrother, Karen and Andrew.

"Like rigatoni and bow ties?" I asked.

"Yeah. You know the names of all that stuff?" I shrugged. Mom had been a cook once.

But she'd never let us play with the food! I settled down happily at the kitchen table, and before the afternoon was over we'd decked ourselves out in pasta necklaces and earrings and Karen had made a "hairpiece" out of spaghetti. Creative, but not practical.

I didn't realize how late it was until I heard Kristy's mother calling, "Hey, guys, I'm home!" "Speaking of which," I said, jumping up.

I said good-bye quickly and slipped out the kitchen door while Kristy's family converged on Mrs. Brewer.

The lights were on in my house and music met my ears as I burst through the back door. Not Aretha. Anna practicing her violin.

"Hey, I'm home!" I called.

To my surprise, my mother entered the kitchen. She smiled. "I figured you were in the neighborhood." "Kristy's," I said.

"Baby-sitters Club meeting?" Mom looked puzzled. "I thought those were held on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. And aren't they usually at Claudia's?" My mom never forgets anything. This has made me an honest person. (The BSC is this club I just joined. But more about that later.) "Just visiting," I said. Impulsively, I hugged her.

She looked surprised. And pleased.

I pulled back quickly (you don't want to spoil your parental units), and asked, "Can we send out for pizza for dinner?" "Pizza?".

I looked up and there was my sister. It wasn't like looking in a mirror exactly. Sort of like looking in a, well, blurred mirror. I have long, dark, curly hair. Anfta has short, dark, curly hair. We have pointed faces and brown eyes. We were both wearing jeans and big sweaters. I sported Timberland boots. Anna wore fuzzy slippers. She had her glasses on. I was wearing my contacts.

Mont has brown curly hair, too, but she wears it extremely short. Her face is squarish and her eyes are a dark hazel.

But if you saw the three of us together, you could tell we're related. And you could tell that Anna and I are very related. A second look and you'd figure out we're twins.

Even twins disagree, though. "Two pizzas," suggested Anna.

"Why?" I demanded.

"Because you're allergic to everything I like, including cheese," she said, smiling to show that she wasn't taking a poke at me and my allergies.

"Not garlic," I teased.

"Ugh," said Anna.

"Girls, girls," Mom said, shaking her head with mock seriousness.

She looked at her watch. "I suggest you work it out, order the pizza - or pizzas - and call me when it gets here. I have a little more work to do." She headed for her study.

Anna and I exchanged a glance. Oh well, at least we'd all be eating dinner together. It didn't happen that often.

We sat at the table and began our pizza negotiations.

Chapter 2.

Kristy's little stepsister Karen calls herself a two-two. That's because she has families in two houses, her father's and stepmother's, and her mother's and stepfather's. So she keeps two of a lot of things, one in each house.

The Baby-sitters Club is a two-two, too.

Or two-two, also . . .

What you've got here is your basic three sets of two best friends.

I realized that at the club meeting the very next day. The BSC meets from five-thirty to six P.M. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in Claudia Kishi's room. There are seven members, plus two associate members, who don't attend all the meetings and who weren't there that day. Which left best friends Kristy and Mary Anne Spier, Claudia and Stacey McGill, and Mallory Pike and Jessica Ramsey.

Let's start with Kristy, since she's the president of the BSC, the supposed Queen of the Great Ideas, and the squeaky wheel most likely to get the grease, and her best friend, Mary Anne Spier, living proof that opposites can get along.

This is what Kristy and Mary Anne have in common. They are both short (Kristy is the shortest person in the eighth grade), they both have brown hair, they have known each other practically their whole lives (and, in fact, lived next door to one another until recently). They each lost a parent when they were young. Kristy's father just walked out one day when she was six or seven; the next time they heard from him he was in California. Mary Anne's mother died when Mary Anne was a baby.

Now Kristy and Mary Anne both have "blended families." That means that their parents have remarried and they have step-siblings and new lives (and even potential ghosts . . .) Kristy's mother remarried not too long ago - to a millionaire, lucky Kristy - and Kristy and her two older brothers, Sam and Charlie (owner of the Junk Bucket), and her younger brother, David Michael, moved into Watson Brewer's mansion. Which is how Kristy acquired her stepsiblings Karen and Andrew Brewer. Then Watson and Kristy's mom adopted Kristy's youngest sister, Emily Mi-chelle, who is from Vietnam and was an or- phan. Nannie, Kristy's maternal grandmother (owner of the Pink Clinker), also lives with them and helps keep order in the chaos, which includes a great dog, a cranky cat, some personality-free goldfish (but then what goldfish aren't), and the ghost of one of Mr. Brewer's ancestors. Believing in the ghost is an option: Kristy's little sister Karen does, but then she thinks the woman who lives next door to her, and between the Brewers' house and ours, is a witch.

When Mary Anne's father remarried, he chose his high school sweetheart, Sharon Porter Schafer, who'd moved back to Stoneybrook from California after her divorce. She brought two kids with her, and one of them, Dawn, became Mary Anne's other best friend, and then her sister, when Mrs. Schafer and Mr. Spier got married. Mary Anne and her father moved into the Schafers' old farmhouse with its own barn, near the edge of town. Dawn discovered a secret passage in the house that might'be haunted.

But now Dawn and her younger brother Jeff are California kids again. Jeff missed California and his father so much that he moved back. Dawn visited them awhile ago - and only returned to Stoneybrook long enough to realize that she wanted to stay in California, too.