Ann Martin - Baby-Sitters Club 040

So now Mary Anne and Dawn are stepsisters - and also best friends. (Yes, Mary Anne has two best friends.) Mary Anne and her father and Tigger (that's Mary Anne's kitten) moved into Dawn's mother's house because it was bigger. Now they all live there happily, except for Jeff, who missed California and his father so much that he moved back there. Dawn misses them terribly, but she tries to visit the California part of her family whenever she can.

You'd know Dawn for a California girl the minute you saw her. She's absolutely gorgeous. Blonde? They don't come any blonder. Her clothes are great - casual, fun, and stylish. She loves health food and the sun, and she's just basically what I'd have to call "mellow." She knows her own mind - for example, she doesn't get tempted by all the great junk food I always have.

One thing that does tempt Dawn is a mystery. And she also loves ghost stories. Her favorite ghost story, in fact, is the one about her own house! That's right - her house may be haunted. There's this secret passage in that old farmhouse, and someday I'm sure Dawn will catch the ghost that she believes lives there.

I don't think Stacey believes in the ghost. (That's Stacey McGill, my best friend.) She's blonde, and pretty, and very smart. Stacey grew up in New York City! But now she lives in Stoneybrook, with her mom. She and I became friends when she first moved here - probably because we both have sophisticated taste in clothes - but now our friendship is much deeper. I was crushed when she moved back to the city (her dad's company transferred him) but it wasn't long before she'd moved back here again. Of course I was thrilled, even if the reason for her move wasn't the greatest - it was because her parents had gotten divorced.

Stacey's handling the divorce well - she visits her dad in the city as often as she can. And she and her mom are close.

Mr. and Mrs. McGill used to be kind of overprotective of Stacey, because Stacey has diabetes. That means that she has to be very careful about what she eats and when she eats it, or else her blood sugar gets all out of whack and she can get extremely sick. It all has something to do with her pancreas, but the complete scientific story behind it is more than I can remember. (I almost failed biology.) Stacey takes good care of herself, checking her own blood sugar and giving herself injections (ew) of insulin. She tries not to let the diabetes cramp her style, but lately I've noticed that she seems kind of tired and weak all the time. I hope she's okay.

The last but not least of my baby-sitting friends are Mallory Pike and Jessica (everyone calls her Jessi) Ramsey. They're younger than the rest of us (they're in sixth grade) but they're pretty cool. They're best friends, and like most best friends they're different in some ways and alike in others.

This is how they're alike: They both love to read (especially horse stories), they both wish their parents would stop treating them like babies (eleven is a hard age), and they both come from close families.

This is how they're different: Mallory's family is huge - she has seven younger brothers and sisters. Jessi's family is smaller - just a little sister, Becca, and a baby brother, nicknamed Squirt - and also, they're black, while Mal and her family are white. Of course, Jessi's color makes no difference to any of us, but there were plenty of people in Stoneybrook who felt otherwise, at least at first. Now I'd say that Jessi is pretty happily settled here. Another difference: Mallory loves to write and draw (she hopes to be a children's book author and illustrator someday) while Jessi's passion is ballet (she's a really good dancer and practices all the time).

So those are my friends. I'm pretty lucky to have every one of them. But I 'knew that the next day, during math class, it would be just me against good old Gertrude. I would be on my own.

Chapter 3.

"Okay, people," said Mr. Zorzi, trying to be heard over the roar of everyone talking at once. "Let's get ready for this test." He stood at the front of the room with a stack of papers in his hands. "Books on the floor beside your desks." Then he walked along the front row of desks, giving each kid a bunch of papers. "Pass them back, please." He folded his arms and watched as the tests were distributed. "This test will count for a large portion of your grade. But don't worry - I think all of you know the material. I'm sure you'll do well." I looked down at the paper that had landed on my desk, and gulped. There were a lot of problems on it. Fractions and decimals were scattered like land mines all over the page.

I glanced up at Mr. Zorzi. He saw me looking up and gave me a little smile. Then he pointed at the clock. I got the message - time to get started.

I focused on the first problem. It didn't seem to make any sense. I blinked and looked again. It still looked like nothing but a jumble of words and numbers. Oh, no! All of a sudden I felt dizzy. What was I going to do? There was no way I was going to make it through this test if I couldn't even make sense of the first problem.

Then I remembered something Janine had told me. "If you get nervous, Claudia, just take a few deep breaths." I did that. Now, what else had she said? I thought for a minute. Then I heard Janine's voice in my mind. "Remember, Claudia - you don't have to do the test in any special order. If the first question looks too hard, find one that you can do, and then you can always go back." 1 looked down the page. There! Problem Six! I was sure I knew how to do that one. It only took a couple of minutes, and by the time I finished it, all the stuff I'd studied had come back to me. I went back up to Problem One and worked straight through the rest of the test.

I didn't work fast - I took my time and made sure not to make any "foolish mistakes," as Mr. Zorzi calls them, like doing the whole problem right but then adding two and three and getting six.

When the bell rang, I nearly jumped out of my seat. I'd been concentrating so hard! I glanced over the problems one more time and then handed in my test. As I walked out of the room, I was grinning. I must have looked like a jerk, but I just felt so good. I had never felt that way after taking a test before. I knew I had done a good job. I was sure I'd get at least a B on the test - maybe even an A! The rest of the day dragged a little, probably because I couldn't wait for it to be over. I was really looking forward to our club meeting that afternoon. I couldn't wait to tell Stacey and the others about how well I'd done on the test.

When I got home, I tried to work on my collage, but I felt too excited. By 5:15, it seemed like I'd been waiting forever for the meeting to start. I'd cleaned up my room a little and put out some snacks - M&M's and Fritos for me, Kristy, Mary Anne, Jessi, and Mallory, and whole-wheat crackers for Dawn and Stacey.

Finally I heard someone pounding up the stairs. (Nobody knocks on the front door or rings the bell when they come to meetings - they just let themselves in.) It was Kristy. Being president, she feels it's important to be on time. She's almost always the first to arrive.

She sat down in the director's chair by my desk, put on her visor, and tucked a pencil behind her ear. She was ready for the meeting. "How's it going, Claud?" she asked.

1 started to tell her about my test, but then I thought maybe I should wait until the others were here so I wouldn't have to tell everything twice.

1 looked at Kristy in her chair and thought about all the other times I'd seen her sitting there. The Baby-sitters Club had been going strong for a long time, I realized. I thought back to how it had all begun.

Kristy got the idea for the club back in the beginning of seventh grade. One night her mom was trying to get an after-school sitter for David Michael (Kristy's little brother, remember?), which wasn't usually a problem, since most of the time either Kristy or Sam or Charlie would be able to sit for him. But anyway, that time, none of them could. And Mrs. Thomas (she wasn't married to Watson yet) could not find a sitter, no matter how many phone calls she made. Kristy started thinking. Wouldn't it be a great service to parents if they could reach a whole bunch of sitters with just one phone call?