Ann Martin - Baby-Sitters Club 033

Kristy has brown hair, brown eyes, and is the shortest kid in our class. I have a feeling she doesn't think she's pretty, but she is. She'd look even better if she took some interest in her clothes, but Kristy wears practically the same outfit day in and day out - jeans, a turtleneck, running shoes, and if the weather is cold, a sweater. Sometimes she wears her Krushers T-shirt instead of the turtleneck, and often she wears this baseball cap with a collie on it. (The Thomases used to have a collie, Louie, but he died, which is why they got Shannon.) Kristy's best friend is Mary Anne Spier. It's funny, but Kristy and Mary Anne actually look a little alike. Mary Anne also has brown hair and brown eyes, and she's on the short side, but there the similarities end. I guess best friends can be opposites and it doesn't matter. While Kristy is outgoing, Mary Anne is shy and quiet, especially around people she doesn't know well. She's also very sensitive (she cries at everything - don't ever see a movie with her), and she's a good listener, someone to go to with a problem. Plus, she's romantic, so I guess it's fitting that Mary Anne, even though she's shy, is the first of us BSC members to have a steady boyfriend. Guess who he is - Logan Bruno, one of our associate members! Like Kristy, Mary Anne has an interesting family - but it sure is different from Kristy's. For starters, Mrs. Spier died when Mary Anne was very little, so Mary Anne grew up in sort of a lonely atmosphere. It was just her and her father for the longest time, and Mr. Spier was really strict, trying to bring up his only child by himself. He made up all these rules for Mary Anne, including rules about how she could dress. But about a year ago, when he saw how mature and responsible Mary Anne really is, he started to loosen up. Now Mary Anne dresses in pretty cool clothes instead of the Janine-like way her father made her dress, although she still isn't allowed to get her ears pierced, use much makeup, or put on any nail polish other than clear.

A little while ago, Mr. Spier began to loosen up even more. That was because he began dating again - and he was dating the mother of Dawn Schafer, another BSC member! See, a long time ago Mrs. Schafer and Mr. Spier had gone to Stoneybrook High together. Then Mrs. Schafer (who was Sharon Porter at the time) went off to college in California, where she met and married Mr. Schafer. Together they had Dawn and her younger brother, Jeff, before they got divorced. After the divorce, Mrs. Schafer moved back to Stoneybrook, her hometown, with Dawn and Jeff. Dawn and Mary Anne became best friends (Mary Anne has two best friends), and then Mrs. Schafer remet Mr. Spier, they began dating, and finally . . . they got married! So now Mary Anne and Dawn are best friends, club members, and stepsisters. As far as Mary Anne is concerned, the only bad thing about all this is that she, her father, and her kitten, Tigger, had to move out of the house in which Mary Anne had grown up, and into Dawn's house because it's bigger. But she's getting used to things.

I should probably tell you about Dawn next, since you already know a little about her. Dawn is our California girl. Having grown up out there, she likes (and misses) the hot weather and sunshine, and had a hard time adjusting to our Connecticut winters. Dawn also likes health food (her whole family does), and would rather eat tofu and broccoli than an ice-cream sundae. And she loves ghost stories and haunted houses and mysteries, which is pretty interesting considering that the colonial farmhouse she moved into in Stoneybrook has an honest-to-goodness secret passage (one end of it is in Dawn's bedroom), and there's an outside chance that the house, or at least the passage, is haunted.

If Kristy and Mary Anne are on the pretty side, then Dawn is out-and-out gorgeous. Her hair is incredibly long and incredibly blonde (it's practically white), and her eyes are a piercing blue. She's thin, and a terrific dresser, although her style is different from that of any other BSC member. We call it California casual - loose clothes, bright colors, trendy but not outrageous. Dawn is an individual and does pretty much whatever she pleases (without hurting anyone's feelings). Her clothes are unique, she's got two holes pierced in each ear, and she doesn't care (much) what other people think of her. She just sort of goes her own way. I tend to think of Dawn as strong, like Kristy, but one thing really tore her apart. That was when her brother, Jeff, moved back to California to live with their father. He'd never been happy in Connecticut, had never adjusted like Dawn had. Dawn knew it was the right thing for him, but she misses him a lot, and now her family is broken in two and separated by three thousand miles. She does like having a stepfather, though, and she especially likes her stepsister, so things have been better for Dawn lately.

My best friend in the whole world is Stacey McGill. Stacey is an only child who grew up in big, exciting New York City. But she and her parents moved to Stoneybrook at the beginning of seventh grade because the company her father works for transferred him to Connecticut. Stacey and I became best friends very quickly. She was my first best friend! But she had been here for just a year when her father was transferred back to New York. I was almost as sad then as I was when Mimi died. However, the McGills had been in New York again for less than a year when Stacey's parents decided to divorce - and Mrs. McGill decided to move back to Stoneybrook, which she had loved. Stacey was allowed to choose whether to live here with her mother or in New York with her father, and she finally settled on Stoneybrook. Boy, am I glad to have Stacey back, even though I'm really sorry about the reason she's here. I know she misses her father terribly, even though she's allowed to visit him any time she wants (except on school days). She hated having to choose between her parents.

As best friends, Stacey and I are much more alike than Kristy and Mary Anne or Dawn and Mary Anne are. We're both sophisticated and mature for thirteen (I guess that sounds a little stuck-up, but I really think it's true), and we're both very into clothes and style. We have pierced ears (Stacey has one hole in each ear, and I have one hole in one ear and two in the other), we're both wild dressers, and Stacey even gets to perm her blonde hair every now and then. Stacey is always trying out new things like painting designs on her nails or putting glitter in her hair.

Stacey is funny, sweet, and a much better student than I am. In math, she's nearly a genius, although I hate to use that word. But she has one problem. She's diabetic. This doesn't bother any of us club members, of course, but it does worry us sometimes. Stacey has gotten awfully thin lately, she has to give herself daily injections of something called insulin, and she has to stay on a strict, and I mean strict, diet. See, diabetes is a. disease in which an organ called the pancreas doesn't make enough of a hormone, insulin, to control the blood sugar in someone's body. (Ew, biology.) So without the injections and the no-sweets diet to control her blood sugar, Stacey could get really sick. She could even go into a coma. Stacey knows this, so she tries hard to do what her doctors tell her, but in all honesty, there are some days when she just plain doesn't feel well. Stacey copes, though.

Before I tell you about the last two club members, Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike, let me finish telling you about me. You've already heard about my family, my art, how I feel about school, and how I'm like Stacey. Here are just two more things about me: 1. I love junk food and keep tons of it in my room. 2. Although I don't really like to read, I do like Nancy Drew mysteries. But I have to keep both the junk food and the mysteries hidden, because my parents don't approve of either one. They don't approve of the junk food for obvious reasons, and they don't approve of Nancy Drew because they think I should be reading "literature." Mimi used to say, "I don't care what you read, my Claudia, as long as you read." I like her way of thinking better than Mom and Dad's. Anyway, my room can be a surprising place. When you open a drawer or turn over a pillow, you never know if you're going to find a hidden package of Ring-Dings or maybe a copy of Mystery at the Moss-Covered Mansion.