Ann Martin - Baby-Sitters Club 028

Although Claud loves her parents and her sister, she's had a rough time lately. Recently, her grandmother Mimi died. Claudia and Mimi had been extremely close. For Claudia, losing Mimi was like losing one of her parents. But she's dealing with it pretty well.

The club secretary is Mary Anne Spier. Mary Anne is more like Kristy than Claudia or me, although she's not exactly like any club member. She's like Kristy in that she actually looks like her - brown hair, brown eyes, very short. And for the longest time, she cared absolutely zero about clothes. No, wait. That's not true. She dressed like a baby, but that was because her father made her dress that way, not because she didn't care. See, Mr. Spier has raised Mary Anne alone ever since Mrs. Spier died, which was when Mary Anne was very little. And for the longest time, he thought that the best way to raise a daughter alone was to be really strict with her. He made up all these rules for Mary Anne, like she had to wear her hair in braids and she couldn't talk on the phone after dinner unless it was about homework. Lately, though, Mr. Spier has loosened up. He's relaxed his rules, and Mary Anne can wear the clothes she likes and fix her hair however she wants.

Oddly enough, Mary Anne is the only one of the club members with a steady boyfriend. His name is Logan Bruno and he's one of the nicest people I know. He's an associate member of the club. That means he doesn't attend meetings, but he can be called on to take a job if one is offered to the club that none of the other members can take. That happens sometimes. (There's one other associate club member, by the way. She's a friend of Kristy's, named Shannon Kilbourne.) Mary Anne and her dad live in the house across from Claudia's with their kitten, Tigger. And I have to add that, despite her problems, Mary Anne is the most sincere, compassionate person I know, and a good listener. She's also a big crier and very romantic. She's best friends both with Kristy and with Dawn Schafer.

When did Dawn join the club? Good question. Dawn came along soon after she moved to Stoneybrook, at a time when the club was expanding and needed a fifth member. Dawn moved to Connecticut from California with her mother and her brother Jeff, because Mrs.

Schafer grew up there and her parents still lived there. The move was difficult for Dawn, but even more difficult for Jeff. He never adjusted and finally went back to California to live with his dad. So Dawn's family is split in half.

Like Kristy, Dawn seems to have adjusted, though. She may look fragile, with her long pale blonde hair and her bright blue eyes, but she's tough. And she's a real individual. She dresses the way she pleases (I think of her style as California casual), eats only healthy foods (none of Claud's junk food and no meat), and doesn't care what people think of her. Two interesting things about Dawn: one, she lives in a really old house with a secret passage in it that just might be haunted and two, her mom and Mary Anne's dad have been going out on lots of dates! Dawn joined the club as an alternate officer, meaning she could take over the job of any club member who couldn't make a meeting, but when I moved back to New York, Dawn became the treasurer.

Something else happened when I moved back to New York. The club's business had been growing and growing, so Kristy decided I would have to be replaced. She ended up replacing me with two people - Mallory Pike and Jessi Ramsey. That's because Mal and Jessi are two years younger than the rest of us. They're in sixth grade, and not allowed to sit at night unless it's for their own younger brothers and sisters. But they're good sitters, so Kristy figured that if they could take on a lot of the afternoon jobs, the others would be freed up for evening jobs. So far, the junior officers seem to be working out just fine.

Mallory is somebody the club used to sit for. Believe it or not, she has seven younger brothers and sisters - and three of the boys are identical triplets! Mal is wonderful at keeping a level head and staying calm during emergencies. I guess she learned those things just from being the oldest of eight kids.

Mallory is really neat. She loves to read, write, and draw, and is thinking of becoming an author and illustrator of children's books one day. She has one big problem, though. She thinks her parents treat her like a baby. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. 7 think Mal has just reached that difficult age when she feels more grown-up than her parents think she is. Mal really had to work to convince Mr. and Mrs. Pike to allow her to get her ears pierced and her long curly hair cut. And they put their foot down (feet down?) when Mal asked for contacts instead of the glasses she wears. Plus, now she has to get braces. I wish Mal felt better about the way she looks, but as she once said, being eleven is a real trial. Mal copes as best she can.

One thing that helped Mal a lot was making her first best friend. Guess who her best friend is - Jessi Ramsey. Mal and Jessi found each other when they both needed a best friend pretty badly. Mal was going through a hard time trying to grow up, and Jessi and her family had moved to Stoneybrook (right into my old house!) from a little town in New Jersey after the company for which Mr. Ramsey works transferred him to their Stamford, Connecticut, office. Boy, did Jessi have a hard time adjusting to the move. The Ramseys are black, and their neighborhood in New Jersey was pretty integrated. So was the school that Jessi and her younger sister Becca had gone to. But Stoneybrook is almost all white. There are only a few black kids in Stoneybrook Middle School, and none except for Jessi in the sixth grade. I have to say that the people of Stoneybrook did not exactly accept the Ramseys right away. They didn't look closely enough to see what a nice family they are. They only saw their dark skin. (Well, that was at first. Things are better now.) But in the beginning, it would have helped if they'd kept their minds open. If they had, they would have found two parents who care about their kids very much. They would have found Becca, who is eight and extremely shy, but a loyal friend and a good student. They would have found Squirt, the baby of the family, who is adorable. His real name is John Philip Ramsey, Jr., but when he was born, he was so tiny that the nurses in the hospital nicknamed him Squirt. (He's caught up to other babies his age now.) And they would have found Jessi. Jessi loves kids, horses, and dancing. She's a great baby-sitter, she and Mal read horse stories nonstop (especially the ones by Marguerite Henry), and boy, can Jessi dance. Jessi has taken ballet forever. When her family moved to Connecticut, she was accepted by this really good dancing school in Stamford where she goes for lessons twice a week. She has these long, long legs and she practices, practices, practices. She has even danced onstage in front of big audiences. So those were the people I knew I'd be reaching when I picked up the phone in Laine's room - Claudia, Kristy, Mary Anne, Dawn, Mal, and Jessi. Some of them were closer friends than others, but they were all my friends.

The phone rang twice.

A familiar voice answered it.

"Hello, Claud?" I said.

Chapter 4.

I was a little nervous about calling right in the middle of a BSC meeting. Kristy likes the meetings to be strictly meetings - since they are only half an hour long - and she doesn't like to tie up the phone with nonclub business. But nobody seemed to mind my call too much (especially not Claudia).

"Stacey?" Claudia replied, after I'd said hello.

"Yeah, it's me." Right away, Claudia's emotional antennae must have gone up. Mary Anne's are always up (that's why she's so sensitive to people), but Claud's come up instantly when someone she cares about is having a hard time. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Something's wrong, isn't it?" "Yes. Can you talk for a minute? I know I called during a meeting, but ..." "Just a sec," said Claudia hurriedly.