Mary Anne and Camp BSC.
Martin, Ann M.
Chapter 1.
Pike"s Peak.
The two words just jumped into my head as I watched Mallory Pike"s seven younger siblings and Pow Barrett Pike, the Pikes" ba.s.set hound, playing a game of freeze tag.
Pike"s Peak is this famous mountain out west that was a sort of landmark for the European settlers who were headed for the coast.
But the Pike"s Peak I was thinking about is written this way: Pikes" Peak.
Because the Pikes were at the peak of their energy and activity. Okay, it"s a pretty dumb pun, but peak is an almost quiet quiet way of describing what I was watching. Adam, Byron, and Jordan, who are ten and are identical triplets (although they weren"t dressed alike - they"d die these days before they"d dress alike, except maybe for a practical joke), were charging around making wild grabs at everybody. Vanessa, who is a budding poet, was dodging way of describing what I was watching. Adam, Byron, and Jordan, who are ten and are identical triplets (although they weren"t dressed alike - they"d die these days before they"d dress alike, except maybe for a practical joke), were charging around making wild grabs at everybody. Vanessa, who is a budding poet, was dodging madly and shrieking, "Freeze, freeze, if you please!" "Freeze, freeze, if you please!" Nicky, who is eight, and Margo, who is seven, had hunched themselves into horrible, contorted, frozen shapes. Claire, who is five, was laughing and jumping out of the way as everyone pretended they were about to grab her and then "missed." And Pow was racing in and out among them all howling "Hoo, hoo, hoo!," his big, long ears flapping as he ran. Nicky, who is eight, and Margo, who is seven, had hunched themselves into horrible, contorted, frozen shapes. Claire, who is five, was laughing and jumping out of the way as everyone pretended they were about to grab her and then "missed." And Pow was racing in and out among them all howling "Hoo, hoo, hoo!," his big, long ears flapping as he ran.
Mallory, who is eleven and a junior member of the Baby-sitters Club (of which I am the secretary, but more about that later) as well as the senior sibling of the Pike family, nudged me with her shoulder. "You"re it," she said with a grin.
I grinned back. We were sitting on the back steps of their house. What were we doing? You guessed it. Baby-sitting. Pike-sitting. The Pikes always ask for two sitters when they call the Baby-sitters Club. Not that the Pikes are .bad kids or hard to handle or anything like that. But there are are a lot of them and they have tons of energy (see above). a lot of them and they have tons of energy (see above).
Claire made a grab at Jordan, who toppled over. "I"m frozen, I"m frozen," he wailed and writhed on the ground before "freezing" into a pretzel shape.
"You iced Jordan, Claire," said Adam. "But you won"t ice me!"
"Baroo! BarooOOOO!" howled Pow ecstatically.
Mal rolled her eyes. "I think all this spring and school-about-to-be-out stuff has gone to the triplets" heads."
"I know," I said. "It"s just too bad we can"t channel some of that energy and use it for, I don"t know, electricity or something."
"Yeah. Dawn would approve of that. It would be very environmentally correct." Mal was talking about Dawn Schafer, who is my stepsister, one of my two best friends, and a fellow member of the BSC. She is also, in case you hadn"t guessed, very environmentally conscious. But more about that later.
I laughed. "I wonder how you"d do it?"
"Beats me," Mal said. We sat in comfortable silence for awhile and watched the frozen victims all come back to life and start over again. Then Mal said, "I can"t believe school will be over in just three weeks!"
"Me either. And I can"t wait. I feel like all I"ve been doing lately is studying for tests and doing homework and baby-sitting. I haven"t even had time to clean up my room lately."
"Don"t worry. Your room will still be there."
"I know. But it bugs me. I like to have things neat."
Mal grinned. "In my family, I just like knowing where things are. With eight kids and two adults picking things up and putting them away, watch out!"
"Hey, when you"ve got a stepmother like Sharon putting things away, watch out!"
We laughed. Sharon Schafer Spier, who is my stepmother and Dawn"s mother, is, well, an imaginative imaginative housekeeper. I"ve found cans of beans on bookshelves and books in the linen closet. Sharon is absentminded that way, just the opposite of my father, the king of neat. But opposites attract, they say. And my father and Sharon are crazy about each other. I"m pretty crazy about Sharon, too. It"s nice having her for a stepmother, and extra nice having Dawn as one of my two best friends housekeeper. I"ve found cans of beans on bookshelves and books in the linen closet. Sharon is absentminded that way, just the opposite of my father, the king of neat. But opposites attract, they say. And my father and Sharon are crazy about each other. I"m pretty crazy about Sharon, too. It"s nice having her for a stepmother, and extra nice having Dawn as one of my two best friends and and my sister ... my sister ...
Wait a minute. I"m getting ahead of myself. I"m Mary Anne Spier. I"m thirteen years old. I"m kind of short, and I have brown hair and brown eyes. People say I"m sensitive and that"s probably true. Sometimes it"s a pain, because the littlest, dumbest things can make me cry (even some commercials on television). And I"m shy, too. On the other hand, I think being sensitive and shy helps me listen to people and be more understanding.
I live in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, where I"m in eighth grade at Stoneybrook Middle School. I"ve lived here all my life, most of the time as an only child and a half orphan. . Half-orphan sounds sad, I guess. But my mother died when I was just a baby, so I can"t really remember her. My father raised me by himself.
My father was strict, but loving. He was, as I got older, a little overprotective. He was so worried about being a single parent that I guess he was overcompensating. Anyway, for a long time, he made me wear my hair in braids and chose all these really little kid clothes for me. But with the help of my friends, I was finally able to bring him around. I can buy any kind of clothes I want now (within reason) and I even got a new haircut not too long ago. I also got a kitten named Tigger.
There"s Logan, too. Logan is the cutest boy in all of SMS and possibly Stoneybrook. He looks just like Cam Geary, the star (okay, so I"m not that objective, but still, it"s true). He"s from Kentucky originally and has this cool southern accent.
And he"s my boyfriend. See how much my father"s changed?
But that"s not the biggest change in my father"s life - or mine, for that matter. The biggest change is Sharon.
That"s right. Dawn"s mom.
You see, Sharon grew up in Stoneybrook.
In fact, years ago she used to date my father. But they lost touch after high school and Sharon ended up in California. Then when Dawn"s mom and dad got divorced, Sharon moved back to her hometown with her two children, Dawn, and Dawn"s younger brother, Jeff.
That"s where we come in. Dawn and I had already become best friends (in fact, I"m the one who suggested that Dawn join the BSC, which is what we call the Baby-sitters Club). Then we discovered the ancient romance between my dad and her mom. So, with a little help from us, the two of them started dating. And fell in love all over again.
And got married.
Which proves that opposites do attract, as I said before. My dad, Mr. Neat and Organized, is a lawyer. He alphabetizes the books on his bookshelves. He arranges his socks by colors in the drawer. He"s never, ever late for anything. His car looks as if he just bought it.
You get the picture.
And Sharon? Well, I"ve found a letter that she meant to mail stuck in the bathroom cabinet, and dishwashing soap in the laundry room. Plus Sharon, like Dawn and Jeff, is pretty health-food conscious. Sharon and Dawn never, ever ever eat red meat (Jeff does sometimes, I think) and they avoid sugar as if it eat red meat (Jeff does sometimes, I think) and they avoid sugar as if it were poison. My dad is a mashed potatoes and meat loaf kind of guy.
But all of that didn"t matter and still doesn"t, I guess, because they love each other. So now we"re a blended, bicoastal family. We"re blended because we"re two smaller families that have become one big family. And we"re bicoastal because Jeff eventually decided to move back to California with his dad (and Dawn just recently spent much too long a time out there on a visit).
We live in this neat house out on Burnt Hill Road. It"s an old farmhouse built back in the seventeen hundreds and it even has a secret pa.s.sage that might be haunted.
Although I"d always wanted a sister, my new family was a bit overwhelming at first (for Dawn, too, I found out). But we really care about each other. I like living in a big family. Well, compared to the Pikes it"s not such a huge family, but you see what I mean. I wouldn"t have it any other way.
"Huge," said Mal.
"Huh?" I said, wondering if she"d turned into a kind of mind reader.
"The chunk of time after school is out at the end of June."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, the camps that most of the kids go to don"t begin for three whole weeks. And the civic center won"t start its summer activities until the middle of July."
I was beginning to see what Mal was talking about. "Three weeks of kids out of school, parents still at work - and lots of jobs for the BSC," I said.
"Maybe too many," said Mal. "Since we"re, you know, a little short-handed."
I nodded. Neither Mal nor I particularly wanted to talk about it. We were short-handed because one of the members of the club had quit not top long before. Stacey McGill, our treasurer, had just left the BSC - and her friends - for her boyfriend and his group of "more sophisticated" friends.
It was true. They were more sophisticated than most of us in a way. But it still hurt.
Quickly I said, "So what"re we going to do about it? Get a new member of the BSC?"
"We could, I guess," Mal said. "But who? And where?"
We were quiet for a moment, thinking it over. At last we looked at each other and shook our heads.
"I vote we make this club business," Mal said. "Bring it up at the next meeting."
"Good idea," I said.
"Come play!" Claire shrieked.
"Okay." Mal suddenly grinned. She jumped up.
"Hey," I said. "Wait for me!"
We played freeze tag until Mal"s mother came home.
Maybe I wasn"t all that sophisticated. And maybe, I thought, making a dive for Mal, I didn"t care if I ever was.
We often eat dinner a little later than most people, because my father works late. He was almost too too late for dinner that night. We were just sitting down at the table when we heard the back door open. late for dinner that night. We were just sitting down at the table when we heard the back door open.
"I"m home and a happy man!" he announced, pausing in the doorway of the dining room. He leaned over to give Sharon a quick kiss. "Just let me hang up my coat and put my briefcase..."
His voice trailed off as he hurried down the hall.
He was back in a minute. "Hmmm. Smells good. What"s the entree?"
"Three-cheese macaroni," said Dawn. "It"s a recipe I made up."
"Sounds great," said Dad. He sat down. He smoothed his napkin onto his lap. He picked up his fork.
We"d all started eating by then. It was a great dinner, California-vegetarian-Schafer style, with some Spier touches thrown in, such as the double garlic and onion toast I"d made.
I put chopped up little chunks of garlic and onion on top of the toast and it looked pretty good.
I waited for my dad to taste everything and talk about how delicious it was-something he almost always does.
But he just sat there, holding his fork, looking around the table.
I knew something was up.
I put down my fork. Was something wrong? But my dad looked pretty cheerful. And hadn"t he just announced that he was a happy man?
So now two of us were holding our forks and not eating. Dad met my eyes and he grinned. He cleared his throat.
At almost exactly the same time, Sharon and Dawn looked up. Sharon put her fork down, too. Dawn stopped in mid-macaroni bite.
"Richard?" said Sharon. "What is it?"
My father cleared his throat again. "Yes. Well. I have some good news. Some outstanding outstanding news. Some excellent news." news. Some excellent news."
"Richard!"
"Our law firm is merging with another firm - "
Sharon immediately looked relieved. "Oh, yes. I remember you"d talked about that being in the works."
"Yes. It"s all set. It"s a great opportunity for us." My father was using his "lawyer" tone of voice now. I had to smile.
"Congratulations, Dad," I said.
"Super, Richard," said Dawn.
"Thank you, both of you." My father looked pleased. "I"ll be traveling more, at least at first." He cleared his throat for a third time. "Beginning with a two-week trip to Cincinnati in July."
"Two weeks!" Sharon smiled at Dad. "Sounds important."
"It is," Dad said.
Sharon looked at Dawn and me. "Well, we can bach it," she said. She p.r.o.nounced it "batch."
Dawn and I gave her puzzled looks, but my dad let out a shout of laughter. "I haven"t heard that term in a long, long time," he said. "I think my grandfather used it."
" "Bach" it?" asked Dawn.
"Make like bachelors. Be bachelor girls," explained Sharon.
It sounded pretty old-fashioned to me.
"Cool," Dawn said. "We"ll order take-out food every every night and stay up late and..." night and stay up late and..."
I was beginning to get the picture. "And have wild parties!" I added.
Dad and Sharon looked at each other. I could see them making all kinds of "eye conversation," if you know what I mean.
"Sounds good to me," Dad said at last. He looked down at his plate as if he"d just discovered it was there. "Dinner!" he said. "I"m hungry!"
We all started laughing then.