BSC10 Logan Likes Mary Anne (2 page)

I was all set for eighth grade. My brand-new binder was filled with fresh paper; I had inserted neatly labeled dividers, one for each subject, among the paper; and a pencil case containing pens, pencils, an eraser, a ruler, and a pack of gum was clipped to the inside front cover. My lunch money was in my purse, the photo of Cam Geary was folded and ready to be displayed in my locker. (That was what the gum was for. You're not allowed to tape

things up in the lockers of Stoneybrook Middle School, so a lot of kids get around that rule by sticking them up with bits of freshly chewed gum.) The only thing about me not ready for eighth grade was my age. I had the latest birthday of all my friends and wouldn't turn thirteen for several more weeks.

Starting eighth grade seemed like a breeze to me. I'd been a chicken when we'd begun sixth grade, and I was going to be one of the youngest kids in the school. I hadn't been much better when we'd started seventh grade the year before. But now I felt like king of the hill. The eighth-graders were the oldest kids in school. We would get to do special things during the year. We would have a real graduation ceremony in June. After that, we would go on to the high school. Pretty important stuff.

But I couldn't decide whether to be excited or disappointed about the beginning of school. When we reached Stoneybrook Middle School, Stacey and Claudia and I just looked at each other.

Finally Claudia said, "Well, good-bye, summer."

Then Stacey started speaking in her Porky Pig voice. "Th-th-th-th-th-th-th-thaf s all, folks!" she exclaimed, waving her hand.

Claudia arid I laughed. Then we split up.

There were three eighth-grade homerooms, and we were each in a different one. I went to my locker first, working half a piece of gum around in my mouth on the way. "Hello, old locker," I said to myself as I spun the dial on number 132. I opened the door. This was the only morning all year that my locker would be absolutely empty when I opened it. I pulled the poster of Cam Geary out of my notebook and set the notebook and my purse on the shelf of the locker. Then I unfolded the poster. I took the gum out of my mouth, checked the hall for teachers, and divided the gum into four bits, one for each corner. There. The poster stayed up nicely. I could look at Cam's gorgeous face all year.

I picked up my notebook and purse, closed my locker, and made my way upstairs. The hallways were already pretty crowded. Kids showed up early (or at least on time) for the first day of school.

My homeroom was 216, about as far from my locker as you could get. I entered it breathlessly, then slowed down. Suddenly I felt shy. Dawn was supposed to be in my homeroom, but she wasn't there yet. The room was full of kids I didn't know very well. And where was I supposed to sit? The teacher, Mr. Blake, was at his desk, but he looked busy. Had he

planned on assigned seating? Could we sit wherever we wanted? I stood awkwardly by the door.

"Mary Anne! Hi!" said someone behind me.

Oh, thank goodness. It was Dawn.

I spun around. "Hi! I just got here," I told her.

Mr. Blake still wasn't paying attention to the kids gathering inliis room.

"Let's sit in back," suggested Dawn.

So we did. We watched Erica Blumberg and Shawna Riverson compare tans. We watched a new kid creep into the room and choose a seat in a corner without looking at anyone. We watched three boys whisper about Erica and Shawna.

At last the teacher stood up. "Roll call," he announced, and the first day of school was truly underway.

This was my morning schedule:

First period - English Second period - math Third period - gym (yuck) Fourth period - social studies Fifth period - lunch

My afternoon schedule wasn't so bad: science, study hall, and French dass. But I thought

my morning schedule was sort of heavy, and by lunchtime I was starved.

Kristy (who was in my social studies class) raced down to the cafeteria with me. We claimed the table we used to sit at last year with Dawn and some of our other friends. (Stacey and Claudia usually sat with their own group of kids.) In a moment Dawn showed up. She settled down and opened her bag lunch while Kristy and I went through the lunch line. Last year we'd brought our lunches, too. This year we'd decided brown bags looked babyish.

When we returned to the table with our trays, we were surprised to find Stacey and Claudia there with their trays. Since when had they decided to eat with us? We were good friends, but last year they always thought they were so much more sophisticated than we were. They liked to talk about boys and movie stars and who was going out with whom. . . . Had Stacey and Claudia changed, or had Kristy and Dawn and I? I almost said something, but I decided not to. I knew we were all thinking that eating together was different and nice — and also that we weren't going to mention that it was happening.

I opened my milk carton, put my napkin in my lap, and took a good long look at the Ston-eybrook Middle School hot lunch.

"What is this?" I asked the others.

"Noodles," replied Kristy.

"No, if s poison," said Dawn, who, as usual, was eating a health-food lunch — a container of strawberries, a yogurt with granola mixed in, some dried apple slices, and something I couldn't identify.

"I don't see any noodles here," I said. "Only glue."

"According to the menu, that glue is mushroom and cream sauce," said Claudia.

"Ew," I replied.

"So," said Dawn, "how was everybody's first morning back at school?"

"Fine, Mommy," answered Stacey.

Dawn giggled.

"I have third-period gym with Mrs. Rosen-auer," I said. "I hate field hockey, I hate Mrs. Rosenauer, and I hate smelling like gym class for the next five periods. ... Do I smell like gym class?" I leaned toward Kristy.

She pulled back. "I'm not going to smell you. . . . Hey, I just figured something out. You know what the mushroom sauce tastes fike? It tastes like a dirty sock that's been left out in the rain and then hidden in a dark closet for three weeks."

The rest of us couldn't decide whether to gag or giggle.

Maybe this was why Claudia and Stacey didn't sit with us last year. I changed the subject. "I put the poster of Cam Geary up in my locker this morning/' I announced. "I'm going to leave him there all year."

"I want to find a picture of Max Morrison," said Claudia. "Thaf s who I'd like in my locker."

"The boy from 'Out of This World'?" asked Stacey.

Claudia nodded.

I absolutely couldn't eat another bite of the noodles, not after what Kristy had said about the sauce. I gazed around the cafeteria. I saw Trevor Sandbourne, one of Claudia's old boyfriends from last year. I saw the Shillaber twins, who used to sit with Kristy and Dawn and me. They were sitting with the only set of boy twins in school. (For a moment, I thought I had double vision.) I saw Erica and Shawna from homeroom. And then I saw Cam Geary.

I nearly spit out a mouthful of milk.

"Stacey!" I whispered after I'd managed to swallow. "Cam Geary goes to our school! Look!"

All my friends turned to look. "Where? Where?"

"That boy?" said Stacey, smiling. "That's not Cam Geary. That's Logan Bruno. He's new this year. He's in my homeroom and my En-19

glish class. I talked to him during homeroom. He used to live in Louisville, Kentucky. He has a southern accent."

I didn't care what he sounded like. He was the cutest boy I'd ever seen. He looked exactly like Cam Geary. I was in love with him. And because Stacey already knew so much about him, I was jealous of her. What a way to start the year.

Chapter 3.

The next day, Friday, was the second day of school, and the end of the first "week" of school. And that night, the members of the Baby-sitters Club held the first meeting of eighth grade. Every last one of us just barely made the meeting on time. Claudia had been working on an art project at school (she loves art and is terrific at it), Dawn had been babysitting for the Pikes, Stacey had been at school at a meeting of the dance committee, of which she's vice-president, Kristy had had to wait for Charlie to get home from football practice before he could drive her to the meeting, and I'd been trying to get my weekend homework done before the weekend.

The five of us turned up at five-thirty on the nose, and the phone was ringing as we reached Claudia's room. Dawn grabbed for it, while I tried to find the club record book. Everything was in chaos.

"I love it!" said Kristy when we had settled down.

"You love what?" asked Claudia.

"The excitement, the fast pace."

"You should move to New York/' said Sta-cey.

"No, I'm serious. When things get hectic like this, I get all sorts of great ideas. Summertime is too slow."

"What kinds of great ideas do you get?" asked Dawn, who doesn't know Kristy quite the way the rest of us do. I was pretty sure that Kristy's ideas were going to lead to extra work for the club.

I was right.

"Did you notice the sign in school today?" asked Kristy.

"Kristy, there must have been three thousand signs," replied Claudia. "I saw one for the Remember September Dance, one for the Chess Club, one for cheerleader tryouts, one for class elections — "

"This sign," Kristy interrupted, "was for the PTA. There's going to be a PTA meeting at Stoneybrook Middle School in a few days."

"So?" said Stacey. "PTA stands for Parent Teacher Association. We're kids. It doesn't concern us."

"Oh, yes it does," replied Kristy, "because

where there are parents there are children, and where there are children, there are parents needing baby-sitters — us. That's where we

come in."

"Oh," I said knowingly. Kristy is so smart. She's such a good businesswoman. Thaf s why she's the president of our club. "More advertising?" I asked.

"Right," replied Kristy.

The phone rang again then, and we stopped to take another job. When we were finished, Kristy continued. "We've got to advertise in school. We'll put up posters where the parents will see them when they come for the meeting."

"Maybe," added Dawn, "we could make up some more fliers and figure out some way for the parents to get them at the meeting. I think it's always better if people have something they can take with them. You know, something to put up on their refrigerator or by their phone."

"Terrific idea," said Kristy, who usually isn't too generous with her praise.

Dawn beamed.

"There's something else," Kristy went on after we'd lined up jobs with the Marshalls and the Perkinses. "When we started this club, it was so that we could baby-sit in our neigh-

borhood, and the four of us — " (Kristy pointed to herself, Claudia, Stacey, and me) " — all lived in the same neighborhood. Then Dawn joined the dub, and we found some new clients in her neighborhood. Now I've moved, but I, um, I — I haven't, um ..."

It was no secret that Kristy had resented moving out of the Thomases' comfortable old split-level and across town to Watson's mansion in his wealthy neighborhood. Of course she liked having a big room with a queen-sized bed and getting treats and being able to have lots of new clothes and stuff. But she'd been living over there for about two months and hadn't made any effort to get to know the people in her new neighborhood. Her brothers had made an effort, and so had her mother, but Kristy claimed that the kids her age were snobs. She and the Thomases' old collie, Louie, kept pretty much to themselves.

I tried to help her through her embarrassment. "It would be good business sense," I pointed out, "to advertise where you live. We should be leaving fliers in the mailboxes over on Edgerstoune Drive and Green House Drive and Bissell Lane."

"And Haslet Avenue and Ober Road, too," said Claudia.

"Right," said Kristy, looking relieved. "After

all, I know Linny and Hannie Papadakis — they're friends of David Michael and Karen. They must need a sitter every now and then. And there are probably plenty of other little kids, too."

"And," said Stacey, adding the one thing the rest of us didn't have the nerve to say, "it might be a good way for you to meet people over there."

Kristy scowled. "Oh, right. All those snobs."

"Kristy, they can't all be snobs," said Dawn.

"The ones I met were snobs," Kristy said defiantly. "But what does it matter? We might get some new business."

"Well," I said, "can your mom do some more Xeroxing for us?"

10181/8 mother (who used to be Mrs. Thomas and is now Mrs. Brewer) usually takes one of our fliers to her office and Xeroxes it on the machine there when we need more copies. The machine is so fancy, the fliers almost look as if they'd been printed.

"Sure," replied Kristy, "only this time we'll have to give her some money for the Xerox paper. We've used an awful lot of it. What's in the treasury, Stacey?"

Stacey dumped out the contents of a manila envelope. The money in it is our club dues. We each get to keep anything we earn baby-

sitting (we don't try to divide it), but we contribute weekly dues of a dollar apiece to the dub. The money pays Charlie for driving Kristy to club meetings and buys any supplies we might need.

"We've got a little over fifteen dollars," said our treasurer.

"Well, I don't know how much Xerox paper costs," said Kristy, "but it's only paper. How many pieces do you think we'll need?"

"A hundred?" I guessed. "A hundred and fifty?"

Kristy took eight dollars out of the treasury. "I'll bring back the change," she said. She looked at her watch. "Boy, only ten more minutes left. This meeting sure went fast."

"We couldn't come early and we can't leave late," said Dawn. "Summer's over."

There was a moment of silence. Even the phone didn't ring.

"I found a picture of Max Morrison," Clau-dia said finally. "It was in People magazine. I'm going to bring it to school on Monday."

"Where is it now?" asked Stacey.

"Here." Claudia took it out of her desk drawer and handed it to Stacey.

"Look at his eyes," said Stacey with a sigh.

"No one's eyes are more amazing than Cam's," I said. "Except maybe Logan Bru-