Kristy and the Mother's Day Surprise (12 page)

     
And whomever I was talking to would say, “Oh, your mom’s going to have a baby! That’s great!”

     
And then I would tell my news. Each time I did, the person on the other end would have to shriek and scream for a few seconds. Then she would ask lots of questions. I was glad for that, because by the time I got into bed, I was exhausted and knew I would be able to sleep.

Chapter 15.

 
.

I slept okay that night, but I was up at six o’clock the next morning. I don’t know the last time I voluntarily got up at that hour on a weekend. But who can sleep on the day her adopted sister is arriving? Not I.

     
I tiptoed downstairs and found that I wasn’t the first one awake. Mom and Watson were sitting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee. A high chair had been placed at one end of the table.

     
“Morning, Watson,” I said. Then, “Hi, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day!” I kissed her cheek.

     
“Thanks, honey.”

     
“I wish I had a present for you, but you got your gift yesterday.”

     
“Oh, I know,” replied Mom enthusiastically. “And it was great.”

     
“Funny,” I said. “We called yesterday’s outing the Mother’s Day surprise. But I think

Emily is the real Mother’s Day surprise. At least she is to me.”

     
“In a way she is to us, too,” spoke up Watson, as I slid into my chair with a glass of orange juice. “We’ve been trying to adopt for quite awhile. It takes time. We feel lucky to have Emily at last.”

     
“Mom? Watson?” I asked. “How come you adopted? You could have had a kid of your own, couldn’t you?”

     
“Yes,” said my mother, “we could have. But I’ve already given birth to four children.”

     
“And I’ve gottwo,” added Watson.

     
“So we decided not to create a seventh. We decided to find a child who’s already here but who needs a home. And when we went looking, we finally found Emily.”

     
I nodded. “I like that. . . Boy, is it weird to see all this baby stuff.” The high chair was at the table, a stroller was parked by the back door, and a car seat was waiting to be taken into the garage.

     
Mom and Watson smiled, looking like proud new parents.

     
They left for the airport around noon.

     
When Sam, Charlie, and I told them we weren’t going to leave the house — we wanted to be here for the very first glimpse of Emily —

us
   
kids were left in charge of each other. As soon as Watson’s car left the garage, I

looked at my sister and brothers. “What are we going to do now?” I asked them.

     
We made about a thousand suggestions — and turned them down. At last I said, “I know what we’re going to do. Well, I know what I’m going to do.”

     
“What?” asked Sam and Charlie. “Invite the Baby-sitters Club over.” That would be great. Even Stacey could come. She wasn’t leaving for New York until much later in the afternoon.

     
“Oh, no, no. Please, no!” moaned Sam. “All those girls?” added David Michael. I made a face at him. “You know all those girls. You spent yesterday with them.”

     
“I didn’t,” said Sam. “I don’t want them here.”

     
“I thought you liked girls so much.”

     
“I like the girls in my class. If you invite your friends over, it’s going to be like a slumber party here.”

     
“Oh, it is not,” I replied, reaching for the phone.

     
“Besides, what’s wrong with girls?” asked Karen.

     
My friends showed up within an hour. Each

time the doorbell rang, Sam and David Michael pretended to faint. But I have to admit that Sam was pretty impressed when Stacey immediately suggested a good project for the afternoon.

     
“We should welcome Emily,” she said. “We should bake her a cake or something.”

     
“Make a sign,” added Sam, brightening.

     
“How about cookies instead of a cake?” said Mal. “She’s only two. She might like cookies better.”

     
“Okay,” I agreed.

     
“From scratch, or those slice-and-bake things?” asked Charlie.

     
“Scratch,” I replied immediately. “That’ll take longer, and we want to fill up the whole afternoon. If we need any ingredients, you can run to the store.”

     
“Oh, thanks,” said Charlie, but I could tell he didn’t really mind, as long as he was here when Emily came home.

     
“How come I don’t get cookies?” asked Andrew, clinging to my legs. “Did anyone bake cookies for me when I was born?”

     
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. What I did know was that Andrew didn’t really want answers to his questions. He wanted a hug. So I gave him one.

     
It turned out that we had all the ingredients

for chocolate chip cookies. We also had paper, scissors, string, and crayons for making a WELCOME EMILY sign. We divided up the jobs. Stacey, Claudia, Mary Anne, Jessi, Sam, and David Michael covered the dining room table with newspaper and went to work on the sign. The rest of us began making a triple batch of cookies. Except for Andrew. He wandered back and forth between the projects, occasionally whining. He couldn’t seem to settle down.

     
I stood at the table next to Dawn, who was stirring the cookie batter. She was humming a vaguely familiar song under her breath.

     
“What is that song?” asked Charlie.

     
“It’s — You know, it goes, ‘Lucy in the sky-y with di-i-amonds’.”

     
“Oh,” said, Charlie. “That old one.”

     
Dawn nodded. She continued singing it softly. “. . . the girl with colitis goes by.”

     
“What?” I said.

     
“What?!” cried Sam. He let out a guffaw.

     
Dawn looked puzzled.

     
“It’s ‘the girl with kaleidoscope eyes’,” he informed her.

     
Dawn and I glanced at each other and shrugged.

     
“Either way it’s a weird song,” I said.

     
We finished our cookies. The sign-makers finished their sign.

     
“Did someone make me a sign when I was born?” asked Andrew.

     
I hugged him again. Then I sat down and pulled him onto my lap. “I will always love you,” I whispered into his ear. “No matter what. Even if we adopt sixteen more kids, I will always love you because you’re Andrew. And so will Karen and your daddy and my mom and David Michael and Sam and Charlie and everyone else.”

     
Andrew smiled a tiny smile. He looked relieved.

     
“Where should we put the sign?” asked Claudia.

     
We ended up stringing it across the kitchen. (We were pretty sure Mom and Watson would bring Emily in through the door from the garage to the kitchen.)

     
Then we piled the cookies into a neat mound on a platter and set the platter on the kitchen table.

     
“Well, now what?” asked Sam.

     
“Now,” I began. I paused. “They’re here! They’re here!” I screeched. “I heard the car pull into the garage! I swear I did!”

     
“Oh, lord!” cried Claudia.

     
“What should we do? What should we do?” Mary Anne was wringing her hands.

     
“Let’s stand under the sign,” I suggested, “next to the cookies.”

     
We posed ourselves — the six Thomas and Brewer kids in the front, and my friends in the back, even though Mary Anne didn’t show up because she’s short and was standing behind Charlie.

     
We were ready. Emily’s first sight when she came into her new home, would be of her special sign, her welcome-home cookies, and her brothers and sisters and friends.

     
The door opened. Mom came in first. Watson was behind her. He was carrying Emily Michelle Thomas Brewer in his arms.

     
She was fast asleep.

     
Mom looked at the sign and the cookies and then at Emily. I could tell she felt bad for us. But we didn’t feel too bad. Emily would see everything later.

     
Mom put her finger to her lips, and we all crowded silently around Emily. I knew we wanted to say things like, “Ooh, look!” Or, “She’s so cute!” Or, “I can’t believe she’s my sister!” But we just stared.

     
Emily’s hair is dark and shiny. It falls across her forehead in bangs. Her skin is smooth, and her mouth and nose are tiny, like any two-year-old’s. I wished I could see her eyes.

You can tell a lot about a person by looking at her eyes.

     
Emily Michelle. She’s my sister, and David Michael’s and Sam’s and Charlie’s. She’s Andrew’s and Karen’s. She’s the one person in our family who isn’t a Brewer or a Thomas. Her mother is Mom and her father is Watson, but she isn’t their baby; if you know what I mean.

     
She’s just ours. She belongs to Watson and Andrew and Karen, and she belongs to Mom and my brothers and me. She would bring us together. She would unite us. That was what Mom and Watson’s wedding was supposed to have done. But it hadn’t exactly worked. Emily just might do the trick.

     
Mom made motions to let us know that she and Watson were going to take Emily upstairs to her crib. I nodded. Charlie and I followed. The others stayed behind. They could see Emily later.

     
Charlie and I stood in the doorway to Emily’s roon~. We watched Watson lay our new sister in her crib. We watched Mom take Emily’s shoes off, then cover her with a blanket. Emily stirred and made a soft, sleepy noise but didn’t wake up.

     
When Mom and Watson left, so did Charlie,

but I tiptoed over to Emily’s crib and looked down at her.

     
Hello, there, I thought. You are a very special little girl. I guess you are lucky, too. You found a family. And we are lucky. We found you. Do you know how much we want you? No? Well, you will when you’re older, because we will tell you.

     
You have a lot of brothers, by the way. You have two sisters, as well. And a mom and a dad and a cat and a dog. Someday you’ll know all this.

     
I tiptoed out of Emily’s room — my new sister’s room. Emily, I decided, was the best Mother’s Day present ever.

ANN M. MARTIN did a lot of baby-sitting when she was growing up in Princeton, New Jersey. Now her favorite baby-sitting charge is her cat, Mouse, who lives with her in her Manhattan apartment.

     
Ann Martin’s Apple Paperbacks are Bummer Summer, Inside Out, Stage Fright, Me and Katie (the Pest), and all the other books in the Babysitters Club series.

     
She is a former editor of books for children, and was graduated from Smith College. She likes ice cream, the beach, and I Love Lucy; and she hates to cook.

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