Claudia and the First Thanksgiving.

Martin, Ann M.

Chapter 1.

"Pa.s.s the milk, please," said my older sister Janine.

"Why? Is it failing?" I asked. I cracked up.

My mother shook her head. My father made a face. Janine just looked at me.

"It's a pun," I explained.

"We know," said my mother. She smiled a little bit.

"As a humorous application of a word designed to play on two of its meanings, it was somewhat funny," said Janine. "Now, may I please have the milk?" Okay, so maybe breakfast time is a little early for jokes. And maybe someone like me shouldn't be making jokes about pa.s.sing and failing.

I picked up the milk carton and handed it to my sister.

Trust Janine to have the definition of pun right on the tip of her tongue. She is very familiar with the word "pa.s.s" as used to mean doing your school work right. In fact, Janine has not only pa.s.sed every course she's ever taken with triple A pluses or something, she's also taking courses at the local college, even though she's still in high school. That's because my sister, who has no sense of humor at the breakfast table, is a genuine genius.

Not me. At least, not when it comes to school. I'm much more familiar with the opposite of pa.s.s. You know, that word, fail, which means doing your schoolwork wrong. School bores me. Homework bores me. I don't understand math, and I think the rules for spelling are much too rigid. Naturally, neither my teachers nor my parents agree. My father likes math so much he works at an investment firm and my mother likes to read so much she is a librarian.

They don't understand how they could have a daughter like me.

I mean, numbers are not my thing, and neither are words (except in Nancy Drew books, which for some reason my parents don't like). I'm an artist. Colors and shapes and designs and textures - that's more like it. The world is an amazing-looking place, if you know how to look at it. And it's much more fun to describe it with images than with words.

So Janine goes on being a genius, and I work on my art every chance I get. And someone checks my homework every night to make sure I don't fail.

"Pa.s.s the marmalade, please," I said. My sister gave it to me without comment.

There was a distressing lack of junk food on the table (I'm a junk food connoisseur) but I made up for it by stirring several spoonfuls of orange marmalade into my oatmeal. I saw Janine making a face, and I was afraid for a moment that she might launch into a lecture on Good Nutrition. Fortunately, she didn't say anything.

I could have chosen grape jelly, but it didn't fit in with my color scheme for the day. Since it was the end of October, I was wearing autumn colors: red, orange, yellow. I liked the effect I'd created. It was sort of post-modernist pumpkin.

Oh. Wait a minute. Before I describe what I look like, I guess I should say who I am.

I am Claudia Kishi. I am thirteen years old and I'm an eighth-grader at Stoneybrook Middle School in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. I have long black hair and dark brown eyes and pierced ears - one hole in my left earlobe and two holes in my right one. I live on Bradford Court, where I have lived all my life, with my mother, my father, and Janine. My grandmother, Mimi, who was my best friend, lived with us too, until she died not long ago. I still miss Mimi.

As I mentioned before, I work very hard on my art. It is, needless to say, one of the few subjects I do well in at school. I've even had my own art show, which I held in the garage. The theme was junk food images.

Besides being an artist, I am the vice-president of the Baby-sitters Club, or BSC. That's because I am one of the founding members of the club, and also because I have my own phone line in my room. But I'll tell you more about the club later.

Now, where was I? Oh. Right. My autumn fashion colors. I'd put on a pair of baggy pants, not blue, not black, but yellow. With these I was wearing my red Doc Martens, laced with orange and yellow laces, and this great, funky, enormous shirt that I found in a vintage clothes shop. It has a leaf pattern on it. The leaves are in a Hawaiian print design, and the colors are fabulous. Underneath I was wearing my red and yellow tie-dyed long underwear shirt. To complete the ensemble, I had on earrings that I'd made myself, shaped like pumpkins, and a fringed yellow-and-white scarf tied around my hair.

I looked (I modestly admit) pretty great. I did not look as if I belonged with the other three people sitting at the table. My mom wore a tailored navy dress with little pearl earrings. My father was wearing a navy pinstripe suit (the jacket was hanging on the back of his chair). Janine was practically a rainbow by comparison: She was dressed in a navy wool skirt and a navy v-neck sweater over a pink oxford shirt.

I finished my oatmeal. Then Mom and Dad left for work, Janine left for high school, and I grabbed my jacket (yellow, with big black b.u.t.tons, also from the vintage clothes shop) and went outside to wait for my friends, so we could walk to SMS together.

Two seconds later, Stacey McGill came cruising into view. Stacey is my best friend and a fellow BSC member. She's from New York City. This is something you would know the second moment you saw her.

During the first moment you would just stare, because Stacey is off-the-scale gorgeous, with her long, blonde hair and deep blue eyes, and elegant bones. By the second moment, though, you would have taken in her cool clothes and known that she is Not From Around Here.

That's because, like me, Stacey has a style of her own. But while mine is Kishi original, hers is New York sophisticated. She was wearing an oversized midnight blue turtleneck under a cropped black wool jacket with square gold b.u.t.tons. She had on black suede ankle boots, the kind that wrinkle around your ankles. Her fitted black jeans were tucked into the tops of the boots. She had looped a light blue m.u.f.fler around her neck and wore matching gloves.

I waved wildly (as if we hadn't just seen each other the day before, and talked on the phone the previous night). Stacey nodded and walked over to me.

"What's happening?" she asked.

"Same old same old," I replied. "Hey, guys! Happy Halloween!" Stacey turned to see who I was talking to.

"Mar and Mal," she said with a grin.

Mary Anne Spier wrinkled her nose and Mallory Pike grinned back. They are both good friends of mine, too, as well as fellow BSC members. Mallory kept on talking as they fell into step with us.

"So I said to them, 'I don't care if you are triplets, it doesn't mean you each have to tell me the same duck joke.' " Mallory lives large - at least, she lives in a large family. She is the oldest of eight siblings, three of whom are triplets. In a family that big, something outrageous is always happening, and so Mal usually has funny stories to tell. Maybe that is why she wants to be a children's book writer when she grows up.

Mary Anne, who grew up as an only child, is quiet and shy. But she is a great listener, which is probably what encouraged Mal to put such energy into the story she was telling.

"Triplet trouble?" asked Stacey.

Mal pushed her gla.s.ses up onto the bridge of her nose and answered, "No more than usual. We rented some old videos - one was a movie with the Marx Brothers called Duck Soup - and the triplets have been doing imitations of the comedy routines ever since." "I love the Marx Brothers," said Stacey. "I went to a Marx Brothers movie festival once at an old theater in New York." "I think we're about to have our own Marx Brothers festival at my house," said Mal.

"There's Logan," said Mary Anne. It was her turn to wave, very enthusiastically.

Logan Bruno is (could you have guessed?) Mary Anne's main squeeze. Mary Anne would die if she heard me describe Logan that way. But he is her boyfriend. He's a good-looking guy, a casual dresser, with blue eyes and brownish blond hair. Mary Anne thinks he looks just like the movie star Cam Geary, and I have to admit she's right. In addition to good looks, Logan has a nice Southern drawl and a way of putting you at ease that guys his age often lack. He's sensitive and understanding, too (like Mary Anne). Plus he's majorly involved in just about every sport on earth.

It's a combination that makes Logan a good baby-sitter. So Logan is in the BSC, too. He's an a.s.sociate member, which means he fills in for us when we can't schedule one of our regular members for a job.

As Logan caught up to Mary Anne, she slipped her hand into his and smiled up at him. The two of them slowed down a little, so they lagged behind the rest of us as we walked. Stacey and Mal and I went into our movie reviewers mode. Since it was nearly Halloween, we concentrated heavily on the Grossest Movies Ever Made. By the time we reached Jessica Ramsey's house, we were arguing about Sickening Special Effects.

"I'm glad the triplets can't hear you," said Mal. "I don't want them getting any more disgusting ideas for their Halloween costumes." She ran around to the side door and knocked. A moment later she and Jessi were hurrying toward us. They were both giggling.

Mal and Jessi are eleven. They're in the sixth grade at SMS, and they are best friends.

Mal is medium height and st.u.r.dy and has shoulder length, reddish brown hair and a faint dusting of freckles on very pale skin. She's a jeans and sweatshirt person, which is what she was wearing today over a red checked flannel shirt. She looked as if she were ready to go horseback riding. Since Mal loves horses, it was a good look for her.

Jessi is taller and thinner, and has smooth brown skin. She loves horses, too, but she dresses more like a ballerina, which is what she wants to be someday. She often wears her dark hair pulled back into a ballerina's bun, as it was that morning. She had on a purple leotard with her jeans, and a big fuzzy lavender cardigan sweater. Not autumn colors, but definitely sensational looking.

We'd reached the hallowed halls of SMS. The usual swarm of students was hanging around outside, waiting until the last possible minute before the bell rang to go in. Even though I don't like school, I admit that I like the way SMS looks, with its weathered red brick walls and worn granite front steps. It was built before air-conditioning, which means that the windows are big, to help keep the school cool on hot days. On cold days the seats by the windows are the coldest in the cla.s.sroom, but I still like to sit near them and look out, naturally.

Come to think of it, there are some other things I like about school. I don't really mind gym. Some of the other cla.s.ses are okay sometimes, such as the one in which we were a.s.signed to write our life stories. And I really like our Short Takes cla.s.ses.

Short Takes is this SMS program in which all the students in all three grades take the same special cla.s.s. You have the chance for six weeks at a time to study things you wouldn't ordinarily learn in school, with a different teacher in charge of each cla.s.s. One of Stacey's favorite cla.s.ses was called Math for Real Life. (I would call a course like that Learning to Hire an Accountant, but who asked me?) And not too long ago we had a cla.s.s called Project Work, in which everyone worked three afternoons a week at a real job. Everybody in the BSC signed up for jobs at the mall, and we ended up solving a mystery there.

Today was the last day of a Short Takes unit called Learning to Read. It wasn't a cla.s.s for slow readers; it was a cla.s.s in how to interpret the news. Our teacher, Ms. Boy den, told us to look at stories on the same subject in different newspapers and news magazines, to see how each one of them told the story. That meant paying attention to where in the newspaper or magazine the article was placed, and even what the headlines said. (Some of the New York newspapers have really wild headlines.) We read different editorials on the same topics in different newspapers. We even looked at the advertis.e.m.e.nts, and tried to figure out who they were aimed at. That gave us clues about who the readers were, and why a newspaper or a magazine would tell a certain news story a certain way.

It was pretty amazing. For example, there was this big political march in Washington. The newspapers that supported the marchers said there were thousands and thousands of marchers. Some of the newspapers that didn't support the political cause said there were about half as many. And some of the newspapers just put a little bitty story on the back page as if there hadn't been a march at all! "Remember that much of recent history comes from what is written in newspapers," Ms. Boy den told us. "And even history books aren't necessarily telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Pretty intense. Pretty interesting, too.

After we'd finished our last discussion in Learning to Read, a summing up of what we'd learned, Ms, Boyden grinned and held up her hands. "I've enjoyed this," she said. "Now, for your next cla.s.s, you'll be doing something else that involves a different way of looking at things. A more dramatic way." She paused. "It'll be a drama unit, and cla.s.ses will be small. I'm going to read your names and the cla.s.srooms to which you are to report on Monday. Please listen carefully." I listened very carefully. So far, I'd liked al- most all of my Short Takes cla.s.ses and this one sounded pretty promising.

"Claudia Kishi, Room two-two-six." "Two-two-six?" I repeated.

Ms. Boy den nodded and smiled at me. I flipped open my notebook. With my purple pen, I wrote Room 226 in big letters on my calendar for Monday.

Then I looked at the clock with a sense of deep satisfaction. It was Friday, and school was almost over for the day, and for the week. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Friday is the best day of the whole week, starting when the last bell after the last cla.s.s begins to ring!

Chapter 2.

Have you ever noticed how all the holidays come at once?" I complained. "And that they really stack up when the weather starts turning bad? I think the holidays should be changed to spring." "Not a bad idea," agreed Logan. "Then I could devote more time to spring training." I backed out from under my bed and ripped open the bag of potato chips I'd stashed there. They were more like potato chiplets, since the hiding place had been a little cramped, but they still tasted fine. I stared down into the bag. I was wondering if I could make a mosaic out of potato chips.

"Pa.s.s the chips," demanded Mallory, putting an end to my artistic trance. I handed her the bag.

The phone rang, and Logan picked it up. "Baby-sitters Club," he said. He listened for a moment, then laughed. "No, it's not a joke.

I am a baby-sitter. This is Logan. Yes. Yes. Okay. We'll call you right back." He hung up the phone. "Betsy Sobak," he told us. "She thought it was some kind of a practical joke when she heard my voice. Her mother let her call to set up the appointment." Betsy Sobak is an eight-year-old charge of the BSC who is infamous for her practical jokes. (After one of her practical jokes I wound up with a broken leg!) She used to spend most of her allowance on jokes from McBuzz's Mail Order, until her parents made her quit. A baby-sitting session with Kristy Thomas, in which Kristy out-joked Betsy and totally embarra.s.sed her, cured Betsy of the worst of her practical joke habit.

I remembered my breakfast table joke that morning and wondered if Betsy would like puns.

"Haven't you ever baby-sat for Betsy?" asked Mary Anne in surprise, reaching for the appointment book.

Logan shook his head. "I guess that's why she was surprised to hear a guy's voice on the phone," he answered.

Mary Anne set Jessi up for the job. Logan called Betsy (and Mrs. Sobak) back to confirm.

Another meeting of the BSC was in progress.

The BSC meets every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from five-thirty until six, in my room. Clients know they can call us then to set up appointments. We meet in my room because I am the only member of the BSC who has her own phone line, so when people call us for baby-sitters, we don't tie up anybody's family telephone with club business. We have seven full members and two a.s.sociate members - and lots of work. Early on, we advertised our club, with signs in the supermarket and fliers, but we hardly ever have to do that anymore.

Like all businesses (according to Stacey, who lists running a small company as one of her ambitions for the future), we started small. One day Kristy, who is the president and founder of the BSC, was listening as her mom called one baby-sitter after another, trying to find a sitter for Kristy's little brother. That's when Kristy had her Great Idea. What if parents could call one number and reach several baby-sitters at once?

Kristy leaped into action, and the Babysitters Club was off and running (or sitting).

We have tons of regular clients, because we run the business well, and we are very good baby-sitters. For example, we schedule all our appointments in one central place, the record book. Mary Anne, who is the club secretary, is in charge of that. She has never, ever made a mistake. We also keep a club notebook (another Kristy idea), in which we write up every single baby-sitting job we go on. We read the notebook to keep up with the kids we sit for: who's developed allergies, who's having problems with a new sibling, who's become obsessed with dogs. It's a big help.

We also carry Kid-Kits to some of our jobs, particularly on rainy days, or when kids are sick and have to stay inside. Kid-Kits are boxes we have filled with old toys and games and books, plus stickers and markers and whatever else we think kids might like. Although most of the things are hand-me-downs, they are brand-new to the kids we sit for. Needless to say, when we show up with Kid-Kits, we are very welcome.

Kristy, who thought up the Kid-Kits, hurtles through life at top speed, running the BSC, coaching a softball team for little kids called Kristy's Krushers, doing her homework, and coming up with great ideas, many of them for the BSC. She is major energy in a small, plain package. Not that Kristy is plain - she isn't. She's short (the shortest person in the eighth grade) and cute, with brown hair and brown eyes. But her style is basic and no-nonsense: turtleneck, jeans, running shoes, and sometimes a baseball cap with a picture of a collie on it in memory of Louie, her old collie who died not so long ago.

Another Kristy fact: She is not shy about saying what she thinks, loudly and often. I think that's because she grew up with two older brothers, Charlie and Sam, and a younger brother, David Michael. Kristy's big brothers acted like, well, big brothers, usually teasing Kristy, sometimes letting her tag along. Kristy learned early to speak up and to stand up for herself.

When David Michael was a baby (he's seven now), Kristy's father just left one day and didn't come back. Things were tough for the Thomases for a long time after that. Then Mrs. Thomas met Watson Brewer, and they fell in love and got married. And Kristy, who'd lived all her life next door to Mary Anne and across the street from me on Bradford Court, moved with her family into Watson's house across town.

It's no ordinary house, either. Watson Brewer is a real, live millionaire, and he lives in a mansion. Now all the Thomas kids not only have rooms of their own, but they also have an even bigger family, including Watson's two kids from his first marriage, Andrew and Karen, who live with Watson every other month. Watson and Kristy's mother also recently adopted Emily Mich.e.l.le, who is Vietnamese. After that, Kristy's grandmother Nannie moved in, to help take care of Emily Mich.e.l.le (and everyone else). Kristy's new, bigger family also includes a Bernese mountain dog puppy named Shannon, Boo-Boo the cranky cat, a couple of goldfish, other a.s.sorted, er, wildlife, and maybe, just maybe, the ghost of Ben Brewer, one of Watson's ancestors.

You've already met Mary Anne. She's one of the founding members of the BSC, too, and she is also Kristy's best friend. If you think that shy, sensitive Mary Anne and high-energy, high-impact Kristy are very different, you are right. But maybe that's what makes them such good friends. They've known each other since they were babies. As I mentioned, they used to live next door to each other, until Kristy moved to the mansion - and Mary Anne and her dad moved into a haunted farmhouse. (Two new families, two haunted houses. See? Mary Anne and Kristy do have a lot in common.) Before the move, Mary Anne was an only child. Her mother died when Mary Anne was just a baby, and Mr. Spier raised Mary Anne very strictly, even choosing the clothes she wore (little kid clothes, long after she wasn't a little kid anymore). As a single parent, he wanted to make sure he did everything right. I think it worked. Mary Anne is a terrific person. And when she finally convinced her father that she was growing up, and was responsible enough to choose her own clothes and have a little more freedom, her father loosened up a bit.

Right about then he started spending time with his old high school sweetheart, Sharon Schafer, who'd just moved back to Stoneybrook (from California) after getting divorced. She brought her two kids, Dawn and Jeff, with her. Dawn, who is tall, blonde, and easygoing, and Mary Anne soon became best friends, which led naturally to Dawn's joining the BSC. And when Dawn and Mary Anne discovered that Mr. Spier and Mrs. Schafer had once dated, they lost no time in seeing to it that their parents became reacquainted. The rest is history: Mr. Spier and Mrs. Schafer got married, and Mary Anne's best friend became her stepsister. They all lived in the Schafers' farmhouse.

Sadly, though, Dawn recently decided, after a long visit with her West Coast family, that she missed her brother, her father, and California too much. (Jeff had decided pretty much the same thing earlier and had moved back.) So she headed west again. She rejoined the California version of the BSC, which she and her fellow West Coast baby-sitters call the We V Kids Club. She and Mary Anne talk on the phone often, and are already planning visits. But we all really miss her.

When Dawn left, Shannon Kilbourne (who wasn't at the meeting) quit being an a.s.sociate member and took over Dawn's job as alternate officer. Shannon is a neighbor of Kristy's. In fact, her Bernese mountain dog, Astrid, is the mother of the Brewer-Thomases' Bernese mountain dog puppy. Shannon has curly blonde hair and high cheekbones and she is just as organized as Kristy. She goes to a private school, makes practically straight A's, and is involved in all kinds of after-school clubs and activities. So she could replace Dawn only temporarily, because she can't come to meetings regularly.

That's where Abby Stevenson came in. She's the newest member of the BSC, and Kristy and Shannon's newest neighbor. Abby has long, dark brown hair and dark brown eyes and she's a real knockout, in more ways than one. The moment she walks into a room you feel her personality. She's a fast talker, and she loves jokes and puns. (She would have liked my jokes at breakfast.) I don't think Abby is afraid of anything - not even going eyeball to eyeball with Kristy when they don't agree about something.

Abby, who's from Long Island, is a twin. She and her sister Anna moved here with their mother, who had just received a big promotion at her job in New York City. Their father died in a car accident when Abby and Anna were nine. Abby doesn't talk about that much.

Abby and Anna turned thirteen a little while ago. They've just started to prepare to become Bat Mitzvahs in the spring, which is a very important event for many Jewish thirteen-year-olds.

Anna is the quieter of the twins. She's seriously into music and schoolwork. Abby is seriously into having a good time. She's a killer soccer player, and has a killer sense of humor.

She also has asthma, and is allergic to all kinds of things. But she doesn't let it slow her down.

Her energy is part of what makes her a great baby-sitter. I don't think there's any kid on earth who could wear her out! Stacey is our treasurer. If this had been a Monday meeting instead of a Friday one, we'd have been paying our dues to Stacey. We grumble, but we always hand the money over. Stacey is a math whiz (one of her favorite Short Takes, remember, was Math for Real Life). She is very cool and, I have to admit, more sophisticated than the rest of us. Sometimes that's a problem. In fact, Stacey recently quit the BSC for awhile, because she started spending nearly all her time with her boyfriend Robert and his friends. Stace started missing jobs, and making lame excuses, and then she and Kristy had a big blowup. For awhile, I was the only one in the BSC who would talk to her - or whom she would talk to.

But Stacey finally realized that saying you're cool and acting cool isn't the same as being cool, which is a problem that Robert's friends had. We all started talking again and now Stacey is back handling BSC jobs and doing our numbers.

She still sees Robert, and some of his friends, sometimes. But she seems to have found a way to balance things better.

Another thing that makes Stacey seem older than the rest of us is that she has diabetes, a disease that prevents her body from managing sugar properly. That means no sweets for Stacey. It also means that she has to follow a special diet and give herself insulin shots (ewww, ow) every day. She says the shots sound worse than they are, but she does miss the sweets. As a junk food fanatic, I'm totally amazed at how much willpower Stacey has. I always make sure to keep things such as pretzels and wheat crackers and Frookies (sugarless cookies) around for our meetings, so Stacey can munch with the rest of us.

Mallory and Jessi are our junior officers. In fact, we used to baby-sit for Mallory and her brothers and sisters. Then we realized that we needed more baby-sitters, and that Mallory, thanks to all her experience with her siblings, would be an excellent BSC member. When Jessi moved to Stoneybrook and she and Mal became friends, Jessi joined the BSC, too.

You already know that Mal has seven younger brothers and sisters, including triplets: Adam, Byron, and Jordan. The other Pike siblings are Vanessa, Nicky, Margo, and Claire.

Jessi comes from a smaller family. She has a little sister named Becca and a baby brother named John Philip Ramsey, Jr., whom everybody calls Squirt. Her aunt also lives with the family, since Jessi's mother started working again.

As I mentioned, Logan is an a.s.sociate member of the BSC (like Shannon is once again), and he doesn't usually come to meetings. But that afternoon, his football practice had been canceled. Now he and Abby were arguing about the merits of football versus soccer. Mary Anne was listening and rolling her eyes.

After the call from Betsy Sobak, we took three phone calls in a row. Things were pretty busy for awhile. When they'd settled down, Mary Anne said, "At least we don't have any baby-sitting jobs scheduled for Halloween." "Good," said Stacey. "I like answering the door and seeing the costumes the little kids are wearing." Mal grinned. "If you want to see something really scary, I'll try to bring the Pike family by your house. The triplets are all going to dress as Groucho Marx, and I think everyone else is, too." "Seven Groucho Marxes," said Jessi. "Awesome." We snickered at the idea.

"Speaking of baby-sitting jobs," said Kristy, "who's going to be here over Thanksgiving, and who wants to work if any jobs come up?" "Count me out," said Abby. "We're going back to Long Island to visit all the people we left behind." "New York City, here we come," said Mal. She crossed her fingers. "Mom's cousins have come through big time. We're going to stay in the apartment of some friends of theirs who are going to be away, and it looks like we'll have grandstand seats for the Macy's parade, too." "New York City for me, too," Stacey put in. "I'm going to spend the whole vacation with my dad." Jessi said, "We're going to New Jersey for Thanksgiving, but we'll be back on Sat.u.r.day.

So if anything comes up over the weekend, I might be able to do it." "My grandmother is coming from Iowa," said Mary Anne, "so I'll be here, but busy. Are the Millers still coming to visit you, Kristy?" "Yup," said Kristy, looking pleased. Her Aunt Colleen and Uncle Wallace are some of her favorite relatives. Plus they'd be bringing their four kids, who are also favorites of Kristy's.

"Here, but very busy," Mary Anne murmured, making a note of it in her record book.