"Good," said David Michael.

"So do you want her?" asked Shannon.

"Yes," replied my brother.

"And what do you say?" I prompted him.

"I say, 'Let's name her Shannon.' "

So we did.

Chapter 15.

"Help! Kristy! Save me! The ghost of Ben Brewer is after me!"

Karen ran shrieking through the second-floor hallway and burst into my room in a panic. "Kristy! Kristy!"

"Ahem, Karen," I replied.

Karen was only fooling around. She knew as well as I did that there probably wasn't any ghost in our attic. And if there was (because we just weren't sure) he certainly wasn't going to chase little girls around in broad daylight.

It was a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, two weeks to the day since Louie's funeral. Karen and Andrew were spending another weekend with us, and Shannon the puppy was almost ours. The members of the Baby-sitters Club were gathered in my room. We'd just had a meeting the day before, of course, but every now and then we like to get together and not conduct business. Besides, my friends enjoy visiting the mansion.

Karen plopped down on the floor between Mary Anne and Dawn. "You know who old Ben Brewer is, don't you?" she asked them.

"Your great-grandfather?" Mary Anne ventured. (Ghost stories make her nervous.) "Right. Before he became a ghost, anyway. He was a - what's the word, Kristy?"

"Herpitologist?" I suggested.

"No!" cried Karen, laughing. "The word that means he stayed in the house all alone for years. He never went out and no one ever went in."

"He was a recluse," I said, "according to Brewer family history."

"And he ate fried dandelions," Karen added.

Stacey snorted.

"Well, he did," Karen insisted, turning to Stacey indignantly. "Anyway, he's a ghost now and he haunts our attic."

"Only the attic?" asked Claudia.

"Yes, thank goodness," I replied.

"But every now and then he leaves it," said Karen. "Just for a few minutes. He likes to chase me through the halls. He says otherwise he never gets any exercise."

"You mean any e-x-o-r-c-i-s-e?" spelled Mary Anne, but Karen wasn't old enough to get the joke. The rest of us laughed, though.

"You do know that's not true, don't you, Karen?" I asked.

"Yes," she admitted. "But it's fun to pretend. Sometimes I'm sure he's behind me." (I shivered.) "But it's not pretend about the attic. He really haunts it."

"We have an honest-to-goodness secret pa.s.sage in our house," spoke up Dawn.

"You do?" Karen's eyes widened.

"I've been in it," I announced.

"You have?" Karen's eyes became the size of soup tureens.

Crash, bang, THUMP.

"What was that?" exclaimed Stacey.

"My brothers," I replied. "I think."

"Yup, that's right," said Karen. "They're playing football."

"In the house?" I asked.

"Yes. Andrew is the football."

I rolled my eyes. Mom and Watson were out for the afternoon. I wasn't baby-sitting, since Sam and Charlie were home, but I felt I should be on top of things. There were ten kids in the house, plus Boo-Boo.

"This house," I informed my friends, "is actually a madhouse. Can you imagine what it'll be like when Shannon arrives?"

At that moment, Charlie charged into my room with Andrew in his arms and threw him on the bed. "Touchdown!" he shouted.

Andrew squealed and giggled. He sounded a little too wild, which was unlike him. "Do a cannonball!" he shrieked. He tucked himself into a ball and Charlie picked him up again and ran him down the hall chanting, "Ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom-ba-boom." We heard a soft thud as my brother tossed him onto another bed.

"Hey, you guys! Perk up!" I shouted to them.

My friends laughed.

Karen ran after Charlie shouting, "My turn! My turn!"

"When do you get Shannon?" Mary Anne wanted to know.

"In two or three days," I replied.

"You know, Kristy," Claudia began, "I hate to say this, but - "

"Then don't," I interrupted.

"Don't what?"

"Say it."

Claudia made a face at me. "But," she continued, "you complained an awful lot about Shannon Kilbourne and the other sn.o.bby girls around here, and now Shannon's giving you a puppy. That's a pretty nice thing to do."

"I know," I said in a small voice as I traced the pattern of the bedspread with my finger: "She's not as bad as I thought she was. In fact, she's sort of all right."

"Well, what happened?" asked Dawn.

I shook my head. "I'm not sure. But we did have a talk the day Shannon brought Shannon to meet me."

"What kind of talk?" asked Claudia. She was lying on her back on the floor and began blowing a gigantic pink bubble with a wad of Bazooka.

"You know, if that pops, it's going to cover your face and goo up your hair," Stacey pointed out after a few seconds.

Claudia ignored her and kept on blowing.

"We had a very pleasant talk," I replied. "We talked about baby-sitting. I said I hadn't realized that I might be stepping on someone else's territory when I started sitting around here. It was just natural for me to sit."

"What did Shannon say?" asked Mary Anne. "Did she understand?"

"Oh, yes. Believe it or not, she said she was jealous."

"You're kidding," said Dawn and Stacey at the same time.

"Nope. She said she wasn't really mad, because she and Tiffany - that's her sister - are the only ones who are interested in sitting, and there are more than enough jobs for them in this neighborhood. But she's jealous of our club."

"I wonder," said Mary Anne slowly, "if she'd want to be another a.s.sociate member of the club. Like Logan is. We can always use extra people to call on when we're too busy."

"Yeah," I agreed. "And that way she could be part of the club without actually joining it."

"Why shouldn't we ask her to join?" wondered Stacey. "It wasn't too long ago that we were so busy we wanted new members. Of course, we'd have to meet her first."

I looked at the rest of my friends. Except for Claudia, they were shrugging and nodding, as if to say, "Why not?" Claudia was still blowing her bubble. Very, very slowly, it was becoming an a ward-winning size.

"I'll call Shannon," I said. And did. Shannon's mother informed me that Shannon just happened to be on her way over, bringing Shannon to visit with David Michael.

"That's perfect," I told the club members, after I'd hung up. "Shannon the puppy can play with David Michael. Shannon the babysitter can meet you guys."

This seemed like an ideal plan - except that Shannon the baby-sitter entered my room just as three things happened: Claudia's bubble popped (and, as predicted, covered her face and gooed up her hair), Stacey spilled a soda, and Charlie cannonballed Andrew onto my bed.

Shannon looked around as if she'd just entered the loony bin.

"Hi!" I called nervously. I pa.s.sed tissues to Stacey while Charlie and Andrew crashed out of the room. I dosed the door after them.

Claudia sat up, picking pink shreds out of her eyelashes.

"Um, meet the Baby-sitters Club," I said. "The normal ones are Dawn and Mary Anne. The sticky ones are Claudia and Stacey. This is Shannon Kilbourne, everyone."

There was nothing to do but laugh. So we did.

"Are you having a club meeting?" asked Shannon when we'd calmed down.

"Not really," I said. "We hold our meetings during the week. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from five-thirty until six," I added. (I might as well fill her in on the workings of the club.) "You meet that often?" she replied, sounding impressed. "Gosh. I could never do that."

I exchanged a look with Stacey. "How come?" I asked.

"Oh, tons of reasons. Homework. After-school stuff. I'm usually pretty busy. I could never be so, you know, committed to something. This club must mean a lot to you."

"Oh, it does," I a.s.sured her.

"You're sure you couldn't commit to the club?" Stacey asked.

"Yeah," answered Shannon, puzzled. "How come?"

"Well," I said, "we'd been wondering if you'd like to join. Lots of times we get more jobs than we can handle. And clients like to get baby-sitters who live in their own neighborhood so they don't have to pick them up and take them home. I'm the only club member who lives around here. We thought you'd be a good addition to the Baby-sitters Club."

Shannon looked both pained and thoughtful. "I'd really like to join," she said, "but I just don't see how."

"Well," Mary Anne jumped in, wanting to make her feel better, "listen, don't worry. You could be an a.s.sociate member of the club. We already have one and we could use another. That would be perfect for you because a.s.sociate members don't have to attend meetings. We just call them and offer them any jobs we can't take. You earn some extra money, maybe find some new kids to sit for, and we keep our clients satisfied by always being able to provide them with sitters."

We looked expectantly at Shannon. "What do you think?" I asked her.

"I think it sounds fabulous," she replied. "I accept."

"Yea!" I cried. "Shannon is our new a.s.sociate member of the Baby-sitters Club."

"You asked a dog to join your club?" spoke up an amazed voice.

My friends and I turned to see David Michael standing in the doorway, holding Shannon the puppy awkwardly, her hind legs dangling.

"No, silly!" I exclaimed. "The other Shannon. Shannon the human."

"Oh," he replied, and set Shannon on the floor. The puppy frisked into my room and David Michael followed her, smiling happily.

I knew David Michael would never forget our Louie. None of us would, because Louie had left a sort of legacy. He'd brought Shannon and me together so we could be friends instead of enemies, and that in turn had brought a new puppy for our family, but especially for David Michael. So, I thought. Endings could sometimes be beginnings. They were sad, but sometimes they brought happiness.

That's what Louie had shown us, and that's just one of the things we would remember about him.

About the Author.

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.