Mary Anne and the Search for Tigger.

Martin, Ann M.

Chapter 1.

"I just don't understand," Dawn Schafer said to me as we slowed down for a stop sign. "How can someone as small as Tigger knock his toys behind the refrigerator, so that you can't even get to them?" I shrugged. Then I checked the street. The coast was clear, so we pedaled across the intersection. "He just does, that's all," I said. "And thank you for calling Tigger a someone instead of a something." Dawn smiled. "I still don't get it, though." "All I know," I said, "is that his toys roll into that s.p.a.ce between the wall and the side of the fridge, where I ought to be able to get them out. You know where I mean?" (Dawn nodded.) "Well, they roll in there and I never see them again." "Sort of a black hole for cat toys," said Dawn.

I giggled. "There's nothing underneath the fridge. I looked there with a flashlight. That leaves in back of the fridge. And I can't get there." "Which is why we're riding our bikes all the way downtown just to buy cat toys," said Dawn.

"Exactly," I replied.

In case you can't tell, Dawn Schafer is my friend. (I'm Mary Anne Spier.) Dawn is one of my best friends, in fact. And Tigger is my kitten. My one and only. He's a gray tiger cat with very pretty stripes. If I do say so, he's smart. Smart and pretty. And he can catch flies, which is difficult. I mean, when you only have paws.

Dawn and I were on our way to downtown Stoneybrook, Connecticut, to stock up on cat toys for Tigger, since he keeps losing them behind the fridge. His favorites are those plastic b.a.l.l.s with a little bell inside. They come three in a pack, and he loses about three a week, so cat toys can be expensive to me. Thank goodness I earn lots of money baby-sitting.

Dawn and I stopped at a traffic light. We had reached Stoneybrook's main street (which is about as small as Stoneybrook is), and were only three blocks from the pet store.

"Hey, what did your dad say about the date last night?" asked Dawn.

We laughed. Dawn's mom and my dad go out sometimes. We really wish they would get married, but we can't help laughing. It's just so weird to see your own parents dating. Especially dating each other. They go out with other people, too, but when Dawn's mom has a date with my dad, she puts on all this makeup and checks her clothes twenty times and then asks Dawn to check her clothes again. And my dad puts on after-shave that smells like the dentist's office and gets nervous and can barely speak to me. Then they go somewhere together. What a pair.

By the way, the reason they can date is Dawn's parents are divorced and my mom died ages ago. I really don't even remember her.

"I think my dad had fun when they went out," I told Dawn. "What about your mom?" "Same," she replied. Then she announced, "Pet store," and stopped her bike. "Hey, I just thought of something." Dawn was grinning.

"What?" I asked.

"Well," she replied, "there's not much s.p.a.ce behind your refrigerator, right?" "Right." We were chaining our bikes to a lamppost.

"Probably just enough s.p.a.ce for the width of one toy, right?" "Right." "So Tigger's toys are probably behind the fridge in a line. And when the line reaches the wall, there won't be room for any more toys, right?" "Right," I replied as we entered the store.

"And then Tigger's toys can't get lost and you won't have to keep buying new ones." "Yeah!" Honestly, Dawn is so logical.

I headed for the cat toy department and picked up two packages of Tigger's toys. In one package, the b.a.l.l.s were half pink and half green. In the other, they were half orange and half yellow. I like to give Tigger a little variety in his toys. Then I began looking over the cat treats. Maybe I should buy some fancy food for Tigger.

I was counting my money when Dawn tapped me on the arm. "We better go," she said. "Club meeting in forty-five minutes." "Okay. Just let me buy these." I held up the toys.

I stood in line at the counter, thinking about the Baby-sitters Club. My closest friends are all in the club: Kristy Thomas (she's my other best friend), Claudia Kishi, Jessi Ramsey, Mallory Pike, Dawn, and Logan Bruno (an a.s.sociate member, who doesn't usually attend club meetings. I'll explain that later.) Logan is basically my boyfriend, and he is incredible in every way. He's incredible-looking and incredibly nice and incredibly thoughtful and, well, incredibly incredible.

(There is also one person who's in the club who is not a close friend, and one person who is a close friend who's not really in the club anymore. I'll tell you about them later.) The Baby-sitters Club is more a business than a club. My friends and I sit for families in our neighborhoods. We get a lot of jobs and earn a lot of money. And I spend a lot of my money right here in the pet store. The club was started by Kristy Thomas, our president. (I'm the secretary, by the way.) In some ways, Kristy is like me, but in more ways, she's my exact opposite. I think that's why she was my very first best friend. That and the fact that we lived next door to each other from the time we were born. Here are the things that are the same about us: We're small for our age and have brown hair and brown eyes. Here are the ways in which we're different: I'm shy and sort of held in; Kristy is outgoing and can be a loudmouth. I'm beginning to take an interest in what I wear; Kristy couldn't care less. She always wears jeans, a turtleneck, a sweater, and running shoes. (Well, not in the summer, of course, but you know what I mean.) Kristy has more ideas than anyone I know. She's always thinking of things to do, or finding ways to solve problems. You can almost see her brain at work. Lately, Kristy's life hasn't been too easy, though. It hasn't been bad, just not easy. For the longest time, she lived with her mom, her three brothers, and her collie, Louie, right next door to me. (Her parents had gotten a divorce.) Then her mom met this millionaire, Watson Brewer, and the next thing I knew, they'd decided to get married. After the wedding, Kristy's family moved across town into Watson's mansion. There was more room in the mansion, of course, but Kristy was upset. She had left her old neighborhood and her friends behind. And then Louie the collie died, which was terribly sad. On the other hand, Kristy gained a new little stepbrother and stepsister, whom she loves very much, and her family had gotten an adorable puppy. . . . And then they adopted a two-year-old girl! Kristy's life is never dull.

The vice-president of the Baby-sitters Club is Claudia Kishi. What a difference from Kristy and me. Claud, who lives across the street from Kristy's old house, is absolutely beautiful. Sophisticated, too. She's j.a.panese-American, and her eyes are dark and beautifully almond-shaped. Her hair is long and black and she wears it all different ways. And her complexion is perfect. It's her clothes that amaze me, though. (I think they amaze everyone.) Claud mixes and matches the weirdest stuff and comes up with the coolest outfits. Like a loose blouse with a fake coat of arms on it worn over a very short black skirt. Around her waist, a scarf. On her feet, short black boots. Dangling from her ears, dinosaurs. And her hair might be piled on top of her head and held in place with hairpins that look like seahorses. She combines all this stuff - and she looks fantastic.

Claud's hobbies are reading Nancy Drew mysteries, eating junk food, and especially working at her art. She's really talented and takes lots of cla.s.ses. She's good at drawing, painting, pottery, you name it. Unfortunately, as far as her parents are concerned, Claud's art does not make up for the fact that she's smart but a poor student. After all, her older sister, Janine, is an actual genius. Luckily for Claudia, her grandmother Mimi lives with their family, and she and Claud are very close, even now when I can see that Mimi's mind is starting to wander and get sort of fuzzy.

Dawn is our club's treasurer, and you already know a little about her, but I'll fill you in on the rest. Dawn hasn't been living in Stoneybrook for long. She grew up in California with her parents and her younger brother, Jeff. But her parents split up, and Mrs. Schafer brought Dawn and Jeff to Stoneybrook to live, leaving Mr. Schafer three thousand miles behind. Dawn's mom chose Stoneybrook because she grew up here, and that's how she and my father know each other - they went to high school together years and years ago. Anyway, Dawn likes Connecticut okay, but Jeff never did. He always missed California and his dad. So after awhile he moved back. That was hard on Dawn. Now her family is split in half. But Dawn is very practical. She takes things as they come. She's not laid-back, exactly, she's just a real individual. Dawn solves her own problems and makes her own decisions in her own ways. And she practically runs the old farmhouse she and her mom live in. That's because her mom is totally scatterbrained. Nice, but living on some other planet. I wonder what kind of stepmother she would make.

Dawn has the longest, palest blonde hair you'll ever see, and bright blue eyes. She looks as Californian as all the health food she eats. (Dawn would never touch the junk food Claud loves.) I am so glad Dawn moved here because she's a great best friend. And if s neat that our parents are dating.

Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike are the junior officers of the Baby-sitters Club. That's because they're the youngest in the club. Jessi and Mal are eleven and in sixth grade at Stoneybrook Middle School, and the rest of us are thirteen and in eighth grade at SMS. Like Kristy and me, Jessi and Mal are best friends who are somewhat alike and somewhat different. Unlike Kristy and me, I think they're more alike than different. Let me describe the two of them for you, and you can make your own decision. I'll start with Jessi.

I might as well be straightforward (even though I hardly ever am), and say right out that Jessi's family is black. They moved to Stoneybrook near the beginning of the school year, and they're one of the few black families here. A lot of people gave them a hard time at first, but things have gotten better. Jessi is a ballet dancer, a good one (I've seen her perform), and she looks like a dancer. She pulls her hair back from her face into a knot above her neck, and she has lo-o-o-ong legs. Besides dancing, Jessi likes reading. (She has to wear gla.s.ses for that.) Jessi is very close to her family. She lives with her parents, her younger sister, Becca, her baby brother, Squirt, and a pet hamster. She feels like she doesn't quite fit in at school, and she thinks her parents sometimes treat her like a baby. But mostly she's happy, especially since she met Mallory.

Now Mallory may be white, and she may have seven brothers and sisters (plus two parents and a hamster), but she wears gla.s.ses, she loves to read, and also to write and draw (she might want to write books for children one day), and she also feels that she doesn't always fit in at school, and especially that her parents sometimes treat her like a baby. The Pikes and the Ramseys did give in a little while ago and let Mal and Jessi get their ears pierced, but both of them still wish for trendier clothes. You can see how much Mal and Jessi have in common.

I guess that's about it. Logan's in the club, too, but I've already told you about him. He's the incredibly incredible one, remember? Then there's Shannon Kilbourne, whom I don't know very well (she's another a.s.sociate member, like Logan, who doesn't go to our meetings), and Stacey McGill, who used to be in the club, but who moved away. More about them and everyone else later. Honest.

"Here's your change, miss," said the man behind the counter of the pet store. He handed me seventy-three cents and the bag full of cat toys.

"Thanks," I replied. (I hate being called "miss.") Dawn and I headed out of the store. On the way, I pa.s.sed the flea-and-tick products.

"Hmm," I said, stopping, "I wonder if Tigger needs a bottle of Doctor Herkie's Flea Tonic." "How bad are his fleas?" asked Dawn.

"He doesn't have any yet," I replied.

Dawn pulled me out of the store. We unchained our bikes and began to ride home.

"Dawn?" I said when we were about halfway there. (Actually I shouted it. She was riding in front of me and the wind was blowing against us.) "What?" "Can we go to my house before the meeting? I want to give Tigger his toys. We'll have time." I also wanted to get the mail. It is my absolute favorite thing to do. I don't know why. There's hardly ever anything for me.

"Sure," Dawn called back.

So we stopped at my mailbox. Sure enough, nothing for me. But some days there are surprises. You never know. We parked our bikes near the front walk and ran inside, where I opened Tigger's packages of toys for him. Then we ran back out and across the street to Claudia's house. It was time for the Wednesday afternoon meeting of the Baby-sitters Club.

Chapter 2.

Dawn and I were not the first to arrive at the meeting of the Baby-sitters Club, but we weren't the last, either. Kristy Thomas and Claudia Kishi were already there.

Kristy was sitting in her official presidential position - bolt upright in Claud's director's chair, wearing her visor, a pencil stuck over one ear. She was looking through our club notebook.

Claudia was doing something we've seen her do a thousand times before. She was lying on her stomach, half under the bed, rooting around in the stuff stored there. She was probably rooting for one of two things - art supplies or junk food. See, Claud's room is sort of a .... Well, I'm sorry, but "rat hole" is the best word I can come up with. Okay, it isn't that bad, but it is messy. Claudia needs all sorts of supplies for her projects, and there just isn't enough room for them on her shelves and in her closet. So she's stored boxes of stuff under her bed, in stacks against the wall, everywhere. She's also a junk-food addict, and she really has to hide her Fritos and Doritos and Heath Bars and M&Ms well. That's because her parents don't approve of her habit and told Claud, "No junk food," but she just couldn't give it up. It's hidden everywhere - in the boxes of art supplies, in drawers, even in her pillow.

So Dawn and I weren't too surprised to see Claudia half under the bed. I'm not supposed to eat right before dinner. Even so, I hoped she was searching for food, not art materials. I was pretty hungry.

"Hi, you guys," said Kristy with a smile, as Dawn and I entered Claud's room. "What's going on?" (We had all just seen each other at school, but that didn't matter. Every time we get together, it's as if we haven't spoken in a week.) "We rode downtown to buy toys for Tigger," I replied. "What's Claud doing?" "Looking for my Double Stuff Oreos," answered Claudia from under the bed, only it sounded as if she said, "Lummy fummy dummy fuff ooeey." "Oh, good!" exclaimed Kristy. "Double Stuff Oreos." "How on earth could you understand her?" Dawn asked Kristy as she and I settled ourselves gingerly on the bed. We didn't want to crush the vice-president beneath us.

Kristy shrugged. "Practice." Claudia emerged from her junk-food hiding place with an unopened package of Double Stuff Oreos in one hand.

"Oh, yum," said Kristy, looking as if she might faint from happiness.

While Claud was opening the cookies, Jessi and Mal arrived.

"Great. We're all here," announced Kristy. "Let's begin." Mal and Jessi took their usual places on the floor, Claudia pa.s.sed the cookies around, and Kristy called our meeting to order. As president, that's one of her jobs.

Maybe 1 better tell you a little about the club and how it works. We hold meetings three times a week, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon from five-thirty until six. Our clients call us during those times to say that they need sitters, and then we schedule the jobs for ourselves, depending on who's free.

How do parents know when to call us? Well, I'll go back to the beginning and tell you how the club started. Then you can find out for yourself.

Kristy is the one who thought up the Babysitters Club. (That's the main reason she's the president.) See, way back at the start of seventh grade, Kristy and her family were still living next door to me and across the street from Claud. Kristy's little brother, David Michael, was six then, and Kristy and her two older brothers, Sam and Charlie (they're in high school), were responsible for baby-sitting for him most of the time, since Mrs. Thomas (well, now she's Mrs. Brewer) has a full-time job. But the day came when Kristy's mom needed a sitter for one particular afternoon, and n.o.body - not Kristy, not Sam, not Charlie - was free. So she got on the phone and began making call after call, in search of a sitter. That was when Kristy got her great idea. What a waste of time, she thought, for her mom to have to make so many calls. Wouldn't it be easy if she could make one call and reach several sitters? Surely one of them would be free.

That was it! Kristy would get together with several of her friends, we would meet a few times a week, and when someone called, one of us was bound to be free for a job. So the caller was practically guaranteed a sitter. Kristy asked Claudia and me to be in her club. When we decided we needed one more member, Claud introduced us to Stacey McGill, a new friend of hers. Stacey and her parents had just moved to Stoneybrook from New York City. We liked Stacey right away and asked her to join. Then we did some advertising so people would know about our sitting service and how to reach us. And soon we were in business. Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and I became the first president, vice-president, treasurer, and secretary of the Baby-sitters Club.

By the time Dawn moved here, we were doing so much business that we wanted her in the club, too, and when Stacey had to move back to New York, we replaced her with both Jessi and Mal. So our club has grown to six people. Actually, if s seven people as far as I'm concerned. Stacey isn't really gone; she's just the New York branch of the Baby-sitters Club! Kristy runs the club in a very businesslike manner. She insists that's the only way to do things. And so we keep a club record book and a club notebook. The record book is really important. It's full of information. As secretary, it's my job to keep track of our clients' names and addresses and stuff like that, and also to schedule all of our sitting jobs on the appointment pages. And Dawn, as treasurer, keeps track of our money in the record book, too.

The notebook is something that most of us don't like too much. In the notebook, we have to write up every single job we go on. Then we're responsible for reading the notebook once a week to see what's happened when our friends were sitting. I have to admit that finding out how other people handle sitting problems is helpful . . . but, boy, do we get tired of writing in that book.

It was one of Kristy's ideas, though, and that's another reason she's president. She's always coming up with new projects or ideas to keep the club fresh. For instance, Kristy dreamed up Kid-Kits. Kid-Kits are decorated boxes filled with games and toys and books - mostly our old things. Each of us has made a Kid-Kit. Whenever I take mine on a sitting job, the kids are thrilled. For some reason, another person's toys are always more interesting than your own. So the kids are happy and their parents are happy, and when parents are happy, they call our dub again! Kid-Kits are good for business.

As vice-president, Claud's job is ... well, she doesn't exactly have a job. She's the vice-president because she has her very own phone and private phone number, so her room is a good place for us to hold our meetings. We don't have to tie up anyone's line three times a week. Claud is really nice about letting us use her things and eat her junk food.

You already know what my job is about. I keep records and schedule sitting jobs. In order to do that, I have to know when Claud's art lessons are, Jessi's ballet cla.s.ses, Mal's orthodontist appointments (she just got braces), and that sort of thing. Sometimes I complain about my job, but mostly I like it.

Dawn took over the office of treasurer when Stacey moved away. Her job is to collect dues money from us club members every Monday and to make sure we always have enough money in our treasury. We use the treasury money to buy new things for the Kid-Kits (crayons, coloring books, anything that gets used up), to pay Kristy's brother Charlie to drive her to and from meetings now that she lives on the other side of town, and to treat ourselves to a sleepover or a party every now and then.

Our junior officers, Jessi and Mallory, don't have actual jobs. "Junior" means that since they're younger than the rest of us, they aren't allowed to sit at night, unless they're sitting for their own brothers and sisters. They're a big help, though. They take a lot of the after- noon jobs, which frees us older club members to take the evening jobs.

Last but certainly not least, there are Logan and Shannon. Logan and Shannon are a.s.sociate members. That means that they don't come to meetings, but we can call on them if a job comes up that none of the rest of us is free to take. Believe it or not/ this happens. And we'd hate to have to tell one of our clients that we couldn't provide her (or him) with a sitter. Shannon Kilbourne, by the way, is a friend of Kristy's. She lives across the street from her in Kristy's new neighborhood.

On the day I went toy-shopping for Tigger, Kristy had just barely called the meeting to order when the phone rang.

We looked at each other and smiled. A job call so early in a meeting must be a good sign.

Claudia reached for the phone, a plastic charm bracelet dangling from her wrist. "h.e.l.lo, Baby-sitters Club," she said. There was a pause. Then she put her hand over the receiver. "Oh, Mary A-anne," she called to me in a singsong voice, "it's for you-ou." I took the phone, glancing at Kristy. She doesn't like us to get personal calls during meetings.

"h.e.l.lo?" I said.

"Hi!" replied a cheerful voice.

Logan! I was really happy to hear from him. I just hoped he was calling about business.

"What's up?" I asked him.

"I need a sitter." Actually, he said, "Ah need a sittuh." (Logan's family moved here from Louisville, Kentucky, not long ago.) "For Kerry and Hunter?" I asked. Kerry is Logan's nine-year-old sister and Hunter is his five-year-old brother. None of us has baby-sat for them before, because Logan always does it.

"Yeah. It's for this Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Mom and Dad have some tennis thing lined up with friends of theirs, and I'm going to baseball practice at school. I was supposed to sit, but then practice came up. Can one of you do it?" I was dying to do it, of course, but I had to treat this job like any other. "I'll check our schedules and call you back in just a few minutes, okay?" "Okay." This is how we handle club jobs. The person who gets the phone call or who answers the phone never just takes a job. It's open for everyone.

I told the others about the job as I looked at the appointment pages in the record book. "Well," I said, "Kristy, you and Mallory and I are free." My friends were very generous and let me take the job. I called Logan back. "What's all that sneezing I hear?" I asked, after I'd told him that I would be the sitter.

"Oh, it's my brother. It's allergy season." "Poor Hunter," I replied, remembering his bare, dust-free bedroom. "He - "I stopped. I had glanced at Kristy. Her eyeb.a.l.l.s were practically falling out of her head in her effort to get me to end my personal conversation.

So I said good-bye quickly. Our meeting continued. When it was over, I dashed out the door, calling good-bye to Claudia's grandmother Mimi, who replied in confusion, "I will take six, please." Then I ran home to play with Tigger.

Chapter 3.

My dad used to be strict with me. Very strict. It wasn't so long ago that I had to fix my hair in braids and wear clothes he picked out, that I had to live in a little-girl room, wasn't allowed to ride my bicycle downtown, couldn't talk on the phone after dinner unless it was about homework, etc. I think my dad made up those rules because he was trying to be a good mother. That may sound funny, but I'm pretty sure it's true. He was nervous about raising a daughter by himself and he wanted me to turn out okay, so he decided he had to practically take over my life.

Luckily, he and I have both been changing lately. I've shown him that I'm more grown up and mature than he thought, and he realized that he doesn't have to live my life for me. So he let me take my hair out of braids and fix up my room so it isn't so babyish. Then came bigger changes. Now I can go places with my friends and talk on the phone after dinner. But Dad is still Dad. There's a ten-minute time limit on phone calls. And if Logan comes over when Dad isn't home, Logan has to stay outside. He is not allowed in.

Which is why the two of us were sitting outside one Friday afternoon that was so gray it was almost raining. But we had no choice. Well, I suppose we could have gone inside. How would Dad have known? But I just am not able to break one of his rules. I'm afraid he'll find out somehow. Magically, maybe. Anyway, a rule is a rule.

Besides, it wasn't raining, and it was fairly warm, so being outside wasn't actually unpleasant. How could it be unpleasant with Logan next to me, and Tigger playing at our feet?

Logan had untied one of his sneakers and was dangling the lace in front of Tigger. Tigger thought this was a great game. He batted at the lace. He tried to catch it. He stood on his hind legs and stretched out his round tummy, reaching as far as he could.

"Aw, look. He's so cute!" I said. (I say that, oh, sixty-five times a day.) Logan grinned. I had said it ten or twelve times just since he'd come over.

I changed the subject. "I'm glad today is Friday. I like school and everything, but . . ." "But there's nothing like two days off," supplied Logan.

"Right." "And think of it. This happens once a week. Boy, are we lucky. I'd like to thank whoever arranged things that way." Tigger got tired of playing with the lace then and darted away from us. He pounced on a bug. He ran after a seed pod that dropped from a tree.

"Aw, he's so cute," I said. Then I called, "Careful, Tigger!" Tigger has only been allowed outdoors for a couple of weeks now. Sometimes I even let him go out alone. He can stay happily in the yard for hours - playing and napping. I worry about him, being outside on his own. Then I remember how great it felt when Dad finally let go of me. I wonder - does Dad worry about me every day the way I worry about Tigger?

"You're sure quiet," said Logan suddenly.

I looked over at him. "I was thinking about how Dad treats me and how I treat Tigger and - " "Again?" said Logan sharply.

I paused. Logan hardly ever speaks like that. I decided to ignore it. "How's baseball practice going?" "Fine." "How's the coach? What's his name?" "Coach Blake." Conversational dead end. Okay. . . . Now what?

"Hi-hi!" called a little voice.

It could only belong to Jamie Newton. I glanced up and there he was, standing at the edge of our yard.

"Hi!" I called back.

Jamie's family lives nearby, so the members of the Baby-sitters Club, especially Claudia, sit for the Newtons all the time. Jamie is four and has a baby sister named Lucy.

Jamie ran across the lawn. "Oh, goody!" he exclaimed. "There's Tigger." Tigger looked like he might be tiring out. He was sitting in the gra.s.s - very neatly, with his tail curled around his front feet. But he wasn't doing anything. Nothing I knew about, anyway. Maybe he was doing some secret cat thing.

"Can I play with Tigger, Mary Anne? Please?" asked Jamie.

"Sure," I answered, "but carefully. I'm not sure he wants to play right now." Jamie lay on the ground near Tigger. He and Tigger looked at each other.