Good-bye Stacey, Good-bye (9 page)

I rang the bell next to the massive front door of Watson Brewer's mansion. When Kristy answered, I waved to my father and he drove off. Kristy was wearing jeans and a blue sweat shirt.

"At least I'm not underdressed," I kidded her.

She smiled and led me through the house

and to the back door. "Now close your eyes/' she said as she turned the knob.

I wondered why I needed to do that since I knew who was going to be in the yard — Claudia, Mary Anne, Dawn, Logan Bruno and Shannon Kilbourne (associate club members), Pete Black, Rick Chow, maybe Trevor Sand-bourne, and Emily Bernstein. I hoped Howie Johnson and Dori Wallingford hadn't been invited, but I figured Claudia would know better.

Kristy flung the door open.

"SURPRISE!" shouted a loud chorus of voices.

My jaw dropped practically to my knees.

The guests were not who I had expected at all. Claudia, Mary Anne, Dawn, Logan, and Shannon were there, but the other guests were children ... all the kids (except for babies) that our club sits for. As I looked slowly around at the grinning faces, I saw the eight Pikes — Mallory, Byron, Jordan, Adam, Vanessa, Nicky, Margo, and Claire; Jamie Newton; Myriah and Gabbie Perkins; Charlotte Johanssen; Buddy and Suzi Barrett; Dawn's brother, Jeff; Kristy's brother, David Michael; Karen and Andrew; Nina and Eleanor Marshall; Jackie, Shea, and Archie Rodowsky; Hannie and Linny Papa-dakis; Amanda and Max Delaney; and even Jenny Prezzioso. (I guess they really couldn't

leave her out.) The yard was twinkling with tiny golden lights, and lanterns and bunches of balloons were strung up everywhere.

"Oh, wow!" I said softly.

"Did we surprise you? Did we surprise you?" cried Karen, jumping up and down.

"You sure did."

Charlotte stepped forward and handed me a little corsage made of chrysanthemums. Kristy helped her pin it to my sweat shirt.

"These flowers are for you," Charlotte said, obviously reciting something she'd memorized. "Today is your special day. We are all here to honor you, to say good-bye, and to ..." (She turned to the other children.)

"HAVE FUN!" they shouted.

I wondered if I was supposed to say something, but Kristy spoke up then. "This is a party not just for Stacey, but for everybody here," she said. "And everyone is going to have a good time. I guarantee it. So ... let the fun begin!"

"What are we going to do first?" asked Karen.

"We're going to have an egg relay race," Kristy replied.

I couldn't imagine how my friends were going to organize twenty-eight children into a

relay race, but they did — and fast, too. They were all prepared. They'd carefully figured out five teams (uneven in numbers, but even in ability), and they handed out eggs and spoons in the wink of an eye.

Soon, little kids were charging back and forth across the yard with fragile eggs balanced on spoons. Jenny tripped and her egg splattered to the ground. Her teammates moaned. They were out of the race.

Then Buddy Barrett and David Michael crashed into each other and squashed their eggs on their fronts.

"I see why we were supposed to wear old clothes," I whispered to Mary Anne, and she grinned.

Only two teams were left, and it looked as if the race might end in a tie. Myriah Perkins and Jamie Newton were both heading for the finish at the same pace. But just a few steps from the end, Jamie's egg seemed to fly off the spoon all by itself. Squish.

"I won! I won!" Myriah shouted as she and her egg made it safely back home.

"You mean, we all won," said Karen, who was her teammate.

"Congratulations," said Claudia. "Prizes for everyone on Myriah's team." And she handed

each child a Silly Putty egg. The prizes came from a big box. I peeked inside. It was chock full of toys!

"Where'd you get the money for all this?" I asked incredulously. "I don't mean to be rude, but . . ."

"Where do you think?" answered Dawn with a smile. "From the yard sale. Thanks to your junk, we are going to have one hot party!"

"Oh, no!" I cried, giggling. "I don't believe it. You guys spent that money on this party?"

"Every last cent."

"You're too much," I said tearfully.

I was about to turn on the waterworks, but luckily Kristy announced that it was time for some more fun. And she wasn't kidding. During the next hour or so, us baby-sitters held our own egg race, the kids played Musical Rug (easier than Musical Chairs when a lot of children are involved) and Pin-the-Baby-on-the-Sitter (for that game, Claudia had drawn a picture of me holding out my arms, and made twenty-eight crying babies that were supposed to go in my arms). The children hunted for peanuts and ran races, and we all played Simon Says. The winner, or winners, of each game received a pretty nice prize — a Transformer, a sticker book, a Slinky, a bag of Gummi Bears.

By the time Simon Says was over and Jordan Pike had been given a Transformer, half the kids were getting tired, and the other half were hysterical with excitement.

"Time to quiet down," Kristy whispered to the rest of us club members. "Mary Anne, can you help me? And Dawn and Stacey, can you get all the kids to the front of the house? Keep them right by the driveway."

We followed Kristy's instructions. I was beginning to feel like a teacher. I decided it was a nice feeling.

When the kids were standing quietly along the drive, Kristy and Mary Anne unrolled a long sheet of brown paper and handed out crayons.

"What's this for?" asked Gabbie Perkins, looking uncertainly at the paper.

"Well," Claudia replied, "Stacey's moving to New York, but we don't want her to forget Stoneybrook, do we?"

"No!" cried the kids.

"So we're going to draw her a big picture of our town. You can put in your streets and your houses and yourselves. Then Stacey will always remember us."

The kids set to work right away. The next fifteen minutes were filled with giggles and shouts and calls of, "I don't have green hair!"

and, "Hey, your house goes here, not there," and, "What did you draw a pond for? There's no pond in our yard!"

I have to admit that when the kids got tired of drawing, the mural looked nothing like Stoneybrook, but it didn't matter. It was a great picture. Kristy made a big deal out of rolling it up, tying it with a red ribbon, and having Hannie Papadakis present it to me. I knew I would keep it forever.

"And now," said Kristy, loving every second of being in charge, "back to the yard. And Charlotte, you blindfold Stacey, okay?"

Charlotte nodded importantly.

When we were gathered in the yard again and my eyes were bound so tightly that I couldn't even see the daylight, a hush fell over the party.

Then I heard singing. Twenty-eight little voices and six bigger voices were joined together singing a song to the tune of "Happy Birthday": "Farewe-ell to you, Farewe-ell to you. Farewe-ell, dear Stacey. Farewell and good luck!"

The blindfold was removed. As if by magic, a table had appeared, and on it were paper plates, napkins, cups, a pitcher of punch, and two cakes. One was a huge sheet cake deco-

rated with pink flowers. In blue frosting was written: GOOD-BYE STAGEY, GOOD-BYE. The other cake was tiny and said simply: STAGEY.

"The little one's for you," Claudia whispered to me. "The bakery makes a special no-sugar cake for people with diabetes. The other cake is for the rest of us."

"That's so sweet," I said, giving her a hug, and adding, "No pun intended. Seriously. You guys thought of everything. I really appreciate it."

So I ate my little cake and the kids and my friends gobbled up the big cake. Then Mary Anne found an excuse to award a prize to any kid who hadn't already won one (most original picture on the mural, neatest cake-eater, that sort of thing).

A few minutes later the parents started arriving to pick up their crayon-y, egg-smeared, cake-covered children. As each guest left the party, instead of receiving a "goody bag," he or she handed me a homemade card. Kristy had asked them to make the cards the previous week and bring them to the party.

I read all the cards many times that night. The funniest was Margo Pike's, which said:

GOOD LICK STASY. HAVE FUN IN NEW YURK. The

one that made me cry was Charlotte's (of course): GOOD-BYE, STAGEY, i WILL ALWAYS MISS

YOU. I WISH YOU WERE MY SISTER.

Well, I would always miss Charlotte and the other children and my Stoneybrook friends. I would never, ever forget them. After all, I had one mural, twenty-eight cards, and thousands of memories.

Chapter 14.

"Order, order! Come on, you guys," said Kristy, sounding cross.

I looked around Claudia's bedroom. The time was five-thirty. The day was Friday. It was the beginning of my last-ever meeting with the Baby-sitters Club. I wanted to remember my friends exactly as I saw them right then. They were all being so typical and normal.

Claudia was sprawled on the floor, halfway under her bed. She was rooting around in a shoebox and mumbling, "I know I have Fritos somewhere. I just know it." She was wearing a wonderful Claudia outfit — a purple-and-white striped body suit under a gray jumper-thing. The legs of the body suit stretched all the way to her ankles, but she was wearing purple push-down socks anyway. Around her middle was a wide purple belt with a buckle

in the shape of a telephone. And on her feet were black ballet slippers.

Dawn was standing by the window pulling a strand of her blonde hair as far out to the side as it would reach. "See?" she was saying to Mary Anne. "It is almost as long as my arm. I told you. By the end of the year, I bet it'll be much longer, even if I have to have the split ends trimmed off." She was wearing a very short kilt, an oversized red sweater, and yellow socks over red tights. On her head was a red beret with a sparkly initial pin attached to the side.

Mary Anne, looking wide-eyed at Dawn's hair, was saying, "That's amazing. How come my hair doesn't grow that fast? Maybe if I attached weights to the ends —"

"If you attached weights to the ends," Dawn interrupted her, "you would look like a Martian."

Mary Anne giggled. "How do you know what a Martian looks like?" she said. She was wearing an outfit that I had helped her choose. It was tame, but not dorky — a navy blue minidress with a pink sash, blue tights, and black slippers like Claudia's.

Kristy was wearing her uniform — jeans, a turtleneck (pale blue), a sweater (blue-and-white striped), and sneakers. She was sitting

in Claudia's director's chair, a pencil over one ear, her visor perched crookedly on her head. She wanted (badly) to start the meeting, and she was tapping a pen on our club notebook and calling for order.

I stood by the doorway to Claudia's room and just looked.

There was a good chance that I'd never be part of a scene like this one again. For about the eighty zillionth time since my parents had announced the move I wanted to cry. Instead I said, "Hi, guys!"

"Hi, Stace!" my friends replied.

And with that, Mary Anne burst into tears. "Your last meeting!" she wailed.

"Oh, please don't start that," I said. "I'm not kidding. I don't want us to spend our last meeting crying."

"Yeah, behave like big, grown-up babysitters," said Kristy, and we laughed. "Okay," she went on, "we have lots to do today, so let's get started."

I sighed and sat down on Claudia's bed.

Claudia had found the Fritos. They weren't under the bed at all. They were behind a spare blanket in her closet. She passed them around.

"First order of business," said Kristy, her mouth full, "is the notebook. Have you all read it?"

"Yes," we chorused, like little kids in school.

"Okay. Here's the second order of business. As we all know, Stacey will be leaving tomorrow. When she goes, we'll need a new club treasurer."

"Not to mention another club member," murmured Claudia, but I was the only one who heard her.

"And so it's time to make Dawn, formerly our alternate officer, the new treasurer of the Baby-sitters Club."

I gave Dawn a wavery smile, feeling sad, but I couldn't help thinking at the same time that Kristy was just using this occasion as an opportunity to show off. I mean, when we originally formed the club, we all just decided, okay, Kristy's president, Claudia's vice-president, and so forth. No big deal. But now Kristy called Dawn and me to stand on either side of the director's chair.

"Stacey McGill," she began, and then paused. "I want this to be official," she said thoughtfully. "Is Stacey your real name?"

"No, it's a fake one," I replied.

Kristy made a face. "Is it your full first name?"

I sighed. "No. My full first name is Anastasia. Anastasia Elizabeth."

"You are joking!" cried Kristy.

"No, I'm not. But you can see why I never

tell anyone that. Even my parents don't call me Anastasia."

"All right/' said Kristy. "Oh, wait. Dawn, what's your full name?"

"Dawn Read Schafer."

"Okay. Anastasia Elizabeth McGill," said Kristy, "as president of the Baby-sitters Club, I hereby thank you for all of your help, and for being responsible, and for being our treasurer."

"Wahh," wailed Mary Anne, in tears again.

Everyone ignored her.

"You were our first treasurer and a good friend and we'll really miss you. Luckily," she went on, "our newest member can move up from her position as alternate officer to take over as treasurer. Dawn Read Schafer, I hereby make you treasurer of the Baby-sitters Club."

"Too bad she can't add," whispered Claudia.

Everyone ignored her, except for Dawn who said, "I heard that."

Kristy handed the manila envelope containing our club dues to Dawn. "You are now in charge of the treasury," she said.

Kristy probably would have gone on forever except that the phone started ringing with job calls then. We arranged sitters for the Perkins-es, the Rodowskys, Jenny Prezzioso (yick), and Jeff Schafer. It was the first time nobody asked

me about my schedule or whether I was interested in the jobs.

When things quieted down, Kristy said, "Wow, that was close. We had to do some juggling to fit in a sitter for Mr. and Mrs. Rodowsky."