The Baby-Sitters Club Friends Forever #3: Mary Anne’s Big Break-up (11 page)

been investigating the party for three days now. We know you weren’t

responsible for it. You just happened to get caught. And so you win a private

lecture.”

My jiggling foot slowed down from eighty miles an hour to thirty.

“Let’s start with this,” Ms. Krueger went on. “How did you guys get to the

party?” she peered at us over her glasses.

“I drove,” said Ducky.

“Um, we walked,” Sunny said, pointing first to herself, then to me.

“Two girls? Alone? After dark?”

“Well…yes,” I said.

“Do you have any idea what that might have led to?”

“I-“ said Sunny.

“Um-“ I said.

“I guess it could have been dangerous,” said Sunny finally.

“That’s putting it mildly,” said Ms. Krueger. “Without unduly scaring you,”

she continued, “you could have been robbed, kidnapped, or attacked. You could

have been hit by a car, especial y out in the country roads where there are no

sidewalks. You would have been a lovely target for a drunk driver. Did you think

about that?”

“No,” Sunny and I admitted.

“Did you tell anyone where you were going?”

“Jil sort of knew. I mean, she had the address,” said Sunny.

“Jil ’s our friend,” I added, purposely not tel ing Ms. Krueger Jill’s last

name. (I noticed that Ms. Krueger didn’t ask for her last name, which I

appreciated.) “She refused to go to the party.”

“Smart girl,” replied Ms. Krueger. “Wel , at least someone ‘sort of’ knew

where you girls were going to be. What about you?” she asked Ducky.

“No one exactly knew,” Ducky admitted.

“Great,” said Ms. Krueger. “So if you hadn’t come home on Saturday night,

your brother wouldn’t have discovered this until Sunday morning, and he would

have no idea where to start looking for you. Is that right?”

“yeah.”

“Okay. Now, about the drinking. Sunny, on Sunday morning you looked to

me like a young woman with a hangover.” (Sunny blushed but didn’t say

anything.) “I’m not going to go into al the dangers of drinking too much. I just

want to make sure that you know about a condition called alcohol poisoning. It

can easily happen when you’re drinking a lot. And it can lead quickly to death.”

(Sunny’s eyes widened and her chin tremble, but still she said nothing.) “Now,

let’s see,” Ms. Kruger went on. “What else? I imagine kids at the party were

smoking, but you already know about the dangers of smoking. Also, the party

was held at a house that was unoccupied. I’m sure you’ve thought about how you

would have summoned help, if it were needed, when you couldn’t get to a

phone.”

“Ms. Krueger?” said Ducky then. “The party was real y stupid. We know

that now. We did a lot of stupid things that night.”

“We didn’t know,” said Sunny defiantly, “that the upperclassmen were

going to play a trick on us, though. I mean, maybe Ducky knew, but Dawn and I

didn’t. That wasn’t our fault. We didn’t know we were going to an empty house.”

“Were the upperclassmen responsible for your choosing to get drunk? Or

choosing to walk to the party alone in the middle of the night?” Ms. Krueger

asked Sunny, raising an eyebrow.

“No.”

“Look, kids, I’m just trying to point out how dangerous Saturday night

could have been for you. The bottom line is that you’re not going to get in

trouble-“

“We’re not?” Sunny asked.

“No, you’re not. You did get tricked. And you didn’t think. And you are very

lucky that nothing more than a hangover happened. But you are not going to get

punished. At least not individual y. And not this time.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“What does ‘not this time’ mean?” Sunny asked suspiciously.

“It means if I hear about this sort of thing in the future, I’m going to come

down hard on you three. I’l be in touch with your parents – even yours,

Christopher – so fast your heads will spin. Is that understood?”

Yes, it was understood. And at that moment I decided Ms. Krueger was a

very cool adult. I understood exactly what she was doing…scaring us (it worked),

giving us one warning (I knew it truly was exactly one warning), then letting us off the hook.

I hope I get Ms. Krueger for a teacher one day.

When Ms. Krueger let Sunny and Ducky and me go, we exploded into the

hall.

“Head directly for the assembly,” Ms. Krueger cal ed after us.

“Okay!” I called back.

“Whoa,” exclaimed Ducky.

“Oh, man,” said Sunny, shaking her head.

“What?” I asked.

“She’s such a dork.”

“Who? Ms. Krueger?” asked ducky.

“Who else?” said Sunny.

“She let us off the hook,” I said incredulously. “She could have called our

parents, you know. Instead of talking to us, she could have sat there and dialled

our parents while we watched.”

“I know. But scaring us with all that stuff about drinking and smoking and

walking around at night. I feel so stupid.”

“I think that was the point,” said Ducky.

Wednesday afternoon 10/8

The assembly wasn’t what I had expected. Since al the teachers

knew that the mean upperclassmen had tricked us poor eighth-graders, I

had come to believe that the principal or someone would haul the kids who

had dreamed up the party onto the stage and lecture them publicly, then ask

them to apologize to us and especial y to the kids who were picked up by the

police. That wasn’t exactly what happened.

This is what happened:

Sunny and Ducky and I found Maggie and Amalia at the entrance to

the auditorium. They were waiting for us while kids had streamed by and

scrambled for seats inside. I noticed that Jill was hanging around, several

feet away from Maggie and Amalia, maybe hoping to sit with Maggie. But

when she saw Sunny and Ducky, she backed off, and when she saw me,

she reddened, then hurried into the auditorium alone. Good, I thought.

“What happened? What happened?” Maggie asked as soon as she

saw us. She was bouncing up and down.

“It wasn’t so bad,” I said. Then Ducky and Sunny and I told her and

Amalia about our visit with Ms. Krueger.

Afterward, we found seats in the auditorium. We couldn’t get five

together, but we found two together in one row, with three together behind

them. Then I sat back and waited for the upperclassmen – the ones who had

dreamed up the party – to get into trouble.

What happened instead was that Mr. Dean, flanked by the new

headmistress of Vista and one of the guidance counsel ors, gave everyone a

big talk about responsibility, respect, and trust. The kids who’d been picked

up at the party by the police, we found out, had been let off with warnings.

The kids who had given the party had also received warnings, apparently,

but not from the police, just from Mr. Dean. The assembly was like a mass

version of what Sunny and Ducky and I had just been through with Ms.

Krueger. Except for Mr. Dean’s last words.

“You are all – every last one of you – as of right now, considered on

probation. Upperclassmen if I hear about any more hazing of the eighth-

graders, those of you responsible for the hazing will be suspended

immediately.”

Yes! I thought.

“And al of you – this includes the eighth-graders – if I hear of any of

you drinking, lying to your parents, sneaking out, defacing property,

trespassing…” (as Mr. Dean’s list went on, I sank a bit in my seat), “then you

will be suspended immediately. I am deeply disappointed in those of you

involved with Saturday night’s party. Beyond that, I’m ashamed of you. As a

final note, I will tell you that the damage to Ms. Krueger’s personal property

totalled approximately two thousand dol ars. Ms. Krueger is going to be

recompensed for it – with your class funds. That comes to just under four

hundred dollars per class. By the way, that leaves the ninth-graders and the

eleventh-graders with nothing. In fact, each of these classes will still owe Ms.

Krueger about seventy-five dollars. You can pay her back what you owe her

as soon as you’ve earned the money with your next class fund-raiser.

Neither of these classes, however, will have enough money at the end of the

year for their usual trip. All right. This assembly is hereby dismissed.”

My mouth hung open. So did just about everyone else’s. Around me

kids were complaining, groaning, exclaiming.

You know what? I didn’t expect it. But I know we deserved it.

At first no one moved. Then slowly, kids began to stand up (looking

stunned) and make their way to the auditorium doors. Maggie, Sunny,

Ducky, Amalia, and I joined them.

“Oh, man,” said Sunny, which she says a lot these days.

“Whoa,” added Amalia.

“I can’t believe they’re taking the money out of our class funds,” said

Maggie as we made our way to the aisle.

“We worked hard for that money,” said Ducky.

“I can’t believe we did two thousand dollars’ worth of damage to Ms.

Krueger’s yard,” I said. “I mean, I can believe it – we saw all the stuff in the

pool and the ruined lawn and everything. I just can’t believe we did it.” I

pictured the ruined yard. I felt horrible. Then I began to get an idea.

“No class trip for the ninth-graders and the eleventh-graders,” said

Sunny. “That real y rots.”

“The rest of us aren’t going to have money for anything but a class

trip,” I pointed out. We headed into the hall. But my mind wasn’t real y on

class trips. It was on my idea.

“Hey, here comes Justin!” Sunny suddenly whispered to Maggie.

Sure enough, Justin Randall and two other guys brushed past us.

Justin nodded at us, said hi to Maggie, and eyed her (another admiring look,

I might add). Then they boys hustled off.

And that was when I caught sight of Mandy and her friends. “Uh-oh,” I

said under my breath.

“What?” asked Amalia.

Before I could answer her, Mandy planted herself in front of Maggie

and said, “So. Did you find your wallet?”

Sunny narrowed her eyes. “How did you know anything about a

wallet? And it was my wallet, by the way.”

Mandy looked disappointed at first, and then confused, but just for a

moment. “Oh. Was it yours? You little kids are so hard to tell apart.”

“I can’t believe you planted my wallet –“ Sunny started to say at the

same time Amalia said, “Justin Randal doesn’t think so.”

Once again, I wanted to smirk but didn’t. Mandy scared me. I could

tell she scared the others too. Amalia already looked sorry that she’d made

that remark. But remembering what Mr. Dean had said about the

upperclassmen and hazing, I figured Mandy wasn’t going to do anything

horrible to us. At least not right now.

Wednesday night 10/8

I was right. Mandy didn’t do anything horrible. She let the matter drop.

She and her friends turned and walked away.

I looked at Maggie and Amalia and Ducky and Sunny. I smiled

uncomfortably.

Maggie and Amalia and Sunny smiled back at me.

But Ducky was staring after Mandy and her friends, an odd look on

his face.

“What is it?” I asked him. “What’s wrong?”

Ducky shook his head slightly. Then he said, “I know them better than

you do. That’s al .” He frowned.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Maggie.

“Nothing,” replied Ducky. “Come on. We don’t want to e late for class.”

Ducky turned on his great grin. He extended his elbows to Amalia and

me. We took them. Behind us, Maggie and Sunny linked arms. We headed

for our classes. Our big adventure was over.

Thursday 10/9

Well, the adventure was over, but the day wasn’t. There was more to

come, and it was directly related to the party and the weekend. Related

only, though. When I think about what happened on Tuesday afternoon, I

don’t entirely understand it. Maybe I never will. People, friends,

relationships…they are very confusing things.

Actual y, there are a lot of things I don’t understand. Like, why couldn’t

Carol tell Dad the news about the baby over the phone? I mean, eventually

she did tell him over the phone, but why did she think she couldn’t at first?

And why are Mandy and her friends so mean to me and my friends? It must

be more than the swimming pool and Justin Randall and the locker mix-up.

The swimming pool was an accident, Justin didn’t come along until later

(after Mandy had already decided she hated me), and most people would

have been understanding about the locker mix-up. They would simply have

said, “Excuse me, this is my locker. Yours is in the next hallway.” Why did

Mandy get so mad? I know I broke her mirror, but still…

There are some nice things I don’t understand either. Why do most

people go along with their same old group of friends and then, bang,

suddenly they have some new ones? I started out last weekend with Sunny,

Maggie, and Jil , and by Sunday I had two new friends – Ducky and Amalia. I

feel like I’ve known them al my life, when really I’ve known them less than a

week. It’s great. And it’s another mystery.

Circles of friends widen and narrow, widen and narrow. My circle

widened over the weekend. Then, on Tuesday, it narrowed.

I lost Jill.

It was my own fault. Mostly.

You know what? I ran into a lot of trouble over the weekend, and

before (with Mandy), and after with Ms. Krueger and the assembly and