Mary Anne and the Secret in the Attic

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  “Mama! Mama!” Where was she? I felt so alone, even though a kitten was cradled in my arms, and even though some people were near me. The people (two of them) were very old. They weren’t exactly strangers, but I didn’t feel connected to them in any way. They stood and watched wordlessly as I called for my mother. “Mama! Mama!”

  I woke up with a start, and it took me a second to realize that I was safe in my own room. The dream had been so real. I could almost smell the musty, closed-in odor of the big building I’d been standing in. I could almost feel the softness of the kitten I’d held. And I could almost understand the loneliness and the fear of the little girl who felt so all alone.

  I rubbed my eyes hard, as if I could erase the dream and the strange feelings that went with it. I hated that feeling of loneliness, and I hated not knowing where I was, and why those old people were staring at me. Actually, I wasn’t even sure if the person in the dream was me — if she was, she was a very, very young me. One who knew how to say just one word. Mama.

  By this time you’re probably wondering who “me” is. I don’t blame you. I am Mary Anne Spier, and I’m not normally a person who has weird dreams. I’m basically just your average, typical thirteen-year-old eighth-grader. I’ve lived all my life in a town called Stoneybrook, Connecticut. I have lots of good friends (including a steady boyfriend), a kitten named Tigger (he’s gray, not black and white like the one in the dream), and a stepsister (who also happens to be one of my best friends) named Dawn Schafer.

  What I don’t have is a mother. I haven’t had one since I was a baby. In fact, I really have no memories of my mother at all. I don’t remember her being sick, and I don’t remember her dying. So I guess I can’t say I miss her, since I didn’t really know her. But I sure do miss having a mother.

  My father has tried to make up for my not having a mother. He truly has done his best. But a father is not the same as a mother, no matter how hard he tries. My father used to be extremely strict with me, but over time he’s begun to loosen up. I think I had to help him learn how to be a father to a teenage girl. There was a lot he didn’t know, until recently. For example, my father didn’t know that a seventh-grade girl should not be forced to wear her hair in pigtails and dress in childish jumpers. My father didn’t know that a seventh-grade girl is quite old enough to decorate her own room. I won’t even get into all the other things my father didn’t know about teenage girls, but I’m sure you can imagine.

  I have always been very shy. I think this is because I grew up as an only child and got used to spending a lot of time alone. But in the past year or so, I have learned that being shy does not have to mean being timid. I have learned to stand up to my father and to challenge some of the rules he had made — just the ones that were obviously ridiculous, that is.

  And I think my father learned to respect me as a person in my own right, instead of thinking of me as a helpless child. He learned that I am a responsible young adult who does not need someone hovering over her at all times. Plus, I think that learning these lessons allowed him to feel free to get on with his own life. Which is how I got my stepsister!

  Is that kind of confusing? Okay, I’ll back up and explain. See, I have a good friend named Dawn Schafer. I met her when she moved to Stoneybrook and became part of this club I belong to, the Baby-sitters Club. (More about the club later.) Dawn moved here from California. She has long blonde hair and blue eyes. She has this laid-back attitude, mellow, but individualistic. And she loves health food like (ugh!) tofu burgers and (ew!) soy milkshakes.

  Anyway, as I said, Dawn moved to Stoneybrook from California, along with her mother and her younger brother, Jeff. They’d left California because Dawn’s mom had just gotten a divorce from her dad. And they’d come to Stoneybrook because that was where Mrs. Schafer had grown up. So for Dawn’s mom, it was like coming home to a place where she felt comfortable. For Dawn, it wasn’t so easy. Connecticut is obviously pretty different from California. Dawn hated our cold winters, for example. But she adjusted quickly, partly because she’d joined our club and almost automatically gained a bunch of very good friends. The person who couldn’t adjust was Jeff, her brother. In fact, he was so miserable here that the family decided he’d be happier going back to California to live with his father.

  Anyway, I’m off the subject. What I meant to tell you about was the Great Romance. Here’s the Great Romance, Part One: Dawn and I found out, while we were going through our parents’ old yearbooks, that her mother and my father had dated back when they both went to Stoneybrook High School. And here’s the Great Romance, Part Two: After we “reintroduced” them, Dawn’s mom (who I now call Sharon) and my dad (who Dawn now calls Richard) fell in love all over again. In fact, as you’ve probably guessed, they got married.

  And are we now living happily ever after? Well, basically, the answer is yes. My dad and Tigger and I moved in with Dawn and her mom, and it took a while for us all to get used to each other. The house is a really, really old farmhouse (it even has a secret passage that may be — oooh! — haunted). At first Dawn and I tried to share a room, but we soon discovered that we each needed our own space.

  But we do get along pretty well, considering how different we are. My dad and I are both neat freaks (at least, that’s what Dawn calls us). Did you ever hear the expression “a place for everything, and everything in its place”? Well, that’s how my dad and I had always lived. We were organized, and tidy, and shipshape. Then we moved in with Sharon and Dawn.

  Sharon is a wonderful person, and I love her very much, but she is most definitely not what I’d call a neat freak. In fact, she’s kind of the opposite. I’ll give you some examples. One: Before she moved in with us, Sharon had never owned a vacuum cleaner. “Isn’t a broom good enough?” she’d asked. Two: Once I found my best shoes (which I’d been looking for all over) in the linen closet, under the clean towels. I’ve also found a box of crackers on the hall table, my Sassy magazine in the freezer, and a bottle of shampoo in my shoe bag. Three: After Sharon has cooked dinner (her meals often involve things like brown rice and seaweed), the kitchen could be officially declared a disaster area.

  Of course, Sharon and Dawn have had to adjust to me and my father, too. And to Tigger. I know Sharon is not crazy about cats, but she tries hard to treat Tigger as a member of the family. And, I have to say it, a “family” is what we really feel like, and that feels great. I’ll never call Sharon “Mom” — that name is reserved for someone I lost a long, long time ago — but she is about the best stepmom I could have hoped for.

  You know, I’m not even sure what having a real mother would be like. Would I be less shy, less insecure if I’d grown up with my mother around? I guess I’ll never know. And I’ve gotten used to not knowing things. For example, I don’t really know much about what my mother was like, or even how she died. I used to try to ask my father questions about those things, but I stopped. Why? Because I could see how much it hurt him to talk — or even think — about my mother. There’s one thing I do know: He must have loved her very, very much.

  Maybe th
is explains why, even though my life is very full now, with Sharon and Dawn and Tigger and Dad and Logan (he’s my boyfriend), sometimes I still feel this empty place inside. And that’s what I was feeling that morning, when I woke up from my strange dream. I felt that emptiness, and I felt alone, and I could completely understand the little girl in my dream. The one who was calling for her mama.

  The really odd thing was that, as I woke up little by little, I remembered that I had had almost exactly that same dream not once but twice before. And all within about three weeks. I guess this was what they call a recurring dream. I was starting to feel almost as if that big, musty building were a real place, and as if those strange old people were real people.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them wide. Even though it was already light outside, I didn’t feel ready to wake up. I was still sleepy, but I was also afraid to go back to sleep. The dream had been very unsettling, and I didn’t really want to repeat it one more time. Then I turned to look at my clock, and when I saw what time it was, I woke up fast. I was going to have to move it if I didn’t want to be late for school!

  I got dressed in a hurry, which wasn’t too hard. I had laid out my clothes the night before, as I always do. That day I was wearing a pink sweater and chinos, with these cute little boots I’d just bought. I guess you could say that my style is basically pretty preppy.

  Then I headed for Dawn’s room, to make sure she was up. “Morning,” I said, knocking on her door. “Are you awake?”

  She opened the door. “Yup,” she replied, rubbing her eyes. “Come on in and help me decide what to wear.”

  Dawn’s room was kind of a mess that day. Clothes were flung all over the place. Her jewelry was scattered over her dressing table, and I counted about seven different shoes littering the floor. “How can you even have any idea of what clean clothes you have?” I asked, shaking my head.

  “Oh, I know just where everything is,” said Dawn. “For example, I’m thinking of wearing my denim skirt today, and it’s hanging on the closet doorknob. And with it, I’ll wear my turquoise necklace, which is behind that book.” She pointed to her night table. I picked up the book and saw the necklace. “See?” she asked. “Just like I told you.”

  I shrugged. “As long as the system works for you,” I said. I’ve learned to live and let live. “Anyway, it sounds like you already know what you’re going to wear. So let me tell you about this dream I had, while you get dressed.” Dawn and I often tell each other our dreams. It’s one of the things I absolutely love about having a stepsister.

  “Wow,” she said, after I’d told her what I remembered. “Strange. So what do you think it means?” Dawn loves to analyze dreams, and usually she’s pretty good at it.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “But it gives me the creeps. I feel like I need to figure it out.”

  We talked about the dream while Dawn got dressed and brushed her hair. And, since Sharon and my dad were already done with breakfast by the time we came downstairs, we kept talking about it as we ate our cereal. (I had Sugar Snaps. Dawn had Health-i-os.) But no matter how hard we tried to analyze the dream, we didn’t come up with anything that felt right to me. It seemed that the dream was going to be haunting me for awhile longer.

  “Hey, Mary Anne! Snap out of it!” Kristy snapped her fingers in front of my nose, and I blinked.

  “What?” I said. “What’s going on?” I’d been thinking about my dream again, and I guess I’d kind of phased out for a minute.

  “We’re about to start the meeting, that’s all,” said Kristy, “and since you are a member, we’d like to have you join us, if you think you can manage it.”

  Kristy was being sarcastic. She can be that way sometimes. It’s funny — Kristy Thomas and I have been best friends ever since I can remember, but we are such different personality types. She’s loud, and bossy, and sure of herself. And I’m exactly the opposite. But I guess it’s like the old saying, “opposites attract.”

  It was later that same day, and I’d been thinking about my dream pretty much nonstop since I had woken up that morning. All through school I’d thought about it, and all afternoon. By five-thirty, which was when our meeting started, you’d think I’d have been tired of thinking about it. But somehow it still had a grip on me.

  I figured that maybe I could forget about my dream if I focused on something else, so I started to think about the BSC. What’s the BSC? It’s the Baby-sitters Club, of course. We call it a club, but it’s really more like a business. Kristy thought it up. She’s great at coming up with wonderful ideas. The idea for the BSC was the best one of all, and it’s really one of the simplest. It works like this: Kristy and I and five other baby-sitters meet every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon from five-thirty until six. Parents call us during those hours if they need to arrange for a sitter, and we figure out which of us should take which jobs. We get plenty of work, the parents get reliable baby-sitting service, and the kids get sitters who really love what they do. Everybody’s happy.

  The club has worked well from the beginning. We used to advertise with flyers and posters and things — and we still do, sometimes — but generally we have as much business as we want. The BSC has a great reputation in Stoneybrook.

  Kristy’s had some other great ideas for the club. For example, there’s the club notebook. That’s like a diary that we each write in after every job we go on. Reading the notebook really keeps us up to date on what’s happening with our clients. Another of her ideas was the Kid-Kits. We each have one: a decorated box, filled with coloring books and toys and stickers and all kinds of things that’re irresistible to kids. It’s not all new stuff. In fact, mine has my first Barbie ever, plus a battered game of Candy Land that I must have played three thousand times when I was little. But Kristy knew that even an old toy can look new and exciting to a kid. My Kid-Kit has been a real lifesaver more than once. It’s just the thing for a rainy, dismal day.

  Anyway, as you can see, Kristy is always having creative ideas, and she’s really good at putting them into action. She’s a real “do-er,” as my dad would say. Nothing seems to bother her, either. Maybe that’s because she’s used to being in the middle of a lot of activity. Kristy comes from a large, complicated, chaotic family. Here’s who she lives with: her mom, her stepfather Watson Brewer, her two older brothers Charlie and Sam, her little brother David Michael, her adopted baby sister Emily Michelle (she’s Vietnamese), and her grandmother Nannie. Plus, every other weekend and on vacations, Kristy’s stepbrother and stepsister, Karen and Andrew, come to stay. Plus, there’s a cat, a dog, and two goldfish.

  Whew! It’s lucky Watson is a millionaire (really, he is) and owns a mansion. That family just wouldn’t fit in any regular house. Kristy seems to love being part of such a big family. I guess it helps that she’s so outgoing and assertive.

  How else can I describe Kristy? Well, she loves sports and is kind of a tomboy, she adores kids, and she couldn’t care less about clothes or makeup or any of that stuff. She’s happiest dressed in a turtleneck, jeans, and running shoes. She’s pretty short for her age (like me) and she has brown hair and brown eyes (also like me). And, last but not least, she’s president of our club.

  The vice-president of our club is Claudia Kishi. It was Claud’s room that we were all sitting in that afternoon. In fact, we always meet in Claud’s room. Why? Because she has her own phone, with a private line. That means that we don’t have to tie up anyone else’s line while we take BSC calls. As vice-president, Claud doesn’t really have any other duties, besides supplying the phone and the meeting place. But she does supply one other very important thing for the club: junk food. Munchies, snacks, bonbons — Claud’s kind of addicted to junk food, and she loves to share it.

  It’s hard to believe that Claudia eats as much junk as she does. For one thing, she has the most beautiful complexion, and for another, her figure is terrific. I guess she’s just one of those people who is naturally gorgeous, no matter what she eats.
Claud has a very exotic look. She’s Japanese-American, and has lovely brown almond-shaped eyes and long, long silky black hair. She is a really sophisticated dresser: for example, that day she was wearing a lacy white top over a solid white bodysuit, a black mini skirt with white polka dots on it, lacy white leggings, and red high-tops. Plus some really outrageous black-and-white jewelry (earrings and bracelets and necklaces) that she’d made herself out of papier-mâché. Claud’s an excellent artist. You should see the portrait she once painted of Tigger.

  Compared to mine and Kristy’s, Claud’s family is really small and, well, normal. It’s just her, her mom and dad, and her older sister Janine, who is a true genius. Claud’s really smart, too, but she’ll never do as well in school as Janine does. She just doesn’t seem to care about getting good grades. Except in art.

  Claud’s best friend is Stacey McGill. She’s the treasurer of our club, which means that she collects dues every Monday. (Ugh! We all hate to part with our money.) Also, she keeps track of how much money is in the treasury. We use the money to cover what Kristy calls “overhead.” It helps to pay Claud’s phone bill, for example, and we also use some of it to pay Kristy’s brother to drive her to meetings. (When her mom married Watson, Kristy moved across town to that mansion of his. She used to live right next door to my old house.) Stacey’s a real math whiz, so the job is a breeze for her.

  Stacey doesn’t exactly look like the stereotypical idea of a math whiz, however. She doesn’t have slicked-back hair, and she doesn’t wear black-framed glasses or carry pens and a slide rule in her pocket. In fact, her hair is blonde and curly (she often gets it permed), and she’s just as cool a dresser as Claud is. I think that’s partly why they’re such good friends: They share a certain sophistication the rest of us just don’t have.

  Actually, Stacey may even be more sophisticated than Claud. She can’t help it: She grew up in New York City. She didn’t move to Stoneybrook until seventh grade. Stacey’s been through some tough times in the past few years. For one thing, she found out she has diabetes. Her body can’t process sugars correctly, so she has to be very, very careful about what she eats. Also, she has to give herself daily injections (ew!) of this stuff called insulin. Stacey’s learned how to take care of herself pretty well, and I’m always impressed at how matter-of-factly she deals with having a lifelong disease.