Dawn and Too Many Sitters

  For Olivia (Livi) Becker

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  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

  Letter from Ann M. Martin

  Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  Scrapbook

  Also Available

  Copyright

  “Hah!” I blurted out.

  “Huh?” My laugh shocked Sunny Winslow out of her own private Twilight Zone. She’d been sitting on my bed, staring out the window, with her homework on her lap. “Are you finished already?”

  I grabbed my paper off my desk and handed it to her. “What do you think?”

  I wish I had a video of her face as she read it. Her eyes grew to the size of stop signs. “Whaaaaat?”

  “I just followed Mr. Swanson’s instructions.” I lowered my voice and scrunched my eyes in a Swansonian imitation. “ ‘Remember, guys, be truthful, interesting, and concise.’ ”

  Sunny burst out laughing. “Oh, you can’t!”

  “He’ll compliment me on my honesty.”

  “Yeah, and then give you a big, fat F.”

  With an indignant sniff, I took back my masterpiece.

  Don’t worry. I wasn’t really going to hand it in. I’m not that stupid. I was just so tired of staring at the blank sheet of paper. I had to write something. Why not the naked truth?

  Personally, I think it’s criminal to assign an essay over the last weekend of the school year. As if I didn’t have enough on my mind. I had two finals on Wednesday, two on Thursday, and one on Friday. Plus I had two evening baby-sitting jobs scheduled.

  Somewhere along the way I had to pack, too, for a summer-long stay with my mom in Stoneybrook.

  So why on earth couldn’t I spend my last bright, beautiful California Saturday properly — with my friends on the beach, relaxing, and deepening my tan?

  Wasn’t Mr. Swanson ever a thirteen-year-old himself?

  Sigh. I turned my paper over.

  Okay, Dawn, take it from the top.

  The moment I started writing, the bedroom door flew open.

  “What’s so funny?” demanded my brother, Jeff. “You guys were laughing.”

  “Have you ever heard of the word knock?” I asked.

  He turned and knocked on the door. “Now will you tell me?”

  “No. It’s none of your business.”

  “Sunny?” Jeff pleaded.

  Sunny shrugged.

  “No fair! Come on, maybe it’s something I can use in my book.”

  I should explain. My brother used to be a nice, normal ten-year-old kid. Then something inside him snapped. He now thinks of himself as a brilliant stand-up comedian.

  His “book,” by the way, is called The Jeff Schafer Book of Funniest Jokes Ever Told, Volume I.

  “Jeff, nothing we think of could possibly be funny enough for your book,” Sunny said.

  He tried to peer over my shoulder. “It’s something you wrote, right?”

  I snatched away the essay. “Je-eff!”

  Sunny, as always, knew the perfect thing to say. “Hey, Jeff, I know this great girl for you. She’s ten and really smart, and she likes boys with a good sense of —”

  “Ew! Yuck! Gross!” Out the door he went, running toward his room. “I’ll find out what was so funny sooner or later!”

  I mouthed a “thank you” to Sunny. Then I turned to my blank sheet of paper.

  As I started writing about my trip, my grumpiness began to lift. As much as I love my dad and my life in Palo City, I couldn’t wait to fly east.

  I am so lucky. I have two lives. Two homes. Two groups of best friends. Two sets of parents.

  Okay, if I had my druthers, I’d rather have one set of parents. I did not ask my mom and dad to divorce. They made the decision themselves.

  But I prefer not to be miserable about it. What’s the point?

  Dad calls me a cockeyed optimist. (He’s right about the optimist part. I have no idea what cockeyed means. Come to think of it, I don’t know what a druther is, either.) His nickname for me is Sunshine. He says it describes me inside and out. Outside, I’m light-skinned and blue-eyed, and I have waist-long, white-blonde hair.

  Inside, I’m very passionate about several things: my family, my friends, baby-sitting, surfing, healthy living, and the environment. I do not eat red meat. Don’t even touch my plate with the ground-up carcass of a slaughtered cow (otherwise known as a hamburger). I am deeply committed to rain forest conservation, animal rights, and the fight against pollution.

  You may be laughing about this. Go ahead. You’re not alone. Some of my Stoneybrook friends love to tease me about my beliefs. But you know what? I don’t care.

  Most of my California pals are right in my corner.

  Including Sunny. Her name, by the way, is short for Sunshine Daydream Winslow. Yes, my nickname is the same as her birth name, and no, it’s not confusing. We’re used to it. She lives down the street from Dad’s house, and we’ve been best friends since second grade. Like me, Sunny is thirteen years old, easygoing, and a vegetarian. Her hair is a gorgeous strawberry blonde.

  Our other best friends, Maggie Blume and Jill Henderson, are organic-food junkies, too. And blondes, although sometimes it’s hard to tell with Maggie. Currently her hair is mostly black. It has been green and purple, too. Her style is L.A.-futuristic-cyberpunk. Her dad works in the movie business, but Maggie likes to downplay that. When Sunny found out that Winona Ryder had been at the Blumes’ for a business meeting, she nearly had a heart attack. To Maggie, it was no big deal.

  Jill’s much more laid back. She has deep brown eyes and is a terrific listener. She lives on the outskirts of town with her divorced mom, her older sister, and three dogs named Spike, Shakespeare, and Smee.

  Jill, Maggie, Sunny, and I are also known as the We ♥ Kids Club. We meet regularly in Sunny’s room and take calls from parents who need baby-sitters. For a long time, we were really casual about meeting times. Parents knew each of our numbers and called any of us whenever they wanted. Then a reporter interviewed us for a newspaper article, and a local TV station did a feature story on us. The next thing we knew, half the parents from here to L.A. were calling us. We were overwhelmed. We double-booked jobs, forgot to call clients back, and generally messed up. We had to shape up, big-time.

  Fortunately, we had a good example to follow: the Baby-sitters Club of Stoneybrook, Connecticut, of which I am a former officer (and currently an honorary member). The BSC is always busy, too, but much more organized.

  To survive our crisis, we borrowed some BSC ideas. We established one central phone number (Sunny’s), regular meeting hours, and good record-keeping.

  Even with our new rules, the We ♥ Kids Club is still pretty easygoing and fun. I’ll miss it tremendously this summer.

  But most of all I’ll miss Sunny. She’s my number one friend of all time. When my parents were breaking up, she was there for me. I must have cried on her shoulder every day for weeks. Now Sunny is going through her own time of need. You see, her mom has lung cancer.

  I adore Mrs. Winslow. She and Mr. Winslow never grew out of being hippies. They’re both warm and kind and youthful. Mrs. Winslow is a professional potter and has a pottery studio in her basement. Her stoneware creations are gorgeous.

  Mrs. Winslow is home fr
om the hospital now, but she has to go back from time to time. She’s undergoing chemotherapy, which is very painful. Her sickness was one of the reasons I moved back to Palo City. Before that I’d been living in Stoneybrook.

  Stoneybrook happens to be Mom’s hometown. After the divorce, she decided to move back there with Jeff and me. At first I wasn’t too thrilled, but I quickly adjusted. First of all, Mom bought a totally cool, two-hundred-year-old farmhouse that has a secret passage from the barn to my bedroom. Second, I made great friends and joined the BSC.

  Jeff never liked the house, hated school, and missed his old friends. He became so miserable that Mom agreed to let him move back with Dad (Mom and I were heartbroken about that for a long time).

  Meanwhile, I had found out that Mom’s high-school boyfriend was the father of another BSC member, Mary Anne Spier. Well, Mary Anne and I put our heads together and reintroduced the two lovebirds — and guess what? Hint: daaa-daaa-da-daa-daa-daa-da-daa. (That’s the wedding march, in case you were wondering.)

  My stepdad is fussy and super-neat. My mom is fun-loving and forgetful. But believe it or not, they make a great couple.

  Speaking of couples and stepparents, guess who else was married while I was living in Stoneybrook? My dad. To his girlfriend, Carol Olson. (Actually, their wedding happened while I was on an extended visit to California.) The ceremony was held on the beach, and I was the maid of honor.

  Leaving Dad and his new life — not to mention my We ♥ Kids Club friends — after the wedding was really tough. I guess that was when I started becoming seriously homesick for Palo City. Even though I love my Stoneybrook life, I felt the Call of the West Coast.

  Then Sunny’s mom became sick, and that cemented my decision. I needed to move back. For good. Boy, was that a painful choice. Especially for Mom. She said she felt as if she were losing both of her kids. Dad, on the other hand, was thrilled.

  Let me tell you, a bicoastal life sure ain’t as easy as it sounds.

  So now you’re up to date on the Saga of Traveling Dawn.

  In my bedroom that Saturday, Sunny flopped down on my bed. Lying on her back, she covered her face with her math book. “This is not a nap,” she announced. “I am learning by osmosis.”

  “Right,” I replied.

  As I thought about what to write for my real essay, I heard a strange snuffling noise. I looked over to see Sunny fast asleep.

  Smiling, I picked up my pen and began to write.

  “Jeff, do you know where my plaid shorts are?” I yelled down the hall.

  “Hum a few bars and I’ll let you know,” Jeff shot back.

  “Oh, please —”

  “Get it? When you say, ‘Do you know,’ it’s like asking if I know a song called ‘Where My Plaid Shorts —’ ”

  “Jeff, we have to leave! Will you answer my question?”

  “How would I know where your shorts are? They’re too big and ugly for me.”

  “Nothing’s too big and ugly for you!”

  “Yo, chill!” Carol called out from downstairs. (She’s in her thirties, but she tries to sound young.) “Will the opponents choose their breakfasts, please: homemade buckwheat pancakes with fresh strawberries or cold puffed millet cereal in mango-kiwi juice?”

  “Pancakes!” Jeff and I both shouted.

  “Make it quick!” Dad called from the kitchen. “It’s T minus twenty-five and counting!”

  Yikes.

  I glanced at my clock. Eight thirty-five. Sunny was due any minute. She was going to ride with my family and me to the airport. If we weren’t all out of the house by nine, Jeff and I might miss our flight to Connecticut.

  Yes, it was Sunday morning. The Big Day.

  Yes, I’d taken my finals and handed in my brilliant, rewritten essay.

  No, I had not flunked my courses. And Mr. Swanson had given me a B-minus on the essay. (Thank you, thank you; don’t applaud, just send roses.)

  My baby-sitting jobs went off without a hitch, too. And on Saturday, our first full day of freedom, my We ♥ Kids Club friends threw me a huge party.

  I don’t know how they found the time to prepare. But when I arrived at Sunny’s house, the whole place was decked out with ribbons, balloons, and a farewell banner signed by our baby-sitting charges.

  I have to admit, after all my long bicoastal visits, I have become used to big farewell parties. But this one was special. Just about all of our clients showed up, and Sunny had ordered food from this phenomenal macrobiotic restaurant. (Plus sweets and cake, to keep the kids from storming out in protest.)

  I hadn’t seen Mrs. Winslow so relaxed and happy-looking in a long time. She was dancing to the music and helping to serve the food. She seemed like her old self until I watched her dancing with her husband to a slow song.

  Her clothes hung loosely on her body. As she rested her face on his shoulders, her eyes looked hollow and sad. Her wig was also slightly askew (she has to wear one because the chemotherapy made her hair fall out).

  At that moment I had big doubts about leaving. Sunny must have noticed, because she put her arm around me and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll be here when you come back.”

  We cockeyed optimists stick together, I guess.

  Now the smell of hot pancakes was drifting upstairs. I could hear Jeff dragging his duffel bag down the hall.

  Quickly, I scoured my room. I packed an extra pair of sandals, a Sierra Club magazine I’d been reading the night before, and a terrycloth robe that was on the floor. Surprise! My plaid shorts were hiding under the robe, so I threw them in my duffel bag, too.

  Then I tried to pull the zipper closed. It would not budge.

  “Mmmmm, your pancakes sure taste good!” Jeff yelled from downstairs.

  Zzzzzzzip! Suddenly I found the strength.

  Pulling the bag behind me, I rushed to the kitchen. Jeff was grinning, his mouth full. Fortunately my pancakes were intact on the plate next to his.

  “Chow down,” Dad said with a smile. “This has to last you until September.”

  “They serve breakfast in Stoneybrook, you know,” I teased.

  “Yeah, but not like this,” Dad said. “Right, Carol?”

  Carol was in the corner, by the stove. She nodded quietly. Then she made a sound that was halfway between a hiccup and a gasp.

  A tear dripped slowly down her cheek.

  I went over to her. Our eyes met, and I started crying, too. She opened her arms, and we shared a big hug.

  “I’m going to miss you so much,” Carol said. “I feel as if you’re my own d —” Sniff. “Dau —”

  “Daughter,” Jeff muttered blandly.

  Dad wrapped Carol and me in a warm embrace.

  “Will you guys knock it off?” Jeff groaned. “I’m trying to eat!”

  “Ohhhhh, Jeffers, I’m going to miss you, too!” Now Carol was running toward Jeff, arms open.

  He shoved a forkful of pancake into his mouth and bolted.

  Ding-dong!

  Jeff continued running into the living room and pulled open the door. “Hi, Jeff!” Sunny’s voice called out.

  “Urrbush gusso muffoo,” Jeff explained.

  Sunny walked in and headed toward the kitchen. “Very attractive. Swallow, please.”

  He did. “Don’t go in there! I said, everybody’s getting so mushy!”

  Sunny didn’t listen. She joined our little lovefest.

  We rocked back and forth together, sniffling a little, not saying much of anything.

  “Call me every day,” I said softly to Sunny.

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  “You, too,” I told Dad.

  “All right, sweetheart.”

  “And we’ll write, too,” Carol offered.

  “Good, because I’ll be thinking of you all the time,” I said.

  Dad was looking around curiously. “Where’s your brother?”

  “If you slobber on my pancakes, you have to make me new ones!” Jeff’s voice called from around a corner.

 
; Somehow we managed to dry our tears and finish breakfast. Sunny helped me lug my duffel bag out to the car and toss it in the trunk. Then we all climbed into the car.

  “Connecticut, here they come!” Dad sang out as he backed the car into the street.

  We did not stop talking once during the whole trip. By the time we arrived at John Wayne Airport, Jeff was cowering in the backseat, his hands pressed over his ears.

  As we stood in the long check-in line, Jeff disappeared into a magazine shop and bought a comic book. While Dad, Carol, Sunny, and I shared some more weepy hugs and promises, Jeff snuggled into a molded plastic seat with the latest issue of The Kannibal Krew.

  Soon after we’d checked in, a voice blared through the speakers: “Attention, passengers. Now boarding Flight Forty-two to New York. Please report to Gate Three …”

  “That’s you!” Dad said.

  Yikes. My heart started fluttering like crazy.

  Jeff looked dismayed. “New York?”

  “You’re switching there for a flight to Stamford,” Carol explained.

  “Two planes? Cool!” Jeff folded up the comic book, tucked it in his rear pocket, and strode toward the gate.

  We followed him as he marched through the metal detector.

  Beeeeeep!

  The attendant made Jeff remove his belt and try again.

  Somehow, watching my red-faced little brother walk through that archway, holding up his sagging pants, really lifted my spirits. I cracked up.

  Jeff glared at me as he slipped his belt back on. “You think that’s funny? I’ll tell you what’s funny.” Then he recited in a nasal, singsong voice: “ ‘This is a dumb essay. I’m going to flunk my finals….’ ”

  “You little sneak!” I cried. “You broke into my room and read my essay!”

  Giggling, Jeff ran off. “I told you I’d find out!”

  Carol shrugged and put her arm around my shoulder. “That’s your brother’s way of saying he loves you.”

  “Yeah? Then he’ll be heartbroken when he finds I won’t sit near him,” I grumbled.

  Well, Jeff and I managed to declare a truce. And he did give Dad and Carol huge hugs before he headed down the loading ramp.

  Once we were on the plane, he was sniffling just as loudly as I was.