For all the readers — past, present, and future — of the Baby-sitters Club books … with thanks.

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

1. Kristy

2. Mary Anne

3. Stacey

4. Claudia

5. Mary Anne

6. Kristy

7. Claudia

8. Stacey

9. Mary Anne

10. Mallory

11. Kristy

12. Jackie

13. Jessi

14. Stacey

15. Kristy

16. Abby

17. Claudia

18. Stacey

19. Claire

20. Dawn

21. Mary Anne

22. Claudia

23. Charlotte

24. Stacey

25. Mary Anne

26. Claudia

27. Kristy

28. Charlie

29. Stacey

30. Mary Anne

31. Claudia

32. Kristy

Letter from Ann M. Martin

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also Available

Copyright

May 31

Can’t believe am about to graduate. Definitely not ready for it. Possible to graduate from 8th grade, then return to SMS and have a do-over? Am REALLY not ready for high school. Tried to explain this to Mom. Was told am being silly. According to Mom, all freshmen are nervous about starting high school. Since when does Mom consider her dear daughter like everyone else?

Walked through the halls of SMS today and was BOMBARDED by notices about caps and gowns, yearbooks, and like. Every notice frightening. How am I supposed to concentrate on finals with all these distractions? Oh! Maybe if flunk finals will have to repeat 8th grade. Good idea.

Note to self: Ask Charlie if he felt like this when he was leaving SMS….

*  *  *

It was a very hot night — hot for May, that is — and I was lying in my bedroom with the windows open, listening to the late spring nighttime sounds. I’m pretty sure I was the only one in my whole house who was still awake. And with a family my size, that is saying a lot. All around me were bedrooms with sleeping people in them. My mom and Watson in one. (Watson is my stepfather. He’s pretty cool, even if he is going bald.) My big brother Charlie in one; my other big brother, Sam, in one; my little brother David Michael in one; my little sister Karen in one; my little brother Andrew in one; my little sister Emily Michelle in one; and my grandmother Nannie in one. And all of them asleep, as far as I knew.

Just me awake and stewing. For three years my friends and I have been edging our way through SMS, or Stoneybrook Middle School. And now, after three years of projects, tests, report cards, field trips, cafeteria meals, softball games, and dances, it’s about to end. We are about to graduate and go on to SHS, Stoneybrook High School. That’s where my brothers Sam and Charlie are students. Sam will be a junior next year, and Charlie is going off to college. Well, we’re pretty sure he’s going off to college. Charlie did a very un-Charlie sort of thing this year. For once in his life he wasn’t all organized and on top of things. He didn’t get around to applying to colleges until it was on the late side. Charlie is a really good student and could probably go to just about any college — if he had applied on time. But he dropped the ball (Watson’s words), and even after a lot of prodding from Mom and Watson, his applications were out too late to qualify for the top schools. He’s waiting now to hear from a few small local ones. He says he wants to go to Boiceville State. We’ll see.

Anyway, I do not understand why we should turn our nice lives topsy-turvy. Everything has been quite fine in the last year or so. Everyone in my whole family (my WHOLE family, Charlie) is settled where they belong. But in the fall so much is going to change. Sam and I will be the high school students. David Michael and Karen, who are seven, will just stay in their schools and move on to third grade, but Andrew will start kindergarten, and Emily Michelle will start full-time preschool. (In case you’re wondering about my enormous family, Karen and Andrew are actually my stepsister and stepbrother. They’re Watson’s kids from his first marriage.)

Here’s the thing. I’m a firm believer that if something isn’t broken, you shouldn’t fix it. (Or as Watson would say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”) And I kind of like things the way they are right now. I’m worried that once my friends and I get to high school, our friendships are going to change. There will be SO MANY kids at SHS. It’s a much bigger school than the middle school. Kids come to SHS from all the middle schools from a couple of other towns. There will be over a THOUSAND kids at SHS. I bet I could go all day there without seeing Claudia or Stacey or Mary Anne. Anyway, they’ll be off making new friends, which they’ll have to do, because they won’t be able to find one another or me in the maze of corridors and rooms that make up SHS.

And then there’s the Baby-sitters Club, or BSC. The BSC is really a business (a baby-sitting business, as if you couldn’t guess) started by yours truly almost two years ago, at the beginning of seventh grade. All my closest friends belong to it. At one time it was a really big deal. Seven of us belonged as full-fledged members, with various honorary and associate members.

Now the club has scaled back to the original four members (Mary Anne, Claudia, Stacey, and me), but it’s still important to us. We meet several times a week to assign sitting jobs, to discuss our clients and the jobs we’ve been on, and also just to talk, to catch up, to be together. Are we really going to be able to continue this once we start high school? We’re going to be so much busier. For one thing, we’ll be in school until later in the afternoon. Then there will be all the extra work and so many after-school clubs, teams, and activities. I have a funny feeling the four of us may not wind up meeting very often.

And I can’t bear to think about not spending so much time with my friends, not seeing the little kids we’ve all grown close to….

Take today. Today was a very typical, very good day. In the morning, Charlie drove himself and Sam to school in his car, the Junk Bucket. David Michael, Karen, and I went off to school on our various buses, and Emily waved good-bye to us from the front door, where she was standing with Nannie. Mom was about to leave for her job, and Watson was already at work in his office at home. At school I met up with Mary Anne, Claudia, Abby, and Jessi at my locker. (Abby and Jessi are former BSC members who are still our close friends.) We chatted until the bell rang for homeroom. At lunch, I sat with Stacey, Abby, Mary Anne, and Claudia. We always grab the same table. There is nothing like knowing where you’re going to sit at lunch and who you’ll sit with. None of that embarrassing wandering around with a tray, wondering if you’ll be welcome at a table of strangers. We picked up practically in the middle of a sentence, finishing up a conversation we had started in the morning.

After school I walked with Claudia to her neighborhood, because I was going to baby-sit for Jamie and Lucy Newton. I took Jamie and Lucy to the playground — and there was Stacey with Charlotte Johanssen. A few minutes later, Mary Anne showed up with two of the Rodowsky boys. We organized the kids into a game of dodgeball. (Lucy watched from her stroller.) When our various sitting jobs were over we gathered at Claudia’s house for a BSC meeting. The only bad part of this whole wonderful normal day was that at the meeting my friends couldn’t stop talking about graduation.

“Did you see the notice about picking up our caps and gowns?” Stacey said. “Oh, I can’t wait. I’m going to try mine on as soon as I have it.”

“Isn’t that bad luck or something?” I said. “No one is supposed to see us in our caps and gowns before we graduate.”

“The groom isn’t supposed to see the bride in her wedding gown before the wedding,” said Claudia. “No one cares about caps and gowns.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Hey,” spoke up Mary Anne, “did you see? They already posted the list of times when we can take a tour of the high school. I’m going to sign up right away.”

“Me too,” said Stacey.

“Me three.” Claudia stuffed a handful of popcorn in her mouth. “I hee ray hab a wait at zubio rare.”

“What?” I said.

Claudia swallowed. “I hear they have a great art studio there.”

Couldn’t anyone talk about anything else?

Luckily the phone rang then. Mrs. Prezzioso needed a sitter. We turned our attention back to the meeting.

*  *  *

Yes, except for that conversation at the meeting, today had been a wonderful day. I pretty much knew what to expect from it. I had seen my friends, my family, some of our sitting charges. I had been to a school I knew my way around. I had attended a BSC meeting. And now I was in bed with my family close by.

So why couldn’t I sleep?

I couldn’t sleep because I didn’t want any of it to end.

I can’t explain how excited I am about graduation. I don’t know why. Maybe because of what graduation represents. Three years of hard work and the fact that our teachers and parents think we’re ready to move on to high school. We’re taking a giant step forward, and the grown-ups are standing on the sidelines, cheering us on, saying we can do it, maybe even that they expect great things from us. Some people might find this intimidating, but not me. I feel ready.

At dinner tonight Dad said to me, “Mary Anne, you seem awfully happy.”

“I am.” I grinned at him and Sharon, and they grinned back.

I was looking around the kitchen in our new house. At first I had thought I might not like making the switch from an old house (a really old house) to a new one. A brand-new one. It was completed just a few months ago, after the old one had burned to the ground. Actually, the big barn that was on our property was converted into this new house. Everything in it is new — all the furniture, all the appliances, everything hanging on the walls, every item in every drawer. All of it bought recently. I had been afraid I wouldn’t like it, but I do. I like the freshness of it. It feels like a new start. And so does high school. New starts are very appealing now.

“Good day at school?” asked Sharon.

Sharon is my stepmother. We get along well, considering the beginning of our relationship wasn’t very smooth. But Sharon is the only mother I’ve known, and now that we’re used to each other, I’m glad she’s a part of my life. I can talk to her about things I can’t discuss with my father. It’s sort of like having a good friend living right in my home.

“Very good day at school,” I replied.

“So tell,” said Sharon with a smile.

“Well, we had an assembly this morning, and Mr. Kingbridge told us about this letter project.”

“Ah,” said Dad, and a fond, faraway look came into his eyes as he remembered when he was an SMS student. “So they’re still doing that? I remember my letter. Do you remember yours, Sharon?”

“Of course,” she replied. (She had gone to school with Dad.)

I thought back to school that morning. We hadn’t known we were going to have an assembly. The news was sprung on us during homeroom. I love when morning announcements are actually interesting or surprising, as opposed to an announcement about a change in the lunch menu or some green Plymouth’s headlights having been left on in the south parking lot.

My teacher had just finished taking attendance when I heard the PA system come on. Soon Mr. Kingbridge’s voice was telling the eighth-graders to gather in the auditorium at the beginning of fourth period. (Mr. Kingbridge is our vice-principal.)

“Yes!” I heard someone say beneath his breath from the row behind me.

Mr. Kingbridge had sounded sort of pleased with himself, so I figured this wasn’t an announcement about final exams or some other horrible thing.

When the bell rang at the end of third period I rushed out of my classroom and hurried down the hall to Kristy’s locker. She was standing in front of it with Claudia.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Kristy was moving in slow motion, rearranging things in her locker. “Just a minute.”

“No, come on. This is going to be good,” I said. “I know it.”

Claudia and I dragged Kristy away from her locker and we sped through the halls. We passed under a banner announcing GRADUATION BALL — EIGHTH-GRADE DANCE. We hurried by the bulletin board outside the office, which is usually covered in memos and notices, but today said simply, CONGRATULATIONS, GRADUATES!!

“We haven’t even graduated yet,” Kristy complained.

“It’s only three weeks from now,” I replied, feeling a little thrill wash over me.

We ran into the auditorium and grabbed five seats near the front.

“Where are Stacey and Abby?” asked Claudia.

“There they are,” I said. I waved to them and they ran for the seats we were saving.

At that moment Mr. Kingbridge stepped onto the stage. He didn’t waste any time. “As some of you may know,” he said, “for decades it has been a tradition here at Stoneybrook Middle School for each of you eighth-graders to write a letter to yourself — a letter that will be mailed back to you in four years, when you are graduating from high school.” I heard uncertain murmurs around me. “Your letter,” Mr. Kingbridge went on, “should be like a small personal time capsule. I suggest you write about anything that seems to capture you as you are today, and also about what you think you might be doing in four years, apart from graduating again. Think about events in your lives that you feel have defined you. Think about what is important to you now, about the things that have had an impact on you and about your hopes and dreams for the future. Believe me, your letter will be very interesting when it is mailed back to you in four years.

“Writing your letter, by the way,” Mr. Kingbridge continued, “is not mandatory. You are not required to write one. And your letter will not affect your grades in any way. This is simply a fun SMS tradition. So if you are interested, think about your letter and start to write it. Give it to me anytime during the next two weeks, and I will hold on to it for four years. Any questions?”

I didn’t listen to the questions. I was already thinking about my letter. Defining events. My dreams for the future. Wow. Where would I begin? So many things seemed to be defining. And my dreams for the future? To be honest, I hadn’t thought much beyond starting high school. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to be. I wished I were like Claudia, who has known practically forever that one day she will be an artist.

When the assembly ended I stood up and looked at my friends. “Are you guys going to write letters?” I asked them.

“Yup,” they all replied. Even Claudia. I hadn’t thought she would write one. Writing anything is a chore for her.

“I kind of remember when Charlie wrote his,” added Kristy. “He was holed up in his bedroom for, like, three nights. I thought he was studying for finals, and it turned out he was writing this letter. Now he’ll be getting it back soon.”

“Cool,” I said, even though I really couldn’t imagine being Charlie’s age, getting ready for college, waiting for my letter to arrive. It just didn’t seem possible.

Abby nudged me as we were edging our way up the aisle toward the back of the auditorium. “Logan,” she whispered.

He had materialized next to me with a pack of his friends. I glanced at him. He glanced at me. We did not speak. We have barely exchanged two words since we broke up. And that was how I wanted it.

Wasn’t it?

In truth, it wasn’t a very nice way to behave around someone I thought had played a defining role in my life. And even though it seemed Logan and I had talked endlessly about our relationship, our friendship, what we meant to each other, what had gone wrong — something felt unfinished. Something about us felt unfinished. And I didn’t like that.

Still, the very thought of writing my special letter made me smile. And that feeling of contentment stuck with me until the end of the day.

From: NYCGirl

Subject: Caps & Gowns

To: bigdad

Date: Friday, June 2

Time: 9:48:21 P.M.

Hi, Dad!

How’s everything going?

I was thinking of you today because we had to measure our heads for our graduation caps, and then I began to imagine you at graduation. Can you believe that we had to measure our heads? Each 8th-grader was supposed to drop by the gym at some point today, and we were given a measuring tape and a form to fill out.

I had a BSC meeting this afternoon after I baby-sat for Charlotte again, so it was a busy day.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you about the caps. I’m getting excited about graduation. Can’t wait to see you! Say hi to Samantha.

Love, Stacey

Hmm. If I could change one thing about graduation it would be the fact that both of my parents are going to be there. Not that I don’t want both of them there, but, well, maybe we could have two separate graduations. I can’t possibly be the only eighth-grader with divorced parents who would rather not be in the same audience at the same time. In fact, as far as I can tell, my parents would rather not be in the same town at the same time. If Kristy’s father lived here instead of in California, I bet Kristy would want separate graduations too.

Oh, well. I’m just being silly. I mean, this is our graduation. It’s one of the more exciting things that’s ever happened to me. A cap, a gown, a diploma, and on to high school. The big league.

That’s what I was thinking about while I waited for our BSC meeting to begin this afternoon. I was looking around at Kristy and Claudia and Claudia’s bedroom while we waited for Mary Anne to show up. I was thinking about how many, many meetings we’ve held there in the past couple of years. And I was watching Claud dig a bag of jelly beans out from the back of her desk drawer, while Kristy doodled on the palm of her hand with a Magic Marker. Then I thought of high school and the big league. The Big League. I wondered how many BSC meetings we’d hold once school started again in September. The BSC was seeming sort of minor league compared to SHS.

It was a small mean thought, but there it was in my head.

I pushed it away.

Because the BSC is where I found all my best friends when I first moved to Stoneybrook. I will admit that Claud and I have had some bad times, friendship-wise. Still … Claudia, Kristy, Mary Anne, Jessi, Mallory, Abby, Dawn. We were brought together by the BSC. And a lot of memories have been created because of the BSC.

Maybe it isn’t so minor league after all.

Kristy was just completing her hand-doodle, which had turned into a dragon, when Mary Anne burst through the door and flung herself onto the bed.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said. “Am I late?” She looked at Claud’s clock. Then she grinned smugly. “Five twenty-nine,” she announced. “Safe.”

Kristy put down the green marker. “Close call,” she said. “Okay. This meeting of the Baby-sitters Club will now come to order. Any new business?”

“You mean baby-sitting business?” asked Claudia. “Because if not, can I just say that my graduation cap —”

She stopped speaking when she saw Kristy giving her a Look from the director’s chair, where she was perched with a pencil over one ear. “Yes, I mean baby-sitting business,” said Kristy. She looked around at each of us.

To tell the truth, as much as I LOVE the BSC, as many things as it’s brought me, as much fun as I’ve had being a part of it … I know it is more important to Kristy than it is to me or to any of the rest of us. And Kristy looked so earnest now, in her chair with the pencil over her ear, a notebook open in her lap, that I tried desperately to think of something that might qualify as new baby-sitting business.

“Um,” I said, thinking, “um, you should all know that … that Charlotte is going to get an award at her end-of-school assembly.” (This was true, and it wasn’t bad, as club business goes.) “It’s a writing award, and she’s really proud, but she’s too shy to say anything. Um, Dr. Johanssen told me so I could congratulate Charlotte, and you guys might want to congratulate her too. Since she won’t tell you about it herself.”

“A writing award. Very cool,” said Mary Anne.

“Definitely,” Kristy agreed.

“Can you believe that Charlotte will be in fourth grade next year?” Claud asked.

“The kids we’ve been baby-sitting for are growing up so fast!” exclaimed Mary Anne.

“You sound like my mother,” I said. “When she’s talking about me.”

“Can we get back to club busi —” Kristy was saying when the phone rang. She grabbed it. “Hello, Baby-sitters Club,” she said. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Pike…. Monday? This Monday? … That’s not such short notice. Don’t worry. Let me call you right back. Mary Anne will check our schedule.”

By the time Kristy had hung up the phone, Mary Anne had opened our club record book and was checking the appointment pages. “What time Monday?” she asked Kristy.

“Right after school. It’s for all the Pikes, but Mal will be home to be the other sitter.”

There are so many Pike kids — eight, including Mallory, who’s the oldest and an honorary BSC member — that we need two sitters at their house if we’re going to baby-sit for all her brothers and sisters. We don’t feel comfortable with just one sitter for more than four kids. This is one of the many sensible BSC rules that Kristy has insisted upon.

It was great to have Mal around again. She now goes to a private school in Massachusetts, but her school term had already ended, and she was home for the summer.

“Actually,” said Mary Anne, “it looks like I’m the only one free. Mal and I can take the job together.”

“Great,” Kristy said, and phoned Mrs. Pike back.

A few other calls came in before the meeting ended. Once upon a time, when my friends and I were a little younger, a little more into baby-sitting, and a little less busy with sports and other activities, the BSC was a much bigger deal. We had more members because we needed them. Sitting jobs were called in almost as fast as we could fill them. The pace has slowed since we scaled the club back awhile ago, and I have to admit I’m relieved. I don’t think Kristy is, though. I think she misses it.

The numbers on Claudia’s clock flipped over to 6:00, and Mary Anne, Kristy, and I stood up.

“Want to stay for dinner?” Claud asked me as I was about to leave.

“Sure.”

It was a nice, simple invitation — one that in the past I wouldn’t have thought twice about, because it would have been so normal. Now I marveled at its normalcy. Every day that passed meant we were a little farther from our big fight and closer to the way our friendship used to be.

I was glad. I didn’t want to graduate from SMS with any bad feelings about my friends.

June 3 7:38:52 P.M.

INSTANT MESSAGE

CKishi: Hey stace whats going on.

NYCGirl: Hi, Claud! Just checking my e-mail. What are you doing?

CKishi: Your going to think I’m crazy starting a assinment on sat. night but I decided to start my letter to myself.

NYCGirl: Great! How’s it going?

CKishi: Its hard!!!!! Have you started yours yet.

NYCGirl: Not yet. Just thinking about it.

CKishi: I was porcri prok prokras putting mine off by reading my e-mail but I guess I’ll go back to it now

NYCGirl: Ciao, then. Later.

CKishi: Later

Why was it so hard to write a letter to myself? It was a perfectly good Saturday night, one with a lot of excellent TV shows that I had been planning to watch as soon as I had written down a few ideas for my letter. But the hours were slipping by and I still had no idea where my letter was going. (The best of the TV shows had already ended.)

I had started by making a list of people who are or who have been important to me. Mom, Dad, Janine, Mimi, Peaches, Russ, Lynn, Kristy, Stacey, Mary Anne, Dawn, Jessi, Abby, Mal, Alan, Jamie and Lucy Newton … This was nice, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. Plus, the list was getting out of hand. I had included Peaches, Russ, and Lynn. Should I add the rest of my relatives too? Alan made me think of past boyfriends and I wondered whether to put all of them down. The Newton kids made me think of the rest of our sitting charges, and I actually did start to list them, then realized how long the list was getting. I hadn’t even written down the names of my art teachers or of artists I admire.

I threw the list of people away and started writing down important events in my life. There was Mimi’s funeral; the day Lynn was born; the day I met Stacey; my big fight with Stacey; my first art class; the day I was told I would have to repeat seventh grade; my sixth birthday party, when the guests didn’t show up; and the time I went to the beach with Kristy’s family and lost David Michael. But were any of these defining events? (What exactly was a defining event?)

I threw the list of events away too and turned my thoughts back to the people in my family. My mom and dad. My sister, Janine. Hmm. Janine is a genius. I have grown up with a genius (while I am far from a genius myself, at least where schoolwork is concerned). Is that defining? Then, of course, there is Mimi. My wonderful grandmother. I had been as close to Mimi as I was to anyone else in my family — to anyone else in the world. And then she was gone. I still miss Mimi. I miss her every day. In the very beginning, just after she died, I couldn’t even figure out how not to think about her. Finally, I began working on a portrait of her, and I found other ways to keep her memory in my life without being overtaken by sadness. So Mimi’s death was definitely a defining event.

“Dear Me,” I wrote. Well, that sounded awfully funny. “Dear You,” I tried. And then, “Dear Claudia.”

Okay. I had the beginning of my letter.

Great. I had been sitting in my room for two hours, missing good TV shows, and all I had come up with was “Dear Claudia.” Anyone could have written that.

My mind wandered. Maybe my phone would ring. A little chat with Stacey might perk me up. Funny. A year ago a little chat with Stacey would definitely have perked me up. I wouldn’t even have had to think about it. But Stacey and I are still dancing around each other a little, just the teensiest bit uncertain about our friendship. I mean, the friendship is still there, but it has changed. I hate to say this, but I feel as if I don’t trust her one hundred percent anymore. And I can’t believe that the reason we had a fight in the first place was over a boy. But it did happen.

Speaking of boys, maybe Alan would call. Alan can always make me laugh. It’s such a shame that the rest of my friends don’t like him much. I do understand that he’s been a major pain since forever (I used to be one of the ones who thought he was a major pain), but he really isn’t like that anymore. At least not around me.

Hmm. I wonder if in four years Alan and I will still be going out. Four years sounds like a lot of time to go out with the same person. In four years I’ll be almost eighteen. On the other hand, I’ve been friends with some people for a lot longer than four years. Now, why is it that four years sounds long when I’m thinking in terms of Alan Gray, but not so long when I’m thinking in terms of Kristy or Mary Anne?

I turned back to my letter. I changed the font on my computer and wrote “Dear Claudia” instead.

Okay. Good job, Claud.

I had basically accomplished nothing.

At long last, the phone actually rang.

“Hello?” I said.

Kristy used to make me answer my phone, “Hello, Baby-sitters Club,” even when we weren’t having a meeting, but I had finally told her that I wasn’t going to do that anymore. I have a feeling that when I get to SHS next fall I probably will answer the phone in a whole new way.

When I get to SHS? Let’s face it, I mean, IF I get to SHS. I am hanging on to eighth grade by a thread. I have JUST managed to make it this far. I have gone back to seventh grade, worked with tutors, spent countless hours in the resource room, and I’m not sure what will happen if I don’t pass all my final exams.

“Hello?” I said again when I heard nothing on the other end of the phone.

“Um … is this Elio’s?”

“Elio’s?” I repeated.

“Sorry, I think I have the wrong number.” Clunk. The caller hung up.

I looked at my pitiful letter to myself. Then I looked at the stack of books and papers that I should have been studying in order to pass my exams.

If I flunked and had to spend another year at SMS while my friends went on to SHS, I would … I would … Well, I wasn’t sure what I would do, but it wouldn’t be anything good.

“Mary Anne!” shrieked Claire at the top of her lungs when she answered my knock at the Pikes’ door. She sounded as if she hadn’t seen me in years.

“Hi, Claire,” I replied. I tried to take off my drippy coat and boots without leaving puddles in the Pikes’ front hallway. “Maybe I should stick these back outside,” I said.

“No, they’ll get all wet.”

I looked at Claire. “They’re already all wet,” I pointed out.

“Oh, yeah.”

Mal appeared. “Hi, Mary Anne. Put your boots on this newspaper and hang your coat over here. Don’t worry about a little water. You think with seven kids coming home from school this afternoon the house stayed dry?”

Mal led me into her cheerful, slightly chaotic house. I like to visit the Pikes, but it would make me crazy to live here. I knew, though, that her home and family were what Mal missed most when she was away at school.

Claire, who’s five, ran ahead of Mal and me into the kitchen, where her sisters — Margo (seven) and Vanessa(nine) — were having a snack.

“Where are the boys?” I asked.

Mal pointed her thumb downstairs. “Rec room,” she said. “Not sure what they’re doing, but they’re quiet.”

I made a face. Quiet isn’t necessarily a good thing. The Pike boys — eight-year-old Nicky and the ten-year-old triplets, Byron, Adam, and Jordan — can get into an awful lot of trouble whether they’re being noisy or quiet. But when I peeked at them I saw that they were reading comic books.

When the girls finished their snacks they joined the boys and their stack of comics. Not ten minutes later I heard Claire say, “I’m bored.” This didn’t worry me until I heard Nicky and Adam say the same thing.

“Okay.” I jumped to my feet and peered outside. Still raining. Uh-oh. “How about a game of Clue?” I suggested.

“No, that’s too hard for me,” said Claire.

“How about making —”

Jordan cut Mal off before she could even finish her sentence. “No crafts,” he said firmly.

I’m not sure now why I did this, but for some reason I found myself telling the kids about the letters my classmates and I were writing.

Claire looked puzzled. “But what kinds of things are you telling yourself?” she wanted to know.

“Things I’ll want to read about in four years.”

“Are you writing about things you’re doing now?” said Byron. “Things that are happening now?”

“Those are the kinds of things you would put in a time capsule,” spoke up Vanessa.

“What’s a time capsule?” asked Margo.

“A time capsule is … ” I looked helplessly at Mal. How do you describe a time capsule?

Mal spoke thoughtfully. “When people make a time capsule,” she began, “they collect things that are representative of a place or time — things that show what it is like — and they put them in a box or something and then bury the box. Sometime in the future the box is opened, and the people who look at the things inside feel like they’re looking into the past.”

“What do you mean, things that show what something is like?” asked Nicky.

“Well, if we were making a Pike time capsule we might put one of Vanessa’s poems in it, since she writes so much poetry,” said Mal. “Or we could put in a photo of our house or a report card one of you guys brings home — anything that’s about us right now. Then when we looked at the things in the future they would show us what the past was like.”

“Cool,” said Byron.

“Let’s do it! Let’s make a Pike time capsule,” said Vanessa. She was practically quivering with excitement.

“Yeah!” cried the other kids.

“How do we start?” asked Margo.

“Let’s start by making a list of things we could put in it,” said Mal.

So Mal got out a pad of paper and a pen, and her brothers and sisters began tossing out ideas. But my thoughts had gone off in a different direction. Suddenly I had a great plan, almost Kristy-like in its brilliance. I couldn’t wait until our BSC meeting that afternoon to tell everyone about it.

At exactly 5:27, Stacey and Claud and I heard thundering on the Kishis’ stairs, and a moment later Mary Anne rushed into Claud’s bedroom, followed by Mallory.

“Mal!” Stacey exclaimed.

“I thought I’d come to the meeting, since Mary Anne was on her way here after she left my house. I hope you don’t mind, Kristy.”

“No, this is great,” I said, missing the days when seven or eight of us used to be crowded into the room.

“Plus, I got an idea this afternoon, and Mal can help me explain it,” said Mary Anne.

“Cool. What’s your idea?” asked Claud.

“Ahem,” I said.

“Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Kristy.” Claud settled herself on the bed and gave me her full attention.

“Thank you. Okay. This meeting of the Baby-sitters Club will now come to order. Any new business?”

Mal’s hand shot in the air. “I have news!”

“My idea?” said Mary Anne, looking wounded.

“No. I wouldn’t tell them your idea. I have news about Jessi. I didn’t say anything this afternoon,” Mal went on, glancing at Mary Anne, “because I was hoping I could tell everyone at once. At the meeting.”

“But wait. Any actual club business?” I asked. “Schedule changes? Problems?” No one spoke. “Okay. Mal? Your news. And then you can tell us your idea, Mary Anne.”

“My news,” Mal began, sounding important, “is that Jessi and a couple of other students at her dance school have been selected to join a dance company that is going to go on a world tour this summer. Can you imagine? A world tour. They’re going to go to eight countries.” (Jessi, who’s a sixth-grader like Mal, is an extremely talented ballet dancer. She studies at a special school in Stamford and has already appeared in lots of productions. In fact, the reason she dropped out of the BSC was because she had been accepted into an intensive program at the dance school.)

“Oh. My. God,” said Stacey. “This is so cool.”

“What an opportunity,” I said.

And then we all began talking at once. When we settled down, I turned to Mary Anne. “Okay. Now tell us about your idea.”

“Well,” said Mary Anne, “Mal and I were sitting at her house this afternoon, as you know, and the kids were bored because they were cooped up inside, so I told them about the letters we’re writing to ourselves, and somehow we started talking about time capsules —”

“And now my brothers and sisters want to make a Pike time capsule.” Mal couldn’t help interrupting.

“So they started planning that,” Mary Anne went on, “but I thought — why not make a bigger time capsule? One that all our sitting charges could contribute to? A time capsule for our neighborhood in Stoneybrook.”

“Oh! What a cool idea!” I cried. “Let’s see. We should plan a meeting for all the kids who want to be involved.”

“Yeah. We’ll have to explain to them what a time capsule is,” said Mary Anne.

“My brothers and sisters didn’t quite understand at first,” Mal added.

“Okay. That’s easy,” I said. “All right. Let me think. The things they put in the capsule could be about the world today, or about Stoneybrook, or the neighborhood, or even their families. Anything that will make a picture of our neighborhood right now.”

“They should probably write up explanations of the things they contribute to the capsule,” Claudia spoke up.

“That would be helpful,” said Stacey.

“Where will we bury the capsule?” asked Mal.

We thought for a few minutes and finally decided on Mary Anne’s yard, which is big and also a central place.

“And when will the capsule be dug up?” Stacey wondered.

That was a fascinating thought — digging up our capsule sometime in the future. We talked and talked. Did we want to open the capsule in a hundred years? In five years?

“In seven years,” I said slowly, “the oldest kids we sit for now — the triplets and other ten-year-olds — will be going off to college. It might be fun to open the capsule that summer. Before they go away.”

“That is so weird,” said Mal. “In seven years the triplets will be going to college. And I will have been in college for a year already.”

“We’ll be going into our senior year in college,” said Mary Anne.

“Oh, I can’t think about it!” I cried.

But we talked about it anyway, of course. Then we decided where and when to hold the meeting with the kids.

I was grateful to think about the meeting instead of the future.

From: ckishi

Subject: grate idea

To: NYCGirl

Date: Monday, June 5

Time: 8:14:44 P.M.

This is a day of grate ideas. Mary ann had one this aftrenoon and know I have one its a REALY grate idea. I cant wait to tell you about it but I am gong to wait anyway. I’ll tell you at lunch tomorow when I can tell Kristy and Maryanne and Abby too. Are you exited? It really is a good idea.

Ok now I am going back to my studying. I am geting VERY nervouse about the math finale.

Love Claud

I was so excited about my idea that, at least for the rest of the evening, it even drove away some of my thoughts about flunking my final exams. But the moment I walked into the school the next morning, those awful thoughts came flooding back. Everywhere were signs that we eighth-graders were about to graduate. And each one reminded me that I might not graduate.

The first thing Stacey and I saw when we entered SMS was a notice about where and when to pick up our caps and gowns.

“Cool!” cried Stacey. “Imagine us in our caps and gowns, Claud. Our parents are going to take thousands of pictures of us.”

“Not if we’re not wearing them,” I replied.

“What?”

“I have to pass my exams first,” I pointed out.

“Oh, you’ll pass,” said Stacey breezily.

“I have flunked many things in my life.”

“That doesn’t mean you aren’t a wonderful and talented person.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that.” (Coming from Stacey so soon after our fight, I especially appreciated it.) “But it doesn’t make me a better student. Remember my science midterm last year? Remember my math midterm this year? Remember when I was in seventh grade and you were in eighth?”

Suddenly Stacey looked worried. “What do you think will happen if you flunk your exams?”

“Well, I don’t think I’m going to flunk all of them.”

“All right. What do you think will happen if you flunk one of them? Math, for instance?”

“That’s the one I’m worried about. And … I don’t know what will happen. I’m afraid to ask. I think I better just hope I pass everything.”

“I’ll help you study,” Stacey offered. “I can give you special help with math.”

“Thank you.” I smiled at her. “I accept.”

“Excellent. Now, what’s your idea about?”

“I’m not telling. Not until lunch.”

“Please? Won’t you puh-lease just give me a little clue?”

“Nope. I want to surprise everyone at once.”

“Hey, look.” Stacey was pointing to a banner outside the library. Huge red letters said, CONGRATULATIONS, SMS 8TH-GRADERS! A bulletin posted at the end of the sign read, In order to graduate, all students must return overdue library books by June 20.

“Well, that’s one thing that won’t keep me from graduating,” I said. “I don’t have any overdue library books.”

The first bell rang then, and Stacey and I hurried to our lockers.

“See you,” I called.

“Later,” replied Stacey.

*  *  *

By lunchtime I was starving. But instead of heading for the food line, I ran for our table. Kristy was already sitting at it, opening her bag lunch.

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked.

“In line,” she replied.

“In line? But I can’t wait that long to tell them my idea.”

“Chill, Claud. Why don’t you get in line too? You can tell us while we’re eating.”

“Oh no, oh no. I can’t wait any longer. I really can’t.” I was like a little kid on Christmas morning who has been told she can’t open any presents until after her parents have had their coffee.

“Claudia.” Kristy looked sternly at me.

“Okay, okay.”

Ten minutes later, Abby, Kristy, Mary Anne, Stacey, and I were seated around our table.

“Don’t make me wait another second!” I cried. “I have to tell you my idea now.”

“What idea?” said Abby, taking a huge bite of a sandwich.

“My idea! My idea! I had a great idea and I was waiting until we were together at lunch to tell you. So now I’m telling you. And I already asked my parents about this and they said it’s okay. I’m going to have a party for us after graduation.”

“Oh, excellent! A party just for us?” said Stacey.

“Well, for the Baby-sitters Club members. So for Jessi and Mal too. And Dawn, if she’ll be here by then. Will she be here, Mary Anne?”

“Yup. She’s going to be at graduation.”

“So we’ll go to my house after graduation. And we’ll have a party in my room.”

“Just like an old Baby-sitters Club meeting,” said Kristy.

“Exactly,” I replied.

“We can remember all the good times we’ve had together at SMS,” said Mary Anne, and I thought her eyes looked a bit teary.

“And all the good times we’ve had baby-sitting,” added Kristy.

“Yeah. Which will be important because I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do much sitting this summer,” said Stacey. “I want to go into New York to be with Dad and Samantha pretty often — like maybe every weekend — and in between I’ll want to help out with Mom’s store.”

“I want to help out too,” I said to Stacey. “The store is going to be so cool.”

“Are you going to have any time for sitting?” Kristy asked me.

I cleared my throat. “Well … ”

While I was struggling for an answer, Mary Anne said, “Actually, Dawn and I were thinking of taking a little time off this summer. You know, not working at all, because once ninth grade starts we’re going to be awfully busy.”

I glanced at Kristy then. She was staring hard at the table.

“Well, that’s why the party is going to be sooooo good,” I said brightly.

From: NYCGirl

Subject: Back to the Future

To: MRDALI

Date: Wednesday, June 7

Time: 7:59:10 P.M.

Dear Ethan,

Hi! How’s everything going? How’s the final project for sculpture coming along?

I’ve been studying a LOT for finals and also have started to help Claud study for her math final. But this afternoon I took a break and we had a really fun time with a bunch of the kids we sit for. Mary Anne had this great idea to help them make a time capsule, so we met with the kids this afternoon to tell them about the project. Much excitement.

The plans for Mom’s store are really coming along. I like that Mom is letting me help her so much. I feel almost like a partner.

Okay. Back to my French review. Write when you have time.

Love, Stace

The kids who wanted to help make the time capsule gathered in Mary Anne’s yard this afternoon. We had phoned lots of our sitting charges the day before to tell them about the meeting, and today twenty-two kids showed up. (Kristy was thrilled.) Thank goodness all four regular BSC members plus Mal were there.

When I arrived at Mary Anne’s house, she and Claudia were waiting in the yard, and Kristy was just arriving, with Karen and Andrew in tow. A few minutes later Mal showed up with every single one of her brothers and sisters. Then Mrs. Newton walked Jamie into the yard, followed by Charlotte Johanssen and Haley and Matt Braddock. Fifteen minutes later the three Rodowsky boys, Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold, and the Kuhn kids arrived as well.

“Wow,” said Kristy as she counted heads.

We waited five more minutes to see whether anyone else would appear, and then Kristy stood up on an old milk carton and blew a whistle that was hanging around her neck.

“Attention!” she cried, and the kids quieted down. “Okay, we are here to tell you about an exciting idea. How many of you know what a time capsule is?”

Quite a few hands shot in the air, including all of the Pike kids’.

“We made one in our classroom,” Jake Kuhn called out.

“Do you want to explain what you did?” Kristy asked him.

“Okay.” Jake paused to think. “First we took a big tin box —”

“Like this one?” Kristy interrupted him.

Jake looked at the enormous tin can she was holding up. Mary Anne had just given it to Kristy. Someone had sent it to her when her family had moved into their new house. It had been filled with three gallons of popcorn.

“Yeah, kind of like that. And we filled it with things about our school. We put in one of our lunch menus, and a program from an assembly, and some of the work we’ve done to show what we’ve been studying, and a school newspaper article about a field trip we took. Stuff like that. Then we buried it on the playground. Our teacher said that sometime way in the future some other kids will dig it up and open it and they can find out what our school was like in the past.”

“Excellent,” said Kristy, sounding like a teacher. “And that’s pretty much what we thought we’d do. Except our time capsule is going to be about us. The way we are right now. So the things we’ll put in our time capsule can be about ourselves or our neighborhood or even the world — as long as they make a picture of us now. Do you understand?”

The kids nodded and murmured, and a few hands were raised.

“Is that going to be our time capsule?” asked Haley, pointing to the popcorn tin.

“Yes,” replied Kristy, “so keep that in mind when you’re deciding what to put in the capsule. Nothing too big, okay?”

“When are we going to bury the time capsule?” asked Nicky Pike.

“Two weeks from today.”

Two weeks from today was two days before our graduation. I felt butterflies in my stomach at the very thought.

“So come back here to Mary Anne’s house then,” Kristy went on, “and we’ll put your things in the capsule and bury it in the yard.”

“How long will it stay buried?” wondered Carolyn Arnold.

“That’s a good question. We thought you guys could open it in seven years. That will be right before the oldest of you will be going off to college.”

I heard a choking sound from the direction of the triplets.

“College?” croaked Byron.

“Seven years? In seven years I’ll be … I’ll be fifteen,” cried Charlotte. “In high school. Older than you are now,” she said to me.

“And I’ll be fourteen,” said Karen Brewer. “Older than you, Kristy!”

“I’ll be six … seven … eight … nine … How old will I be?” Claire asked Mallory.

“You’ll be twelve.”

Claire looked as if she might faint.

The kids became distracted by imagining themselves seven years in the future, and Kristy eventually had to blow her whistle to recapture their attention. Twenty minutes later the meeting ended, and everyone left, their minds filled with thoughts of the present and of the future.

I stopped writing. Was this what I wanted to read four years from now? I didn’t think so. I hardly wanted to read it now. It sounded so bitter.

I decided to try a different approach.

“Kristy! Kristy? Are you home? Is anybody home?”

With a huge sigh of relief I put down my pen, ran to the door of my room, and threw it open. “Charlie? Is that you?”

“Yeah. Where is everybody?”

“Well, Mom is at work, of course, and Nannie took the kids downtown. Sam is still at school, I think, but Watson should be in his office. Didn’t he hear you?”

Charlie had come pounding up the stairs and had thrown himself across my bed. He was holding a letter. “Maybe Watson’s on the phone,” he said breathlessly. “I won’t disturb him. But Kristy, you have to hear this news!”

“What?” I looked warily at the letter in his hand.

“It’s from Boiceville State. I got in! Even though I applied late and everything.”

Of course Charlie had gotten in. His grades are excellent. Any school would want him.

I plastered a smile across my face. “Wow! Cool. So you’re going to college after all. At least it’s nearby. You can still live at home —”

Charlie held up his hand. “Oh, no. That’s the best part. I’m going to live on campus. They have room for me. The dorm —”

“But you’ll only be forty-five minutes away. Why aren’t you going to stay here?”

“Living away from home is half the college experience,” said Charlie, sounding as though he were quoting from the college catalog, but also sounding as though he really meant it.

“I guess.”

“And you know what else? I think I’m going to apply to UCLA for next year. I don’t know what got into me — why I put off applying — because I really want to go to college, and a good one at that.”

“UCLA?” I repeated. “Isn’t that in California?”

“Yup.”

“So you’d be near Dad.”

Charlie frowned. “That is not a factor,” he said crisply, and I believed him. After an uncomfortable pause he brightened and went on, “UCLA has everything I want. I wonder if I could even transfer mid-year, as a freshman. Maybe … Well, first I just have to get ready for Boiceville. I have to do really well there, make top grades and all. I have to tell Watson,” he went on in a rush. “I don’t care if he’s on the phone.”

Charlie bolted from the room. I looked at my pathetic attempt at a letter to myself. I crumpled the pages and threw them across the room, making three baskets in a row. I did not impress myself. I leaned back against my pillows and put my arm over my eyes.

A week and a half until graduation. Mine. Charlie’s.

I didn’t want any of it to happen.

I didn’t want time to march on. I wanted it to march backward.

Stop. Why am I telling myself this? I know I have diabetes. And I’ll still have it four years from now when I read this letter. Hmm. I see what Kristy meant when she said that writing her letter was a lot harder than she had thought it was going to be.

I stopped writing. Thinking about Samantha had caused an image of graduation to pop into my head. This was the image: I am standing with my friends behind the podium that will be set up on the grounds of SMS (assuming we have good weather on graduation day), and looking out at the audience — all the gathered friends and family members. In the front row I see Mom, Dad … and Samantha. Only not seated in that order. Samantha is between Mom and Dad, for some reason. And I can feel the tension from where I am standing. Mom, who has been seething ever since Samantha sat down, pokes Samantha in the side. Samantha pokes her back. Dad pretends not to see this. Then Mom subtly pulls a strand of Samantha’s hair, and Samantha yanks a whole handful of Mom’s hair. In a flash, a huge fight has broken out. Everyone knows it’s my stupid family having the fight and hundreds of pairs of eyes turn on me. I have disrupted the entire graduation ceremony, and I haven’t done a thing.

I shuddered. How bad would graduation actually be? Was Samantha going to come? If she did, where would she and Dad stay?

I shook my head and put down my pen. I needed a break. That was when I realized I had forgotten to bring in the mail when I returned home from school. Perfect excuse to leave my room and walk outside for a breath of air.

I retrieved our mail and leafed through it as I headed back inside.

Hmm. An envelope addressed to me from Stoneybrook Middle School. Now, what could that be? A reminder about something to do with graduation? Probably. Still, as I opened the envelope a funny feeling crept over me. I felt as if I were in second grade and I’d been sent home with a note from the teacher.

This is to inform you, the letter began, that Stacey McGill has one overdue book(s) from the Stoneybrook Middle School library before June 20. Please return Ribsy, by Beverly Cleary, to the library before June 20. Please note that 8th-grade students with outstanding library books cannot graduate.

The funny feeling changed to a feeling of horror. What? What was this? I had an overdue library book and I couldn’t graduate until I returned it? And that overdue book was a copy of Ribsy? When had I taken Ribsy out of our library? I couldn’t believe I had ever checked it out. Ribsy is a fabulous story (I love Beverly Cleary’s books), but it is a tad on the babyish side for someone who is about to enter high school.

I knew I hadn’t checked the book out this year. It must have been something I had checked out in seventh grade. Probably near the beginning of seventh grade. Something I needed to read for comfort when I had first moved to Stoneybrook from New York and hardly knew anyone and just wanted to feel little and secure again.

Where on earth was the book? I didn’t remember seeing it in my room in recent history. Worse, between the beginning of seventh grade and now I had moved back to New York again and then returned to Stoneybrook. Had the book survived two moves? I didn’t think so.

Oh, lord. Oh, lord. This was just horrible. I wasn’t going to graduate, and all because of a copy of Ribsy.

The only good thing about my not being able to graduate was that now my mother and Samantha wouldn’t have a fistfight in front of all of SMS.

To Whom It May Concern:

I’m not sure exactly who will be opening this time capsule seven years from now. It should be Byron, Jordan, and Adam Pike, along with other people from the neighborhood. But you never know.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Kristin Amanda Thomas. As I write this I am thirteen years old. What I have decided to include in the capsule is the attached flier. It is one of the original fliers announcing the formation of the Baby-sitters Club about two years ago. The reason I have chosen it is because without the BSC, this time capsule probably wouldn’t be here.

My friends and I started the BSC at the beginning of seventh grade. Since then we have been baby-sitting for lots of the kids around here and also working on fun projects with them, projects like the time capsule. One of the best things about the BSC, for me, has been that it has made me feel so connected to my neighbors, and it has brought friendship and lots of good times. Also, lots of funny times.

Among other things, the BSC members have helped the kids around here put on a talent show, and make baskets to take to the elderly people living in Stoneybrook Manor. We have helped out with a Little Miss Stoneybrook pageant and a baby parade. We have run a summer play group, organized carnivals, and thrown parties. We have solved mysteries and taken trips. Who can forget such things as the kids’ performance of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, or when they put on the BSC Follies? My friends and I have baby-sat, dog-sat, and even goat-sat! These have been two of the best years of my life. Well, to be honest, the Babysitters Club IS my life.

I hope that when you are reading this, our neighborhood still feels like a community, because that is so important and wonderful.

Maybe this flier and letter will give some of you an idea — and you’ll start your own Baby-sitters Club. Feel free to use the name. And if you want to consult me on anything, just look up Thomas in the phone book. I bet we’ll still be listed.

I threw my paper down in disgust. What was it about this letter? It was the hardest thing in the world to write. Maybe I should just scrap it. There was no real reason for me to write it. It wasn’t an assignment. I wasn’t going to get graded on it. It wouldn’t have any effect on whether I passed and went on to SHS.

But I didn’t want to be the only one of my friends who didn’t write a letter, who didn’t have an envelope to open at the end of my high school years. Everyone (and by “everyone,” I mean Kristy) would be saying, “Did you get your letter, Claud? Did it come yet?”

And I would have to say no.

Which I didn’t want to do.

Hmm. I could just mail myself a blank piece of paper or even an empty envelope. Who would know? We were supposed to give Mr. Kingbridge our envelopes all sealed up. The only way to know I had mailed myself a blank piece of paper would be if someone opened the letter before I did, and I believe that is called mail fraud, which is a federal offense.

But how humiliating. When I opened the letter in four years and saw the lame way out I had taken I would be SO embarrassed. It would be a horrible reminder of what a pathetic student I can be.

And speaking of being a pathetic student … I looked at the growing stack of papers, books, and notebooks I should have been going through in order to finish studying for my finals. An uneasy feeling crept over me, and I remembered the papers that had been handed back to my classmates and me in science earlier in the day. During this last quarter of the year each of us had had to write a paper on a topic of our choice. The paper was worth twenty-five percent of our final grade. My topic had been “Plants: Can They Really Hear Music?” I had actually performed an experiment, one that had driven certain members of my family nearly crazy. I had grown bean plants in three separate jars. One jar of beans had been placed next to a radio that played nothing but the local classical music station. Another had heard only rock music, and the third had heard no music at all. I had written up my experiment very officially, describing everything, including how the plants looked each day. I had been certain to use professional experimental terms, such as control group (that was for the beans that heard no music at all). The result? All the beans grew pretty much the same way. I decided music didn’t have any effect on plants.

I had been proud of my experiment, but I had felt … uncertain … when I had handed in my paper. Which was why I hadn’t looked at it yet to find out my grade. I decided to do that now. I opened my science notebook and pulled out the folder in which I had handed in my paper. I had drawn a lovely portrait of the three jars of beans on the front of the folder, which I had hoped might add a little something to the project in case anything was lacking.

Now, very slowly, I opened the folder. Written at the top of the first page in red ink was a … D+.

For a moment, I just stared at it. This large cold lump was forming in my stomach. I tried to ignore it. I tried to get mad at my teacher. What was the stupid point of giving someone a D plus? As if the plus would make the D sound any better. Give me a break. A D is a D.

And I was now seriously close to failing science.

I panicked. What should I do? I didn’t want to tell my parents what was going on. I had already been in so much trouble. And what if they decided that the best thing for me to do was to repeat eighth grade? I just couldn’t let that happen. My friends absolutely could not go on to high school without me. That would be way more humiliating than when I had to repeat seventh grade.

I grabbed the phone and dialed Stacey’s number. She answered on the first ring.

“Stacey, it’s me, and I’m in terrible trouble,” I said in a rush.

“What? What is it? Where are you? Are you hurt?”

“Not that kind of trouble,” I replied. “But I really think I’m going to flunk science.”

“Claud, do not call a person and say you are in terrible trouble unless you mean —”

“I won’t, I won’t.” I didn’t even let her finish speaking. “I’m sorry. But listen, this is really serious.” I explained what had happened. “What am I going to do?”

Stacey thought for a moment. “I’ll tutor you in science too,” she said finally. “I’m not as good in science as I am in math, but I’m doing fine, so I think I can help you. We’ll just buckle down and start working, okay?”

“Really? Oh, Stacey, that would be great. I don’t know how to thank you. I —”

“I’ll be right over,” Stacey interrupted me.

I sighed. Just like the old days.

I turned back to my books and felt a teeny bit better.

By Anastasia Elizabeth McGill

Hello to all you people of the future. My name is Stacey McGill, and I moved to Stoneybrook when I was twelve years old. Until then I had lived in New York City. I love Stoneybrook. In fact, when my parents got divorced, I was given the choice of living with my dad in New York or with my mom here. I chose here. It was a really difficult decision, of course, since I love both of my parents, and since I had grown up in NYC. But the truth is, I’d already felt that Stoneybrook was my home. Why? The piece of paper I have attached to this one should help explain.

Take a look at the heading on the paper:

STARS OF TOMORROW

Talent Show

I don’t know if anyone opening this time capsule will remember that show, but I sure do. It took place in the Pikes’ backyard, and half the neighborhood was in the show. (The rest of the neighborhood turned out to watch it.) As you can see from the list of acts that Vanessa announced to the audience, Sean Addison played his tuba, Buddy Barrett showed off Pow the basset hound’s tricks, and Nicky Pike performed on stilts to “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Those were just some of the acts. I remember that the Pike triplets built a stage for the event and sold tickets to the show at the entrance to their yard. It was quite a day.

Why have I included this in the time capsule? Because it is just so … Stoneybrook. Things like this go on in our neighborhood all the time. Maybe that doesn’t mean much to most people, but it does to me. When I was growing up, I lived in a high-rise apartment building. I had a few friends in the building, of course, and I knew some of the people who lived and worked on our block. I guess the block was my neighborhood. But nothing like the talent show ever happened there.

This neighborhood, our community here in Stoneybrook, is very special, at least to me. The people here have become some of my closest friends, and I know that when I’m grown up I’ll find happy memories when I look back on this time. I hope that seven years from now Stoneybrook won’t have changed much, and that the kids who open the time capsule will be creating their own happy memories.

Well. Everyone has told me how much trouble they’re having with their letters, but for some reason I didn’t think I would have trouble with mine. I just assumed that when I sat down with my notebook, the words and thoughts would flow. But it is SO WEIRD to try to write to myself in the future.

What things have been important in my life? The fact that I never knew my mother, that I grew up in the tiny world of Dad and me, that we lost everything in a fire? These things are important — I know that — but there’s so much more to my life right now.

I guess I think of my life in terms of the people in it. Maybe you could even say that my life is defined by the people in it. I don’t know. Mr. Kingbridge told us to talk about defining moments. I think that’s what he said, anyway. I’m having trouble remembering his exact words. Well, I do remember that he said to write a letter that I would find meaningful and interesting when I read it in four years. So I suppose I can write whatever I feel like writing about.

Maybe I’ll just select several people who are important to me and write a paragraph or two about each of them. This won’t be a conventional letter, but so what. Now … who should I write about? Or is it “whom” should I write about? Oh, brother. If I get hung up on stuff like that, this letter will not be finished on time. All right. The important people in my life are Dad, Dawn, Sharon, my grandparents, Jeff, Kristy, Claudia, Jessi, Stacey, Abby, Mal, Kristy’s mom, Karen, Andrew … Hmm. That’s quite a list. And I haven’t mentioned people who are no longer alive who have been very important to me — Mom and Mimi.

Then, of course, there’s Logan.

Okay, let me focus on the others for the moment.

Kristy. I don’t know why I’ve decided to start with Kristy. She’s not a family member, but she is, well, hard to ignore. Kristy and I have known each other since we were babies. When I think of Kristy, I think of a person who has always been a part of my life.

I paused. I put down my pen. I read the paragraph I’d just written about Kristy. It was nice enough, but why was I telling myself about Kristy? I had a strong suspicion that four years from now Kristy and I would still be best friends (I think we always will be), and when I opened my letter I would wonder why I had written about our early years together.

I stood up. I cracked my knuckles. I looked around my brand-new bedroom. I sought inspiration from the scene outside my window, from the wall, from the floor. Nothing came to me. I remembered once when I had been in a session with my therapist and I couldn’t find the words to talk about something or other. Finally my therapist told me I was “blocked.” That was how I felt now. Blocked. What was preventing me from writing my letter? I didn’t even seem able to write a rough draft of it.

My eyes settled on a photo of Logan that was on the bureau. Logan had given me the photo shortly after the fire, when I realized that along with everything else that had been lost, our albums and pictures were gone. Then my mind settled on Logan as well.

In my life, Logan is unfinished business. He should be finished business. When I told him it was time for us to stop seeing each other I meant it. I really meant it. I was tired of Logan and tired of so many things about our relationship. I had thought, For heaven’s sake, Logan and I are only thirteen years old. We shouldn’t be so tied to each other. We should see other people. Who could expect us to be together forever? We’d already broken up once. And I had felt it was time for us to break up again. Permanently. Before we got to high school, so we could be free to go out with other people when we were there.

And yet, now that we weren’t speaking, now that Logan did occasionally see other girls, why did my decision seem … not quite right? I remembered all the things that had been wrong with our relationship — and suddenly they seemed fixable.

Which was why I headed into Dad and Sharon’s room and sat in the armchair next to the telephone table. I picked up the phone. I set it back in the cradle. I picked up the phone again and dialed the first three digits of Logan’s number. I set the phone back in the cradle. I picked up the phone once more and dialed five digits before I hung up. Six digits. Then the complete number. When I heard Logan’s sister, Kerry, say hello, I hung up again.

With a huge sigh, I returned to my room. I pulled a fresh sheet of paper out of my notebook and wrote, Dear Logan. Then I crumpled it up and threw it away. Finally I headed downstairs to start dinner for Dad and Sharon.

I had made a decision.

I needed to talk to Logan.

Okay. I managed to do it. I have finally written the letter to myself, and I think it is okay. No, it’s good. I think I’ll be pleased and interested when I read it in four years. It paints a pretty accurate picture of my life now, and it includes my thoughts for the future. (They may be fairly entertaining when I read about them later.) Anyway, here is my finished letter:

Dear Stacey,

Greetings! This is a voice from the past — your voice. It is June as I write this, almost the end of school, which this year means the end of eighth grade, and graduation from SMS. In the fall I’ll be a freshman at SHS. I’m scared and nervous, but just a little. Mostly I’m excited. I feel ready for bigger things.

Here are the bare facts about my life right now (to give you something to compare your life to). Mom and Dad have been divorced for awhile and have settled into their lives in Stoneybrook and New York City. Mom has been on a couple of dates, but absolutely none that was serious. I don’t think she’s in any rush to be in another relationship. She’s going to concentrate on her career instead. At the moment she is planning to open her own store, which is so exciting. I hope she really can go ahead with it and that in four years it will be a big success. It will be so cool to see newspaper ads for it and things like that.

Dad is another story. He is still a workaholic, AND he is already in another relationship. In fact, he and Samantha are going to get married soon. Maybe when you read this in four years you’ll be a big sister! I know Samantha wants to have children and I bet Dad does too. After all, he had a pretty nice kid the first time around. In four years I would really like to have a little sister and a little brother, one of each.

Currently, my closest friends are Claudia, Mary Anne, and Kristy, the other members of the Baby-sitters Club. I used to feel that Claud was my best friend, but I can’t say that anymore. Our fight really changed things. I would do anything for Claud — absolutely — but I don’t feel quite the same way about her that I did even a few months ago. And Mary Anne and Kristy are fabulous, but (and maybe this will make you laugh in four years) I suspect that by the time we graduate they may not be my closest friends anymore. I think we’ll have other really close friends, friends we’ll make in SHS. No doubt about it, though, the BSC (the club itself as well as the people in it) has been one of the most important things in my life the last couple of years. I think I will always look back on it that way.

The most important boy in my life at the moment is Ethan. Four years from now? Hard to predict. I bet we’ll still know each other, but will we still see each other as (potential) boyfriend and girlfriend? I just can’t say. Ethan will have been in college for a couple of years already, so we’ll be in pretty different places in our lives.

Some of the things that I think have helped me to be the person I am today (the defining events Mr. Kingbridge talked about) are my diabetes, and Mom and Dad’s relationship, including the divorce. I see myself as a pretty strong person, and I expect to be even stronger in four years. I think I’m strong because of facing and dealing with these situations. The diabetes has shown me that I can’t always be in control, but it has given me a sense of control. I mean, when I was first diagnosed with diabetes I had to understand that sometimes things just happen that we can’t control. But then I learned how to follow a diet and regulate my insulin, and that gave me back a feeling of control — one that I don’t take for granted.

In a way, the divorce has done the same thing. I didn’t have any control over Mom and Dad’s marriage, but once it fell apart, I regained my feeling of control by deciding where I wanted to live and by making a place for myself in both Mom’s life and Dad’s. This balance of control — I think it plays a huge role in my life. I feel pretty secure, pretty sure of myself. If I make mistakes I can fix them. Sometimes things do just happen, but I can make other things happen.

What do I hope to be doing in four years? Well, going off to college, of course. I think I’d like to go someplace far away, so that everything about college is different — different faces, a different part of the country. I want to have a taste of being really independent. I don’t know what I want to study in college, though. Maybe something involving math? Or business? (I bet you’re laughing at this now. I bet you’re on your way to Connecticut College to study history or something.)

Well, Stacey-of-the-Future, as you read this I hope you remember that you were pretty happy when you were 13 years old, even while facing some difficulties. It hasn’t always been easy, but overall, it’s been good.

Love, Stacey

As I reread my letter one last time, I told myself that everything in it was true. And I tried to hold on to those positive thoughts about taking charge as my mind skipped ahead to graduation. Sure enough, both Dad and Samantha intended to be here for it. Dad would never miss it, of course, but Samantha had said that she wouldn’t miss it either. They were going to drive to Stoneybrook on the day of graduation, spend the night in a hotel just outside of town, and drive back to NYC the next day. This wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t bad either. With any luck, they wouldn’t even see Mom. They’d sit rows and rows away from her, and hopefully she would be seated with the Thomas/Brewers or the Kishis, and she’d be so caught up in the ceremony that she wouldn’t even think about Dad and his fiancée.

I don’t know which is more satisfying — having finally talked with Logan or having finally finished my letter. Actually, yes I do. Finishing the letter was more satisfying. Talking with Logan was … well, it was as if a great weight had been lifted from my chest. It was a hugh relief. And after it was over, I felt almost exhilarated.

I’ll get to that in a minute, though. First, here’s my letter. (And what a struggle it was. writing it was almost like preparing for another final exam. But it was worth it.)

I didn’t think I’d be embarrassed when I read the letter again in four years. In fact, I was proud of the letter. And very pleased that I had talked to Logan before I had written the final draft. I had actually asked him if he could meet me at Pizza Express one day after school. He hadn’t sounded thrilled with the idea (no wonder, since I haven’t been terribly friendly lately), but he had agreed. We sat in a booth in the back, so we had as much privacy as possible, and … nothing earth-shattering happened, but at least we admitted that we don’t like feeling mad, and that we especially don’t like this business of not speaking to each other.

I am very relieved. If nothing else, when we run into each other we won’t have to feel all uncertain and embarrassed. And we can start SHS on good terms. Maybe we’ll even hang out every now and then. If we wind up with a couple of classes together next fall, that will be okay too. Nice, even.

Oh. My. Lord. Will finals ever be over? For days now I haven’t done anything but study, study, study. Thank goodness for Stacey. She has been helping me almost every day with math and science. Here’s the weird thing: I think I was more prepared for the math final than the science final. That must be a first. At least those two exams are OVER. In fact, only English is left. I take that one tomorrow and also will start finding out the results of my first exams.

I am SOOOOOO tired of looking at my English notes, though. So I am going to take a break here and write the letter to myself. I think I finally know what I want to say in it. And I had a fabulous idea for it. Instead of writing a regular letter I am going to interview myself.

Here goes.

That letter took so long to write that I had to finish it before school the next morning. (I was just determined to finish it and get it out of the way.) Then, the moment my letter and I arrived at school I ran to the office to pick up my first two graded exams — math and science. I took them politely from the secretary, walked daintily out of the office … and tore down the hall to the girl’s room, where I could look at them in the privacy of a stall.

I opened the math exam first. At the top was a … C+. A C+!! I had passed. That wasn’t a bad grade for math at all. In fact, it was a pretty good one. Thank you, Stacey, thank you. I let out an enormous sigh. Then I looked at the science exam.

When I saw the grade at the top my hands began to shake.

An F.

I had flunked science completely.

Every time I sat down to work on my letter I found myself going off in a different direction.

Time was running short. The letters were due in two days. And I had one more final left to study for. I decided just to sit down and write the letter. One draft. Whatever came out would be what wound up in the letter, what I would read in four years. I was feeling confined and needed to write in what I knew was called “stream of consciousness.” (Being able to recall that term gave me high hopes for my last exam, which was English.)

And so … I pulled up a blank page on my computer screen and got to work.

Dear Kristy,

I am writing this at a time in my life when I feel that everything is about to change. It occurs to me that the next time you read this, everything will be about to change again. Right now, Charlie is going off to college (the first one of us Thomases to leave home), and I’ll be starting high school in the fall. High school will bring so many changes. In four years, though, I’ll be the one leaving for college, Sam will be in college, and Charlie will be graduating from college and going on to the rest of his adult life. Karen and David Michael will soon be sixth-graders, Andrew will be entering third grade, and Emily will be entering first grade. And a whole slew of new changes and challenges will be waiting.

Anyway, I don’t care what Mr. Kingbridge said to write about. I just want to tell you about the Baby-sitters Club. Maybe the BSC will seem childish in four years. If it does, remind yourself that when you were in middle school, it was the most important thing in your life. Why? Because in many ways it was what connected so many other important things in your life.

When I think of the BSC I think of friends. Of course, Claudia and Mary Anne and I were already good friends when the BSC began, but the club drew us closer. And because of the BSC I became friends with Dawn, Jessi, Abby, Stacey, and Mallory. Also Logan and Shannon. Plenty of adults and little kids became friends as well. A giant network of people. When I think about it, that network extends to California, to New York, even to Europe.

You know what? I have to admit something. I will admit it only once, and only here. The club is so important to me that I have been really hurt that it has changed and that it will probably change again. Whenever anybody dropped out of the club, even if it was because that person had to move away, I felt stung. And recently, when Abby and Jessi dropped out (after having already lost Dawn and Mal), and when Stacey, Claud, and Mary Anne said they could stay in the club but would have to scale back, I felt as if my world had fallen away. I know that sounds overly dramatic, especially since even I realized I couldn’t devote quite as much time to baby-sitting anymore. But that is how I felt.

The Baby-sitters Club is my baby. It’s my creation. I am SO proud of it. It may seem small and amateurish to some people, but it doesn’t to me. It is the greatest thing I have done, and I must keep it alive. If it ends, a little part of me will die. And the worst thing is that no one understands this. Not even Mary Anne, who is my best friend in the world. I could explain it to her, and she might understand it intellectually, but she wouldn’t feel it. Feeling it would be true understanding.

Why is the BSC not as important to anyone else as it is to me? Maybe in four years I’ll have the answer to that. Right now I just feel as though I am standing at the edge of a cliff. I feel alone, and I feel scared, and I feel confused because I know I am the only one of my friends who feels this way. Everyone else is ready to move ahead, ready for high school, ready to move beyond the Baby-sitters Club. They’re going to say good-bye to so many things so casually. And I’ll be left standing at my cliff, afraid to fall, unable to turn around and go back. If only I had wings. Then I could soar into the sky. Maybe that’s how my friends feel — as if they have wings. But not me.

So there we have it. I suppose the creation of the Baby-sitters Club was the defining event of my life. It must have been, if it’s all I can write about now. I mean, here’s my opportunity to write about Dad, about the impact his leaving had on our family and on my life, about how mad at him I’ve been. And here’s my opportunity to write about what Watson’s coming into our lives meant, about Emily’s arrival. But all I can focus on is the Baby-sitters Club. Or maybe I’m obsessing about it. Who knows?

I don’t want things to change now. I hope that in four years change will seem a more positive thing. I hope I’ll be looking forward to going to college. When you read this letter again, remember that being thirteen can be really, really hard.

Love, Kristy

From: NYCGirl

Subject: Burying the time capsule

To: MRDALI

Date: Wednesday, June 21

Time: 8:11:37 P.M.

Dear Ethan,

Just two days until graduation! I can hardly believe it. I have such butterflies in my stomach. Good butterflies. I’m excited, but not nervous.

Finals are over. We still haven’t gotten all our exams back, though. Guess what. Claud has already flunked her science final. We’re not sure what that will mean. Her parents are pretty upset and are going to have a meeting with some of her teachers tomorrow. I feel bad about the exam, since I’d been tutoring Claud in science. On the other hand, I’d also been tutoring her in math and she passed that.

Keep your fingers crossed. Claud is terrified that she’ll be held back again.

News of the day: We helped the kids bury the time capsule. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but everyone has taken the project seriously and some very interesting things went into the capsule. I was actually kind of impressed….

So much is going on. We arrived at school today thinking we would get the last of our finals back, only to find that the teachers need one more day with them, so we will have to wait until tomorrow. Poor Claud is practically dying. I’m a little nervous myself, since I have a shot at straight A’s, although I didn’t tell Claud that’s why I’m nervous. Tomorrow we will also be issued our caps and gowns. And our year-books. Friday is … ta-da! … graduation. And, of course, Claud’s party, if her parents aren’t so mad that they decide she can’t hold it.

For one miserable, miserable period of time earlier this week I thought that I myself would not be graduating. And all because of Ribsy. I had looked absolutely everywhere for that book. I had even looked in New York when I visited my dad over the weekend. I didn’t expect to find it there, but you never know. Sometimes the contents of my closets are a considerable surprise to me. When, in the back of the one in the city, I unearthed a box that clearly had not been opened in quite some time, my heart leaped. I ripped it open and sifted through it, but no Ribsy. I did find a really nice pair of unworn socks, though.

On the train ride back to Stoneybrook on Sunday I tried to imagine how I would break the news to Mom that I would not be graduating (or that I would not be able to attend graduation — I wasn’t sure which). When I pictured myself explaining that this all had to do with Ribsy, I figured Mom would either laugh at me or be furious. Neither response was appealing. Then something occurred to me, something that me think, Stacey, you are the stupidest person in the world. What I realized was that our librarian wouldn’t care whether I gave him back the exact same copy of Ribsy that I took out two years ago. All he wants is a nice copy of the book for the library. The copy I checked out was probably a hardcover, so I could just go to the bookstore and buy a hardcover copy of Ribsy and hand it in to the librarian.

When I realized that, I almost burst out laughing. How could I possibly have thought I wouldn’t graduate because I couldn’t find some old copy of Ribsy?

On Monday after school I went to the bookstore downtown, bought Ribsy, and on Tuesday I gave it to our librarian. I handed it to him gift-wrapped, just in case he was in a bad mood or something. He accepted it with a grin and erased my name from a nasty-looking list in the computer.

Ahh. I could graduate.

And I could truly enjoy this afternoon’s activity — the burying of the time capsule. At four o’clock, I cut through my backyard into Mal’s and met up with her and her brothers and sisters. We walked to Mary Anne’s house and found that a little crowd of kids was gathering. Of course, Kristy was already there. She was standing on the milk crate, wearing her visor. On a chain around her neck was her whistle. Next to the crate stood the empty popcorn tin.

“Hold on to your things until everyone has arrived!” she was yelling. “Don’t put them in the box yet.”

Everyone in the yard was clutching a paper bag or a package or an envelope. And if everyone felt the way I did, we were a pretty excited crowd.

“Hey!” Kristy called when she spotted Mal and me.

“Hi!” I called back.

I helped Kristy with crowd control for a few minutes. When we were pretty sure everyone had arrived, Kristy cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted, “Welcome! Thank you for coming. This is going to be a great time capsule. Now, the first thing we have to do is dig a hole to bury it in.”

The Pike triplets were prepared for this and got to work with shovels near an herb garden behind Mary Anne’s new house. While they dug, the other kids and my friends, one by one, stepped up to the tin box and dropped into it whatever they had brought. If they felt like saying a few words, they did.

“Here’s a Krushers’ softball,” said Jackie.

“I cut out a newspaper article,” said Jessi.

“This is one of our old BSC fliers,” said Kristy.

“I’m putting in our school newspaper,” said Charlotte. “Stacey, read this first, though, okay?”

Charlotte handed the newspaper to me instead of dropping it into the tin, and while the other kids continued to step forward, I read what she was pointing to. It was an essay she had written for school about an important person in her life. And she had chosen me as her important person.

“Charlotte, thank you,” I told her. “I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s okay,” she replied. “When you’re almost-sisters, you don’t always have to say everything. Sometimes you just know.”

I gave Charlotte a hug, and we turned back to the kids gathered around the box in time to see Claire drop her old teddy bear into it.

“Claire, are you sure you want to put Ba-ba in there?” said Kristy.

“That’s what I’ve been asking her all along,” Vanessa whispered.

Kristy glanced at Mal, who simply shrugged. Ba-ba went into the capsule with everything else.

By the time the capsule had been filled, the hole had been dug. Kristy lugged the box to the edge of the hole and, with great ceremony, placed it inside. “On this day, the twenty-first of June,” she said, “the citizens of Stoneybrook hereby bury a time capsule, not to be opened for seven years. At which time, Byron, Jordan, and Adam Pike” — Kristy motioned for them to stand beside her — “will be in charge of digging it up.”

“I hope they remember where it’s buried,” I heard Nicky whisper to Vanessa.

“And now, who will throw the first handful of dirt in the hole?” asked Kristy.

“You, Kristy, you!” cried several of the kids.

So Kristy threw in a handful of dirt, and the rest of the kids followed suit. I noticed that Claire looked horrified as the tin slowly disappeared, but she said nothing.

A few minutes later, our time capsule officially buried, we began to walk home.

Sharon was the one who answered the phone. She was edging around the breakfast table with a plate of toast, and she was right in front of the phone when it rang. “Hello?” she said, grabbing it before it could ring again. I knew she wanted Dawn and Jeff to be able to sleep as late as possible. Then, “What? … What?” After a moment, she handed the phone to me. “Mary Anne, I think it’s for you.” When I raised my eyebrows at her, she added, “I’m not sure who it is.”

“Hello?” I said.

The voice on the other end was tearful. What I heard was, “Wawaaa … be … can’t … Ba-ba … ”

“Claire? Is that you?”

“Yeeeeeess!” A wail.

“What’s the matter? Is Mal there?”

There was a clunk as the phone was set down. Then someone said hello.

“Mrs. Pike? This is Mary Anne.”

Mrs. Pike sounded crabby. It turned out she hadn’t had a whole lot of sleep the night before. Neither, I was guessing, had the rest of the Pikes. Claire had awoken shortly after midnight and had discovered that she couldn’t sleep without Ba-ba next to her.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“Mary Anne, here’s Mal. I’m going to let you talk to her.”

Mal sounded as crabby as Mrs. Pike.

“What do you want to do?” I finally asked her.

“I think we’re going to have to dig up the time capsule.”

“Dig it up?! Kristy will kill us.”

“I know, but we have to do it. Claire needs Ba-ba, and she knows where she is. We can’t just leave her buried in the ground.”

I looked at my watch. “Okay. Can Claire wait until after school, though? We don’t have time to do it now. Plus, I kind of think Kristy will want to be present for this.”

“Whatever,” Mal replied crossly. “Anyway, Claire has morning kindergarten for some reason today.”

As I had suspected, Kristy was none too pleased with the idea of digging up the time capsule. “We just buried it!” she exclaimed.

We were standing in the hallway by Kristy’s locker.

“I know, but Claire is desperate,” I explained.

It was Kristy’s turn to become crabby. “All right,” she said gruffly. “Right after school today.” She turned and walked off, muttering under her breath, “Whoever heard of digging up a time capsule twenty-four hours later?”

“Can’t you just pretend you buried it today instead of yesterday?” I called after her.

“No!”

I decided not to let anyone else’s crabby mood ruin my day. It was one of our last days at SMS and I intended to enjoy it. Everywhere the eighth-graders were lounging around with their yearbooks, leisurely signing them. The sixth- and seventh-graders were in their classrooms working away at who knew what, but us eighth-graders were DONE! Classes were over. We were here to get our final exams, to clean out our lockers, to sign yearbooks, to have a rehearsal for graduation …

The moment homeroom was over I tore down to the main office to get back my last two final exams — social studies and French. Ha! An A on the French exam and a B+ on the social studies. I was going to end my career at SMS with nearly straight A’s. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Even better, as far as I was concerned, was that Logan and I didn’t feel we had to avoid each other anymore. In fact, when I spotted him in the hall just before lunch we waved and called hi.

When the final bell rang that day, Kristy found me signing another yearbook. “I’ll walk home with you,” she said.

“Cool. Dawn can help us dig up the capsule.”

Kristy made a face.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said. “It isn’t that bad, Kristy. Nobody else is going to want anything from the time capsule. All we have to do is open it, take Ba-ba out, close it up again, and bury it. This time it really won’t be opened for seven years.”

“I guess.”

Kristy’s mood improved on our walk home because she was excited about seeing Dawn.

“Plus, now Dawn can look in the capsule,” I pointed out. (Dawn had mailed an envelope to me to put in the time capsule since she wasn’t going to be at the official burial.)

“True,” said Kristy.

Kristy and Dawn had a happy reunion when we reached my house. They hugged and laughed, and Dawn said she couldn’t wait to see us graduate the next day.

“You’re going to get to see the time capsule too,” I told her, and explained what had happened.

Ten minutes later, Mallory showed up with Claire, Nicky, and Vanessa. Mal and Dawn had a happy reunion of their own.

Then Nicky said gleefully, “I want to see if worms are crawling all over Ba-ba.”

Claire burst into tears, and Mal put an arm around her. “It’s a sealed metal container, Nicky,” she said. “There won’t be any worms in it now, and there won’t be any worms in it seven years from now.”

“Oh.” Nicky looked disappointed.

“All right, let’s get going,” said Kristy.

“Hurry!” cried Claire.

Mal, Dawn, Kristy, and I set to work with shovels and trowels, and a few minutes later the tin box was in view. We hauled it out of the ground and Kristy stood over it, shaking her head. Finally she announced, “The unofficial opening of the Stoneybrook time capsule.” She pried off the lid and pawed through the contents until she spotted Ba-ba’s ears. Then she reached in, pulled her out, and handed her to Claire, who hugged Ba-ba to her chest.

“Thank you,” said Mal.

“You’re welcome.” Kristy put the lid back on the tin and returned the tin to the hole. “Now,” she said, standing up and brushing dirt off the knees of her jeans, “the people of Stoneybrook once again bury their time capsule, and this time it really, really, REALLY is not going to be opened for seven years.”

When the box had completely disappeared under the earth Kristy looked at the plot of loose soil and said, “We ought to make a marker to put here so we know exactly where the capsule is buried. That might be a nice project for the summer.”

A marker was a nice idea, but how could Kristy even think about such things when graduation was … the next day? I watched Mal and the Pikes amble home, Claire still clutching Ba-ba, and I turned to Kristy and Dawn. I pictured my friends and myself in our caps and gowns. I imagined the events the next day would bring. We would become SMS graduates. Middle school would be over. We would be on our way to high school.

From: ckishi

Subject: GARDUATION!

To: NYCGirl

Date: Thursday, June 22

Time: 9:09:53 P.M.

Stacey can you beleive it I am going to graduate with you guys after all.!! All I have to do is pass sumer school and I have passed summer school before. Also I pased all my other finales so I realy didnt do so badly. And now on to tomorrow I am SOOOOOOOO excited. Actual garduation! And then the party here. Oh you know what I am just way too exited to finish this e-mail. I have to call you. I am going to call you right now.

It was a little too much for me. Considering the incredibly bad start the day had gotten off to, I had not had high hopes for much of anything. In the past, meetings between my parents and my teachers have led to horrifying turns of events. When I headed off to SMS on Thursday morning, knowing Mom and Dad would soon be doing the same thing, I fully expected them (or my guidance counselor or somebody) to inform me later that I was going to have to repeat eighth grade. If that had happened, well, I just wasn’t sure what my response would have been. I think I might have had a tantrum right there in the hallway. All day long I was on pins and needles. From 10:00 until 11:00, the time of the Meeting About Me, I kept an eye out for my parents. I didn’t see them, though, and by the beginning of the last period of the day I hadn’t heard anything from anyone. I was so nervous that my skin began to itch and I wished I could crawl out of it.

You can imagine my reaction when I heard my name called over the loudspeaker, summoning me to the office. I practically ran there. I was so desperate for news then that I almost didn’t care whether it was good or bad. (Well, not really, but you know what I mean.) Anyway, I bolted into the office and was greeted there by my guidance counselor. And guess what, I may have flunked my science final, but I was going to be allowed to graduate with my friends. I’d have to take science in summer school, though, and my diploma would be a blank piece of paper. But I didn’t care. That blank will be replaced with the real thing when I pass the summer-school course. (Of course, if I don’t pass it I really will have to repeat eighth grade, but I am going to do everything I can think of to pass it. I KNOW I’ll be going to SHS in September with my friends.)

So … how did I spend the rest of the afternoon? Shopping. I’d been too superstitious to buy anything for the party until I knew whether I’d be graduating myself. Now I had a million things to do. Which was good, because I was becoming overly excited about graduation, and planning the party kept my mind off of it.

The next thing I knew, it was Friday morning. The eighth-graders didn’t have to go to school until two-thirty — half an hour before graduation. Janine was at school, Mom and Dad were at work, Stacey and her mom had decided to go to the hairdresser together, Mary Anne was busy with Dawn … I was on my own, but I had things to do. I cleaned up my room, then decorated it for the party. And slowly the morning passed. Mom came home from work early to help me get ready for the ceremony, and at 2:20 we were in the car on the way to SMS.

Mom asked me a hundred questions. Did I know where to meet her and Dad and Janine after graduation? (Yes.) Was I ready for the party? (Yes.) Had I called Peaches to tell her where she and Russ should meet Mom and Dad? (Yes.) Had I remembered my cap and gown? (Yes. Duh.)

I couldn’t wait to get out of the car. We found a mob scene at school. The parking lot was full — of cars and of people.

“How am I going to find Stacey?” I wailed. And like magic, she materialized at my elbow then.

“Oh, my lord, I am so nervous!” she cried.

“Me too!” Suddenly we were hugging each other. “Do you remember where we’re supposed to go now?”

“The gym,” she replied. “Come on.”

“ ’Bye, Mom,” I said. “Go get good seats. We’ll see you later.”

Stacey and I, clutching the boxes containing our caps and gowns, made our way to the gym. We were unbelievably keyed up. So was everyone we passed.

“An hour from now we’ll be graduates!”

“SHS, here we come!”

“We’re almost out of here!”

When we reached the gym, Stacey and I looked around for Kristy, Abby, and Mary Anne. We wouldn’t be sitting together during graduation since we would be seated alphabetically, but we had agreed to meet in the gym anyway. That was where we would put on our caps and gowns, and where we would line up to march to the playing fields for the ceremony.

“There’s Abby,” said Stacey.

“There are Kristy and Mary Anne,” I said.

The five of us drew into a knot and hugged one another.

“Come on,” said Mary Anne. “We better get ready.”

We put on our gowns and adjusted our caps and tassels.

“We get to keep the tassels, you know,” said Abby. “Look. They have little gold SMS charms on them.”

“May I have your attention?” A voice boomed through a megaphone. The gym fell silent. “Time to line up. Alphabetically, please. Try to remember who you were standing next to when we rehearsed this yesterday.”

“Well, this is it,” I said to my friends. “We’ll meet up afterward, okay?”

Unexpectedly, Kristy burst into tears.

She started a chain reaction.

“Not now, you guys,” said Abby, searching for a tissue. “We have to pull ourselves together. We don’t want to look all blotchy when we get our diplomas.”

After a lot of sniffling and hugging we calmed down. We found our places in a line of blue robes that wound around the gym. From outside came the sound of our school band tuning up (minus all its eighth-grade members, of course), and before I knew it, I was marching through the halls of SMS. We left the building through a side door and snaked around to the back of the school. Before us was a sea of folding chairs. Every single one of them was filled and a small crowd of people was standing behind them. My classmates were filing onto risers. I followed Stephanie Kingsley to our spot in the third row. Then I turned and faced the audience. I tried to find my family, but the crowd was too big.

When the last of my classmates was in place, the music stopped and our principal, Mr. Taylor, stepped up to the podium and made a brief speech. This was followed by several more speeches — our class officers spoke, and Emily Bernstein gave the valedictory address.

And then … at last …

“It is now time to award the diplomas,” said Mr. Taylor when he had returned to the mike.

My classmates began to file off of the bleachers. As each one reached the podium, Mr. Kingbridge announced his or her name and Mr. Taylor handed out the diploma. When my name was called I heard a shout from the audience (my parents? shouting with relief?) and I grabbed my cap off of my head and waved it in the air. I had done it! I had graduated! (Sort of.)

The ceremony flew by. Before I knew it, my classmates and I were standing in our spots on the bleachers again. After a moment of silence, Mr. Taylor looked at us, each holding a diploma, and said proudly, “Ladies and gentlemen, our graduates.”

I have never in my life heard such cheering and clapping. Every single one of us was grinning. I was still grinning a few minutes later when my friends and I had filed off of the bleachers once again, this time to find our friends and families in the crowd.

“Claudia! Claudia!”

I heard someone shout my name. Then I was being wrapped in a hug. Mary Anne.

She started to cry, of course, and so did I.

The next half an hour was complete pandemonium. I found my parents and I remember introducing them to Samantha, when she and Mr. McGill were walking around looking for Stacey. Jessi and Mal were there. And at one point or another I think I saw every member of every one of my friends’ families.

Eventually we started taking pictures.

“Photo op!” Abby cried. “First the graduates.”

Snap. Someone took a picture of Mary Anne, Kristy, Abby, Stacey, and me.

Snap. A picture of me with Mom, Dad, Janine, Peaches, Russ, and Lynn.

Snap. A picture of Kristy and her huge family.

Snap. A (harmonious) picture of Stacey and her parents and Samantha.

“Okay, now all the BSC members!” called Kristy.

Snap. A picture of Kristy, Stacey, Jessi, Abby, Dawn, Mary Anne, Mal, and me.

I think the picture-taking could have gone on for quite some time, but eventually I began to feel overwhelmed by the crowd. I drew Kristy aside. “Don’t you guys want to go to my house now?”

Kristy looked a little overwhelmed herself. “Definitely,” she said.

“Come on, everybody.” I rounded up Abby, Mal, Mary Anne, Dawn, Jessi, and Stacey.

“Wait,” said Kristy as we were getting ready to leave. “I think we need one more picture of the eight of us. The BSC members — without our caps and gowns, though.”

“Why?” asked Dawn.

“Because I want one picture to remind me of us as we used to be,” said Kristy. “Before some of us graduated and everything changed.”

A pause. Then, “Okay,” I said. “Hey, Janine! One more picture!”

Snap.

When I looked at that picture later, after Janine had had her film developed, I saw one of the most somber pictures ever taken of the eight of us. But I framed it and put it on my desk.

My friends and I were driven to Claudia’s in two cars. Charlie drove Stacey, Abby, Jessi, and me there in the Junk Bucket. And Claudia’s uncle Russ and her aunt Peaches, who have a van, dropped off Claud and the others.

“Okay, PAAAAARTY!!” cried Claudia as we met on her front lawn. The rest of us began to cheer and whistle. Even me. I hadn’t expected to feel excited, exactly. But I found that I did. Everyone else’s excitement was contagious.

“Whoooooo, we did it!” cried Stacey.

“I can’t believe you guys get to go on to high school next year,” said Jessi enviously.

“Oh, look who’s talking. The person who’s going to travel the world this summer!” said Dawn.

“But I’ll be left all alone at SMS,” Jessi complained.

Mal put her arm around her. “You’ll survive. At least you won’t be a lowly sixth-grader anymore. Seventh grade is much cooler.”

“Well, I still can’t wait for high school,” said Jessi.

“It’s going to be pretty exciting,” said Mary Anne.

“Yeah, older guys,” said Claudia.

“Better dances,” said Stacey.

“Better everything, I bet,” added Mary Anne.

Claud wanted to start the party. “Let’s go inside, you guys,” she said, opening her front door. “Come on upstairs.”

We trooped up the stairs to Claud’s room. I tried to pretend we were about to begin a BSC meeting, just like one of the ones we would have held a few months ago. But when I saw the inside of Claud’s room that idea flew out the window. Claud had turned it into a graduation fantasyland. Bunches of balloons were tied everywhere. Streamers crisscrossed the ceiling. A HAPPY GRADUATION! sign was strung up over her bed. (Well, actually, the sign said, HAPPY GRADUATION!) The desk was covered with a paper cloth decorated with caps and gowns and diplomas, and strewn with sequins and glitter. On it Claud was setting out sodas and a bowl of punch and plates of cookies and chips and popcorn and veggies and even tiny chocolate diplomas.

“Pop one of the balloons,” Claud directed me, handing me a pin.

Popping balloons has never been one of my favorite activities, but I obeyed and was showered with more sequins and glitter.

“Cool!” exclaimed Mal. “How did you do that?”

Claud just shrugged and grinned, while the rest of us set to work popping balloons. Soon we were covered with glitter. We were shaking it out of our hair and brushing it off of our clothes.

“Look at us!” I exclaimed.

“We are … the Baby-sitters Club!” cried Mary Anne.

We abandoned the pins and flopped on Claud’s bed and the floor.

“Remember the time Jackie got a raisin stuck up his nose?” Stacey suddenly said.

My friends and I began to laugh.

“And he got his arm stuck in his pants drawer?” I added.

“Remember when he hit the home run that broke a window at Stoneybrook Elementary?” said Mal.

“Think of all the stuff that’s happened since we formed the Baby-sitters Club,” said Claud.

“Yeah, Lucy Newton was born,” said Dawn.

“We learned sign language so we could communicate with Matt Braddock,” said Jessi.

“Dawn and I became stepsisters!” exclaimed Mary Anne.

“Yeah, a lot of non-baby-sitting stuff has happened too,” said Dawn.

“Tons,” agreed Stacey. “I don’t think I would have gotten through most of it without you guys.”

“I know I wouldn’t have,” said Mary Anne.

“Yes, you would have,” said Abby.

“Not as well. You guys are the best friends in the world.” Mary Anne’s eyes filled with tears.

“We’ve had a lot of fights, though,” I pointed out.

“Being friends doesn’t mean we can’t fight,” said Stacey. She glanced ever so briefly at Claudia. Then she added, “Actually, you just never know about fighting and getting along. Did you guys see Mom and Dad and Samantha all together this afternoon? I nearly fainted.”

“That was kind of amazing,” agreed Jessi.

“Remember how mad you were when I decided to go to Riverbend?” Mal said to Jessi.

“I’ll never forget it.”

“Remember the fight Dawn and I had after Dad and Sharon got married?” Mary Anne spoke up.

“Sometimes fighting makes friendships stronger,” said Stacey.

“Does everyone here think we’ll still be friends when we’re grown-up?” Claudia asked.

“Oh, please, do we have to talk about that?” I said. “I don’t want to think about us not being friends.”

Mary Anne was sprawled on the bed with a fistful of popcorn. “Well, I want to tell you what I think anyway,” she said. “Because it might make you feel better, Kristy. See, to be honest, I’m not sure that when we’re grown-up we’ll be exactly the kind of friends we are now —”

“Well, that is exactly what I don’t want to hear,” I interrupted.

“Shh, just listen,” said Mary Anne impatiently. “But,” she went on, “I do think we’ll always be friends. You know, my dad has friends from his childhood. They may not be his best, best friends, but they are people he knew in elementary school — there’s even one person he knew in preschool — and they still write letters to each other, and send e-mail and Christmas cards, and meet up sometimes.”

“My mom’s best friend now,” said Jessi, “was her best friend from when she was growing up. They’ve been best friends since they were four years old.”

“That is so cool,” I said, feeling reassured.

Jessi grinned. “Yeah. You know, when they were six they decided they were going to become famous actresses and stay together for the rest of their lives. They were going to marry twin brothers and have their kids at the same time and all live in one big house.”

My friends and I burst out laughing.

“Well, we know what your mom is doing now,” said Mal. “What about her best friend?”

“She’s an architect in Chicago, and she’s married but she and her husband don’t have any kids. But she and Mom are still best friends. They constantly talk on the phone, and they see each other about two times a year.”

“Maybe being a best friend is different when you’re grown-up than when you’re a kid,” said Abby. “I mean, just because you are a grown-up.”

“When I’m grown-up,” said Claud, “when I finally get out of school and become an artist, a real artist, I don’t think I’ll want to get married right away. I think I’ll just want to be an artist and live on my own for awhile. Then maybe I’ll get married.”

“I’m not sure I want to get married at all,” I said. “I don’t see why everyone has to get married.”

“Everyone doesn’t have to get married,” replied Stacey.

“They do if they want kids.”

“They do not. Plenty of people who aren’t married have kids.”

“Oh, good. Then I want to adopt four kids but not get married. Maybe I’ll adopt five. You know I’ll want to have a lot of kids.”

“I want to get married and have kids,” said Mal. “But not eight kids. I think just two or three. I’ll want to have my writing career too.”

“When you are a famous dancer, Jessi, traveling the world, will you come back and visit your old friends?” asked Mary Anne.

“Of course I will. And when I’m not around, I’ll send all of you lots and lots of postcards and letters and e-mail.”

“Hey, Dawn,” I said. (I was beginning to feel more relaxed. This wasn’t such a bad conversation after all.) “Do you think you’ll stay in California all your life?”

“I don’t know. I might. Well, probably. But you never know. I think I’d like to go to college here in the East. Maybe. But then go back to California. And you know what? I’m pretty sure I want to get married someday, but I’m not sure I want kids.”

“You’re kidding. Why not?” asked Abby.

“I don’t think I’d be a good parent. I mean, I like kids and everything, but I don’t know that I want to have any of my own.”

“Not everyone has to have kids,” said Jessi. “My mom’s friend is really happy and she doesn’t have kids. But I think I want to have at least one.”

“Well, I’ll tell you guys something,” said Abby. “I know for sure that before I settle down in any way, I want to see this whole big world. You are so lucky, Jessi. Traveling around. Visiting foreign countries. I wish I could see every country there is. I want to do lots of traveling as soon as I can.”

“Hey, you guys. What do you want to do?” I asked Mary Anne and Stacey.

“I don’t know,” said Mary Anne. “I really don’t. Not what I want to do or whether I want to get married or anything. I think I just want to enjoy high school and college first.”

“Well, I know for sure that I want to go into some kind of business,” said Stace. “Like, run a big company, or own a store or a chain of stores. Working with my mom will be good practice. And I guess I want to get married and have kids, but I haven’t thought much about it.”

“You know what?” I said. “We should make a pact.”

“What kind of pact?” asked Dawn.

“That in twelve years, when we’re all grown-up and out of college, we’ll meet — the eight of us — and have a reunion. Then we can see what we’re really doing.”

“Where will we meet?” Abby asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We can’t decide that now. But we should write this up and make it official — that on January first, twelve years from now, we will all call one another and plan a reunion, somewhere, for the eight of us on June twenty-third of that year.”

We were silent for a few moments, considering this. Then, very solemnly, Claud took a piece of paper and a pen from her desk drawer and handed them to Mary Anne, our secretary, who drafted an official-looking pact. She promised to have it copied for each of us the next day.

When the party ended that evening, I went home thinking of the pact. And I began to think about it again, much later, as I was writing in my journal.

Dear Readers,

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been almost fifteen years since Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Stacey formed the Baby-sitters Club. When I first began working on the series, I thought I was going to write four books, one about each of the girls. But to my surprise, a total of 213 books about Kristy and her friends followed. I’ve had a lot of fun working on the series; in fact, these have been fifteen fabulous years. But now it’s time to say good-bye to the members of the BSC.

The series wouldn’t have lasted so long without the support of many people, but especially without you — the loyal BSC readers. Over the years, I’ve felt a great connection to my readers. I’ve received thousands of amazing letters — letters with suggestions for plots, letters of thanks, and letters from kids who simply wanted to share their lives with me. I’ve met readers at book signings, at schools, and through contests. Of all the wonderful things that happened to me as a result of the Baby-sitters Club, getting to know my readers was one of the best.

I’ve been thinking a lot about decisions and choices lately. Often, making the right decision is easy. But sometimes a decision is difficult to make, even when you feel certain it’s the right one. That’s how I feel about the decision to end the series. I will miss working on the books, miss spending time with the characters, and especially miss my connection with the BSC fans. On the other hand, I have fifteen years of memories, many of them created by you. That’s why this last book is dedicated to my readers.

Thank you for your loyalty and enthusiasm.

Happy reading,

Acknowledgments

The Baby-sitters Club was conceived over fifteen years ago, and would not have become a success without dozens and dozens of people who brought their time, energy, vision, and talents to it. To them, I am unendingly grateful. They may never know how much I appreciate them. I want to extend thanks to:

- My editors: Brenda Bowen, my longtime friend, and the first editor on the series; the current editors—Bethany Buck, David Levithan, and Kate Egan (editors extraordinaire); Julie Komorn; Kathryn McKeon; and Janet Vultee.

- The other writers for the Baby-sitters Club, Baby-sitters Little Sister, and California Diaries who, with great sensitivity, shared the voices of Kristy and her friends: Ellen Miles, Peter Lerangis, Stephanie Calmenson, Suzanne Weyn, Nola Thacker, Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner, Gabrielle Charbonnet, Jeanne Betancourt, Jan Carr, Diane Molleson, Vicki Berger Erwin, Mary Lou Kennedy, Helen Perelman, and Laura Dower.

- Hodges Soileau, Susan Tang, Charles Tang, and the other artists whose work brought the characters and their world to life visually.

- David Tommasino, the first art director for the series, and his staff for their insight and vision; Elizabeth Parisi, Dawn Adelman, and Cristina Costantino in the art department; and Holly Tommasino, who created and executed all the handwriting for the characters.

- Ronnie Ambrose, Bonnie Cutler, Annie McDonnell, Laurie Giannelli, Heidi Robinson, Pam LaBarbiera, Nancy Smith, Karyn Browne, and Ellie Berger in production and manufacturing.

The Baby-sitters Club has many other Scholastic friends as well. Among them are Dick Robinson, Barbara Marcus, Ed Monagle, Craig Walker, Judy Newman, Maggie Kniep, Alan Cogen, Betsy Howie, and all those (currently and formerly) in the publicity department, the sales department, the marketing department, the book clubs, and the book fairs who have promoted the series.

In addition I would like to thank Adele Brodkin, Lisa Pasquale, Beth Perkins, Debbie Jensen, Madge Christensen, Kirsten Hall, Becca Lieberg, Bonnie Black, Diane Muldrow, and especially Elisa Geliebter for their inestimable help over the years.

As always, I want to thank Laura Godwin.

And most of all, I want to thank Jean Feiwel, who came up with the idea for the Baby-sitters Club and who guided it from the very beginning to the very end. Without her, the series wouldn’t have happened at all.

Thank you, Jean.

About the Author

ANN M. MARTIN is the acclaimed and bestselling author of a number of novels and series, including Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), A Dog’s Life, Here Today, P.S. Longer Letter Later (written with Paula Danziger), the Family Tree series, the Doll People series (written with Laura Godwin), the Main Street series, and the generation-defining series The Baby-sitters Club. She lives in New York.

Copyright © 2000 by Ann M. Martin

All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

First edition, 2000

e-ISBN 978-1-338-09382-7