"Babysitters Club 02 Claudia And The Phantom Phone Calls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Babysitters Club)

"Not very often."
"Someday you will be friends/' said Mimi.
I went back to her portrait, and she continued her story. Later, when she had left my room, I got the licorice whips out of my desk and the Nancy Drew book out from under my mattress, where it was hidden, along with a bag of root beer barrels.
I was up to chapter fourteen in The Phantom, and it really was pretty exciting. Even so, as I chewed away on the licorice, my thoughts began to wander, and they wandered right to Trevor Sandbourne.
I lowered the book.
Trevor Sandbourne is the most gorgeous boy in the entire seventh grade at Stoneybrook Middle School. And he happens to have the most romantic name in the whole world. Trevor has jet black hair and dark, brooding eyes and freckles on his nose. He walks through the halls looking serious and deep in thought, and he writes poetry for The Literary Voice, our school's creative journal. I never dreamed I would fall in love with a poet. The only problem is that Trevor and I don't have any classes together, so we don't know each other at all. He probably doesn't even know I'm alive.
R-r-r-r-ing! The sound of the phone made me jump. I reached for the receiver, wondering
if there was just the teensiest chance that Trevor was on the other end.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Claud. It's me."
"Hi, Stacey."
"What are you doing?"
"Thinking about Trevor Sandbourne. What are you doing?"
"Thinking about Sam Thomas." (Sam Thomas is one of Kristy's older brothers, and Stacey has an Immense Crush on him. Personally, I think he's too old for her. He's a freshman in high school.)
I sighed.
Stacey sighed.
"Any Baby-sitters Club calls?" she asked after a moment.
"Nope."
"Really?"
"Really." The headquarters for the club is my bedroom. This is because I'm the only one of the four of us with a phone in my room. Not only that, I have a private number. The Baby-sitters Club meets three times a week in my room and if people call during a meeting, they can reach all four of us at once, so they're bound to get a sitter immediately. As Kristy says, "That's the beauty of the club." Of course,
people can call us individually at our homes during other times, plus a number of club calls come in on my line when we're not meeting. When that happens, I'm supposed to take down all the information about the job, like when it is, how many kids there will be, and how late the parents will be out Ч stuff like that. Then I'm supposed to offer the job to all the club members before calling the client back with a sitter. I'll admit that a few times I've forgotten to do this and have taken the job myself on the spot. But I didn't think it was very nice of Stacey to imply that I was job-hogging.
Stacey sighed again.
"Is anything wrong?" I asked her.
"I just wish I knew more people, that's all."
"You will, Stace. Look, you haven't even been here two months yet. It takes time to make friends." Stacey and her parents had moved to Stoneybrook, Connecticut from New York City in August.
"I guess," she said.
"Maybe you and I could get together with Kristy and Mary Anne on Saturday. I mean, to do something besides have a club meeting. Are you free Saturday?"
"I'm always free," said Stacey.
"Oh, come on, you are not. You get lots of
baby-sitting jobs, and you get to go back to New York with your parents all the time."
"That's not the same as having friends."
"So Ч let's do something Saturday, okay? I'll call Kristy and Mary Anne."
"All right."
"See you tomorrow, Stace."
" 'Bye."
" 'Bye."
We hung up and I stared out the window at the rain. It wouldn't be easy finding something Mary Anne's strict father would allow her to do, or something Stacey's strict diet would allow her to do, but I was determined that we would get together. I'd talk to Kristy and Mary Anne in school the next day.
I went back to The Phantom of Pine Hill.
Chapter 2.
Stacey, Kristy, Mary Anne, and I did get together on Saturday, but we couldn't think of a thing for the four of us to do together. Mary Anne wasn't allowed to ride her bike to the mall. Stacey couldn't eat s'mores or ice cream or anything fun. (She has diabetes and has to control very carefully the amount of sugar she takes in each day.) And there was only one movie playing in town and Kristy and I had already seen it.
So we sat around in Kristy's front yard. We were sprawled all over the place, except for Stacey who was sitting up primly with her legs tucked under her. She wanted to look nice in case Sam should come along or poke his head out the door or something. Mary Anne had the latest edition of The Stoneybrook News spread open in front of her, but she wasn't reading it. We were very, very bored.
"We could go up in the attic and look through
that trunk of antique toys that Mom got from Grandma's," Kristy suggested.
Stacey and I rolled our eyes. Even though Kristy and Mary Anne are in seventh grade, just like Stacey and I are, they can be very childish. They're not interested in boys or clothes yet, and sometimes they do the weirdest things. Mary Anne still dresses up her stuffed animals. And they even look younger than we do. Kristy has long brown hair which she doesn't do much with yet, and big brown eyes which will look great with makeup in a couple of years. She's small for her age. She looks more like a ten-year-old. Mary Anne also has brown eyes and brown hair. Her father makes her wear her hair in braids. I wonder how long that will go on. And both of them wear kind of little-girl clothes Ч kilts and plain blouses and stuff like that.
Stacey, on the other hand, dresses pretty much the way I do. She's tall and slender and her mother lets her get her blonde hair permed. She looks older than twelve.
"We could try that new cookie piЧ " Mary Anne began, than glanced at Stacey and stopped, remembering the diet problem.
"We could rent a movie for your VCR," I said to Stacey.
"Yeah!" said Kristy.
"Yeah!" said Mary Anne.
"The VCR's broken," said Stace.