"Babysitters Club 040 Claudia And The Middle School Mystery" - читать интересную книгу автора (Babysitters Club)

The rest of my homework was a breeze, compared to studying for that test. I raced
through it. Then I put down my pencil, got up and stretched, and threw myself onto my bed. "Aaaahh!" I sighed. "All done." I rolled over and reached for the phone.
"Hi, Stace - it's Claud," I said, when my best friend, Stacey McGill, answered the phone at her house. I told Stacey all about my big math test, and about how incredibly nervous I was about it. She tried to calm me down. (She's great in math, just like Janine. She never gets nervous about tests.)
"C'mon, Claud," she said. "What about all that time we've spent going over that stuff?"
It was true. Stacey had been helping me with my math all year, during study halls and sometimes even - when I was especially confused - during lunch.
"I know, Stace, but - "
"But nothing," she interrupted. "You know that material backwards and forwards. You're going to do a great job on that test. I guarantee it!"
This made me feel better, but I still wasn't convinced. I dropped the subject, and we talked for awhile longer, about clothes, about a movie we'd seen, and about our club - the Baby-sitters Club.
"Just think, Claud," she said. "By the time
we have our next meeting you'll have taken the test. It will all be over with."
She was right. We had a club meeting the next day after school. When we'd said goodbye and hung up, I thought about how lucky I was to have such a good friend. And even though Stacey's my best friend, I'm especially lucky because I've got a whole gang of other friends, too - the other members of our club.
Maybe I should tell you about them.
First off, there's Kristy Thomas. She's the president - and the founder - of the Babysitters Club. Kristy used to live on my street, and I've known her since I was about six months old, probably. Now she lives way across town with her "new" family.
Kristy's original family was pretty average - a mom, a dad, two big brothers (Sam and Charlie) and one little one (David Michael). But when David Michael was a baby (he's seven now), Kristy's dad just up and left. I'm not even sure where he lives now - California, maybe? - but Kristy has almost nothing to do with him.
Kristy's mom is a pretty strong woman - I think Kristy takes after her in that way - and she held her family together for years. But then she was lucky enough to fall in love and
get married again. And she didn't marry just any old guy. She married Watson Brewer, one of Stoneybrook's millionaires. After that, Kristy and her family moved across town into Watson's mansion (yes, it really is a mansion), but of course Kristy remained president of our
club.
So these days Kristy's family is anything but
average. Besides being a millionaire, Watson is the father of two children from his first marriage - Karen, who's seven, and Andrew, who's four. They're at Watson's every other weekend. But even when they're not there, the house is pretty full.
Who else lives there? Well, there's Emily Michelle, the most adorable baby in the world. She's a two-year-old Vietnamese girl whom Kristy's mom and Watson adopted not long ago. Soon after Emily Michelle came, Nannie moved in, too. Nannie is Kristy's mother's mother, and she watches Emily when nobody
else is home.
And as if that weren't enough, there's Boo-Boo and Shannon, too. No, they're not kids - they're pets. Boo-Boo is a mean, fat, old cat. (Watson would probably be mad if he heard me say that, but it's true!) And Shannon is a puppy who's going to turn into a gigantic dog
some day - a Bernese Mountain dog, to be exact.
So Kristy's got a busy life at home. But I think she likes it that way. She's always doing two or three things at once and planning a fourth at the same time. She's a whirlwind with great ideas {like the one about starting our club). She's so busy that she doesn't care much about her looks - which, in fact, there's nothing wrong with. Kristy has brown hair and eyes, and a really friendly, open face. She's pretty, but she doesn't seem to want to bother with clothes, or makeup, or hairdos, or any of that. She wears the same thing every day - running shoes, jeans, a turtleneck, and maybe a sweater, if it's cold. I guess you'd have to call her a tomboy.
Kristy's only fault may be that she kind of has a big mouth. At times things just slip out of her mouth - but usually it's not a problem with the rest of us. We're used to it.
Even Mary Anne Spier isn't bothered by the blunt way Kristy can talk. And that's saying something, because Mary Anne is the most sensitive soul in the universe. Who's Mary Anne? She's the secretary of our club, and Kristy's best friend, which is kind of funny if you think about it - they're so different. Mary
Anne is as quiet as Kristy is loud, and as shy as Kristy is outgoing.
They do look alike, though. Mary Anne's a little taller than Kristy (Kristy's the shortest person in our class), but her hair and eyes are the same shade of brown as Kristy's.
However, Mary Anne's clothes are trendier than Kristy's, she's less of a talker (she's a great listener, in fact), and she's more of a romantic. Maybe that's why she's the only one in our club who has a steady boyfriend. His name is Logan Bruno, he's incredibly cute, and he's in our club, believe it or not. (He's just an associate member, but I'll explain all about that later.)
Sometimes it still amazes me that Mary Anne is allowed to have a boyfriend. I still think of her father as strict, even though he's actually eased up a lot recently. See, Mary Anne's father raised her on his own - her mother died when Mary Anne was just a tiny baby - and I guess he thought that being very strict was best. But he got married again not too long ago, and that seems to have softened him up a bit. Actually, he was beginning to be less strict even before that - back when he was just dating his future wife.
And who is that wife? I thought you'd never
ask. Mr. Spier just happens to be married to the mother of another member of our club, Dawn Schafer. How did they meet? It's a crazy story. Mrs. Schafer and Mr. Spier were high-school sweethearts, right here in Stoneybrook. But Mrs. Schafer left town for California, and that's where she met and married Dawn's father. They had Dawn and her younger brother, Jeff, but later they got divorced. Then Mrs. Schafer and Dawn and Jeff moved back to Stoneybrook, and it wasn't long before the high-school romance bloomed all over again! Isn't that great?
So now Mary Anne and Dawn are stepsisters - and also best friends. (Yes, Mary Anne has two best friends.) Mary Anne and her father and Tigger (that's Mary Anne's kitten) moved into Dawn's mother's house because it was bigger. Now they all live there happily, except for Jeff, who missed California and his father so much that he moved back there. Dawn misses them terribly, but she tries to visit the California part of her family whenever she can.
You'd know Dawn for a California girl the minute you saw her. She's absolutely gorgeous. Blonde? They don't come any blonder. Her clothes are great - casual, fun, and stylish. She loves health food and the sun, and she's just basically what I'd have to call "mellow." She knows her own mind - for example, she doesn't get tempted by all the great junk food I always have.
One thing that does tempt Dawn is a mystery. And she also loves ghost stories. Her favorite ghost story, in fact, is the one about her own house! That's right - her house may be haunted. There's this secret passage in that old farmhouse, and someday I'm sure Dawn will catch the ghost that she believes lives there.
I don't think Stacey believes in the ghost. (That's Stacey McGill, my best friend.) She's blonde, and pretty, and very smart. Stacey grew up in New York City! But now she lives in Stoneybrook, with her mom. She and I became friends when she first moved here - probably because we both have sophisticated taste in clothes - but now our friendship is much deeper. I was crushed when she moved back to the city (her dad's company transferred him) but it wasn't long before she'd moved back here again. Of course I was thrilled, even if the reason for her move wasn't the greatest - it was because her parents had gotten divorced.
Stacey's handling the divorce well - she visits her dad in the city as often as she can. And she and her mom are close.
Mr. and Mrs. McGill used to be kind of overprotective of Stacey, because Stacey has diabetes. That means that she has to be very careful about what she eats and when she eats it, or else her blood sugar gets all out of whack and she can get extremely sick. It all has something to do with her pancreas, but the complete scientific story behind it is more than I can remember. (I almost failed biology.)
Stacey takes good care of herself, checking her own blood sugar and giving herself injections (ew) of insulin. She tries not to let the diabetes cramp her style, but lately I've noticed that she seems kind of tired and weak all the time. I hope she's okay.
The last but not least of my baby-sitting friends are Mallory Pike and Jessica (everyone calls her Jessi) Ramsey. They're younger than the rest of us (they're in sixth grade) but they're pretty cool. They're best friends, and like most best friends they're different in some ways and alike in others.
This is how they're alike: They both love to read (especially horse stories), they both wish their parents would stop treating them like
babies (eleven is a hard age), and they both come from close families.
This is how they're different: Mallory's family is huge - she has seven younger brothers and sisters. Jessi's family is smaller - just a little sister, Becca, and a baby brother, nicknamed Squirt - and also, they're black, while Mal and her family are white. Of course, Jessi's color makes no difference to any of us, but there were plenty of people in Stoneybrook who felt otherwise, at least at first. Now I'd say that Jessi is pretty happily settled here. Another difference: Mallory loves to write and draw (she hopes to be a children's book author and illustrator someday) while Jessi's passion is ballet (she's a really good dancer and practices all the time).
So those are my friends. I'm pretty lucky to have every one of them. But I 'knew that the next day, during math class, it would be just me against good old Gertrude. I would be on my own.
Chapter 3.
"Okay, people," said Mr. Zorzi, trying to be heard over the roar of everyone talking at once. "Let's get ready for this test." He stood at the front of the room with a stack of papers in his hands. "Books on the floor beside your desks."
Then he walked along the front row of desks, giving each kid a bunch of papers. "Pass them back, please." He folded his arms and watched as the tests were distributed. "This test will count for a large portion of your grade. But don't worry - I think all of you know the material. I'm sure you'll do well."
I looked down at the paper that had landed on my desk, and gulped. There were a lot of problems on it. Fractions and decimals were scattered like land mines all over the page.
I glanced up at Mr. Zorzi. He saw me looking up and gave me a little smile. Then he
pointed at the clock. I got the message - time to get started.