"Babysitters Club 059 Mallory Hates Boys (And Gym)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Babysitters Club)

"Ooooohh! At Ben's!" the other club members sang out, laughing. All except Mary Anne. She was there with her boyfriend, Logan Bruno. (He's also a member of the club. I'll tell you how he fits in after 1 tell you about
the club.) It was unusual for Logan to come to meetings. I guess he was at the meeting that day because he had been hanging out with Mary Anne.
"What's wrong with doing homework together?" Mary Anne asked, taking Logan's hand. "Logan and I just came from studying in the library."
"Oooooooooooohhhh!" the club members teased.
Now it was Logan's turn to blush.
"Cut it out, you guys," said Mary Anne.
"Oh, we're just teasing," laughed Stacey McGill, perched cross-legged on Claudia's bed.
"Okay, enough," Kristy said, speaking over the giggles. She looked very stern as she sat forward in Claudia's director's chair with one leg crossed high over the other knee, her pencil stuck over one ear and the club notebook on her lap. "This meeting of the Baby-sitters Club is about to begin!"
Before I go any further, I suppose I should tell you about the club and its members. I'll start with the members and then I'll explain how the club works.
First I'll tell you about Jessi, since she's my best friend. Like me, she's eleven. We're both in the sixth grade at Stoneybrook Middle School. Jessi is tall and beautiful. And African-14
American. This was a problem for some people when the Ramseys first came to Stoneybrook. But the Ramsey family stuck it out, and now nobody bothers them about the color of their skin anymore.
Jessi is a ballet dancer. She's already en pointe, which means she dances in toe shoes. This proves how gifted she is. She's already danced in several professional productions and has been accepted to this great (and really demanding) ballet school in Stamford (which is about a half hour from Stoneybrook).
Jessi isn't stuck-up about her dancing. Not at all. Everything about her is very normal. She has a normal-sized family: a father, a mother, a sister (Becca, who is eight), and a baby brother named John Philip Jr., also known as Squirt. Her Aunt Cecelia lives with them. She stays home and takes care of things while Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey work.
Despite our differences (one of them being that 1 can't dance to save my life!), Jessi and 1 have tons in common. We love to read, especially about horses. Marguerite Henry's horse stories are our favorites. We love to baby-sit. And we are soooooo glad to be junior officers in the BSC.
As I've mentioned, the president of the BSC is Kristy Thomas. She has brown hair, brown eyes, and is very short. In fact, 1 think she's
the shortest girl in the eighth grade. When you're around Kristy, though, you don't think of her as a small person. Thaf s because she has such a big personality.
Kristy is loaded with energy. I guess you could call her a tomboy. She almost always wears jeans, a turtleneck shirt, a sweater, and running shoes. She coaches a softball team for little kids called Kristy's Krushers, and she's good at lots of sports.
To be honest, you could say that Kristy has kind of a big mouth and is on the bossy side, but that doesn't bother me. One reason the BSC works so well is that Kristy isn't afraid to take charge.
Besides, I understand how it feels to be part of a big family. (Kristy's family is now as large as mine.) In a big family you have to speak up if you want to be heard. And when you have younger brothers and sisters, you get used to being in charge. Giving orders starts to come naturally.
So, I can appreciate these things about Kristy, even though size is the only thing our families have in common. Unlike my plain old family, Kristy's is a modern blended kind of family. And the story of her family is pretty interesting.
The Thomases started out with two parents and four kids - Kristy, plus two older broth-
ers, Sam and Charlie, and one younger brother, David Michael. When David Michael was still a baby, Mr. Thomas walked out on the family, leaving Mrs. Thomas to raise four kids. (Can you imagine?) For a long time she struggled, but - like Kristy - she's a real dynamo, and she did very well.
After several years, Mrs. Thomas met and fell in love with Watson Brewer, who is (are you ready?) a millionare! He even lives in a mansion.
They got married, and Kristy and her brothers moved into his house. (Believe it or not, Kristy wasn't thrilled about this because she didn't want to move and she didn't like Watson. But now she's used to her new neighborhood and she's changed her mind about her stepfather.) When her mother got married, Kristy's family grew right away. Watson has two kids from his first marriage, Karen and Andrew, who are seven and four. Even though they only stay at Kristy's every other weekend, Kristy has grown close to them. Then, Watson and Kristy's mother adopted Emily Michelle, a little girl from Vietnam, who is two and a half. Finally, Nannie, Kristy's grandmother, moved in to help out with Emily Michelle. That means when Karen and Andrew are over, ten people live in Kristy's house, just like in mine - only I'm sure being
spread out in a mansion cuts down on the "pandemonium" quite a bit.
Do I sound jealous? Maybe I am, just a little. But it's nothing against Kristy. She's not snooty. In fact, she's a regular person, and a lot of fun.
Claudia Kishi is the vice-president of the BSC. She has that title mostly because we use her room and her telephone. Like Kristy, Claudia's a lot of fun, but I don't know if you'd call her a "regular person." For starters, Claudia is so beautiful it's almost unbelievable. She's Japanese-American and has this long, silky black hair, and dark, almond-shaped eyes.
But that isn't what makes her different. It's Claudia, herself, who's unique. (Okay, we're all unique.) Everything about Claudia is artistic. She paints, draws, makes pottery. Claudia looks artistic, too. She makes her own jewelry, and she wears her hair and clothing in really trendy, unusual ways.
Today was a good example. Claudia was wearing a pair of soft, balloony, purple pants; a neon green long-sleeve leotard top; a wide, red braided belt; and a pair of soft, red ballet shoes. Her hair was swept into a French braid with wispy tendrils hanging loose. From one ear dangled a long earring made up of small papier-mache tropical fruit. In the other ear,
where she had two holes, Claudia wore two small papier-mache hoops. (This earring set is her own creation.) If 1 wore an outfit like that, I'd look like a lunatic. But not Claudia. She looked like a fashion model.
Claudia adores junk food and Nancy Drew books (which she hides around her room because her parents don't approve of either). Here's what she hates: school. She is the worst student. I can't believe the words she spells wrong! Honestly, half the time I think she must be kidding. But she swears she's not. Claudia's teachers say Claudia just doesn't try hard enough. That might be because she doesn't want to be compared to her sixteen-year-old sister, }anine, who is an actual genius. But, anyway, I've never met anyone like Claudia, and I don't think I ever will.
Mary Anne Spier is our club secretary. She looks a bit like Kristy (who is one of her two best friends). They're both short with brown hair and eyes. But Mary Anne is very different from Kristy. She's quiet and sensitive. She cries easily. And while Kristy is a talker, Mary Anne is a listener. She's a very sweet person.
Mary Anne's mother died when she was small. For a long time, the Spier family was just Mary Anne and her father. Mr. Spier was very over-protective. Even in the seventh grade, Mary Anne still wore braids and these
dumpy little-kid jumpers. But now she looks much more fashionable. That's because Mr. Spier has loosened up a lot.
At this point, I have to stop and tell you about Dawn. Dawn is not only Mary Anne's other best friend, she's her stepsister!
Dawn is our alternate officer. That means she has to be ready to fill in for any other member who can't come to a BSC meeting for some reason. Dawn has long, long, long white-blonde hair and a casual-but-trendy way of dressing. (For example, today she was wearing black stirrup pants, a long, fleecy red-and-pink rose-print top and black high-top sneakers. She has two holes pierced in each ear. In those she wore four matching sparkly rose earrings.) Dawn is very pretty, but doesn't seem aware of it. I like that about her.
Another interesting thing about Dawn is that she only eats healthy food. No junk food at all, and she doesn't eat red meat. (I admire that, but I don't think I could do it.) Dawn also likes ghost stories and thinks her house might be haunted. There is even a real secret passageway leading from her bedroom to the old barn behind her house, which is now also Mary Anne's house.
Here's how that happened.
When Dawn first moved to Stoneybrook with her mother and younger brother, Jeff, she
didn't know anyone. Her mother was originally from Stoneybrook and had moved back here from California after she and Mr. Schafer got divorced. I think she wanted to be close to her parents (Dawn's grandparents), who still live in Stoneybrook.
The first person to befriend Dawn was Mary Anne. Then an amazing thing happened. While looking through Mrs. Schafer's old high school yearbook one day, Dawn and Mary Anne discovered that long ago their parents had dated in high school. They arranged for their parents to meet again and . . . Mr. Spier and Mrs. Schafer fell in love again. They dated for what seemed like an eternity, but finally they got married. Now they all live together in the Schafers' big farmhouse. (Except for Jeff, who went back to California to live with his dad.) Of course, everyone didn't adjust to this new situation overnight. But now they all seem pretty happy to me.
Last, but not least (as they say) is Stacey McGill. She's our treasurer and a real math whiz. Before moving to Stoneybrook, Stacey lived in New York City. You can tell she's a city girl. She's a lot more sophisticated than the rest of us; even slightly more so than Clau-dia, who is her best friend. Stacey dresses with great style (though not quite as artistically as Claudia). She has shoulder-length blonde hair,
which she usually wears permed, and big, gorgeous blue eyes.
I think Stacey is a little too thin, but thaf s probably because she has diabetes. A bad form of it, too. She can't eat sweets, except for a little fruit, and she has to give herself injections of insulin every single day. Everyday, forever! I can't imagine that! Stacey handles it pretty well, though, and hardly ever complains.
Besides being a diabetic, Stacey has had to deal with a lot of difficult things. First, her father got transferred back to New York from Stoneybrook. So just when Stacey was all settled in and happy here, she had to move again. (The Ramsey family moved into the McGills' old house.) Then, when she was back in New York, her parents decided to split up. Her mother decided to come back, again, to Stoneybrook. We were all really glad to see Stacey.
Oh, and just so you know, the dub also has two associate members, Shannon Kilbourne, and Logan Bruno. Shannon lives across the street from Kristy, And Logan is Mary Anne's boyfriend (remember?) (He speaks with this wonderful drawl, since he's from Kentucky.) They don't usually attend meetings, but if none of the regular club members can take a job, we call them.
Now I'm ready to tell you about the club. Kristy got the idea for it one day when she saw her mother making a million phone calls trying to find a baby-sitter for David Michael. It ocurred to Kristy that it would be great if her mother could call one number and get in touch with a whole bunch of baby-sitters at once. That was when she thought up the idea for the Baby-sitters Club.
Immediately, Kristy told Mary Anne and Claudia. They thought the idea was great. Then they decided they needed at least four members, so Claudia suggested Stacey.
The logical place for them to set up headquarters was in Claudia's room since she has her own private phone line. (No one else does. Stacey has an extension, but not her own number.) They wrote an announcement about their club and placed it in the Stoneybrook News. Then they made up fliers and passed them out all over the neighborhood. They were in business! They received job calls at their very first meeting.
Soon the club had more business than it could handle. Dawn joined and that helped some. But then Stacey had to leave, and the club was back to four members. That's when they asked Jessi and me to come in as junior officers. We're junior because we can only sit in the afternoons, not at night. But that frees