"Martin, Ann M - Baby-sitters Club - Super Special 01 - Baby-sitters on Board!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Ann M)

But he perked up on the Starlight Deck, where we found another cafe, two fancy
swimming pools, an ice cream parlor, a disco, a teen center, a bar, and Ч best of all Ч a movie theater.
"Presents ten movies a day," I read on the sign outside the theater. "Ten movies!" All thoughts of Alexandra Carmody flew out of my head. I love movies Ч old ones, new ones, love stories, space adventures, stories about kids in high school. "I'm changing my mind," I told Nicky and Vanessa. "I think the Starlight Deck is my favorite."
"It might be mine, too," said Nicky, "but look. We have at least one more deck to go." He pointed up a short flight of stairs, where an arrow indicated the way to the Sun Deck.
The Sun Deck, which turned out to be the very top deck of the ship, might not have been the most interesting level, but it certainly turned out to be the most exciting. At first it simply seemed, as Vanessa noted, "too healthy." It was where we found the largest of the swimming pools, a jogging track, lounge chairs, and the health spa.
"Boring," said Nicky, but just then Vanessa exclaimed, "Hey, look!"
"What?" I cried.
In a corner of the deck sat a shabby life raft.
A tarp had been pulled over it.
"What's so great about an old raft?" asked Nicky.
"Not the raft, the head!" cried Vanessa.
Sure enough, a sandy-haired head was peeking out of the raft. A hand moved the tarp partway aside, the head poked even further up, and then in one swift movement, the tarp was shoved off, and a tall boy leaped out of his hiding place and darted down a flight of steps.
"After him!" cried Nicky.
Nicky and Vanessa chased the boy, and I chased Nicky and Vanessa. But the boy had gotten a headstart. By the time we reached the bottom of the staircase that he'd run down, he was nowhere in sight.
"Awesome!" exclaimed Nicky for the umpteenth time that day.
And Vanessa added, "I can't believe it. I cannot believe it! Do you know what, Mary Anne? There's a stowaway on the Ocean Princess!"
c TTll A P T] E R
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t was perfect, absolutely perfect. I couldn't have asked for a better arrangement. The thing is, I had just finished reading Harriet the Spy. Well, not really just finished, but pretty recently. I had finished it about a week before my family left on our trip. And I wanted to be just like Harriet. Well, not really just like her, since she had a lot of problems. But I wanted to keep a notebook like hers, a notebook in which I could write down things about people. And I couldn't imagine a better place to do that than on a huge ship full of people. There were bound to be some interesting ones to write about. Now, I know Harriet's notebook got her in trouble, but I wanted to keep one anyway. I'd just be extra careful that my notebook wasn't discovered the way Harriet's was. Besides, I'd be writing mostly about
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strangers, not about people I knew. I told myself that if Mom or anyone caught me, I could say that this was a writing exercise, which was true, and which would sound believable since I might become a writer one day. (You never know.)
The perfect part of the arrangement came when Stacey announced that us older Pikes Ч the triplets and me Ч were allowed to go off on our own. We didn't have to stick with Mom or Dad or Stacey or Mary Anne. Not that I don't like them, and not that Stacey and Mary Anne aren't a lot of fun, but it sure was going to be easier to spy and to write in my notebook if I could look around the ship alone.
So after the triplets ran off, with big plans to go find people wearing goofy bathing caps and laugh at them, I started to go off, too.
"Don't you want to come exploring with Nicky and Vanessa and me?" asked Mary Anne.
I did, I really did Ч but not as much as I wanted to go spying. "Thanks," I said, "but I'll look around by myself." I rolled my eyes, trying to make Mary Anne think I'd had it up to here with Vanessa, and Mary Anne grinned. Then I pretended to leave. I walked away, but after I'd rounded a corner, I hid behind a door
until I'd seen Mary Anne go off in one direction with Nicky and Vanessa, and Stacey go off in the other with Margo and Claire.
Then I ducked back into the cabin I was sharing with Vanessa and Mary Anne. I rummaged around in my suitcase until I found the new spying book I'd bought three days ago. It was a spiral notebook with a shiny green cover. As a precaution, I'd written OUR TRIP: A DAILY DIARY across the front. That was something that sounded fairly boring, should the book happen to fall into the wrong hands Ч not that I'd be careless enough to leave the diary where anyone might find it.
I grabbed a pen out of my purse and was ready to go, but where? The ship was huge. I'd seen a diagram of it showing where the shops and restaurants and swimming pools and everything were. There were eight decks on the ship, from the Island Deck on the bottom to the Sun Deck on the top. At least I wouldn't have to worry much about running into my brothers and sisters. If you wanted to, you could probably get lost on the Ocean Princess.
I decided to start my spying right where I was, on the Dolphin Deck, but all I found were
cabins, cabins, and more cabins. No people. No interesting people anyway. Maybe I needed an interesting deck in order to find interesting people.
I made my way up to the Tropical Deck. That was the level with a theater, a casino, a video games room, and some restaurants and stuff. My luck up there was much better. Trying to look inconspicuous, I settled myself on a lounge chair on the veranda that wound around the deck. Almost the first person who walked toward me was a girl about Stacey and Mary Anne's age (or maybe a little older) with long, dark, wavy hair. She was wearing the teeniest bikini you can imagine, and she looked as sophisticated as if she'd just stepped out of a fancy penthouse apartment in New York City.
She paused to look at the ocean and soon a cute boy paused next to her. He smiled at her in this sort of coy way.
Gosh! Maybe something like that will happen to me someday.
"Great view," said the boy. "Look, you can still see land."
The girl yawned. "It is great, I guess. It's just that it's no big de^al. I mean for me. I live down here."
Darn. So she wasn't a New Yorker after all.
"Well," the girl went on, "I live here when I'm not making movies."
"You're an actress?" said the boy. "Wow." He took the girl by her elbow and they sauntered off together.
I wrote furiously, trying to get down everything I'd heard. When I was finished the boy and girl were gone, but I stayed right where I was Ч like a fisherman who's caught a trout and decides he's found a lucky spot on the riverbank.
A few people strolled by me on the veranda Ч no one out of the ordinary. Then this old man came by. The thing that made me notice him was that he just looked so sad. He leaned against the railing and stared out at the water. I could tell he was thinking of something else, and that the something, whatever it was, made him feel just awful.
I was right in the middle of inventing a tragic past for the man when I caught sight of Kristy and Claudia. Oh, no! I didn't want them to see me, but it was too late to get up and hide. I scrunched myself against the back of the lounge chair and bent Over as far as I could. At least they wouldn't be able to see my face.
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Then they walked by and I could tell that, like the man, they weren't really seeing the ocean, or anything else. They were very caught up in their conversation.
"I know I'm a slob," Kristy was saying, "but why should it matter to Dawn? Can't she ignore it?"
"I don't know," Claudia replied. "Why don't Ч "
"Excuse me," said a third voice, and I dared to look up.
The old man had stopped Kristy and Claudia!
"Do you have the time?" he asked them.
"Sure," replied Kristy. "If s three forty-five."