Baby-Sitters Beware Read Free Page A

Spier raised Mary Anne alone. He wanted to make sure that he did it right (and he clearly did) so he was very, very strict. It took Mary Anne awhile to make him see that she wouldn't be a little girl who needed little-girl rules forever.
    Gradually he loosened up, (especially after Mary Anne showed him how responsible she was already) and now she doesn't have to wear little kid clothes (or braids!) anymore. He's even calm about the fact that Logan (yes, one of the associate members of the BSC) is Mary Anne's steady boyfriend. In fact, her father is pretty all around reasonable these days.
    And that’s not just because of Mary Anne. Dawn Schafer had something to do with it, too.
    How?
    Well, Dawn and Mary Anne became best friends not long after Dawn moved to Stoneybrook, with her mother and brother, from California. Dawn's mother had grown up in Stoneybrook and was returning after she and Dawn's father divorced. Soon Dawn and Mary Anne discovered that Dawn's mom and Mary Anne's dad had been high-school sweethearts. They put their heads together and gave .the old romance a new push, and it worked! Sharon Schafer became Sharon Schafer Spier, and Mary Anne and her father (and her kitten Tigger) moved into the old farmhouse where Dawn and her mom were living. (Dawn's brother Jeff had moved back to California before the wedding.)
    Since Dawn and Mary Anne were best friends, they were pleased that they could be sisters, too. Here's another case of very different people getting along. Dawn, who is tall and has long, straight blonde hair and blue eyes, and two holes pierced in each earlobe, is quiet but not at all shy. And she has very strong feelings about things. She's practically a vegetarian. She avoids all sweets (she calls sugar poison!), and is careful about what she eats. She's very environmentally conscious, too.
    We miss Dawn, and I know Mary Anne misses her most of all.
    Claudia and Stacey are best friends, too. They are both a little more fashion conscious than the rest of us. Stacey's sense of style has a New York spin to it, while Claudia's is more artistic. For example, for this early December meeting when most of us were in jeans and sweaters, Stacey (who is tall and on the thin side, with blonde hair and pale blue eyes) wore black leggings with cowboy boots, an oversized turtleneck sweater, and this cool black suede vest with pearl buttons. Claudia (who is Japanese-American with creamy, perfect skin, brown eyes, and long, straight black hair) was wearing leggings, too — purple ones — with black Doc Martens, red slouch socks,
    black bicycle shorts over the leggings, a big T-shirt with the words "This Might Be Art" scrawled on it in purple (I knew she'd made it herself), and an old black suit jacket of her father's, with the sleeves rolled up. Stacey had gone for your basic gold earrings. Claudia's earrings were purple feathers (she made those herself, too).
    They both looked fantastic. I think they would have drawn admiring looks from people even on a crowded street in New York.
    But even though they are best friends, like Mary Anne and Kristy, and Mary Anne and Dawn, Claudia and Stacey are very, very different.
    For example, when it comes to school, Claudia would rather be anywhere else — maybe even the dentist's. She is not a good student, and she is what you might call a creative speller. Although she's an extremely talented artist, maybe even a genius, her teachers and her parents still insist, to her complete puzzlement, that other school stuff is important, too.
    Claudia tries, but she often needs help. And her parents still go over her homework with her every night.
    To make it tougher, Claudia's sister Janine is a real, live, academic-type genius. Even
    though she's only in high school, she's already taking courses at the local college.
    But Claudia manages not to let it bother her, most of the time. She goes on seeing the world her way, making art, and appreciating junk food and Nancy Drew mysteries (two