Ann Martin - Baby-Sitters Club 090

BSC090 - Welcome to the BSC, Abby - Martin, Ann M.

Chapter 1.

The people in Stoneybrook name their cars. Or at least, some of them do. Such as a neighbor of mine. Residing in her driveway are two cars with names - the Junk Bucket and the Pink Clinker.

I do not need to describe these cars. The names tell their stories. In fact, that they even have names tells a story in itself.

But when in Rome do as the Romans do. And when in Stoneybrook, do as the Stoney-brookians do, right?

"I dub this . . . this . . . means of transportation the Wheeze Wagon," I said as the Stoneybrook Middle School bus wheezed, heaved, coughed, and groaned to a stop. It gave a final lurch just as I stood up, and I almost fell into the people sitting in the seats across from me. I saved myself just in time.

Kristy Thomas, who rides the bus with me and gets off at the same stop, started to grin.

(Okay, okay, Kristy is the neighbor I was talking about, although she's not the owner of the cars with names, just related to the owners.) "I think this thing sounds like it has a cold. Or the flu." "Or asthma and major allergies," I added as the bus coughed a few times. We made a quick exit and the bus made a slow turn around the corner and out of sight.

Not surprisingly, Kristy didn't say anything. Kristy is a bossy beast, but she is polite. Just like all the rest of the Stoneybrookians. Which means she is not going to comment on asthma and allergies, since I am saddled with both. Life makes me sneeze.

Good thing it makes me laugh, too.

"I'm going to name that thing that just departed, that the Stoneybrook school system calls a bus," I continued. "Seriously. I'm calling it the Wheeze Wagon." That brought the grin back to Kristy's face. "So I heard," she said.

I was on a roll. "This bus gets to the garage and it says to the other buses, T've got such a headache. I'm allergic to the roads, and what do they make me do all day? Roads, roads, roads. I wanted to be a boat, but does anybody listen to me?' " Kristy started laughing then and we went our separate ways. She went to a nice big house full of a million people, animals, and even a ghost.

I went to a nice big house, too. Only it was empty.

Surprise, surprise.

"Honey, I'm home," I called, just like the old sitcom fathers called to their wives, before the wives got smart and got out of the unpaid labor of housework.

(So sue me. Housewives get no respect, no pay, and no tax deductions.) Speaking of "r-e-s-p-e-c-t" (which is the name of a song by Aretha Franklin, in case you didn't know), I decided to put on some music. I am not musical the way my twin sister Anna is (in fact, in many ways I do not resemble Anna at all, which makes me wonder sometimes why we are twins), but I do enjoy cranking my music up loud. I like it to fill up empty rooms and leak out of the windows and doors.

Loud music makes me less lonely.

So where was Anna? Where were our parents?

Good questions. I'm glad you asked.

But enough about you. Let's talk about me.

I'm Abby. Abigail Stevenson. I am not a native Stoneybrookian as you might have guessed. I come from far, far away.

Okay, I come from Long Island, which is not all that far from Stoneybrook. But sometimes it seems like another planet.

I mean I have things in common with the local flora and fauna, and I'm starting to make friends, but I feel like an alien sometimes. I talk faster, I walk faster, I think faster. And sometimes I say things that make people's mouths drop open and their eyes pop out.

My schtick is different. (Schtick is a great Yiddish word, isn't it? Yiddish is an old Germanic language originally spoken chiefly by Jews from eastern Europe, which is where my family is from originally.) Schtick, by the way, sort of means "the things I do that make me me." I have a picture of me playing soccer on my team in Long Island (I was the star forward, the leading scorer, and the co-captain) and it's a blur. You can tell who I am, but I am definitely moving fast. What I'm doing in that picture (I remember that game well) is leaving the other team in the dust. Watching the defense scramble after me to try in vain to stop me. Scoring. Making their goalie hate the sight of me.

But the picture represents how I feel. A blur. Moving fast. And then wondering why the only people who are keeping up with me are the ones who are trying to slow me down.

I stuck Aretha in the CD player and cranked her up. My homework could wait.

Walls of boxes lined most of the rooms. Although we'd had an interior decorator get the house ready before we'd arrived, and even though we'd delayed moving in just to make sure that everything was right, we still hadn't unpacked most of our stuff. Mom had plunged back into work even more vigorously than ever. (Her recent big promotion meant that we could move to Stoneybrook, and into a big new house). Anna had resubmerged in her music, particularly her violin studies, and I just haven't been motivated.

As for my father ... he died in a car accident when I was nine years old.

So that's our family. Absent, mostly.

It wasn't always this way. When my father was alive there were only four of us, but somehow, it seemed like more. We were always cooking. Literally. My mom liked to cook. She had started training as a chef at this place in New York called the Culinary Institute of America. When Anna and I were kids she taught cooking at a local college. My father was deeply involved in environmental engineering and urban planning. (Believe me, Long Island could use all the environmental help it could get. Like it has this incredible stretch of land called the Pine Barrens that some people still want to turn into parking lots!) I remember my parents used to joke about designing an environmentally correct restaurant and building it in a tree.

Anna and I actually had a treehouse. For our birthday one year, when we were little, we held a picnic dinner in the treehouse. Dad lowered a bucket on a string - Anna and I "helped" - and Mom put the food in the bucket. Then she climbed up to join us. It was so much fun. Dad would laugh at anything, and the way he laughed, everybody else would find themselves joining in.

But that changed after the car wreck.

I try not to think about it. They said he was killed instantly. That he never knew what happened.

The truck driver who ran into his car got a broken arm.

After that it felt wrong to laugh. Sometimes it felt wrong even to be alive.

Mom never mentioned Dad's name after the funeral.

Neither did my friends. They were cool, they helped by just being there. But I caught some of them watching me, as if I were going to break down and scream. Or cry.

But I didn't cry.

Mom changed jobs. She became an editor at a publishing house. She worked and worked and worked. She commuted into New York City every single day except some Saturdays. She stopped cooking. Suddenly Anna and I were on our own, and we learned how to order take-out food big-time. Mom hired a housekeeper who took care of the house during the day.

And then one day at school I started laughing at this really dumb joke that my best friend was telling and I suddenly remembered how my dad used to laugh all the time. I laughed harder and harder and I couldn't stop.

I couldn't even stop when class began. I had to run to the bathroom. The next thing I knew I was sitting in the bathroom stall laughing and crying and wheezing and trying not to throw up at the same time.

After that I went home from school. Just walked out. I told Mom and Anna I'd gotten really sick, and I stayed home from school for a few days.

Although my sense of humor wasn't ever quite the way it was when my father was alive, it felt okay to laugh again. Laughing, I could remember my dad, and think he might be laughing, too.