Stacey's Lie

by Ann M. Martin

  “Maybe I’m like you,” I said.

  “Maybe you are,” he agreed. “But it’s not a healthy way to be. It doesn’t do you any good. All it got me was a divorce. That’s not all there was to it, of course, but that trait didn’t help me with your mother. She’s much more direct.”

  “I’m sorry about not telling you about Robert,” I said. “You’re right. I was taking the easy way out. I should have been honest. Would you have minded coming here if I’d told you straight out?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’d have appreciated your honesty. I probably would have come around.”

  “And Claudia would have known what she was getting herself into if I’d told her,” I said. “She could have chosen.”

  Dad nodded. “I love you, honey. You’ll always be my girl. And life will go on — for both of us,” he said, putting his arm around me.

  I wiped my tears and smiled a little. “Claudia said Samantha is nice.”

  “She is,” said Dad with a grin. “Tell you what. Why don’t you come out to dinner with us tonight? You can start getting to know her.”

  I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. But it felt so good to be talking to Dad again. “All right,” I said. “I love you, too, Dad.”

  He reached across and ruffled my hair. “We’re some pair, huh,” he said. “Two of a kind.”

  “Dad, do you think we’re sneaky and conniving?” I asked.

  He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms thoughtfully. “No,” he said after a moment. “I think we don’t like confrontation and unpleasantness. It’s very tempting to avoid issues when you’re like that. But avoidance is a form of lying, and it leads you into real lies. You know, I didn’t even realize all that about myself until Samantha pointed it out.”

  “Want to go down to the beach?” I asked him.

  “I can’t right now,” he said. “I’m waiting for Sam to call about tonight. How about if I meet you down there?”

  “All right,” I agreed.

  I changed into my bathing suit, grabbed a towel, and headed out onto the boardwalk. Halfway to the beach, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned and saw Robert running toward me. “Stacey, wait!” he called.

  I stopped and waited for him to catch up. I spoke first. “Robert, listen. I know I’ve done some awful things lately. I don’t blame you for thinking badly of me. But I’ve learned my lesson. Really. I don’t want to lose you. I promise that you’ll never catch me lying to you or anyone else again.”

  “Thanks. But I was too hard on you,” Robert said. “I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because I think of you as perfect. This is the first time I’ve seen a side of you that isn’t … well … isn’t perfect. I’m really sorry.”

  “You don’t want to break up?” I asked hopefully.

  “No, no, not at all. I got on the ferry and I realized that that was what I’d done. I hadn’t meant to, but somehow it came out sounding like that. When I figured it out, I couldn’t wait to get back and try to make things right. I ran all the way here.”

  I threw my arms around him. He hugged me back.

  Now there was just one more person I had to make things right with.

  “Will you walk me back to the dock?” Robert asked.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I need to make an important phone call.” I walked with him as far as our beach house. “Do you want to come out to dinner with my dad, Samantha, and me tonight?” I asked.

  Robert made a funny, fake-horrified face. “Do I have to?”

  “No,” I said.

  “All right. I will.”

  I kissed him happily. “I’ll meet you when you come in off your last ferry run.”

  Then I went inside to call Claudia, and tell her I was sorry.

  “Mom!” I cried as I stepped off the train at the Stoneybrook station. She was waiting on the platform. It was so great to see her. I hugged her tight.

  We loaded all my stuff into the car and headed toward home. “Would you mind dropping me off at Claudia’s?” I asked.

  “Stacey, I haven’t seen you in two weeks!” Mom objected.

  “I won’t be there long,” I promised. “It’s really important that I talk to her.”

  “I ran into Claudia at the mall,” Mom said. “Of course I was surprised to see her, since I thought she was with you. She told me what had happened, but I had the feeling she wasn’t telling me everything.”

  I looked at Mom. Claudia probably had left out the part about Samantha. “She told you about Robert, though, I guess,” I said, wanting to avoid the Samantha subject myself.

  Mom nodded. “You should have been more honest, Stacey.”

  “I know, believe me!” I said. “I’ve learned my lesson. That’s why I have to go straighten things out with Claudia in person.”

  “I understand,” said Mom as she pulled up to the curb in front of Claudia’s house.

  “Thanks,” I said, kissing her cheek before I slid out of the front seat.

  Claudia must have spotted the car, because she opened the front door before I even rang the bell. “Hi,” I said, feeling a little shy.

  “Come on in,” Claudia said. We went up to her room and shut the door.

  For the first time ever, I felt awkward and out of place in Claudia’s room. I stood by the door nervously. “I just want to say that I will never do anything like that to you — or to anyone — again. I’m really, really sorry,” I said. “I hope we can go back to being best friends.”

  “I hope so, too,” Claudia agreed seriously.

  I nodded and smiled. “Oh, and I have these for you,” I said, pulling a large yellow envelope from my shoulder bag. In the envelope were two of the photos which had been displayed at the Beach Glass Gallery, three receipts, and … “There’s sixty dollars in there,” I told her. “You sold three photos. Dad bought one for Samantha.”

  “Wow!” said Claudia, taking the envelope. “People actually bought them. I can’t believe it. But, you know, I thought they were pretty good.”

  “They’re beautiful photographs,” I said sincerely.

  Claudia folded the money. “I’m low on baby-sitting money after taking a week off. This money will buy chips, art supplies, and Nancy Drews.”

  “That’s all you need to be happy,” I said.

  “No,” Claudia said seriously. “I need my best friend, too.”

  “So do I,” I said as I hugged her. “I won’t let anything, not even a boy, ever come between us again.”

  “I have something for you, too,” said Claudia. She opened her top drawer and pulled out the photo of both of us building the sand castle together. It was enlarged and matted. “Here,” she said. “I had this done up for you after you called on Thursday. I’ve done some thinking, too. I might have overreacted some. I could have been more understanding. After all, what are friends for?”

  I took the photo from her. On the mat was written, “Friends Forever by Claudia Kishi.”

  “Thanks, Claud,” I said. “This is the best present in the world.”

  After that, I had to head home. Mom would be upset if I stayed away too long. Besides, I had missed her, too. When I got home, she was weeding her garden, but I knew she was really waiting for me. (Mom only weeds when she’s killing time.) “Are you guys friends again?” she asked when she saw me coming up the front walk.

  “Yup,” I said and showed her the photo Claudia had given me.

  “That’s lovely,” said Mom, looking at the photograph. “Stacey, I’m sure Claudia wasn’t telling me something,” Mom pressed. “What was it?”

  I have to admit that my first impulse was to come up with some story. I knew Mom wouldn’t want to hear about Samantha. Even though she and Dad are divorced, I think Mom still has a lot of feelings for him. I was sure she wouldn’t like the idea of my spending two weeks with a potential stepmother, either. (Although Dad told me he and Sam aren’t nearly that serious yet.) I was opening my mouth to say that the only thing Claud had left out was that D
ad and I had had a little disagreement in the beginning.

  Then — thank goodness — I caught myself.

  “What she didn’t tell you is that Dad has a new girlfriend, and she was there. Not in our house, but in Davis Park. Dad didn’t tell me at first, and we had a big fight over it.”

  Mom sat back on her heels and absorbed this information. “Did you meet her?”

  “Yeah, she’s all right.”

  “Are you okay with it?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t at first, but now I am. How about you?”

  “It was bound to happen sooner or later,” she said slowly. “It will take me a little while to get used to it. Thank you for telling me.”

  “I figured you should know,” I said.

  Mom smiled a little. “Yes, I should know something like that.”

  The rest of Saturday and Sunday passed quietly. I spent most of Sunday evening writing Robert a long letter, just sort of going over everything that had happened. After all those rough spots, our double date with Dad and Samantha had gone really well. We all had a good time and started to relax with one another. From then on in, the rest of the vacation was great. Spending so much time with Robert was the best. It made me miss him even more now.

  By Monday, the whole vacation was starting to seem like something that had happened long ago. I was back at our regular BSC meeting, sitting on Claudia’s bed and collecting dues, just like always.

  Logan Bruno was there. (He doesn’t always come to meetings, but since he was around, he’d decided to drop in). He was busily reading the club notebook, bringing himself up to date. He’d been away (in Louisville, Kentucky, where he used to live), so he wanted to catch up on everything that had been happening while he was gone. “Are Vanessa and Haley still friends?” he asked as he closed the book.

  “They are such lovey-dovey friends that it’s sickening,” Mallory told him. “Our day camp job was fun, but I’m glad it’s over. For the last few days, they were constantly saying stuff like: ‘Excuse me, Haley, my most wonderful friend,’ ‘What, Vanessa, my number one best bud?’ ‘Oh, you smudged your sneaker, Haley, allow me to wipe it for you.’ It got to be too much after awhile.”

  “At least I can get away from them,” Jessi laughed. “Mal is stuck with them at her house all summer.”

  “That’s why I’m never home,” Mal said, rolling her eyes.

  “Well, if you want to escape from your house, we’ll have plenty of work for you,” said Kristy. “A lot of our customers are coming home from vacation. Our little holiday from baby-sitting is about to come to an end.”

  I can’t say that made me sad. I’d had about enough of vacations for a while. I was eager for normal life — and that meant being friends with Claudia again. I hope Claudia and I will be friends forever. And that’s no lie!

  * * *

  Dear Reader,

  In Stacey’s Lie, Stacey visits Davis Park, a community on Fire Island. Davis Park is a real place, and I chose it because as an adult, I used to go there in the summertime. Every summer for about five years, my friends and I would rent a house and spend the weekends there. We had a great time, and we did a lot of the things that Stacey does in the book. We took walks on the beach, we ate dinner at the Casino, and we shopped at the one small store in town. Since I lived in New York City at the time, I loved the fact that there are no cars allowed in Davis Park. There are no streets. People walk everywhere, the houses are connected by boardwalks, and we would pull luggage or groceries around in little red wagons.

  I liked Fire Island so much that I set two other books, Just a Summer Romance and Eleven Kids, One Summer, in Davis Park. I haven’t been there in many years, but I’ll always have fond memories of it.

  Happy reading,

  * * *

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Suzanne Weyn

  for her help in

  preparing this manuscript

  About the Author

  ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.

  There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.

  Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.

  Copyright © 1994 by Ann M. Martin

  Cover art by Hodges Soileau

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  First edition, June 1994

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-76844-3