“Whoa, it’s six o’clock,” said Kristy suddenly, and the meeting broke up, the six of us still calling thank you to one another.
Not until Jessi and I were outside and walking down the Kishis’ driveway did I say, “Hey, Jessi, you didn’t open —”
“I know,” she interrupted me. “For some reason, I wanted to do it in private.” She pulled my present out of her purse, and we stopped while she tore the paper off the box. “Ooh,” she breathed as she peered inside, “books. Just like yours.” She paused. “So we can be twins?” she asked.
We both laughed, thinking of Marilyn and Carolyn.
“No,” I replied. “Best friends.”
“Oh. Best friends,” Jessi repeated, and gave me a big hug.
Then we headed for our homes.
* * *
Dear Reader,
When I was young, I thought it would be fun to have an identical twin sister. A popular TV show then was The Patty Duke Show, about a teenage girl and her cousin growing up in Brooklyn. Patty and Cathy were identical. They looked so much alike that they were able to fool people. I knew several sets of twins, including my cousins Lyman and Jimmy, but none of them were identical. They couldn’t get away with what Patty and Cathy could on the show. So I created twins who could — Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold. In fact, I like identical twins so much that I put a set in the Baby-sitters Little Sister series, and the newest member of the Baby-sitters Club is a twin, too. Who knows what kind of trouble Abby and her sister, Anna, will get into?
Happy reading,
* * *
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 © 1989 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, January 1997
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 978-0-545-62806-8
Mallory and the Trouble With Twins Page 9