Stacey leaned back against the pillows. “I’m glad things worked out for you.”
“I’m sorry they didn’t work out for you,” I said, reaching for my pajamas.
Stacey sighed. “Well, at least it’s been an interesting vacation. Never a dull moment.”
“Never a dull moment,” I repeated.
“You know what, Mary Anne? I think I’ll be kind of glad to get back to Stoneybrook.”
“Mmm, me, too.” I pulled on my pajamas and fell into bed.
“Do you think Stoneybrook will seem dull after Sea City?”
I yawned and buried my head in the pillow. “No,” I mumbled. “I think it will seem … peaceful.” Stacey said something else, but I had already pulled the quilt over my shoulders and was heading for a dream.
“Who has the beach blankets?”
“My bathing suit is still wet!”
“My inner tube has a leak.”
“Good, it has to be deflated anyway.”
Moving out of the Sea City house was just as hectic as moving in. Maybe more so. Let’s face it, packing up to go home is never as much fun as unpacking in a new place. The excitement just isn’t there. The house looked empty now that most of our belongings were stashed in the cars.
Mr. Pike was cooking an early breakfast, while I helped Mrs. Pike clean out the refrigerator.
“At least we don’t have many leftovers,” she said, tossing some cold cuts into a cooler. “How about the pantry?” she said to Stacey, who was opening cabinet doors all over the kitchen.
“It’s almost bare,” Stacey said. “So far all I’ve found are some stale potato chips, a piece of bubble gum, and three Oreo cookies.” She peered at something moving on one of the shelves. “Yuck! And a few ants.”
“You don’t have to pack those,” Mr. Pike teased her.
All of the kids wanted to take a last swim after breakfast, but the sky was overcast, and they finally decided against it. I was glad. Now that our vacation was over, I was eager to get back to Stoneybrook. Of course I had one important thing to do before we left. I had to keep my promise to Vanessa to take her to Ice-Cream Palace.
“It would have been nice if the sun was shining on our last day here,” Stacey said, sitting down to breakfast. “I could have used another hour on the backs of my legs.”
“The backs of your legs look fine,” Mal told her. Stacey had been aiming for the perfect tan for the past two weeks. She brought her watch to the beach and carefully turned over every half hour so her tan would be even. She reminded me of a chicken rotating on a barbecue grill, but I didn’t tell her so. (I still looked as pale as ever, because I had worn my caftan and hat every single day.)
“Can we play on the beach before we go, Dad?” Adam asked.
“Yeah, let’s build one more sand castle,” Jordan chimed in.
Mr. Pike looked at Mrs. Pike. “I’ll leave it up to you.”
“Well, I don’t know,” Mrs. Pike began, “the swimsuits are packed now.”
“We don’t need our suits to play in the sand,” Nicky said.
“You win.” Mrs. Pike got up and started to clear the table. “I want to get going by eleven, though.” She looked at Stacey and me. “We seem to have everything under control here. Is there anything you girls would like to do before we leave?”
“I think I’ll play with the kids on the beach,” Stacey said. “Who knows? Maybe you can get a tan on a cloudy day.”
I caught up with Stacey as she was heading toward the porch. “There’s something Vanessa and I have to do in town,” I said quickly. “Can you and Mal handle things here while we’re gone?”
“Sure.” Stacey looked puzzled but didn’t ask any questions.
I told Mrs. Pike that Vanessa wanted one last trip into town. Then I nodded to Vanessa, who was clutching her poem in her hand, and we headed for Ice-Cream Palace.
I was feeling a little nervous by this time, but Vanessa was very cool as we walked along the boardwalk. I found out that she had planned everything down to the second.
“Slow up a little,” she said. “I want to get there exactly at ten-fifteen.”
“You do? What happens at ten-fifteen?”
“That’s when the other boy behind the counter takes his break. Chris is really busy then because he has to handle all the customers himself.”
I was amazed at the way she had thought things out. “What are we going to do exactly?”
She smiled. “You’ll see.”
We peered in the window just as a sandy-haired boy flung his cap on the counter and headed out the front door. Right on cue, a bunch of giggling girls barreled into Ice-Cream Palace and nearly collided with him.
“Perfect,” Vanessa said under her breath. “Chris will go crazy trying to wait on all those kids at once.”
She grabbed my hand, and we sneaked in behind the girls. Chris was facing us, scooping out ice cream. Vanessa hung back for a moment, staying out of sight. She waited until he turned around to use the whipped-cream machine, and then she darted forward to toss the note on the counter. Before I knew what had happened, the whole thing was over and we were outside.
Hearts pounding, we took a few steps and then stopped to hug each other. “We made it!” Vanessa cried.
“We made it,” I echoed. I was glad to see she could smile about it.
* * *
Later that day, we were back in Stoneybrook. I was practically bouncing off the seat when Mrs. Pike pulled into my driveway.
“You did a great job, honey,” Mrs. Pike said, handing me an envelope. I knew it contained a nice check, but that was the last thing on my mind. I wanted to run right inside and see everyone.
“Good-bye, Mary Anne!” shouted Stacey and the Pikes as I raced for the kitchen door.
When I burst into the kitchen, Sharon was standing at the sink. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re back!” she said, giving me a big hug. “We really missed you.”
“I missed you, too.”
A moment later, Dad hurried in to hug me, with Tigger at his heels. “He’s been meowing since you left,” Dad said. “I think he was lonely.”
I scooped up Tigger and cradled him in my arms. He started purring like a motorboat and I knew he was happy to see me. And I was happy to be back. I looked around the kitchen as if I had never seen it before. Sea City had been fun, but it was great to be home.
“Where’s Dawn?”
“She’s upstairs lying down,” Sharon said. “But she asked me to wake her up the minute you got back.”
Dawn was napping in the middle of the day? “What’s wrong? Is she sick?” I asked.
“She flew in from California yesterday and she has jet lag. She’s been acting like a zombie. If you want to relax for a minute, I’ll go get her.”
I decided to make a quick phone call while I waited for Dawn to make her appearance. A moment later, Logan’s warm voice came flowing through the phone wires.
“Hi, it’s me,” I said softly. I was trying to sound cool, but I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice.
“You’re back!” Logan exclaimed. He sounded really pleased, and I could feel myself grinning from ear to ear.
“I just got here.”
“I missed you.”
“Me, too,” I assured him.
We made plans to see each other after dinner and said good-bye just as Dawn staggered down the stairs in her bathrobe. She looked like she had been awake for forty-eight hours. Her face was pale, her eyes were glazed over, and her long hair was lifeless. “Hi there,” she said.
“Hi yourself.” I put my arms around her and squeezed her tightly. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Dawn opened her mouth in a jaw-breaking yawn and then collapsed on the sofa. “I’m okay. I just feel like I want to sleep for a year.”
“I’ll make you girls some cinnamon-apple tea while you catch up on things,” Sharon offered.
“That would be nice, Mom.” Dawn yawned again. When we were alone, she tucked a p
illow behind her head. “Okay,” she said. “You go first. I want to hear everything about Sea City.”
“Everything?”
“You can start by telling me about Alex. And Toby — is that the boy Stacey was going out with? And I want to hear what happened with Vanessa.” Dawn had obviously paid close attention to the postcards I’d sent her.
“This is going to take awhile,” I said, settling down on the floor. Tigger immediately jumped into my lap. “The problem is there were just so many boys. Things got so complicated.”
“That’s okay,” Dawn said, waving her hand. “Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out. I’m not going anywhere.”
I took a deep breath and plunged in. “It all started when we saw Alex and Toby on the beach. Or I should say, when they saw us….”
Dawn and I talked until dinnertime, and afterward she sat on my bed while I unpacked.
“So you think Vanessa is over her broken heart?” she asked me.
“I’m sure of it. She handled it very well. I’m proud of her.” I reached for a pile of T-shirts, and something white caught my eye. A piece of notebook paper was tucked between my shirts.
It was a poem from Vanessa, and my eyes misted over when I read it.
“Yes,” I said softly. “I think Vanessa will be just fine.”
* * *
Dear Reader,
In Mary Anne and Too Many Boys, Mary Anne finds herself torn between Logan and Alex. In the end, she realizes that Logan is the boy for her. Many kids write to me saying they are concerned because they don’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend. While Mary Anne may be ready for a steady relationship, lots of kids her age are not! The truth is, many kids feel more comfortable being a friend instead of a boyfriend or girlfriend — like Mary Anne and Alex. Or Kristy and Bart. Sometimes knowing when you’re ready for a relationship can be confusing. The most important thing is always to do what feels right for you.
Happy reading,
* * *
The author gratefully acknowledges Mary Lou Kennedy 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 © 1990 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, March 1996
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 978-0-545-63317-8
Mary Anne and Too Many Boys Page 8