"Babysitters Club 028 Welcome Back, Stacey!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Babysitters Club)

"Eighteen-eighty," I whispered to Claud. "Pretty old."
We stepped into a dark hallway. The house smelled musty, the air was stale, and a thin layer of dust covered everything.
"It has the typical old-house problems, but with just a little work, you can see that it would be a lovely home. Not too big, not too small, and plenty of attractive old features." Ms. Keller showed us a bathtub resting on claw feet, a bedroom with dormer windows, and a kitchen with appliances that appeared
to be about a thousand years old.
"They all work, though," Ms. Keller informed us. Then she added, "At least for the time being."
Mom looked at me. I shrugged. It was kind of a neat house, but still . . .
"I'll give you my answer within a week," Mom told the agent.
Chapter 10.
Dawn was on the phone with her brother Jeff when Claudia and I called her from the Kishis' house. Since the Schafers have call-waiting, Dawn put Jeff on hold and spoke to us for a few moments.
"You'll never guess where I am," I told her.
"Where?" asked Dawn.
"In Stoneybrook. I'm over at Claud's. Mom and I were up here house-hunting today, and Mom drove back to New York, but she said I could spend the night here and take the train home tomorrow."
Claud took the phone from me then and added, "BSC slumber party at my house tonight. Can you come?"
"Sure!" exclaimed Dawn.
"Great. Be here around seven."
Dawn had to get back to Jeff then, so Claud and I hung up and began calling the other club members.
What an unexpected weekend this had turned out to be. First house-hunting, and now a slumber party, just like in the old days! I couldn't believe Mom had let me stay in Connecticut. (But I was happy knowing I would return to New York the next day.)
Promptly at seven o'clock, the Kishis' bell rang. "That must be Dawn," said Claud. "She is always exactly on time. See? My digital clock says seven on the nose."
It was Dawn at the door. She was quickly followed by Jessi and Mal. The five of us settled ourselves in Claud's room with hoagies and salad. We had a real feast. Then Claud and Mal attacked a package of Oreos (hidden in the closet), Jessi delicately took a single Oreo (she watches her weight to stay in shape for dancing), and Dawn and I passed up the junk food. We braided each other's hair instead.
At eight-thirty the Kishis' bell rang again, and soon we heard feet pounding on the stairs.
"Kristy's here!" said Claud, giggling.
The rest of us smiled. No one else can thunder up a flight of stairs quite the way Kristy can.
"Hi!" cried Kristy. "Hi, you guys! Hi, Stacey!" Kristy is not much of a hugger, but she opened her arms and we hugged anyway. "I'm so glad to see you!" she said. "Did you find a decent house? I'm starved."
Kristy can be hard to keep up with.
"You're starved?" said Claud. "You were sitting at the Rodowskys' at dinnertime. Didn't you eat there?"
"I ate part of a hot dog when I fed the boys, but that was it. I was so busy cleaning up after Jackie that I didn't have time to eat anything else."
I sat back down on the bed with Dawn and we began working on each other's hair again, while Jessi and Mal experimented with Claudia's makeup and nail polish.
"What did Jackie do tonight?" I couldn't resist asking.
"Squirted his hot dog across the kitchen the second he bit into it - " Kristy began, grinning.
"He bit into the kitchen?" said Dawn.
"No, the hot dog!"
"The hot dog bit into the kitchen?"
We all started laughing.
See? This is what I love about my friends up here. They're so ... natural. They don't spend every second of their lives trying to impress each other. Sure, they talk about boys sometimes, and they care about how they look (well, some of them do), but those things aren't the focus of their lives. With my friends in New York (except for Laine) all they do is
talk about who's dating whom, where they went, what they ate, and what they wore. Or who's going skiing in Aspen, or who'll get the best tan in Bermuda over spring vacation.
"Do you want something to eat?" Claudia asked Kristy.
"Anything," she replied desperately.
"There's half a hoagie left over," said Claud. "I'll go get it for you."
Claudia left the room, and Kristy sat in her favorite place, the director's chair. She didn't bother with the visor, though, since we weren't having a meeting.
A few moments later, Claud returned with not only the hoagie, but Mary Anne.
Another happy reunion followed, and then the seven of us got down to serious slumber-party business. First, we took Mal and Jessi's lead, and all painted our nails. I painted my fingernails with sparkly pink polish. Then I painted my toenails with clear pink polish and added a green dot in the center of each one.
"Who's going to see your toes?" asked Kristy, who would only go so far as to paint her fingernails with clear polish.
"Me," I replied. "I like to look good for myself."
Dawn grinned. "You're the most important person to look good for," she informed us. "I always dress to please myself."
"Speaking of that," said Kristy, "you know what Alan Gray wore to school last Wednesday?"
"Oh, lord," moaned Claud, burying her face in her hands, apparently remembering.
"What? What?" I asked.
"A hat with an alligator on top of it, and when he pulled this string, the alligator's mouth opened and closed, and its tail waved back and forth."
We were laughing again. That's another thing I love about these friends. We laugh a lot. We've done our share of crying together and being scared together, but mostly when I think of us as a group, I think of the laughter.
"How is old Alan Gray?" I asked. Alan is the bane of Kristy's existence. He'd like her for his girlfriend, but he's so immature. Besides, Kristy likes Bart Taylor, the coach of Bart's Bashers.