"Babysitters Club 041 Mary Anne Vs Logan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Babysitters Club)

with Velcro straps and were pretty ratty compared to her new red Keds.
The phone rang then, so I said, "Come on, Jenny. Race you to the telephone."
Giggling, we ran down to the kitchen.
Guess who was on the phone. Logan.
"Logan, I'm - I'm busy now," I said.
"Okay."
We hung up, and I felt stung, but Jenny was my responsibility, so we went back to her room.
"Your mom sure has been buying you a lot of stuff, Jen," I ventured. I was making every effort not to think about Logan.
"Yup. It's big-girl stuff. Mommy says the baby won't know how to do anything for itself." (Apparently even Jenny didn't know whether she would have a little sister or a little brother.) "So Mommy will be busy, and I'll have to be a big girl."
Since Jenny did not look too happy about this, I said, "You sure are lucky - new shoes, earrings - and all because of the baby."
"Yeah. Mommy wants to make sure I'll like that baby." -
Whoa. Had Jenny just said what I thought she said? It sounded as if she knew she was being bribed to get along with the new baby.
Mrs. P. certainly had an interesting method for dealing with sibling rivalry.
Jenny showed me two more things that her mother had bought her. Then I helped her to brush her teeth, wash her face, and finally climb into bed. After just a few pages of Babar, Jenny's eyes began to close, so we said good night. I turned out her light, and then I tiptoed out of her room, leaving the door open a crack.
The phone rang immediately. I raced downstairs and picked it up.
It was guess who.
"Jenny asleep yet?" asked Logan.
"Yup. She fell asleep pretty quickly."
"Oh. Well, just checking to see how the job is going."
"It's fine."
"Okay."
Twenty minutes later, the phone rang again. I knew I should be professional and say, "Hello, Prezziosos' residence." Instead I said, "Hi, Logan."
"You knew it was me?" He sounded surprised.
"I had this feeling."
"Jenny still asleep?"
"Yes."
"So. How about a date? There must be some
evening when you're not baby-sitting."
I hesitated.
"Just tell me when you're free," said Logan.
I told him I'd be free the next night.
"Great. We'll do movies and a pizza. It's all set."
All set by Logan, I couldn't help thinking. What had happened to me in our relationship?
Chapter 2.
I must be the world's biggest wimp. It wasn't that I didn't want to go to a movie with Logan. It was that I felt I had let myself get talked into it. Logan was trying so hard. Why did he need to do that? Had he always been like that? I tried to remember. I didn't think so. Then again, when two people are having problems, it-s hard to tell who has changed. Usually, I supposed, they both have. So how had I changed? Was I more independent than I used to be? Was I sending Logan mixed signals? Maybe. I wanted to be with him - but I didn't want to lose myself in him.
There was just one thing to do - call a friend and talk about it. As a baby-sitter, I knew the call would have to be short. (It's not a good idea to tie up a client's phone line with personal calls. The parents might be trying to call in to check on things.) So I would have to choose just the right person to talk to - someone
who knows about boys. I consider all the girls in the Baby-sitters Club my friends, and Dawn and Kristy Thomas are my best friends. However, Claudia Kishi and Stacey McGill definitely know the most about boys. I tried Stacey first. Her line was busy. So I called Claudia on her private phone.
I complained to her for about five minutes.
Claud listened patiently, but she didn't have any suggestions. That was okay. I had wanted a solution, but I knew the problem was mine, and I would have to work it out myself. Anyway, I was glad about one thing. I was glad that I had so many friends - so many people I could call on. And that's due mostly to the Baby-sitters Club, which is more of a business than a club. My friends and I baby-sit for children in our neighborhoods. We earn a lot of money doing this and we're good at it. I guess it's because we all love children so much. We're the kind of sitters who really get involved with the children we care for.
Let me tell you about my friends, the BSC members. I'll start with Kristy Thomas, for two reasons. One, she is my oldest friend in the world. (I mean, we're the same age, but we've known each other since we were born.) Two, Kristy had the idea for the BSC, organized it, and got it running. That's just the way Kristy
is. She's a doer, an organizer, and she's got a mind full of ideas - which she usually carries out. She's also got a big mouth. I don't mean that she blabs on and on and won't stop talking. I mean that she doesn't always think before she speaks. If something pops into her head, she says it. Occasionally, she hurts people's feelings, although she never intends to. Kristy is part of the most unusual family I know. She used to be part of a regular family - a mother, a father, two older brothers, and a baby brother named David Michael. Then, shortly after David Michael was born, Mr. Thomas walked out on his family. He just left them. Kristy and I lived next door to each other then (and across the street from Claudia), so I know how hard this was for her family. But Mrs. Thomas pulled things together quickly. She got a good job and she managed to hold her family together. Then, when Kristy and I were twelve and in seventh grade, Mrs. Thomas began to be serious about Watson Brewer, this man she'd been going out with. Watson (most of us refer to him as Watson because that's what Kristy calls him) just happens to be a millionaire. He lives in a mansion across town in a much wealthier neighborhood than the one Kristy and I lived in. And at the end of school last year, he and
Mrs. Thomas decided to get married. So they did!
Watson moved the Thomases out of their cramped house and into his huge one. You'd think Kristy would have just died to be living in a mansion with bedrooms galore and a rich stepfather, but she wasn't too happy at first. I think that was just because there were too many changes in her life. Not only did she acquire a stepfather and move out of the house in which she'd grown up, but she acquired some other family members, too. First of all, Watson has two kids - Karen, who's seven, and Andrew, who's almost five. Kristy didn't want to like them, but she couldn't help it. They're too adorable. Now she's wild about them. And she even complains that she doesn't see them enough. (Karen and Andrew only live with their father every other weekend and for two weeks during the summer.) Then, after Watson and Kristy's mother had been married for awhile, they adopted a two-year-old girl from Vietnam. They named her Emily Michelle. And talk about adorable, well, Emily is right up there with Karen and Andrew. When Emily was adopted, another member joined the Thomas/Brewer household. That was Nannie, Kristy's grandmother. She moved in to help with Emily while Watson
and Kristy's mom are at work, and to help run the household. Everyone just loves Nannie. She is very special.
Back to Kristy. Kristy has brown hair and brown eyes. She and I look sort of alike. We're both short, although I'm taller than Kristy. And Kristy doesn't need to wear a bra yet, which bothers her. She's a tomboy, and she started a softball team for kids in the neighborhood. The name of her team is Kristy's Krushers. Kristy has a boyfriend, too, although she won't admit it often. He's Bart, the coach of a rival softball team!
It's hard to tell you about Kristy without telling you about me. I guess that's because she's one of my best friends, and because we have a lot in common. In other ways, we're very different, though. (Maybe there's something to the saying that opposites attract.) Anyway, you already know a little about me: that I have brown hair and eyes, and I'm short; that I have a stepmother, and a stepsister named Dawn, who's my other best friend; and that I have a kitten named Tigger, and a boyfriend named Logan with whom I'm having some problems right now.
Here are some other things about me. I'm extremely shy and sensitive (that's where Kristy and I are opposites), I'm romantic, and I cry
easily. My dad raised me since the time my mother died. That was when I was quite young. Dad was very strict. He made up lots of rules, such as I was not allowed to ride my bike downtown, even when all of my friends were able to. He even picked out my clothes and made me wear my hair in braids. I looked like a real baby at the beginning of seventh grade. Kristy didn't mind that. She isn't - and never has been - interested in clothes. (She just wears jeans and stuff.) But I was interested in dressing more stylishly (or at least not like a first-grader), and I wanted my hair out of braids. Well, sometime during seventh grade, I was able to prove to my dad that I wasn't a baby, and he started letting up on me. He loosened the rules, allowed me to wear my hair down, and even allowed me to pick out my own clothes. (I am not allowed to get my ears pierced, though. But that's okay. I'm not sure I want holes punched through my ears. Besides, Kristy doesn't have pierced ears, either.)
So that's me.
Now, just like it was hard to tell you about Kristy without telling you about me, it's hard to tell you about me without telling you about Dawn, since she's my stepsister. For starters, Dawn is gorgeous. She has long, pale blonde