The Baby-Sitters Club #99: Stacey’s Broken Heart

Stacey and Robert are out on a tennis date and sitting together, just relaxing. Suddenly Andi shows up, one of the girls from his old group. She starts telling him a story about another friend and he cracks up. Then another friend Shelia turns up and Stacey starts to feel left out. The girls want Robert to play with them, but he opts out because of her and she thinks that he really wanted to play.

They go back to her house and play a computer game together. The phone rings and it’s Mrs. Walker from New York City. She wants Stacey to sit for Henry and Grace for a week, while she gets ready for a gallery show. Stacey agrees, but Robert seems kind of put off because it’s their last week together before school starts. She promises him that they’ll have lots of time together before she goes.

Things don’t go the way she planned though. Robert starts acting shifty and nervous. She calls him one day and his sister said he went to play basketball with some friends. She goes to the court and he’s nowhere around. Later he says he was playing with another guy who he’s never really mentioned before. And then, he starts spending a lot of time with Pete Black.

Erica Blumberg calls the BSC during a meeting, with news for Stacey. She saw Robert and another girl eating Mexican food together. Stacey tries to keep calm, but then decides to stalk him with Claudia’s help. They follow him to the mall and see him going to the movies. She sees him with Pete and then sees two other girls going in the theater. They go to an action movie, hoping to catch them, but the guys actually went to a romantic movie. Robert explains that she’d be out of town when it stopped playing, but then makes up an excuse to not hang out with her that night.

The day she leaves, Robert promises to come over, but he’s nowhere to be seen. He finally shows up with a bouquet and sees her off at the train station. She’s still hurt and confused and her dad lectures her about them being too young to go steady. She helps out the Walkers and meets this cute guy Ethan. They have a lot in common, he loves kids and they have a lot of fun together.

Then Claudia calls with some big news: she saw Robert and Andi together, kissing. Stacey is heartbroken and actually talks to her dad a little. Then she gets to spend some more time with Ethan and realizes that if she and Robert stayed together, she wouldn’t be able to hang out with Ethan. He gets her number before she leaves and says he wants to see her again.

As soon as her mom pulls in the driveway, Andi comes walking down the street. She tells Stacey that they didn’t mean for it to happen, la-di-da and Stacey kind of forgives her. Then Robert calls and comes over. He’s surprised that she knew what happened and surprised that Andi already talked to her. He wants to be friends, but she asks him for some time. The book ends with her being glad that she’s single, but still hurting.

The other story involves Abby taking over as president while Kristy is gone. She decides to organize a Mexican festival, to raise money for an orphanage that her sister works with. She spends a bunch of treasury money, demands the other girls give her money for supplies and then spends some of her own money.

Everything goes horribly wrong because she keeps letting all the kids do the work, without any real supervision. They hold the festival in Mary Anne’s yard and Abby doesn’t even get the stands built before it starts. They have to get a bunch of help from other people. Abby finally admits that maybe Kristy is a better president.

*Nice callback to the Stacey quits storyline: Kristy gets pissed because she took the job without consulting them and it’s going to make them short a sitter. Kristy can’t really talk though, given that she’s taking off for a week long trip to Hawaii.

*I don’t think I really mentioned him on here before, but I was dating/living with a guy for about a year and a half. He actually found me a few BSC and SVU books at random book sales and stuff. Anyway, we broke up not long before Christmas and I was in the middle of reading this book at the time. Needless to say, it wasn’t the best choice for me.