"Yes, you are. You're right — "

"David Michael, come here for a sec," said Kristy.

David Michael left the front hall.

A few seconds later, I heard footsteps tiptoeing toward the hall. The front door slammed shut in my face.

I stood on the Thomases' stoop, shaking.

Then I turned and crossed the lawn.

All the way to school I kept hearing Kristy's angry voice and the door slamming. Well, I thought, there's still Dawn. Dawn wasn't the same as Kristy or my other friends, but she was something.

We ate lunch together after all. "Your friends are absent again?" Dawn asked. She looked skeptical.

"Yeah," I replied. I decided not even to go into it.

I looked around the cafeteria for the other members of the Baby-sitters Club. Things were a bit different that day. Kristy was still eating with the Shillabers, but the empty chair had been filled by another friend of theirs, Jo Deford. Claudia and Trevor were sitting with Rick and Emily. At the opposite end of their long table were Dori, Howie, Pete, and Stacey. Every so often, Stacey would look up and give Claudia the evil eye, or Claudia would whisper something to Trevor and then look in Stacey's

direction and laugh. Once, she stuck her tongue out at Stacey.

Things were worse than ever. I wasn't surprised that Kristy was holding a grudge, but I had sort of expected Stacey and Claudia to make up, or at least to pretend to have made up. I never thought I'd see the day when cool Claudia would stick her tongue out at somebody in front of Trevor Sandbourne.

"Boy," I said under my breath.

"What?" asked Dawn.

I sighed. "Nothing."

When the bell rang at the end of the day, I made a dash for the front door of school. I was supposed to meet Dawn there and was trying to figure out just how to time things so that Kristy would be sure to see me walking off with my new friend. I decided that I should simply meet Dawn and dawdle. As it happened, things worked out better than I could have hoped.