Kristy's best friend is Mary Anne Spier. Mary Anne is short, like Kristy, and also has brown hair. They both have brown eyes, too. But personality-wise, she and Kristy are like night and day. Mary Anne is quiet and sensitive and very neat. For instance, that day, as Kristy started the meeting, Mary Anne was bent over the club record book, updating her information on our schedules. (Mary Anne is the BSCs secretary, and she does a terrific job.) She erased something carefully, and then, printing precisely, wrote something else in its place.

Like mine, Mary Anne's home life is fairly quiet. She lives with her dad, her stepmom, and her kitten, Tigger. But Mary Anne's family has been through a lot of changes in recent years. First of all, Mary Anne grew up without

a mom. Mrs. Spier died when Mary Anne was just a baby. Mr. Spier did a great job of raising Mary Anne on his own, although he did go overboard in the strictness department for a long time. He eased up a little bit when he remarried, though.

The woman he married happens to be the mother of Mary Anne's other best friend, Dawn Schafer. How that happened is kind of a wild story, but (deep breath!) here goes: Dawn's mom grew up in Stoneybrook and dated Mary Anne's dad when they were both in high school. But they didn't stay together. Instead, Dawn's mom went to college out in California, married a man named Jack Schafer, and had two kids, Dawn and her younger brother Jeff. Unfortunately, that marriage ended in a divorce, and Dawn's mom moved herself and her kids back to Stoneybrook. Dawn and Mary Anne met and became best friends (Dawn joined the BSC), found out their parents used to date, and brought them back together. (Whew!)

So now everybody's living happily ever after, right? Well, not exactly. First, Jeff didn't adjust to life in Stoneybrook, and he "ended up moving back to California to live with his dad. Next, Dawn started missing her dad and Jeff, and ended up going out there for an extended visit. We thought that visit would get California out of her system, but no. It turned