Chapter 1.

Aughhh!"

"Hi! Hello!"

"Oh, wow! Look at your tan! That's disgusting!"

"Your hair, Dawn! It's even blonder than before!"

It was the first meeting of the Baby-sitters Club since Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, Mary Anne, and I (Dawn Schafer), had been separated. It had been our longest separation since the beginning of the club. Two whole weeks. And we'd been scattered from here, inStoneybrook,Connecticut , all the way across the country toCalifornia .

Claudia Kishi and her family had taken a trip to a resort inNew Hampshire . Mary Anne Spier and Stacey McGill had gotten jobs (through the Baby-sitters Club) as mother's helpers, and

had gone toSeaCity , aNew Jersey beach, with the Pike family. Poor Kristy Thomas hadn't gone anywhere. She'd stayed here.

I was the one who went toCalifornia . I went with my little brother, Jeff. Our parents got divorced last winter and Mom moved Jeff and me from nice, warmCalifornia to freezing cold, snowyConnecticut . (Well, it was cold and snowy when we moved here. Now it's August, and hot and humid.) Mom chose Stoneybrook because she grew up here, and her parents still live here. Anyway, it was sort of a messy divorce, and Jeff and I hadn't seen Dad in ages, so Mom arranged for us to spend the first two weeks in August with him.

We got to fly by ourselves and everything. Since we were traveling alone, we were given all sorts of special attention. One stewardess slipped us free headphones. We saw European Vacation, starringChevy Chase . Jeff laughed so hard he nearly got sick, but he recovered in time for dinner and managed to collect extra desserts from all the people around us who didn't want theirs — five in all. (Ordinarily, we're really into health food, but Jeff goes sort of crazy over chocolate cake.) Next, Jeff collected all the packets of salt, pepper, nondairy creamer, instant coffee, sugar, and Jiffee Tow-