Dear Janine —

Hi, how are you? I’me fine. We whent to Centrle park today and saw a clock and whent to the childrens zoo. Remerber when you read Stewart little to me we saw the boat pond where he had his scarry advertiure. We saw a stachew of Alice in wonderland. The kids climed all over it. They were allowed to. I’ll be home by the time you get this postcrad. I hop you had a good weekend.

Love,
Your sister Claudia

It had been a long time since I’d just wandered through the park. Usually my friends and I go tearing through it to get to the east side of the city. I hardly ever wander around looking, the way I used to do when I was a kid.

But that was how we spent the rest of our time in the park. First we ambled west until we came to —

“The merry-go-round!” Leslie shrieked. “There it is! Please please please please please can we ride it?” She jumped up and down on those little legs of hers that looked like they couldn’t support a mosquito.

The carousel costs next to nothing to ride, so I paid for the ten kids. Then, as an afterthought, I gave the man enough money for five more fares.

“Come on, you guys,” I said to the members of the Baby-sitters Club. “We’re riding, too.”

My friends looked doubtful at first. Then they grinned and scrambled for horses. So there we were, bobbing up and down on a carousel in the middle of a park. I felt like I was in Mary Poppins (which, by the way, is my favorite movie ever). It was as if Mary Poppins and Jane and Michael Banks and I had jumped into one of Bert’s chalk drawings on a London sidewalk and were riding the carousel in a make-believe world.

“Stacey?” said Mary Anne, interrupting my daydream.

“Yeah?” (I was afraid she was going to spout some fact, like how old the carousel was, or how much it had cost to create, or how many horses were on it.)

But all she said was, “This is really fun. I’m glad we came to the park today.”

“Me, too,” I replied.

The carousel wound down, and the older kids reluctantly slid off their horses. My friends and I helped the younger ones climb down, and then we set off again.

“I didn’t know the park was so big,” commented Kristy.

“And you haven’t even seen half of it,” I told her.

“Here are the checker-people!” called Henry suddenly.

“The checker-people?” I repeated, and then I realized what he meant. We’d come to a group of tables, sort of like picnic tables — with benches attached to the sides. Only these tables aren’t as long as picnic tables and the tops are very special. They’ve got checkerboards built right into them. A lot of old people, and some not-so-old people, bring their checkers or chess sets to the tables in nice weather and enjoy games and company.

Blair Barrera tugged at my hand. I looked down at him.

He indicated that he wanted to whisper something to me, so I leaned over.

“They’re very serious,” he said, nodding toward Henry’s checker-people.

He was right. A lot of the players had brought along clocks or stopwatches so they could put time limits on their moves. They sat at those tables in silence, concentrating as hard as if they were taking IQ tests.

So the players were not pleased when Leslie suddenly shrieked, “Cut it out! Stop that, Cissy. Stop that! You are an old toad!”

“I am not. You are,” Cissy retorted. “Because I’m rubber and you’re glue, and whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you. Nyah, nyah, nyah.”

“Unh-unh,” sang Leslie, hands on hips. “I’m rubber and you’re glue.”

“No, I’m rubber —”

“You guys!” I cried desperately.

Four checkers players and two chess players were glaring at us. I felt as if we had just screamed in a library.

“Come on,” I whispered to my friends. “Let’s get the kids out of here.”

We hurried along a path that wound down a little hill, and found ourselves in a wide-open area. A group of kids were playing softball. Two guys were tossing a Frisbee back and forth.

Claudia burst out laughing.

“What?” I asked.

“There’s a dog playing Frisbee!” she cried, pointing to a German shepherd just as it leaped into the air, expertly catching a Frisbee thrown by its master. “And it’s a better player than I am!”

We walked and walked. By the time we reached the boat pond, the kids were looking tired and us baby-sitters were feeling tired. We sat down on some benches. There was plenty to watch. For one thing, this golden retriever kept diving into the pond for a swim, leaping out, shaking himself off all over whoever was nearby, and diving in again.

Then Carlos spoke up. “I wish I had my boat with me.”

“Do you have one of those boats?” asked Dennis enviously.

“Those” boats are specially powered sailboats and sloops that can be controlled from the shore. Their owners turn them loose in the pond and then direct them here and there, running back and forth at the edge of the water, making the boats zigzag and loop, using the remote controls to keep them from crashing into each other. They’re sort of like bumper cars, except you can’t ride in them; you can only watch.

“Sure I’ve got one,” replied Carlos. “Don’t you?”

“No,” said Dennis. “I want one, though. Has yours ever been in an accident?”

“Only about a million of them. It survived.”

“Like Stuart Little,” added Peggie Upchurch.

“Who’s Stuart Little?” asked Sean.

“Who’s Stuart Little?” repeated Peggie, looking alarmed.

“Peggie, not everyone reads as much as you do,” said her older sister.

“I read plenty!” protested Sean.

“Then you should know who Stuart Little is,” said Peggie.

“I don’t know who he is,” spoke up Leslie.

“Me neither,” said Grace softly.

“Perfect,” I replied. “Then I’ll tell you who he is. He’s a mouse. A man named E. B. White wrote a book about him.”

“Is he real?” asked Leslie, wide-eyed.

“Who? E. B. White?” said Kristy.

“No! Stuart Little.”

“He’s made up,” Kristy told her, and pulled Leslie into her lap for the story.

“Stuart,” I began, “was sort of a surprise. He was a mouse who was born to human parents, Mr. and Mrs. Little. They were expecting a baby, of course, but they got this mouse. The Little family lived right here in New York City, and one day Stuart took himself over here, to this very pond.”

I told the kids about Stuart’s adventure in the pond, and the wind that blew up, and his scare. Even the kids, like Peggie, who had heard or read the story several times already, listened dreamily. (Partly because they were tired, I think, but who cares?)

When I finished the story I said, “I think it’s time to start for home, kids. We don’t have to be back for a while, but we’ve got to walk all the way through the park again, and that’s going to take some time.”

“Aw, Stacey, do we have to?” whined Cissy.

“Yes, we do,” I told her. I wasn’t sure if she was whining because she didn’t want to leave the park or because she didn’t want to walk home. At any rate, I told her to climb up for a piggyback ride. Kristy did the same with Grace, Dawn did the same with Leslie, Mary Anne did the same with Henry, and Claudia did the same with Sean. We set off.

Soon we stopped by the Alice in Wonderland statue and let the kids climb on it. Then we walked on. We passed roller skaters and a man who was performing magic tricks. But we never saw the crouching panther. I’d forgotten where it was; I remembered only that it was on a route Laine and I used to take when we would rent skates and go careening around the park.

By the time we were nearing the west side of the park and Eighty-first Street, the piggyback riders were walking again and the ten kids were ahead of us baby-sitters. They were huddling together and whispering.

“They’re up to something,” I said to Claud, nudging her. “I just know it.”

“Well, we’re lucky,” she replied. “Whatever it is, it’s quiet.”

Famous last words. Just as she finished speaking, and just as I was about to yell ahead to the kids not to cross Central Park West without us, they turned around and began singing loudly, “For they are jolly good sitters, for they are jolly good sitters, for they are jolly good sit-ters, which nobody can deny.” (Except for Grace, who sang, “For they are jelly good sitters, which nobody can peny.”)

I’m sure my face turned red. Kristy’s did. And so did Claudia’s, Mary Anne’s and Dawn’s. A bunch of people were nearby, watching and smiling. At first I wanted to hurry the kids across the street and home, away from our audience. Then I thought, How come everything embarrasses me so much? How come this embarrasses me? It’s cute. The kids are doing this because they like us and they had a good time today.

“Thanks, you guys!” I called, running to catch up with the kids.

“Yeah, thanks!” cried my friends.

And the fifteen of us formed our Madeline lines again and crossed the street, tired and happy. We took a left and hup-two’d down the sidewalk. We turned onto my street and passed Judy.

Blair decided to try again. “Hup, two!” he said to Judy.

“Hup, two!” she replied. Then she noticed me and added, “Hello, Missy.”

Blair grinned.

We marched to our building, past James and Isaac and Lloyd, into the elevator, and rose up and up. Our adventure was over.