Disclaimer: I do not own Baby-Sitters Club or any of its characters. I wish I did, but since I don't I will have to give all of the credit away.
Prologue
Originally there was only supposed to be the three of us. The three of us who had not made plans to do something over he summer. We looked at all of our friends getting ready for the events of their summer, and decided that w wanted to do that to. We wanted some plans for the summer. Mary Anne was going to do some kind of internship with a newspaper in Hartford so she would be there all summer. Stacy was teaching kids about diabetes at a summer camp all summer. Jessi was going to tour the continental US with a ballet troupe. And Mallory was going to take some college courses over the summer so she would be ahead when she graduated in a couple of years. That just left myself, Claudia and Kristy. And that was when Kristy came up with a great idea.
She came up with the idea of a road trip. The three of us had lots of money from various jobs that we had during high school, enough to take a giant road trip for most of the summer. Kristy got permission from Charlie to borrow his van so that we could take the trip. It was a miracle that he would even let us borrow it considering how much that van meant to him. Claudia also wisely suggest that we hold off on telling our parents until we were already on the road, given that they might not like a particular road trip where we just took off, not really sure of our destination. And this way they wouldn't really have anyway to stop us once we were gone.
Then the night of graduation had come. We were leaving two mornings from then. And then I saw him. Logan. My sister had broken up with Logan before the graduation, about two days before it, and he looked absolutely devastated. He had not really talked to anybody in the class as far as I could see since we had all congregated at the auditorium. So, I decided that I would go and say congratulations to him. After all, his on-and-off relationship with my sister in high school had made us somewhat close friends. He gave me a small smile as I approached him. We talked for a few minutes, and before I knew what I was doing, I told him he should come with us on the road trip, not even thinking about the consequences of it. And then I told him he should bring a friend.
I did not tell the others until the day we were leaving and Logan came up with Alan Grey, ready to go on the trip. Claudia and Kristy looked at me with accusing eyes as I tried to explain myself. Tried to explain how I did not like the sad look on his face and how he needed something to take his mind off of my sister. I could not really explain the presence of Alan, but Logan did that for us when he told us that the only friend of his that hadn't left for the summer was Alan. Alan and Kristy had not been on good terms since they had dated sophomore year and she had broken his heart.
And then Charlie showed up with the van and insisted on going. It was Kristy's turn to get a look of confusion. According to her, Charlie said that if his mom found out that he was loaning his van out to his baby sister to take on a road trip to god-knows-where, then he would be dead. So, therefore, he was going to come so that way he could take care of Kristy and the rest of us. Plus, I knew when he saw Alan and Logan, he did his whole protective older brother thing with Kristy, who was annoyed with it, but I also think secretly glad because she did not want to anywhere without that if she was going to be with Alan.
So, in the end, there turned out to be six of us going on this little road trip. Claudia, Kristy, and I had already made plans for a few places we wanted to stop, and we even let the boys add on some amusement parks to the trips. They seemed just as excited as we did about the trip, maybe even more considering that this was the first time they had decided to go for it while we had been planning for a couple of weeks.
I then decided that I wanted to commemorate this moment, like we had done so many times in middle school, so that the rest of the gang could look at it when we got back, and hopefully not feel too mad at us. Claudia and Kristy were, of course, excited to do it, but the boys groaned. It took a lot of begging and pleading, but the book of our trip was made. Also, some of our other friend's contributed some chapters about their summer experiences.
It was a great road trip, with laughs, romances, and some fights. It was the perfect way to say good-bye to high school before heading towards college.