Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the BSC, ann m martin does. It's fan fiction, I don't get paid for this. I do not own the rights to LOST or any of it's characters. ABC does, and they were created by JJ ABRAMS and some other people. Please don't sue me.

The Baby-sitters Club Super Special #4815162342

GONE!

Chapter One: Stacey

Dear Charlotte,

You will never guess where I am! Okay, if you looked at the front of this postcard, I'm sure you would have some sort of a guess, but if you didn't… I'm in AUSTRALIA!

Love, Stacey

I could barely believe it myself. It was like something out of an afternoon special on TV. I, Stacey McGill, would be spending two weeks in Australia, with my boyfriend Sam and my 9 closest friends. Of course, I had to be there for a much less pleasant reason. In fact, I didn't even want to go at all.

See, my dad wanted me to visit a specialist in Australia. He promised, years ago that I wouldn't have to keep going to different doctors to find a miracle cure for my diabetes. I hate doctors, and I know there is no cure for diabetes. All I can do is manage my diet and insulin levels, which I do very well.

That was when I was twelve. They let up for awhile, but every now and then they forget and drag me off for testing. I may be diabetic, but I am also an excellent baby-sitter, a good student, and the only girl in my class to make varsity cheerleading freshman year.

But do my parents congratulate me on that? No, they are more concerned about my stupid diet. As if I wanted to eat all that fattening food anyway. Diabetes is one of the best (and worst) things to ever happen to me. I grew up in New York City, and was diagnosed with the disease when I was younger. Some of my friends in NYC didn't understand so well, and thought I was contagious. It was a very traumatic time for me.

So my parents moved me to Stoneybrook, Connecticut. I needed to get away from my "friends" in the city, and even though Stonybrook seemed like a major drag at first, I managed to make some wonderful friends

My Stonybrook friends and I even started our own baby-sitting service. We call it the Baby-sitters Club. It's really more of a business than a club though, even though we have lots of fun. See, what happened was my best friend Claudia Kishi (she was the first person I met in Stonybrook – we ran into each other, literally!) lived across the street from this girl Kristy Thomas. Kristy has three brothers: Charlie, Sam, and David Michael. Charlie and Sam are older, and sometimes I go out with Sam. He's dreamy. He's not as sophisticated as I am, probably because he was abandoned by his father when he was younger. At least my parents waited until I was 13 to get divorced.

Oh, so one day, Kristy's mom needed a baby-sitter for David Michael, Kristy's little brother – I think he was six at the time. No one could do it, and Kristy got all upset watching her mom make phone call after phone call. Kristy realized that it would be easier for parents to make just one single call to reach a whole network of baby-sitters, and "The Baby-sitter's Club" was born.

Kristy and her best friend Mary Anne Spier (she lived next door to Kristy) decided to ask Claudia to join, even though they weren't really close friends or anything. Claudia volunteered her room (and her private telephone line), and she introduced me. We make tons of money because we baby-sit just about every day. As we got older, we invited new people to the club, and we started extending our hours. Now that we are 15, we can all baby-sit until 11 pm on school nights – as long as we get our homework done – and 1 p.m. on Weekends.

The BSC (as we like to call it) currently has seven regular members and two associate members that we call on when we run out of other options. We also have a Californian branch and a New York City group. As I said before, we are serious about our business.

Kristy is the president of our club. She is president because she thought of the club and she gets all sorts of great ideas. When she was in eighth grade, she even started a softball league for kids who were too scared, shy, or unskilled for Little League. She's way into sports. Sometimes she gets a little bossy, but overall she's a good person. She doesn't care one iota (isn't that a great word? It was on my vocabulary test last week) about clothing and usually wears jeans and a tee-shirt. Once in a while Claudia and I joke around that she's just itching to come out, but we aren't really sure. She's constantly torn between dating Alan Grey (a boy in our class) and Bart Taylor (a boy sort-of in her neighborhood), even though she doesn't really seem to be all that into either of them.

Claudia Kishi is my best friend, and vice-president of the BSC. Claudia is Japanese-American and really creative. She can be very self-conscious about her schoolwork because she's a very good artist, but a terrible student. This is made worse by the fact that her sister Janine is a certified genius. Honest. Janine is eighteen and already in a doctoral program at some university in Massachusetts. Claudia, on the other hand, had to repeat eighth grade. She couldn't even blame it on moving or anything. Poor Claudia, it's got to be awful to be her. She makes up for it though with her wonderful fashion sense.

She comes up with the most dibble clothes (isn't that cool, we even made up our own language! Dibble means cool, while stale is the opposite of cool). She doesn't pay attention to trends either, but somehow she always looks great. For example, yesterday I saw her wearing stripped leggings, a torn black skirt and a ruffled white shirt. She tied a scarf around her neck and fastened it with a pirate pin that she made. In her ears she had homemade earrings. One was a parrot and the other was a chest. She was a totally dibble pirate for "Talk Like Pirate Day."

Claudia is Vice President of the Baby-Sitters Club because she was the only one of us with a private telephone line at the time. We think her parents felt sorry for her, due to the fact that her sister is a super genius.

Mary Anne Spier is the secretary. She grew up next door to Kristy with her dad. They were best friends forever, but Mary Ann is really shy because her mom died when she was just a baby, leaving her father brokenhearted and very, very strict. Mary Anne didn't make her own friends until seventh grade, which is when she met Dawn Schafer. This turned out to be lucky for both her and the BSC. It was lucky for her, because Mary Anne was finally allowed to fix her own hair and pick out her own clothing. So why did Mr. Spier relax? Well, it had to do with Dawn.

Dawn came to Stoneybrook in the seventh grade when her parents divorced. Her mother grew up in Stoneybrook, but her parents sent her away to California for college, where she met Dawn's father. Sound sad, doesn't it? Well, it has a wonderful ending, because it turned out that the reason Sharon (Dawn's mom) was sent to California in the first place was because her parents didn't approve of her high-school boyfriend – Richard Spier (yes, Mary Anne's father). Sharon and Richard re-met and re-married. It was SO dibbly romantic. There was some adjustment trouble at first, but now everyone is (mostly) happy.

Dawn is the BSC "Alternate Officer". That means that she can (and has!) filled in for any club member who can't make a meeting. I think she likes the variation – it goes with the bi-coastal living. She tends to spend most of her summer vacation and longer school breaks in California with her father. Dawn has a brother too, but he lives in California with their father. Dawn misses him a lot, but knows it's for the best.

Mary Anne and Dawn are best friends, even though they are very different. Dawn has a style that can only be described as "California Casual". She likes comfortable clothing, political messages, and body piercing. She values her individuality above all, and really works hard to be herself. She has this really long blonde hair that she can sit on, and is way into health food. The thought of anyone eating a Ring-Ding can sent her into shock.

Mary Anne is more traditional. She likes trendy, preppy clothing like skirts and sweaters and eats meat and junk food. She's also been dating the same guy since the beginning of eighth grade, and is very soft-spoken and shy. She's very sensitive to people's emotions.

Mallory Pike and Jessi Ramsey are our junior members. When they joined the club, they were only 11, and we all were 13. Now they are 13, but they are still junior members. Sometimes, I think Kristy has a bit of an inferiority complex, and needs to feel superior to someone. As junior officers, they don't really have any responsibility besides babysitting. I think they like it that way.

Mallory and Jessi are best friends, even though they are very different. Mallory is the oldest of eight children, while Jessi has just a brother and a sister. They are both excellent sitters though. Mallory likes to read and write, while Jessi likes ballet and pets.

Growing up with seven younger siblings has made Mallory very mature for her age. She has red hair, glasses and a small frame. She hates her hair though, thinking it's too frizzy or something. I think she's crazy, because she's very pretty.

When Jessi moved to Stoneybrook, she had a lot of problems, because she's African American. This doesn't bother any of us, but some people on her street were very rude to her family. I think this adversity has also caused Jessi grow up faster then other girls her age. That might have something to do with why Mallory is her best friend.

Jessi studies ballet. She will probably go professional someday in New York. She's already danced in several ballets in Stamford, which has a well known company. Jessi is also really good at languages, and even learned sign language so she could communicate with one of our clients. That's just how professional our club is.

Shannon Kilbourne and Logan Bruno are associate members. They don't go to meetings, but we call on them when needed. Shannon lives in Kristy's neighborhood, and goes to private school (the rest of us go to public school). She's one of the people who get straight A's, plus are president of every club they can join.

Logan is our only male babysitter. He's been dating Mary Ann forever, and I think he only hangs out with us because of her. Logan is very attractive, and his southern accent only turns Mary Ann on more (and most of the other girls he comes into contact with).

At this moment though, I was more interested in the fact that he was trying to grope Mary Anne right in front of my father. As I mentioned before, my father thought it would be a good idea for me to see a specialist in Australia. I managed to convince him that I would only agree to a trip across the dateline if I could bring a friend. I guess my bargaining chip worked, because before I knew it the entire BSC and my boyfriend Sam were all on a plane to Sydney. Right now, we were in the airport, waiting for our luggage, and I really didn't want my father to think that we weren't going to be responsible. If he thought my friends were acting irresponsibly, he might not let us have much freedom.

I wanted freedom because I had read in one of Mary Anne's travel brochures (I swear, the girl sent out for every possible booklet and magazine about Australia the second she heard I was going. Before she even knew she was going, actually. Honest.) Australia was one of the best places to go surfing! I know it sounds odd since I'm from New York City, but I love surfing. I learned how to do it when I was on vacation in California a few years ago. I was hoping to be able to teach Sam how to surf too.

"Stacey. Stacey." Sam was tugging on my jacket. Honestly, he can be really needy sometimes. He handed me a suitcase and gave me one of his adorable smiles. How could I possibly think he was immature? "Here's your bag – did you bring anything else?"

I told him what to look for, and he ran off. I think he was totally growing up. We might actually have a future together. I looked around at my friends – I guess I felt sort of responsible for everyone. Dawn and Kristy were having a sort of hush-hush conversation over their luggage. I noticed neither of them brought more then one bag and a carry-on apiece. Lucky them. Claudia was running around, searching for her giant bags – she even paid extra so she could bring 4 bags instead of the standard 2. Then she brought oversized ones and had to bring more. At least if Dawn and Kristy ran out of clothing, they could just borrow some from Claudia. Mallory and Jesse were standing by their luggage (just two bags apiece) looking at the Australian boys. Shannon was deep in conversation with my father about something that sounded boring, and Mary Anne and Logan were making out next to a phone booth. Lovely.

I pointed this out to Sam, and he ran over to them and put some rubber tarantulas in Mary Anne's hair. Logan attacked him and they started wrestling in the middle of the airport. I could have died with embarrassment, right there. Mary Anne came over and pointed out that it looked as though everyone had their stuff but Claudia and we really should "get a move on". Really, sometimes she talks like my father. At that precise moment he came over and said the exact same thing.

Everyone picked up their stuff. Claudia seemed almost panicked over the fact that she could only find two of her bags. She went to fill out one of those forms, while the rest of us waited while my dad rented a car.

After what felt like hours, we were out of the airport and in Australia!