Author's Note: It has barely been two months since "Accusations" was completed, and here I am, hoping to start the sequel. I can't help it; somehow, the BSC ended up becoming interesting again as I wrote the fic. I don't know how…I guess I liked it more after I killed off some of the girls. I do know this sounds morbid, believe me. I just hated some of those girls! My apologies to all true BSC fans, including all of the reviewers and readers 'Accusations' garnered. Which reminds me…if you plan to read this, read ACCUSATIONS first or this may not ever make any sense to you! But it's very long, as this should be, so there are no worries if you skim or skip it altogether. And NO, this will be about one of the only long Author's Notes I write. Oh, and let me know (please?) if the characters are too OOC. I've never written a story with adult characters. :D

Chapter 1

Think of a city and you probably imagine skyscrapers, traffic, noise, and seedy hotels, drunks passed out in the few-and-far-between places of greenery, and young women in short skirts standing on the street corners. If not, maybe you can imagine mingling cultures; glittery stores open all night; and all kinds of personalities. For a fourteen-year-old girl who had grown up in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, which is a small town with an even smaller number of people who knew words like 'prostitute' and 'marijuana,' Chicago was a pretty big shock.

I'd lived as New York's neighbor for the first fourteen years of my life, so while we weren't completely oblivious to crime and the other things most of us don't like to think about, the city's glamour typically overshadowed any bad news that could come with city life. Childhood friends who adored the city were proof of that.

Chicago wasn't New York. But it wasn't bad. For one thing, leaving Connecticut meant leaving a vast array of memories and problems behind. I hadn't many friends left there, so leaving at the age of fourteen wasn't as painful as it would have been at thirteen years old. It also meant a fresh start—new friends, new teachers, a new home, and new memories.

Almost. Much had changed, but several things hadn't. Several ties hadn't been severed. Such as my friendship with Bobbi Battista, who I met when I was, as the last member of the Baby-Sitters Club (BSC) was going to be watching a three-year-old, Bobbi's little sister, Kerry. I'm not sure how a friendship blossomed out of the chaos that was my fourteenth year of life, but I'm very happy that it did.

It was why I was walking alongside a huge house, admiring the flowery bushes and colorful Japanese Cherry trees lining the stone path. Bobbi's wealth had never decreased and she didn't hesitate to spend. She was cautious, but not frugal. I could hear the sounds of a typical, warm, late Spring day as I neared the bushes and gate that led to the Battista backyard.

I could see, hear, and smell all of the things one might as they spend five minutes in the sun on an average sunny day. Hot dogs and hamburgers on someone's barbecue. Dogs barking. Children laughing and shrieking. Water splashing, both from sprinklers and pools. Music as a man down the street washed a very expensive car. And, the one thing I wanted to hear: Bobbi's voice. Three years older than me, and still more fun than I ever was. At the age of twenty-seven, and a mother of two adorable twin girls who are now six years old, she was still just as responsible and fun as she was at seventeen, when I first met her.

A lot can happen in ten years. Bobbi's mother died six years ago, when I was eighteen (and Bobbi was twenty-one) and left Bobbi, who was already mothering Kerry, with everything they owned. Money, cars, a new house. Two years later, Bobbi married her boyfriend, Michael and gave birth all in one year. I don't see much of Michael, who works abroad most of the time as some kind of scientist/politician, and Bobbi's daughters spend a lot of time with Kerry (who is now thirteen and their role model) so she and I have a lot of time to reminisce.

One of the things we talk about most frequently is something that came with us from the past and lives with me in the present. Ashley Wyeth had been living with my family and I for the last ten years or so, and a lot had happened to change the way things were when we first came to Chicago and even before, when we thought everything was going to be one way.

Like most people, I never really imagined I'd move out or grow up. But when Ashley couldn't stop fighting with my parents (and vice-verse, of course) she left. I think Mom and Dad were so harsh with Ashley after what happened with Janine—who announced that she was pregnant and left when I was seventeen with her husband (who we didn't know about until she mentioned him as she stormed out) and hadn't been heard from again. That left me with my aging parents. Both were disappointed with Chicago—my mother's job at the library didn't pay as well as it had in Stoneybrook even though there were probably ten thousand more books, and my father's job had ended when he and a colleague got into an argument in front of the customers and my father had never been able to redeem himself, so he was stuck taking on jobs of less interest to him.

Eventually, when my parents' angst started depressing me and I couldn't do anything to please them (I tried) I moved in with Ashley, whose former roommate wasn't good with paying the rent. I got a job (at a bookstore, which would have surprised anyone who knew me as a kid) and went to college. Now I live across town from Bobbi, who lives in the nice, luxurious, and relatively safe side of Chicago. I live on the much less luxurious and safe side, in Ashley's apartment (which I say even though I pay an equal share for it.)

Despite everything that has happened, Bobbi and I remained close. She still looks much like she did at seventeen (despite having had twins!) and although her hair was recently styled, she still looks pretty much the same, but she doesn't wear the same black, gray or white single-color tank tops, cargo pants, and sneakers anymore.

One of the things we talk about most is my relationship with Ashley. Despite living together for almost seven years, (yes, we only lasted three years as a family in Chicago! I guess the move was a little more traumatic than we'd expected) we still had issues. Ashley was a newcomer to vegetarianism, and I was still as much a junk food addict as ever, with a few more pounds than I'd had at thirteen or fourteen. She wasn't a neat freak, but I certainly wasn't, either. She was constantly picking on me about 'eating right' and 'being neat' and even 'reading good literature.' She was starting to sound like a mother. More specifically, my mother.

"Claudia!" Kerry was on her feet in a flash, abandoning her magazine on her lawn chair and streaking across the yard in her one-piece bathing suit as I peered around the hedges. It was hard to believe she was the same age I'd been when I got into most of the adventures I had. One of the most influential adventures I ever had happened when I was fourteen and led to my move to Chicago (and I was still sometimes surprised that my parents were still together) but that was beside the point. I'd gotten into plenty of trouble at thirteen, and now Kerry was the same age.

She wrapped me in a hug and let go just as her little cousins, Elizabeth and Jennifer, pounced on me. Bobbi, carrying a tray of icy lemonade out of the house and stepping onto the stone terrace and over the flowery border, looked over at us to see why her daughters and sister were tackling someone at the edge of the yard. Seeing me, she flashed a smile.

"Claudia! I didn't expect you so early," she said, stepping into the lush green grass and heading towards me. She was barefoot and wearing a black bikini. The twins were also dressed in their bathing suits (metallic pink) and were hopping over the sprinkler again, my arrival forgotten.

"I had to get away from Ashley," I confessed. "She's insane."

Kerry took a lemonade from Bobbi's tray and hurried off, evidently aware that we were about to have one of our 'talks.'

"Insane, or just bothering you?" Bobbi held out her tray, and I took one of the glasses. She took one for herself and set the tray (which held two smaller cups of soda) on the table beside the lawn chairs. She and I each settled ourselves onto them.

Kerry was back reading her magazine at this point, alternating between sipping and flipping pages. The twins had split up, Elizabeth remaining in the sprinkler spray with her drink, sitting in the grass, and Jennifer taking her Coke to the edge of the pool so she could dangle her feet in the water. The Battista backyard is very picturesque; flowers line the tall, fancy wrought-iron fence and terrace, and high hedges line the house itself. A little pond with a waterfall (which both glow gold at night) and statues sit around the yard. And then, of course, there is the pool and hot tub. And the barbecue.

"Both," I answered, feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin. Wearing shorts and a T-shirt over my bathing suit, I crossed my legs and kicked off my sandals.

"In what way? Did she ask your boyfriend out again?"

I scowled. "No, and she'd better not try. She waited up for me last night, and said it wasn't very responsible of me to stay out until midnight. On a Saturday."

"Have you told her she's bugging you?" Bobbi fixed her bright, blue-green eyes on me. "Have you considered the possibility that she might be jealous about Mallory?"

I guess I should explain here that Mallory Pike, who we (our other friends and I) lost touch with after she went to boarding school, recently sent me an e-mail and wanted to meet up.

"Why would she be? Ashley and I only knew each other for a few weeks when we were thirteen, and Mallory and I haven't spoken in nine years. And six months."

"But you've now known Ashley longer than you knew Mallory," Bobbi pointed out, "and maybe Ashley's afraid that since you and Mal went through so much together, you'll feel closer to her than you do to Ashley now."

"Maybe. But it's still going to be weird to see her again."

"So you've decided to meet her?"

"Yeah…I mean, I think so. I don't know. The BSC meant so much to me for so long." Having explained the BSC to Bobbi, and about most of the adventures we had, Bobbi nodded in understanding.

"Didn't you also say it could be a pain in the ass? You were glared at if you sat at a different table, and if you were a few seconds late, they all glared at you like you were some kind of traitor." Bobbi hesitated, with a little smile. "And from what I hear, some of your friends were a little bit too excitable. What kinds of teenagers willingly got up early just to run a playgroup when they could be hanging at the mall with kids their own age?"

Although Bobbi wouldn't have admitted it out loud, I knew she was constantly amused by my former friends. I knew she thought Mary Anne was a wimp; that Kristy was a bitch; and that Stacey had been a snob. I knew she thought Dawn wasn't a real individual, that Mallory was a bit of a nerd and a freak, and that Jessi was pretty cool. It was hard to admit that, she was kind of right. They were good people, but Mallory had always cared far too much about what people thought, to the point where it was kind of creepy. She was almost always examining people. Stacey had been a snob. There was no doubt about that. She considered New York to be the best place on the planet, and although several million people live there, seemed to consider it a claim to fame. And when she once fudged (literally) on her diet and wound up in the hospital, she was all 'Poor me, why can't things ever go right?' Kristy had considered 'being bossy' to mean 'a born leader.' And when you look at it in the sense that bossy boys are 'strong-willed' and so on, but girls are 'hard-headed,' she was right. However, at the age of thirteen, we should each have been far more relaxed than we were. Instead of enjoying sunny days, we had to rush to be at every meeting on time or early, and if we sat with anyone other than BSC members at lunch, we were practically shot on the spot. Dawn was considered an 'individual' but never actually did anything that was really extraordinary. So she ate vegetarian food and avoided sweets and liked the environment. So? People never called me an individual, even though I, despite criticism, stuck to my junk food. And we all cared about the environment, but because Dawn was willing to spew facts and insults simultaneously to anyone who ate what they wanted to (like calling hamburgers 'fried cow carcasses' in public) she was an 'individual.' Not. And Mary Anne was a wimp. That was just how it was. She could cry at dog food commercials. She'd twitch and spasm if you mentioned books in which a character died. And she even confessed once that the fairy tales (Disney fairy tales!) were too scary for her!

I knew Bobbi hadn't ever seemed to have a problem with Jessi, at least how I described her. I guess most people saw Jessi as being black, which was enough of a character flaw for them. She wasn't shy or bossy or snobby or nerdy. She didn't dress like a lunatic (that would be me; how had I ever mixed red and purple and electric lime green together? I must have been insane!) or have an insanely big family full of divorce, remarriage, disease, and pets.

And, come to think of it, we weren't that diverse a group. Nobody was poor or unpopular or even that different. And even as teens we liked to consider ourselves insightful. How had we not seen that we were just a clique like any other, except that we had 'rules' and 'jobs' and 'earned money?'

"All of us," I muttered, in response to Bobbi's question. "I was just thinking about how 'different' we supposedly all were. We weren't ever that different."

"How so? I thought you seemed like a pretty mixed-up group."

I was about to answer when she called, "Elizabeth, don't run on the grass, please! It's wet and slippery!"

"Well, we had enough money and luck to always go on vacations. Disneyland, a cruise, cross-country in two RVs. And every single time, all of our parents agreed to let us go. Even Jessi and Mallory, and they were eleven. You wouldn't let Jen or Liz or Kerry go out on things like that without you, would you?"

"Ten or fifteen years ago, I'd probably have said 'Yes,' just because I knew my mother wouldn't. But I know now what it's like to feel so protective. There's no chance they'd ever go out sailing without an adult, or across the country with so many teenagers and the fathers. That wouldn't be smart even if I'd known everyone forever."

I was silent for a moment. "You know…sometimes, my whole childhood seems fake. I know we had problems, but it was mostly smooth sailing the whole time. Winning a lottery—and, hello, nobody scolded us teenagers from gambling? Going across the country and into other countries and on various trips away from home for weeks at a time, all in one year? Were our parents insane?"

"Okay, so you weren't all that diverse. You all had money and luck. But they were good friends. Weren't they? That must count for something."

"When Kristy and Dawn weren't fighting over Mary Anne, and Stacey wasn't annoying everyone with her always-sophisticated attitude, yes. When Dawn wasn't crusading for something, yes, and when Abby wasn't butting heads with Kristy, yes—"

"Wait, who's Abby?" Bobbi asked. "I don't think you've mentioned her."

"I didn't? Wow. Well, she was a Jewish girl who joined the club. An athletic, opinionated asthmatic. She and Kristy, each being leader-like and used to being the one in command, often struggled for control over who did what and how it was done."

It was getting easier to remember things without a flood of painful memories and nostalgic grief bubbling up. It was getting easier to think of Stacey again, too, especially seeing that I could now freely admit she'd been a bit of a snob when, ten years earlier, I couldn't think of her or hear the name 'Stacey' without crying.

"Mom, can we go watch TV? I think Finding Nemo was listed for this afternoon."

"Okay," Bobbi agreed. "Hey, Kerry! Come on in and get some sunscreen!"

I followed Bobbi inside. The twins had already settled themselves down in front of the TV with the remote and were flipping through the channels. Kerry followed us to the kitchen, carrying three cups. Bobbi held the tray she'd held the glasses on, and we each held our own cups. Bobbi gestured to the sink, and Kerry and I deposited ours with Bobbi's.

"Don't you think Mallory just wants to reminisce?" Bobbi asked. "It can't hurt to go see her. She's probably wondering why you live in Chicago. I wonder how she found you."

"Her e-mail didn't explain," I said, with a shrug.

"Hey, Bobbi! Come look at this!"

Probably fearing for the clean white carpet, Bobbi hurried into the living room. I followed, seeing as it was the only way I'd get to talk to Bobbi. She never stayed in one place for long.

"'And in local news, Dahlia Battista, convicted as a teenager for terroristic crimes in Connecticut, will be having a final parole hearing before a civilian jury this Friday. It's to be the final hearing before she's released from custody and integrated into the system that will allow her to be reintroduced to society. More details on the hour.'"

- Author's Note 2: I hope this chapter didn't bore you all to death. -