BSC 10 YEARS LATER

A/N: This is basically a Super Special that takes place ten years after the series' end.

PROLOGUE: Kristy

I lay on the examining table in Dr. Wright's office, and Jason held my hand while the doctor measured my stomach. Even though it was mid-June, I was freezing my ass off, mostly because of the air conditioner. I'm just glad I spent the entire time looking at the amethyst ring on Jason's right ring finger, which I'd given him on our wedding night. Otherwise, I never would've gotten through this.

After a minute, the doctor looked up. "Well, congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Everett," he said. "You're having a baby."

Jason and I smiled at each other, and he squeezed my hand. "How far along is she?" Jason asked the doctor.

Dr. Wright measured my stomach again and said, "Judging by the size of her uterus, I'd say about eight weeks, which is roughly about two months."

Jason shook hands with the doctor, then helped me sit up. "I'll meet you out in the waiting room, Kristy," he said, then left me alone to get dressed.

Before I go any farther, I should probably tell you more about me and Jason, and how we met. My name's Kristy Thomas-Everett, I'm twenty-three years old, and Jason is twenty-five. I met him when we were in eighth grade, when he and his family had moved into what had been a brand-new apartment complex at the end of the block where my mother and stepfather live.

We'd started dating just before our senior year of high school, and were even crowned the prom king and queen. And thankfully, no one dumped pig's blood on me. After graduation, we attended Ohio University in Athens, majoring in elementary education. I teach PE, and Jason teaches music.

We moved to Hartford, Connecticut, shortly after our college graduation, and were engaged and married within the following year. Hartford is not only the capital of our state, but it's also an hour and a half away from Stoneybrook, where I was born and raised. Jason, on the other hand, was born in Scotland, in a little town just an hour and a half outside of Glasgow. He came to America with his mom when he was four, and they settled in Manhattan. He told me that his real dad died about a month before he was born, and about a year and a half after they arrived in America, his mom married Steve, and Jason not only acquired a stepfather, but also a stepsister, Bebe. Jason was also adopted by his stepfather, and took his last name.

Jason also has a scar on his right cheekbone, which he says he got in a fight when he was ten. He told me the other kid hit him in the face with a board that had a little nail sticking out of it.

Soon after Jason started eighth grade, the Everetts moved to Stoneybrook when Steve was hired to be the superintendent of the apartments. The one thing that's always fascinated me about Jason is the fact that even though he came to America at such a young age, for some reason, his accent never went away completely. Nowadays, he sounds like the present-day Ewan McGregor. And when he decides to turn on the American accent, he sounds like Larry Caputo, the ex-husband of the Long Island Medium. My best friend, Mary Anne Spier-Bruno, is a movie freak, and Ewan McGregor happens to be one of her favorite actors.

Jason and I recently celebrated our first anniversary. We went to Scotland for our honeymoon, and one of the places he'd taken me was the Firth of Clyde, where his granny's ashes are scattered.

Okay, back to me. I changed my clothes, and met Jason in the waiting room. We got in our red pick-up truck, and Jason started the ignition. During the ride home, we talked about our news, which I couldn't wait to share with our friends in the Baby-sitters Club.

What is the Baby-sitters Club, you ask? Well, it's a business that my friends and I had started in seventh grade, and continued through high school. By my senior year, I decided that was one service the town couldn't do without, so I turned the presidential duties over to my stepsister, Karen Brewer.

They meet every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 5:30 to 6:00, just like it had been when my friends and I had it, and parents can call them to line up baby-sitters. It saves the parents time, because that way, they don't have to call all over town just to find a baby-sitter. I actually got the idea when I was in seventh grade, and I saw Mom having that particular problem, finding a sitter for my younger brother, David Michael, who was only six at the time. Well, one thing led to another, and like the saying goes, the rest is history.

When I was the president, Claudia Kishi was the vice-president, and we held our meetings in her room, since she had her own phone and phone number, not to mention a buffet of junk food, which Stacey McGill and Dawn Schafer couldn't eat: Stacey, because she's a diabetic, and Dawn, because she's a health nut, so Claudia always made sure to have fruit or crackers for them. Nancy Dawes is now the vice-president, and her little brother, Danny—along with Laura Perkins, Lucy Newton, and Lynn Benedict, Claudia's cousin—are all members of a children's show choir called the Stoneybrook Kids. It was started seven years ago by Mr. Drubek, who's getting ready to retire from SMS. My brother and stepsiblings, along with several of our former baby-sitting charges, are all original members of the group. Mr. Drubek still runs it, but now he's helped by Nina Marshall, a Stoneybrook Kids alumnus, who happens to be Andrew's girlfriend.

Here are more essentials about Claudia. She lives on the north side of Chicago, where she teaches art at one of the local high schools. In her spare time, she does art work and submits it to local galleries. In fact, she's preparing for an art show this fall. I was impressed that Claudia could actually get into college, because she wasn't the best student in the world when we were in school. Recently, Claud was diagnosed with ADD (not to be confused with ADHD). She had to repeat some of seventh grade, but she was able to catch up, go to high school, and graduate with us.

Mary Anne was the BSC secretary. She's now married to Logan Bruno, one of our former associate members. (Jason's another one; we made him one after SMS finished their production of Carnival.) They live in an upstate New York town called Auburn, where Mary Anne is a middle school guidance counselor, and Logan is the PE teacher and football coach at one of the local high schools. Mary Anne was recently diagnosed with social phobia/social anxiety disorder, and sought treatment about three months ago. Now, Hannah Papadakis, formerly Hannie, is the secretary.

Stacey McGill-Thomas, who happens to be my sister-in-law, was the BSC treasurer. Like I said, she has diabetes, and even though she could get pregnant if she wanted to, chose not to, because of health risks, so she and Sam are in the process of adopting a baby. They live on the west side of Manhattan, where she was born and raised. She just got hired as a nurse's aide at New York Children's Hospital, as well as the director of their Juvenile Diabetes Center, and my brother is a sportswriter, like our father had been. Now, Margo Pike is the treasurer.

Dawn Schafer and Abby Stevenson were our alternate officers, which meant that one of them took over if someone had to miss a meeting. Dawn also happens to be Mary Anne's stepsister (her mom is married to Mary Anne's dad), and is originally from California. She moved here when she was in seventh grade after her parents divorced, then moved back for good the summer after we finished our sophomore year of high school. She now lives in Zuni, New Mexico, and has two jobs. During the school year, she works in the elementary school cafeteria, and the rest of the time, she helps Sunny Winslow, her childhood best friend, run a health-food store. Also, she and Sunny were members of the We Love Kids Club, a California-based BSC, even though they're not quite as organized.

Oh, that reminds me: Stoneybrook Elementary and Zuni Elementary are involved in a pen-pal program called Pens Across America, which is for students in second through fifth grades. When the school in Zuni burned down, Dawn organized a fundraiser. In fact, Dawn loved the people there so much, she decided to settle there.

Abby lives in Stoneybrook, and also has two jobs. During the day, she's an advertising executive for the same company in Stamford that Mom works for (Mom is her supervisor), and two or three nights a week, she does a stand-up comedy act at a nightclub in Stamford. On the nights she does, she only has time to grab a bite to eat between jobs, and gets home pretty late. In fact, I've seen her act, and she's hilarious!

At first, I was a little worried about her taking the second job, because of her asthma and allergies, but she reassured me that this particular nightclub is a smoke-free facility. She kind of reminds me of Joey Gladstone from Full House, only she doesn't do the funny voices, and she's nowhere near as dim-witted. Abby, Mary Anne, and I all have something important in common: we each have lost one of our parents. Mary Anne was just a baby when her mother died, and thirteen when her dad remarried. Abby has a twin sister named Anna, and they were only nine when their father was killed in a car accident. I was only six when my dad walked out on us, and he was killed in a plane crash ten years later. Nowadays, Natalie Springer is the alternate officer.

Like me, the above-mentioned members are all twenty-three years old. We also had two junior members who weren't allowed to baby-sit at night, unless it was for their own siblings. Mallory Pike-Hobart and Jessica Ramsey are both twenty-one years old and have recently graduated from college. Mal married Ben Hobart, whose brothers we used to baby-sit for. He's originally from Australia, and came to America when he was eleven. However, unlike Jason, his accent never went away, mostly because he was older when he came to America. The Hobarts live in Cleveland, where she's planning to be a high school English Lit. teacher, and he's planning to be an accountant.

Jessi lives on the east side of Manhattan with her boyfriend, Manette Hughes. They met during our trip to Washington with the Stoneybrook Kids. While we were there, they exchanged e-mail addresses, then ended up together at Julliard about four years ago. They're also professional dancers, and are currently rehearsing for an '80s revue that opens off-Broadway next month. Now, Gabbie Perkins and my adopted sister, Emily, are the junior officers.

Logan and Jason, along with Shannon Kilbourne, who lived across the street from me, were our associate members. That meant they took the jobs we couldn't, although all of us—including the associates—all being booked at once only happens once in a blue moon, as my stepfather would say. Shannon currently teaches French at Stoneybrook High School, and is engaged to my ex-boyfriend, Bart Taylor. Now, Mathew and John Hobart and Myriah Perkins are the associate members.

Okay, back to us.

Jason and I pulled into the driveway and got out of the truck. Our house is really cute: white with dark green trim, and it's actually the upper half of a duplex. All you do is open the door and go upstairs to the apartment. Luckily for us, it's not six flights, there's no hole in the skylight—if we had one—and our landlord, who lives downstairs, is relatively sane, even if he isn't the nicest guy in the world.

As soon as we came inside, I sat down on the couch and cried, which is something that I rarely do. Honestly, I don't think I've cried this much since Nannie's funeral, which was last fall.

Jason was beside me in an instant. "Shh, Kristy, it's okay," he said, putting his arm across my shoulders. I laid my head on his chest, continuing to cry, and listening to his heartbeat. I knew that's what the next couple of months or so would be like for me, in addition to morning sickness, and eventually, wild food cravings. I remembered that when Mom was pregnant with David Michael, she practically lived off peanut butter and banana sandwiches, seedless watermelon, and German chocolate, the really dark kind. And isn't it ironic that chocolate's something that David Michael's allergic to? (By the way, he's a spring baby, so Dad didn't have to worry about Mom sending him to Mexico for the seedless watermelon.)

And best of all, Jason doesn't play or sing "I Get Around" while I'm hurling!