BSC in NYC!

Dear Margo and Claire,

I hope you two are behaving for Mom and Dad and your older siblings! I am having a wonderful time in New York! We are staying at the Plaza Hotel where Eloise lives! Today I went to the American Girl Place on 5th Avenue with my friends. Tell your doll I bought her a beautiful dress!

Love your big sister,

Mallory

New York is so dibble! (Dibble means really cool. My friends and I make up words all the time). I felt so grown up traveling all alone. Well, I wasn't really alone since I was with my friends and the Brewers.

Jessi, Kristy, Mary Anne, Dawn, and I were staying at the Plaza Hotel with Kristy's family. I have stayed at some pretty fresh (that's another word we made up. Like dibble, it means really cool) places before in New York. The last time I way here, I stayed at the Dakota, a really fancy apartment building where you have to be really rich to live. (Laine Cummings, Stacey's best friend from New York lives there, but now she's Stacey's ex-best friend. Laine is really stale now. (Stale, by the way, means really bad or uncool)). I was super excited to be staying at the Plaza Hotel because it was the place where Eloise lived and had her many adventures! Eloise was one of my favorite books as a child. It's one of my favorite books to share with the kids I baby-sit for. I usually have a copy of it in my Kid-Kit. (Kid-Kits are just one of many Kristy's great ideas. We fill boxes of toys and games and books and take them on baby-sitting jobs. It keeps the kids entertained for hours!)

I wasn't the only one excited to be staying at the Plaza. As we ate breakfast the next morning, Mary Anne kept telling us random facts about the hotel, acting like a tour book.

"Did you know that eighteen-story cast-iron structure was made to resemble a French Renaissance chateau on a larger scale? And that the Plaza was designed by Henry J. Hardenbergh, also known for the Dakota and the original Waldorf-Astoria?"

"That's fascinating, Mary Anne," Jessi said politely as she poured maple syrup over her pancakes.

"Don't encourage her, Jessi!" Kristy hissed.

"What are you girls going to do today?" Mrs. Brewer asked us from the other end of the table.

"I was thinking we could go to Central Park," Kristy said at the same time I said, "I'd like to visit the American Girl Place. It's right on Fifth Avenue"

"The American Girl Place!" Karen exclaimed. "I want to go there! Oh, Daddy, can I go there?"

"I thought you wanted to go to the Central Park Zoo today, Karen," Watson said after taking a sip of his orange juice.

"I do! But I want to go to the American Girl Place much, much more!"

"I don't want to go to any doll place!" David Michael said looking disgusted.

"Yuck! Me neither!" Andrew agreed.

"I can take Karen with me," I told Mr. And Mrs. Brewer, feeling very grown up.

"And I'll come to," Jessi added. "I went to Central Park last time I was here, but didn't really spend a lot of time strolling along Fifth Avenue."

"Mary Anne, Dawn, do you want to come to Central Park with me?" Kristy asked.

"I will," Mary Anne said. "We should definitely visit Strawberry Fields and the Hans Christian Andersen statue. Oh, and we should probably invite Claud since Stacey's meeting her dad's new girlfriend. Maybe we can go to the Met. I'm sure she'd like that."

"Dawn, what about you?" Kristy asked. "Fifth Avenue or Central Park?"

"Maybe I should just stay here," Dawn replied.

"Da-awn!" Kristy exclaimed. "You can't spend your entire vacation cooped up in the Plaza.

"Okay, fine, I'll go with Jessi and Mal," she said. I was a little surprised since I figured Dawn would rather want to go to Central Park since she loves nature so much, but she continued talking. "I don't want to step a foot in Central Park! I was watching this TV program where these women kept getting strangled there."

"That's awful!" exclaimed Mary Anne. "I haven't heard anything about that, though. Where did you see that?"

"Well, it was an episode of Law and Order or one of those shows, but it could have happened!"

"Dawn, you need to chill out," Kristy advised her.

After breakfast, Jessi, Dawn, Karen, and I stepped out onto Fifth Avenue, ready for a day of shopping! Since I would be spending the afternoon on one of the world's most fashion conscious streets, I was wearing my most sophisticated outfit. I must say, I was looking pretty fresh. I had on my red jumper with my name embroidered across the front of it and my white tights with red hearts on them. I tried to tame my red unruly hair as best I could, but the heat was making it frizz all over the place. For the final touch, I had put on my earrings: small silver ones in the shape of horses. (Jessi and I both love horses!)

I wanted to visit the American Girl Place to get something for my younger sisters, Margo and Claire. They share the Samantha doll and I wanted to buy them an outfit for their doll or something.

It was a beautiful, summer day and lots of tourists were out strolling and window-shopping.

"Look at that," Dawn said with disgust as she stopped in front of the Louis Vuitton store window and pointed to a leather bag poised on a well-dressed mannequin. "They kill poor defenseless animals to make expensive bags out of them! How can they be so heartless?"

"Well, you have to pay a pretty penny to buy one of those bags," Jessi replied.

"Jessi! That shouldn't matter! The life of an animal should be priceless! I don't care if these bags cost a million dollars! This is outrageous!"

Each time we passed another store window displaying something made out of leather or fur, Dawn would keep on berating the people who sold the items and the people who bought them.

"Murderer!" she shouted at two elderly ladies as they went into a Fendi store.

Luckily they didn't hear her as a taxi had just honked at that moment.

"Dawn, would you be quiet!" Jessi hissed.

"I see the American Girl Place!" Karen suddenly shouted. "I see it!"

I was thankful and prayed we wouldn't have to pass anymore stores that Dawn would have a problem with on the way. Karen excitedly led the way and we entered a huge three story store.

"Oh, I wish I had bought one of my dolls with me to New York!" Karen pouted. "I could have their hair done at the salon!"

One of her dolls? "Which ones do you have?" I asked her.

"Oh, I have all of them!" Karen exclaimed brightly. "I have Kirsten, Samantha, Molly, Felecity, Addy, Kaya, Kit, Josefina, and Nellie. Oh! And I also have one of those dolls that look like myself. She has blonde hair and blue eyes, just like me! I named her Katrina. Isn't that a beautiful name, Mallory."

I nodded, still stunned at how many dolls she had. And these weren't cheap dolls either. They were eighty dollars each. Of course, Karen's father is a millionare.

Each of the dolls are from different periods and they come with their own dresses and accessories. There were many young girls in the store, browsing with their mothers or older sisters as they carefully decided what to buy for their dolls. Karen loved watching dolls get their hair styled at the salon, as they sat in little chairs. On the second floor was a hospital where you could get a body replacement for your doll if something (like an arm or a head) fell off.

"These dolls are so precious!" Jessi exclaimed as she looked at all the dolls on display in a glass case. "Ooh, I bet Becca would love that one." She pointed to the only black doll.

"That's Addy," Karen informed her. "She's from 1864."

"I'm going to look for some dresses for my sister's doll," I said.

As Jessi, Karen, and Dawn continued browsing, I started looking for dresses I knew my sisters didn't have. I was debating between a pink kimono bathrobe with white slippers and a white teadress with pink trim when an employee came up to me.

"Hello, dear, are you finding everything okay?" she asked me. She was a friendly looking woman, in her sixties, her white hair tied up in a bun.

I nodded. "Yes, thank you. I'm just deciding which outfit to get."

"Oh, I see you have the Samantha doll," she said as she put on her wire-rim glasses which were attached to a thin chain around her neck. "She has such beautiful dresses."

"Well, actually, they're for-" I started to say, but was interrupted when the woman suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, your tights are so darling! My granddaughter would just love those! Tell me, where did you get them?"

"At a department store in Stoneybrook called Bellairs," I replied.

"Stoneybrook? Never heard of it."

"It's in Conneticut."

"That's where my little Colleen lives! She's going to turn five next month."

"That's great," I replied feeling a little offended that she thought her four year old granddaughter would like my tights. Suddenly I wasn't feeling very sophistacted in my outfit.

"Have you decided on which outfit for your dolly you would like to get?"

I held up the teadress.

"Fabulous choice! I can ring you up downstairs. Do you want to get your mom first?"

My mom? "I'm not here with my mom," I replied. "I came with my friends."

"Well!" the woman chuckled. "Aren't you all grown up?"

I frowned behind the woman as I followed her to pay for the doll outfit. Wasn't I already grown up? I may not be able to wear make-up or baby-sit at night, but I always thought I was one of the most sophisticated and grown-up people in my class. Had I been wrong all this time?