Disclaimer: Fans of the BSC probably know this, but just want to make clear that none of the Baby-Sitters' Club characters belong to me; they all are the creation of Ann Martin, not the current author. And in addition, the character Mona Vaughn belongs to author Betsy Haynes, not the current author. Now their kids and some of the spouses and some of their other friends are my creation and have been copyrighted.

Edge of Darkness

By: CNJ

PG-13

1: February 2023, Part 1:

Mary Anne:

The alarm buzzed loudly. I slowly opened my eyes, willing the noise to just go away and let me sleep some more. But I couldn't go back to sleep because it was Monday morning and time for Owen and me to wake up, make sure our kids, Tamara and Alma were up and to get ready for work.

I slid out of bed and walked across the room and turned it off. By then, my husband, Owen Spiser had awakened and reached over toward my side.

Seeing our overnight bags lined up by the dresser made us both remember that today we had a flight to catch to Atlanta, Georgia for our teachers' international conference.

Owen and I are both high school teachers and live just outside of New York City, in a suburb called Hudson Ridge. I'm now thirty-nine and Owen is forty-four.

"We gotta get ready," I yawned. Neither Owen or I are morning people, which is why we set two alarms way across the room. Owen nodded and got up, his blue eyes still bleary.

"We have 'till ten-thirty to catch that plane..." Owen mumbled as he headed toward the bathroom.

I put on my glasses, ran a comb through my dark, straight hair and went down the hall to check if my girls were awake. They weren't, but it was still early, around six-thirty. I usually let them sleep until seven, when they have to get ready for school.

Alma's four and in pre-school and Tamara is nine and in the fourth grade. Owen and I would be at the teachers' conference until Friday, then heading back here on Saturday.

While we were gone, I'd be paying my friend, Mona Vaughn to watch them. Mona is a veterinarian and lives just down the street from me. She has a daughter, Zara, who's Alma's age and the two of them are good friends.

I got dressed, then headed down to the kitchen to dig up something edible for breakfast. There was more snow from earlier this week, being late February.

Looking in the pantry, I saw oreos, cereal, egg noodles, granola bars. I set out plates and glasses for all of us. By the time I got out of the shower, Tamara and Alma were up and getting dressed.

"Have your overnight stuff packed?" I asked them.

"Yeah..." Tamara pointed at their overnight bags by the hallway. We headed downstairs together and Owen was there, making bagels. We sat down to eat.

"Can I have a granola?" Alma asked.

"I guess so," I nodded and she got up to get one from the pantry. Actually, she got several and sat and scarfed them down. As we ate, Owen turned on the radio and we listened to the weather report. The anchor called for more snow starting on Friday.

"Hey, maybe we'll be off school Friday!" Tam crowed as we stacked the dishes in the dishwasher.

After the rush to brush teeth, I told the girls to head straight over the Mona's after school. Owen and I hugged them before we headed out the door. By that time, our baby-sitter had arrived.

"Byyyyee..." we called.

"Don't get airsick," Alma called.

"We won't," I promised. Owen and I laughed as we headed toward the car to head toward Kennedy Airport.

"Hi, Mona..." I said into my cell phone. "Owen and I are at the airport now. We're catching a flight to Atlanta in a half hour."

"Enjoy yourselves you two." Mona told me. She was already at work in her vet's office. "And don't worry about the girls. I'll be sure they're all right here. Bye."

"Bye." I clicked the phone closed. Owen and I sat on two green connected chairs until our flight was called.

It claimed half an hour, but it really took forty-five minutes to be called. Once the flight was called, we edged onto the shuttle, bit by bit.

It was a three-minute ride to the actual plane and once we got on, we let out our breaths, glad to be able to sit down again. I was still fighting the early-morning sleepiness.

I lay back and let my mind wander and was almost in a half-sleep. Mona's been one of my best friends since eleventh grade when she joined the Baby-Sitters' Club.

The Baby-Sitters' Club, the legacy of Stoneybrook, Connecticut made up of nine friends of mine and me...sounds like a long-ago epic out of a book? Actually, it wasn't so long ago, although it often feels like it.

I grew up in Stoneybrook, Connecticut and so did two of my friends, Kristy Thomas and Claudia Kishi. We were best friends since nursery school on and are still close friends today, even though they both live in Two Skies, Minnesota now.

They're both businesswomen, Kristy specializing in products for left-handers and Claudia in commercial art and advertising. They're both creative go-getters, so it's not surprising. Claudia's married an has three daughters; Kristy's divorced and has five kids.

I smiled softly to myself as I remembered always knowing somehow that Kristy would have a large family. Kristy was the one who came up with the idea of forming the Baby-Sitters' Club or BSC for short way back in seventh grade when we were kids at Stoneybrook Middle School.

By then Stacey McGill, who'd just moved from New York City had joined us and the four of us started the club to offer parents just one number to reach and get several experienced baby-sitters. Stacey is now an engineer in Vermont and has two kids.

All of us love kids and enjoyed baby-sitting. The mini-business grew and we had several meetings a week My stepsister Dawn joined us in the middle of seventh grade.

In eighth grade, several more members joined us, including Abby Stevenson, Jessi Ramsey, and Mallory Pike. Later on in eleventh grade, Mona joined us and so did Abby's twin sister, Anna.

Our club lasted all through high school much to our surprise. Senior year came and we wanted the club to continue, but knew we'd be going off to different colleges, so we decided to train our former charges, who were in middle school, to take over the club once we left for college. And so the BSC the Next Generation was born. Now the BSC is in its sixth generation back in Stoneybrook and still going strong.

Stacey:

"Have a great day, kids, " I called to my two kids as I headed out the door that cold February morning in mid-week after the baby-sitter had arrived.

We had gotten a snowstorm here in Vermont last night and Larry, who's seven and Syrie, who's five were off school. I wasn't off work as an engineer, so I was on my way out the door to catch the railway into the small city of Vladboro.

Thank heavens the main road had been cleared and that the rail was running on time.

In some ways, this train reminds me of the subway in New York City where I grew up. My mind traveled a little back to when I used to live in NYC before my parents split up when I was in seventh grade, then my mom and I moved to the large town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut where I'd met my friends in the BSC and finished growing up there.

My mom and I are still close today and we e-mail and talk on the phone several times a week. Sadly, Dad had died shortly before I married Jon Metrick when I was thirty.

I couldn't help thinking what an odd irony it is that now Jon and I are splitting up and our divorce will be final in a few months. Too many different values and I'd suspected that Jon had been drinking and gambling as well.

But I'm grateful for my two wonderful kids. People tell me that Larry looks a lot like me and I guess they're right. Both kids have honey-colored hair like me and Larry has my shade of eyes, dark cobalt blue. Syrie has her dad's green-gray eyes.

I was lucky to be able to have them in a regular birthing center instead of a hospital. It was a feat actually, since I'm diabetic and diabetic pregnant women have to be monitored more closely. They were both born very large, but healthy.

I smiled softly as I pulled out my insulin patch and put it on my abdomen. Gone are the days when diabetics had to poke a needle into themselves to get their insulin way back in the twentieth century and in fact until about ten years ago. Now all I have to do is put the patch in place once a day for ten minutes and let the insulin absorb into me and do the work. The wonders of technology.

Getting to work, I smiled at my co-worker, Jean Searles, who had a desert screensaver on her laptop. It reminded me of Mary Anne Spiser's stepsister Dawn Schafer, who lives out in Arizona. She used to be part of our BSC back in high school and went to Arizona for college since she loves the desert climate. She's an archeologist and has twins, a son, Ben, and a daughter, Sierra.

I sat at my desk and picked up the old picture of all of us in the BSC way back the summer after we graduated from eighth grade...well the senior BSC. Mallory and Jessi, who'd been our junior officers, are two years younger than the rest of us.

It was that summer than we'd taken the cross-country trip across the USA in RV's. It had been a fun, exciting trip. It had also been a prelude to our high school years.

Boy, did we have our ups and downs in high school. Getting used to being freshman, then in tenth grade, dealing with an awful IN clique who picked on other kids, including the BSC. I still get a clammy, creepy feeling remembering how the IN clique dominated Stoneybrook High. Finally in eleventh grade, triumphing over the IN clique with a movement that Abby Stevenson started, Operation Today's Good Youth.

We'd deluged the editors of northeastern newspapers with letters on how the media back in the 1990's had a negative portrayal of youth in our time and blaming moms. Back then, some people still considered it unacceptable for a woman to work if she had kids!

That movement weakened the IN clique, then by the end of junior year, kids from the IN clique had gotten into trouble and they broke up. Senior year had been the anti-climax so to speak of our high school years.

Putting the picture down, I opened a drawer and pulled out another picture, one of Mom and me arm-in-arm and me holding my valedictorian award. Wow. I remembered how I couldn't believe it at first, then it had slowly sunk in.

Putting the picture away and starting my research of the day, I made a mental note to e-mail my friends tonight. Vaguely, I remembered Mary Anne telling me about a teachers' conference she and Owen was headed to in Atlanta at the end of this month. I wondered if they were there now.

"Stacey...Stacey..." Lini Wang's voice came into the lab later that afternoon. "It's the phone...urgent." I raced over and it was my neighbor and a friend, Valerie Goldboro.

"It's your son, Larry," Val was panting. "I think you'd better get here as fast as you can."

"What happened!" My breath caught. "Is he all right?"

"I...don't know..." Val sounded a little faint. "The kids were ice-skating by the park..." She hesitated.

"My God, tell me what's going on," A very bad feeling was coming over me and I felt a bit shaky. "Please..."

"He disappeared down a ledge..." Val gasped some and I realized that I had to get home fast.

I made it home in record time and Valerie, shaken and pale, led me to the edge of the pond where part of the ice had melted into a huge hole which dipped downward into a steep cliff.

"Where's Syrie?" I asked.

"She's inside with Pia," Val told me. I headed out toward the lake. "Stacey, no, it's dangerous; the rescue crew is on the way!"

I kept going, my heart hammering. If there was a way to get my son out, I'd do it. Sliding my way cautiously down to icy pond, I edged toward the hole.

"Stacey..." Val's voice was faint above the whoosh of the melting side of the cliff.

Clinging to a low branch, I peered down and saw a flash of yellow. Larry's jacket! But just as quickly, it floated away.

The next few hours are hazy in my mind, but I remember the branch giving way and me being at the edge of the cliff, the icy water washing over me. My hands began to hurt after clinging to that thick branch, which was dangerously close to breaking.

"Larry!" I screamed into the blue-gray icy churning chaos below me. The yellow splotch flashed again and I screamed again, "LAARRRR-RRR-Y!" But the yellow was gone again.

Desperately, I reached with my free hand, but the branch cracked again and I was plunged deeper into the waves and very close to falling down that cliff.

At the last minute, I heaved my body up the end of the branch just as one end broke off into the cliff. I hung there on my stomach in terror. A stark, numb dread overwhelmed me as I realized that I was helpless to save my son. I couldn't see the yellow anywhere now. It could have been an hour; it could have been just a half hour, but I hung on.

"There're almost there; hang on, Stace..." I heard Val call. In a daze, I heard voices among the trees and felt something on the branch.

"N-no, don't move the branch..." I wailed, beginning to shake, fresh terror washing over me at the thought of losing my grip and plunging into the cliff. "Please!"

Closing my eyes, I waited for the fall, waited for maybe my own death...a strong pair of arms grabbed my waist and someone called, "We got her!" A huge woman was wrapped around me and gripping me in her arms and we were both pulled up from the branch and onto the dry ground.

"She's all right..." someone murmured as I fell back onto the ground, an awful dizziness rushing over me.

"My son isn't..." I wailed. "Oh, God, Oh, God, somebody please help my son..." I was crying now and the woman who'd pulled me from the tree whispered soothing words, I don't know what. It was a blur in my mind, the rest of that nightmarish afternoon. Thank the all the skies that I blacked out then.