#90: Welcome to the BSC, Abby!
“Life makes me sneeze. Good thing it makes me laugh, too.” - Abby, page 2
Right off the bat, asthmatic and allergic-to-everything Abby is a feminist queen, applauding wives who “got smart and got out of the unpaid labor of housework.” Abby’s dad died in a car accident when she was nine years old. Her mother works in publishing and recently got a big promotion, so Abby and her twin Anna and their mom moved into a big new house in Kristy’s neighborhood in Stoneybrook, and Abby joined the BSC.
Things are going pretty swimmingly for Abby, until she has a really bad asthma attack while baby-sitting for the Papadakises and has to be taken away in an ambulance. Kristy witnesses it and Abby worries that she’ll be seen as infirm and be kicked out of the BSC.
Meanwhile, there’s a huge fundraising carnival going on to help save the Stoneybrook arts and music programs. Families or organizations can create booths to help fundraise — so the BSC has a button booth, Abby and Anna have a cupcake-decorating booth, the Arnold twins charge people to get their photos taken with Mrs. Stone’s goat Elvira, etc. Watson even pays to have a bunch of carnival rides (a ferris wheel, bumper cars, etc.) set up — which is great, but dude, you could have just donated that money to the arts and music programs, right?
Anywho, everything is going great until Abby hears a radio report of a train derailment and freaks out… because her mother is supposed to be on the train. After losing her father in a car accident, this is pretty traumatic news. Luckily, though, it turns out that Mrs. Stevenson had been on the train behind the one that got derailed, so it had just taken her a long time to get back to the station and then get to Stoneybrook on a bus. (And this is 1995, so… no smart phone.) She shows up at the carnival and the Stevensons are able to enjoy the rest of it together.
The next time a baby-sitting job comes up for the Papadakises comes up, Kristy suggests without hesitation that Abby take it, so Abby knows she’s “off probation.” And Anna is actually getting along really well with Shannon Kilbourne, so it seems as though the Stevenson sisters are settling in just fine.
WELCOME TO THE DAMN BSC, ABBY!
