the 13 craziest things that happened to stacey from the baby-sitters club
My fellow scholars of The Baby-Sitters Club have noted that Mallory, out of the ten sitters, was disproportionately predisposed to misfortune. Mallory was also the one who wanted to be a writer, so it could’ve read as a self-own had author Ann M. Martin not admitted to basing Mary Anne on herself.
Wait. I’d better back up and parody the second chapter of every BSC book in excruciating detail. The Baby-Sitters Club (hyphenation VITAL) was a series of YA-before-there-really-was-YA novels from the ’80s and ’90s by Ann M. Martin (and her haunted mansion’s worth of ghostwriters) about a group of thirteen-year-olds (who have the personal freedoms, thought processes, and general dispositions of the average eighteen-year-old) in Connecticut who… form a babysitting club. Netflix adapted the series pretty recently, and they did such an unbelievably good job that I almost forgave them for canceling Santa Clarita Diet. The original publisher, Scholastic, has also been slowly releasing graphic novel editions of the earliest books in the series over the last decade or so, and I unironically recommend both of these over the actual books themselves despite the veritable Mariana Trench of nostalgia I hold for them.
A brief rundown of our heroines (and Logan):
Kristy: Club founder and president, child of divorce, dykon. Her mom gets remarried to a rich guy and she has to move into a three-story McMansion, so she depends on her older brother and his shitty car for rides to club meetings, which are held at Claudia’s house. She also coaches a softball team. I want to be her when I grow up.
Mary Anne: Club secretary, cat aficionado, sympathetic crier. Probably the second most deserving of a batshit happenstance ranking, given that the original series opened with her taking a feverish four-year-old to the hospital and ended with her house burning down.
Claudia: Vice president, artist, sugar addict, fashion icon. Does poorly in school, which Martin exemplifies by spelling every other word in her diary entries wrong. Her bedroom is the BSC headquarters because her otherwise strict parents let her have her own phone line for some contrivance reason.
Stacey: Treasurer, native New Yorker, Type I diabetic, math nerd, also a fashion icon but in a boring way, i.e. she does not often sport homemade papier mâché earrings. It’s short for Anastasia. Her parents get divorced pretty early on and spend the rest of the series being shitty about it. Her case of diabetes is serious enough to merit such frequent mention that I’ve seen theories it was supposed to read as a metaphor for HIV, like that alleged high school production of Rent. I don’t think it’s that deep, but I also don’t want to discount anyone’s interpretation. Also, she’s the star of this article, so please retain her bio if no one else’s.
Dawn: Walking sanctimonious environmentalist stereotype. Winner of the Most Improved Characterization By Netflix Award. “Alternate officer”, which means she takes over for any senior club member in the event of their absence. From California the same way that Stacey is from New York (read: she shuts up about it never, and the Connecticuters always lose their minds about how cool she is). Her mom marries Mary Anne’s dad eventually. Then she moves back to California so that Ann M. Martin could launch an actual, babysitting-free young adult series about her and her friends, but for brand integrity, Dawn isn’t really allowed to do anything other than be like, “My friends sure do have issues!” Which is actually very in-character, but I digress.
Mallory: Cosmic punching bag.
Jessi: Ballerina. Horse girl. Like Mallory, she is sixteen eleven years old, in contrast to the other club members, who are eighteen thirteen. Originally from New Jersey, but no one thinks this is cool.
Abby: Dawn’s replacement. Likes soccer and puns. From Long Island, which is as exciting as Jessi being from New Jersey. Low-key my favorite character.
Logan: Mary Anne’s boyfriend and associate club member, which means they’re allowed to make him babysit if no one else is available.
Shannon: Kristy’s mean rich neighbor (I say as if Kristy isn’t also mean and technically rich by this point) and associate club member.
Was that really long? Did you hate reading it? GOOD. You have just speedrun every single Chapter Two.
Anyway, the thing about these books is that there were a staggering 209 of them, and there are only so many childcare-related plotlines the average readership is going to tolerate. I for one was definitely in it more for the soap operaesque dramatics with which Martin and the ghostwriters began injecting the series around Book #37 or so. Did I care if the token clumsy kid made Kristy’s softball team? Not really. Did I stay up until 2:00 A.M. on a school night to find out how Claudia and Dawn would escape that desert island? Fucking obviously.
Eventually I noticed a pattern: just as Mallory was prone to hardship, Stacey was prone to finding herself in a greater number of preposterous situations than one would reasonably expect to befall a person in the span of just one school year — even if that school year was kind of a time loop. In a sense, Stacey underwent as many (if not more) calamities as Mallory, but the things that happened to Mallory were unglamorous and mundane. Her dad lost his job. She got mono. She was bullied by eighth graders. She had an evil roommate at boarding school. We’ve all been there. Stacey, meanwhile, couldn’t so much as plan a school dance without triggering a Carrie pastiche.
It kind of makes sense? Stacey was the quote unquote sophisticated one. Of the eighteen-year-old thirteen-year-olds, she was the eighteenest. She had a possibly allegorical autoimmune disorder that landed her in the hospital a few times. And she was from New York City, where crazy shit allegedly happens to people, although the majority of her mishaps took place in Connecticut, where I actually believe crazy shit happens to people. Blame these books.
Now, I’m a Kristy sun, Dawn moon, Mallory rising. I have never found Stacey relatable, due to her being cool and good at math and only like, a 1 on the Kinsey scale, but we do (per official BSC lore) share a birthday! Which is on Monday! I’m turning -SIGNAL INTERRUPTED- and Stacey is presumably turning thirteen for the thirty-sixth time, so in honor of this momentous occasion, I have ranked her thirteen most bananas misadventures. Let’s go.
#13: Getting poison ivy at summer camp (Baby-sitters’ Summer Vacation)
An extremely Mallory plotline, yet Ann M. Martin inflicted it on Stacey. This was early on in the series, hence the normalcy. Every other conflict in this book is interpersonal, and that usually means Stacey is about to experience actual physical danger. This will be a recurring theme. She can’t identify poison ivy because they don’t have it in Manhattan, apparently, so she accidentally sits in a patch of it during a group singalong. The camp director warns them about poisons ivy and oak, and then this worrisome new thing called Lyme disease, (this book was published in 1989) and Stacey’s like, “Oh no!” and just. Sits down in a pile of unfamiliar leaves. With zero self-awareness. When she of course ends up with poison ivy symptoms, she assumes it’s Lyme disease and freaks the fuck out. Relatable. So she goes to the infirmary all, “I HAVE LYME DISEASE,” and the nurse is like, “Okay. Let me get you something for your horrible case of poison ivy. You dumbass.” She also has pinkeye and a cold: side effects of living in a small cabin with a bunch of six-year-olds. And diabetes!
#12: Having a crush on her twenty-two-year-old math teacher (Stacey’s Big Crush)
This is so low on the list because it happened to Stacey. If this were a Kristy or Jessi or Mary Anne or Dawn book, it would’ve had the impact of nine apocalypses, (but only like, seven apocalypses if it were Claudia. Mallory is irrelevant because hot people are not allowed within her field of vision) but for Stacey it’s Tuesday. “When I walked into math class the next day, Tom Cruise was in the room,” she informs us, immediately pausing to disclaim how used she is to encountering famous people because she lived in New York. I do not know why Tom Cruise was selected for this dude’s visage, but it does increase the craziness severalfold, at least for me. She writes him a poem about star-crossed lovers that includes the line “each so dull in heaven’s net” and ACTUALLY GIVES IT TO HIM. Then they hang out at the Spring Fling and he’s like, “I am twenty-two years old. And you know I am twenty-two years old,” and Stacey finally decides it’s time to move on.
#11: Almost going into a diabetic coma (Stacey’s Emergency)
Stacey’s defining traits, in order: Diabetes, New York, coolness, boys, divorced parents, math. So obviously, there’s a book where she goes to New York to visit her divorced dad and winds up in the hospital because of her diabetes. It was actually the first one I read, which I cannot recommend less as an introduction to what is supposed to be a fun series about babysitting. The tagline on the cover (all of them have taglines, and they are usually hot garbage) is “Stacey just can’t win.” Cosigned!
#10: Almost not being allowed to graduate eighth grade over an unreturned library copy of Ribsy by Beverly Cleary (Graduation Day)
The chronological last book was a rollercoaster of emotions; somebody had to have a comedic plotline. I mean, she also has the requisite divorce angst, but that’s nothing new. She checked this book out in seventh grade. It’s like a Chekhov’s gun you never even knew there was, which I think technically disqualifies it from Chekhov’s gunhood, but whatever. Newsflash, asshole! She’s been hoarding that book the entire goddamn time!
#9: Quitting the club, but they had to make the club into like, 20% more of a cult than usual in order for this to be plausible (Stacey vs. the BSC)
She quits and Kristy fires her — I think that’s an important detail. Anyway, Stacey has this boyfriend named Robert for awhile, and Robert has cool friends who don’t babysit, so she starts hanging out with them. She does like, three mildly irresponsible things, to which the rest of the club reacts uncharitably, and by uncharitably, I mean they start following her. Finally, she snaps and tells them off, and is absent for five whole books, (so only about four months in real time) including Baby-sitters’ Haunted House, which meant Dawn, as alternate officer, had to be the one to get stuck in a dumbwaiter.
#8: When she and her bad influence, non-BSC friends got caught with alcohol at a concert (Stacey and the Bad Girls)
Loses points because she had nothing to do with it, but during Stacey’s short-lived reputation era, she goes to see her favorite band with Evil Claudia, Evil Kristy, Evil Mary Anne, and Evil Dawn (I refuse to remember their real names) and they sneak in a bottle of… wine? Whatever, I guess your options are kind of limited at thirteen, no matter how eighteen you are. They stash the wine on Stacey’s person, and security catches her with it. She’s like, “This isn’t mine, I’m literally diabetic?” and the guard is like, “That won’t work on me, I didn’t read Stacey’s Emergency.” So they call her mom, and her mom shows up to corroborate the diabetes alibi. Stacey rejoins the BSC and ghosts her evil friends, who only reappear whenever Ann M. Martin needs a bitchy throwaway line.
#7: That time every single one of her ex-boyfriends showed up in town at the same time (Stacey and the Boyfriend Trap)
Stacey and Claudia are feuding over some guy named Jeremy, who Stacey is currently dating. She’s also trying to bury the hatchet with her New York ex, and trying to plan a farewell party for her math teacher (who just got hired at NASA) with several of her Connecticut exes, plus TWENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD TOM CRUISE, who is after the new teaching position. Her vacation ex from Atlantic Sea City is also in town for no reason, and Kristy’s older brother — Stacey’s very first love interest — wants to go to the math teacher’s farewell party. Jesus Christ. Then her New York ex shows up, and she has to suffer through a social gathering attended by five of her exes, Tom Cruise, and Jeremy. Who breaks up with her at the end of the book because he’s so weirded out by the whole thing.
#6: When she and her mom got stranded in a blizzard because she just had to go to the mall and get a perm two days before the big school dance (Snowbound)
Yeah my sympathy is not very high, I must admit. To be fair, it wasn’t snowing when they got to the mall, but it was forecast! It was so extremely forecast! Then for some reason her mom elects to drive home on the unplowed backroads rather than the highway. Of course they get stuck, which is bad for all the reasons you’d expect, but also because Stacey can only go so many hours without food (she has diabetes) and her perm “smells like rotten eggs.” Hours later, they’re rescued by a guy who lives in a Thomas Kinkade painting, and he lets them stay the night. He even has a baby — you know, those things Stacey sits for! “By the way, my perm looked fantastic,” she says during the epilogue, recapping the dance, “but I’m not sure it was worth getting stranded in a snowstorm.” Neither am I.
#5: That time the club’s stalker tried to hit her with his car (Baby-sitters Beware)
Baby-sitters Beware is one of the earliest entries into the infinitesimal canon of Fiction That Has Actually Scared Me. Some background: Once upon a time, Dawn lived the plot of a Scooby-Doo episode, and brought a real estate tycoon/dognapper to justice. Only for the dognapping thing, but still. Then she conveniently moved back to California before the guy’s son could decide he wanted revenge. Working off a newspaper photo of the club (minus Mallory and Jessi, who were cropped out because… eleven is too disturbingly young to have a stalker, but thirteen isn’t? I guess?) from when they solved the case, the son starts doing creepy shit like spraypainting “YOU’RE NEXT” on Kristy’s front door and trying to burn Claudia’s house down. The same Claudia’s house where they hold BSC meetings. And then he tries to annihilate Stacey with his Mercedes, and she narrates as the car is closing in that she “had time to wonder if it would hurt,” which is burned into my brain and pops up every time I jaywalk. He swerves at the last minute because this is still The Baby-Sitters Club, and Stacey shows up to a club meeting looking “all shuck up,” as Claudia spells it. Me too.
#4: When she was just trying to visit her hot older boyfriend in New York for Christmas, but his evil ex-girlfriend tried to push her onto the subway tracks and pasted a picture of her head onto a jack-in-the-box clown (Baby-sitters’ Christmas Chiller)
It happens.
#3: Almost dying in a helicopter crash in Hawaii, and then having to survive in the wilderness (Aloha, Baby-sitters!)
Not as iconic as Dawn and Claudia’s desert island incident, but good lord. Stacey and Robert spend this entire implausible school trip fighting, culminating in them taking separate helicopters for an aerial tour of Haleakalā National Park. Stacey’s crashes in a storm, because of course it does. Everybody’s fine, but the nearest town is fifteen miles away, and supplies are limited, and Stacey has diabetes. They hike for a day, sleep in the forest, (at least there’s no poison ivy) and are anticlimactically rescued by some guy in a land rover. So anticlimactically, in fact, that Stacey starts embellishing the story as soon as she’s out of the hospital (her blood sugar was dangerously low). “The Great Haleakalā Lava Beast was the worst,” she concludes, like even she’s finally realized how susceptible she is to farfetched disasters.
#2: When the stalker finally caught up with them and tried to push her into a frozen lake (Baby-sitters Beware)
The attempted hit and run wasn’t enough! Kristy, Stacey, Claudia, and Abby go on a ski trip to try to escape the stalker, (fuck Mary Anne, I guess) but he follows them there. He also breaks the ski lift while Stacey is on it so that she almost freezes to death, but he makes attempts on the other three’s lives too, so it’s not as impactful. So the stalker, posing as a helpful local, is leading them through a blizzard to the ski lodge after their cabin loses electricity, and he pulls Stacey towards the lake, then threatens to push her in. Then he monologues about his evil plan, and how the BSC ruined his life, (relatable) and Kristy throws a road flare at him. Stacey manages to shove him away, he loses his balance, and then he falls into the lake, ending what Kristy terms his “mad campaign of terror.”
#1: Accidentally grabbing the wrong suitcase at Heathrow and finding some guy’s ashes inside (Baby-sitters’ European Vacation)
Objectively not as scary as anything that happened with the stalker, but when I think about Stacey mishaps, this is the pinnacle. There was no buildup. She gets to her hotel, tries to change into a dress so she can explore Ye Olde London Towne in style, SURPRISE HUMAN REMAINS. Fortunately, her mom is a chaperone on this trip, so she has the emotional support of an actual adult instead of just like, Kristy. Not that she needs it, because she’s more upset about losing her own stuff than being jumpscared by the late Mr. Dennis Petropolus. The rest of the book is Stacey learning a valuable lesson about how insensitive she’s been, and even skipping a day of tourist shit in Paris to accompany the owner of the suitcase (a WWII vet) to Normandy to scatter his friend’s ashes. Still, the initial discovery rattled me to the point of lifelong mild apprehension every time I open my suitcase after a flight. Because I could not handle it. I wasn’t eighteen when I was thirteen; thus I find the world much scarier.
Graduation Day, the last Baby-Sitters Club book, was published in October 2000, and since then I hope Stacey has known peace.