The Baby-Sitters Club Friends Forever #3: Mary Anne’s Big Break-up by Whitney Shimmell

finally.
    “That’s putting it mildly,” said Ms. Krueger. “Without unduly scaring you,”
    she continued, “you could have been robbed, kidnapped, or attacked. You could
    have been hit by a car, especial y out in the country roads where there are no
    sidewalks. You would have been a lovely target for a drunk driver. Did you think
    about that?”
    “No,” Sunny and I admitted.
    “Did you tell anyone where you were going?”
    “Jil sort of knew. I mean, she had the address,” said Sunny.
    “Jil ’s our friend,” I added, purposely not tel ing Ms. Krueger Jill’s last
    name. (I noticed that Ms. Krueger didn’t ask for her last name, which I
    appreciated.) “She refused to go to the party.”
    “Smart girl,” replied Ms. Krueger. “Wel , at least someone ‘sort of’ knew
    where you girls were going to be. What about you?” she asked Ducky.
    “No one exactly knew,” Ducky admitted.
    “Great,” said Ms. Krueger. “So if you hadn’t come home on Saturday night,
    your brother wouldn’t have discovered this until Sunday morning, and he would
    have no idea where to start looking for you. Is that right?”
    “yeah.”
    “Okay. Now, about the drinking. Sunny, on Sunday morning you looked to
    me like a young woman with a hangover.” (Sunny blushed but didn’t say
    anything.) “I’m not going to go into al the dangers of drinking too much. I just
    want to make sure that you know about a condition called alcohol poisoning. It
    can easily happen when you’re drinking a lot. And it can lead quickly to death.”
    (Sunny’s eyes widened and her chin tremble, but still she said nothing.) “Now,
    let’s see,” Ms. Kruger went on. “What else? I imagine kids at the party were
    smoking, but you already know about the dangers of smoking. Also, the party
    was held at a house that was unoccupied. I’m sure you’ve thought about how you
    would have summoned help, if it were needed, when you couldn’t get to a
    phone.”
    “Ms. Krueger?” said Ducky then. “The party was real y stupid. We know
    that now. We did a lot of stupid things that night.”
    “We didn’t know,” said Sunny defiantly, “that the upperclassmen were
    going to play a trick on us, though. I mean, maybe Ducky knew, but Dawn and I
    didn’t. That wasn’t our fault. We didn’t know we were going to an empty house.”
    “Were the upperclassmen responsible for your choosing to get drunk? Or
    choosing to walk to the party alone in the middle of the night?” Ms. Krueger
    asked Sunny, raising an eyebrow.
    “No.”
    “Look, kids, I’m just trying to point out how dangerous Saturday night
    could have been for you. The bottom line is that you’re not going to get in
    trouble-“
    “We’re not?” Sunny asked.
    “No, you’re not. You did get tricked. And you didn’t think. And you are very
    lucky that nothing more than a hangover happened. But you are not going to get
    punished. At least not individual y. And not this time.”
    “Thank you,” I said.
    “What does ‘not this time’ mean?” Sunny asked suspiciously.
    “It means if I hear about this sort of thing in the future, I’m going to come
    down hard on you three. I’l be in touch with your parents – even yours,
    Christopher – so fast your heads will spin. Is that understood?”
    Yes, it was understood. And at that moment I decided Ms. Krueger was a
    very cool adult. I understood exactly what she was doing…scaring us (it worked),
    giving us one warning (I knew it truly was exactly one warning), then letting us off the hook.
    I hope I get Ms. Krueger for a teacher one day.
    When Ms. Krueger let Sunny and Ducky and me go, we exploded into the
    hall.
    “Head directly for the assembly,” Ms. Krueger cal ed after us.
    “Okay!” I called back.
    “Whoa,” exclaimed Ducky.
    “Oh, man,” said Sunny, shaking her head.
    “What?” I asked.
    “She’s such a dork.”
    “Who? Ms. Krueger?” asked ducky.
    “Who else?” said Sunny.
    “She let us off the hook,”