Stacey is going to babysit for her favorite kid, Charlotte. They are going to go downtown and have lunch and do some shopping. Charlotte is very excited about this and feels very grown-up. They go into the Merry-Go-Round and Stacey finds some earrings she wants, but when she goes to pay for them, the cashier thinks the $10 bill Stacey gives her is counterfeit. She calls the police.
The cops show up and ask some questions and say that the bill is fake and that Stacey will need to come to the station with them. Then and only then does Stacey call her mother, and it's only because she wants her mom to watch Charlotte until her parents are done with work. Stacey's mother is like "sure, whatever, take my minor child to the station with you and interrogate her without her parent or a lawyer present, that's fine." This is a stupid move on Stacey's mother's part, I'm just throwing that out there. Charlotte is really upset because she thinks Stacey is getting arrested. Stacey tries to reassure her but it doesn't really work. Stacey goes to the police station and tells her story several times.
Kristy babysits a new client, Georgie Hoyt. Georgie is 8 and has an older brother and sister, twins who are in 8th grade. The twins are named Terry and Tasha. Stacey has a crush on Terry, and apparently he likes her back, because he invites her on a date. While she's babysitting for Georgie, Kristy finds a school ID with Tasha Hoyt's picture on it but a different name, but doesn't know why it might be there.
The club has a special Saturday morning get-together (at which Claudia is wearing tie-dyed pajamas) and Kristy is kind of a cow to Stacey. She's worried that news might get out to their clients that one of them passed a fake bill, and it would be bad for business. I don't know why I even like Kristy, because she is really kind of a bitch to most of her friends a lot of the time. The club decides that they will try to solve the counterfeiting mystery, to clear Stacey's name.
At school on Monday, the girls use lunchtime to go to the library and research counterfeiting. While they are there, they see Alan Gray and a couple of other boys standing by the dictionaries and snickering. Kristy rolls her eyes and says they're probably just looking up dirty words. This little detail is amusing to me.
After school, the club goes to the public library and also to the police station. The officer they speak with at the police station tells them to stay out of it and let the professionals catch the criminals. This is sound advice which naturally is ignored completely.
Jessi babysits for Becca and Charlotte. Charlotte is still worried about Stacey so Jessi tells her about what the club is doing and Charlotte wants to help. I mean it's goddamn stupid enough that 11- and 13-year olds are trying to catch criminals, but dragging 8 year olds into it is not a quality I would be looking for in a babysitter. Jessi, Charlotte, and Becca stake out copy machines around town because they think the counterfeiters may be making copies of money on copy machines in public places. They see one of the teachers from the middle school using a copier and remember that Stacey had seen him the other day, which makes him a suspect. You know, because teachers have utterly zero reason to use a copy machine aside from being counterfeiters. It's not like they might need to copy anything for class, amirite?
Stacey goes on her date to the movies with Terry, and afterward, they go out to eat with Mary Anne and Logan. Stacey notices that Terry references living in at least half a dozen cities, and she thinks he might have said different middle names when introducing himself to her mother and then to Mary Anne. Who introduces themselves by their full name anyway is what I want to know. Then Mary Anne and Logan leave, and Stacey's ex-boyfriend comes in with his new girlfriend, which is awkward.
At the club meeting, Kristy says that she thinks the Hoyts are the counterfeiters because they've lived a lot of places and Georgie didn't want her to open a closet in their house when she sat for him. Everyone but Stacey is like "oh, maybe".
The girls follow their english teacher around school and spy on him because this book is stupid. And long.
Stacey babysits for Charlotte again and they go stake out copiers and then they leave and see a man running through a parking lot and he drops a bag that is filled with counterfeit money. For some ungodly fucking reason, Stacey decides that the person to call in this situation is not the cops, but her friends and Terry Hoyt. The kids all come and wait in the parking lot for the counterfeiter to come back for the money and then they take his photo to give to the police. Because that is a much better idea than calling the police in the first fucking place. At least Stacey has the brains to take Jessi up on her offer to take Charlotte to her house to play with Becca instead of staking out criminals.
Terry Hoyt tells Stacey that they don't need to take the photo of the bad guy to the cops. They can just take it to his dad. It turns out his dad is a Secret Service agent who moves from place to place investigating counterfeiters. The pictures help him catch the criminal, he lectures Stacey for getting involved in the first place (THANK you), then Stacey says goodbye to Terry (real name: David Hawthorne) and he kisses her and the Hoyts move away.
Good lord this book is fucking stupid. And boring. My score: 1/10.
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