Now, I like to have an occasional Twinkie as much as the next person, and I won’t turn down a Kit Kat bar. But Claudia is on another level of junk-food eating altogether. Security for Claud would be knowing that there are some M&M’s in her sock drawer, a pack of Yodels in her paint box, and a bag of that new kind of Doritos — the ones with extra cheese? — on the top shelf of her closet.
The funny thing is that even though Claudia is a very generous person, she can’t share her junk food with her best friend, Stacey McGill. Why not? Well, the reason isn’t all that funny. It’s because Stacey has diabetes, a disease in which her blood sugar can get out of whack, and she has to be very, very careful about what she eats.
Not too long ago, Stacey got really sick — partly because she had gone off her strict no-sugar diet, and partly because her blood sugar had gotten really hard to control. She was in the hospital and everything, and we were all pretty worried about her. But she’s fine now. And I think she will be, as long as she takes care of herself. (“Taking care of herself” includes giving herself daily injections of this stuff called insulin, which her body doesn’t make anymore. Giving yourself shots! Can you imagine? Ew.)
Stacey hasn’t lived in Stoneybrook for that long, even though we all feel like we’ve known her forever. She grew up in New York City — and she’s just as sophisticated as you might imagine. Sometimes she and Claudia decide to get really dressed up. They try their best to outdo each other with wild hairdos (Stacey has blonde hair that she gets permed once in awhile), crazy earrings, and the coolest clothes this side of the Connecticut state line.
Stacey stays in touch with what’s happening in the city because her father lives there and she visits him fairly often. That’s right, Stacey’s parents are divorced, too. And the split took place pretty recently.
What happened was this. Stacey’s family first moved to Stoneybrook when she was in seventh grade because her dad got transferred to his company’s Stamford office. (That’s a city near here.) Then, just when we’d made friends with her, he got transferred back to New York and the McGills had to move back there! We were so sad to see Stacey go.
But pretty soon after they’d returned to the city, Stacey’s parents began to fight a lot, and finally they chose to separate. Her mom decided to move back to Stoneybrook, and we were all thrilled when Stacey (who was given the choice of coming back here or living with her dad in his city apartment) came with her.
Let’s see. Me, Mary Anne, Dawn, Claudia, Stacey … There are still two other members of the BSC that I haven’t told you about. Jessi and Mallory are younger than the rest of us — they’re eleven and in sixth grade at Stoneybrook Middle School. (All of the rest of us are thirteen and in eighth grade.)
Jessi Ramsey’s family has only lived in Stoneybrook for a little while. They bought the house that Stacey used to live in! And when they moved in, they caused a bit of a stir in the neighborhood. Why? Because they’re black. Big deal, right? That’s what all of us thought. But a lot of people felt differently. There aren’t too many black families in Stoneybrook — and some people wanted it to stay that way.
But you know what? Most people accept the Ramseys now. They’re a great family. Jessi’s the oldest of three kids: She’s got a little sister named Becca, who’s eight, and the cutest baby brother named Squirt. (Well, he wasn’t actually named Squirt — that’s just his nickname. His real name is John Philip Ramsey, Jr.)
Mallory Pike is the oldest in her family, too. But her family is a lot bigger than Jessi’s. Mal has four brothers and three sisters! (Three of her brothers are triplets.)
Being the oldest is sometimes hard on Mal and Jessi — mainly because they feel that while they have lots of responsibilities, they still get treated like babies by their parents. You know how it is when you’re eleven. You want to be treated like more of a grown-up, but your parents still see you as a kid. Jessi and Mal did win one round with their parents: They were finally allowed to get their ears pierced. But Mal still has braces and glasses. Oh, well.
Like any best friends, Jessi and Mal have a lot in common (they both love to read horse stories, for example). But they also have a lot of separate interests. Jessi loves to dance — I’m sure she’ll be a professional ballerina some day, if she wants to be. She’s really, really talented. And Mal is a writer and an artist. She’s always keeping journals and sketching and making up stories. She wants to write — and illustrate — children’s books when she’s older.
So, those are the members of the BSC. I’m sure you can see why I think our club is pretty special — and why I consider myself so lucky to have such a great group of friends.
Claudia’s room. Monday, 5:25 P.M. If that’s the time and place, you can bet what kind of mood I’ll be in. I’ll be feeling great, because it’s almost time for the first BSC meeting of the week.
That day was no exception. I sat in Claudia’s director’s chair, wearing my visor. (I always wear my visor during meetings; it makes me feel more official.) I had tucked a pencil over my ear, and I was watching the clock, waiting for the others to arrive.
I’m almost always the first club member to reach Claud’s room. Why? Because I’m the president, and I feel it’s my responsibility to start the meeting on time.
We’ve run the club in a businesslike way, right from the start. I think it’s part of the reason that we’ve been so successful. Who could have guessed that such a simple idea would have turned out so well? As I sat and waited that day, I thought back to the very beginning of the club….
It was the beginning of seventh grade. I was still living next door to Mary Anne, and across the street from Claudia, on Bradford Court. Mom and Watson were dating, but I had no idea that they’d end up married.
Even back then, I loved to baby-sit. But the person I sat for most was my own brother, David Michael. He needed watching every day after school until Mom got home from work. I also sat for him in the evening sometimes, when Mom went out with Watson.
Sam and Charlie watched David Michael, too — so it was rare that Mom had to hire a baby-sitter from outside the family. But once in awhile everybody wanted to go out at the same time. One afternoon Mom realized that she’d need to hire a sitter for the next day. She got on the phone and started calling around, looking for somebody to bail us out. I’ll never forget that night. We were eating pizza and Mom’s got cold while she kept making calls.
That’s when I got this idea. What if Mom could call just one number that would put her in touch with a whole bunch of experienced baby-sitters? One of them would have to be free. I got really excited about it, and I told Mary Anne and Claudia as soon as I could. What if, I asked them, we formed a club that would meet a few times a week? During those times, parents could call us to line up sitters.
They thought it was a great idea, but Claud pointed out (and Mary Anne agreed) that three people weren’t going to be enough to keep up with the demand for sitters. Claud had just met — and made friends with — Stacey, so we asked her to join, too. By the time Dawn moved to Stoneybrook, we had so much business that we were nearly desperate for another member. So Dawn joined the club.
How did Jessi and Mal get to be members? Well, remember how I told you that Stacey’s family moved back to New York for awhile, right before her parents got the divorce? When she left, the club just couldn’t keep up with all its sitting jobs, so that’s when Jessi and Mal joined. Of course, when Stacey came back, she was automatically part of the club again.
The club seems to be just about the right size now, especially since we also have two associate members, Shannon and Logan. (I’ll tell you more about them later.) They don’t come to meetings (there’s no way nine of us could fit comfortably into Claud’s room), but they help us out when we need extra sitters.
You might be wondering how we get all this business I keep talking about. Well, some of it is “word of mouth.” Parents we’ve sat for have been impressed with us and have told other parents to call us. Also, we advertise.
We made up these cool-looking fliers (Claud designed them), and every now and then we distribute them around the neighborhood. Once we even put an ad in the Stoneybrook News — but we haven’t had to do that again. We have as much business as we can handle.
The fliers explain how the club works. We meet every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 5:30 to 6:00, and parents can call us then to line up a sitter. Parents love knowing they’ll find a sitter, and we love to baby-sit!
I told you that I’m the president, but I haven’t explained what everybody else in the club does. This is one club where every member has a job or a position.
Claudia is the vice-president. She doesn’t exactly have a job to do, but she’s vice-president for a few good reasons. First of all, we meet in her bedroom. Why? Because she’s the only member who has her own phone — and her own private line. We could never tie up any grown-ups’ lines with all the calls we get during our meetings.
Claud also might be referred to as the refreshment officer, if there were such a thing. She’s very generous with her junk food. As soon as each meeting gets under way, Claudia digs out the snacks. She’s thoughtful, too. She knows that Stacey and Dawn don’t go for junk food (Stacey because of her diabetes; Dawn because she’s addicted to health food) so she always makes sure to have some plain, boring thing like whole-wheat pretzels on hand, to supplement the Ring-Dings and Pringle’s potato chips.
Mary Anne is our club secretary. What a job she has! She keeps track of all our appointments in this big notebook that we call the club record book. The information in that book is irreplaceable. The record book has all the names and addresses of our clients (as well as special facts about their pets, their children’s allergies, and other stuff). It also includes our sitting appointments.
Mary Anne has another important task. She has to keep track of all our schedules. That might sound simple, but when you start to think about the things we do — Jessi’s dance classes, my softball practices, Claud’s art classes, Mallory’s orthodonist appointments — well, you get the picture. When a call comes in from a parent looking for a sitter, Mary Anne can tell at a glance which of us is free. She’s never made a mistake, which is pretty awesome.
Stacey, the math whiz, is our treasurer. She keeps track of how much money we earn (even though we each keep what we make, we like to know the total), and she also collects our dues every Monday. We hate giving up any of our hard-earned money, but we know it’s going to a good cause.
Or several good causes, that is. For example, we use some of the money to pay my brother Charlie to drive me to meetings, since I now live so far from Claud’s house. And some of it goes toward Claud’s phone bill. And once in awhile, we get crazy and spend some on a big pizza blowout.
Dawn is our alternate officer. That means that she knows how to do all our jobs, so we’re covered if anybody has to miss a meeting. She was terrific as treasurer, for example, during the time that Stacey had moved back to New York.
Mallory and Jessi are our junior officers. Since they’re younger, they don’t sit alone at night. But they handle a lot of our afternoon and weekend jobs, which is a tremendous help.
Last but not least are our associate members, the ones I told you about who don’t come to meetings. One of them is Shannon Kilbourne, this girl who lives in my new neighborhood. The other is Logan Bruno. Does that name sound familiar? That’s right, he’s Mary Anne’s “ex.” He’s a good sitter, too. I’m glad we have him and Shannon to fall back on when the rest of us are too busy to take a job.
* * *
“Hey, Kristy, aren’t you going to call the meeting to order?”
I snapped my head around to see who had spoken. It was Stacey. She sat in Claud’s desk chair, grinning at me and pointing at the digital clock. Its big, white numbers said 5:31. I’d been lost in my thoughts and had almost forgotten that it was my job to get things going.
“Thanks, Stacey!” I said. Then I sat up straight, pulled the pencil out from behind my ear, and tapped it on the arm of my chair. “Order!” I said. “This meeting will now come to order!”
Everybody looked at me and giggled. “We’ve been wondering when you’d get around to starting the meeting,” said Claudia, who was sitting on the bed between Dawn and Mary Anne. She tore open a bag of barbecue potato chips and passed it to Jessi and Mallory, who were in their usual places on the floor.
“Any club business?” I asked, looking around the room. Stacey held up the manila envelope that we keep our dues in. “Oh, right,” I said. “It’s Monday. Okay, everybody, pay up!” We groaned as Stacey passed the envelope around, but we all chipped in.
“Hey, Stacey,” said Dawn as the envelope went around. “Do we have enough money for some new stickers? My Kid-Kit is all out of them.”
I don’t want to sound conceited, but Kid-Kits are another of my great ideas. I noticed something once when David Michael had some friends over. Kids sometimes like to play with other kids’ toys more than their own. So I thought that we could each make up a kit to take with us on sitting jobs. They’re boxes we’ve decorated with glitter and stuff, and they’re full of toys and books and stickers and games.
The kids just love our Kid-Kits, especially on rainy days. And when the kids are happy, the parents are happy, and when the parents are happy, they hire us again. Then we’re happy! It’s very simple.
Stacey doled out some money to Dawn, and to Mallory, who said she needed crayons for her Kid-Kit. Stacey frowned as she counted out the change, and I had to stifle a giggle. She’s a great treasurer partly because she hates to spend our money.
“Okay,” I said. “While we’re waiting for the phone to ring —” and just then, it did. I almost jumped out of my seat, but I recovered in time to make a grab for it. It was Mrs. Perkins, one of our regular clients. She wanted a sitter for that Thursday, and I said I’d call her back. Mary Anne checked the record book and said that Claud was the only one free, so Claud got the job. Once I’d called back Mrs. Perkins, I started over again.
“Has everyone read the club notebook?” I asked. There were nods all around the room. The club notebook is another of my ideas, and I have to admit that it’s not one of my most popular ones. The notebook is where we write up each of our sitting jobs, giving all the gory details so that the other club members can keep up-to-date on what’s happening with our clients. Everybody’s pretty good about reading the entries, but nobody (except Mal, maybe) really likes to write them. It takes time, but I have to say that it’s worth it. I think it helps us to be better sitters.
“I liked what Dawn had to say about her new technique for dealing with temper tantrums,” said Mary Anne. “I never would have thought of tucking children into their beds and talking gently to them until they felt calmer.”
“It really works, too!” said Dawn.
We talked some more about “tantrum techniques,” and then I started to tell the others about the baby parade. But just then, the phone rang again and Stacey grabbed it. She rolled her eyes when she first heard who was calling, so we all knew it had to be Mrs. Prezzioso, one of our more “difficult” clients. Then she listened for a long time, saying an occasional “yes” and “I see.”
I was dying to know what the call was about. Finally, Stacey said she’d call Mrs. Prezzioso back and hung up.
“What did she want?” I asked.
Stacey filled us in. It seemed that Mrs. Prezzioso was looking for a regular sitter — two afternoons a week — for a whole month. The Prezziosos have two daughters: Jenny, who’s four, and can be kind of a brat, and Andrea, who’s a baby.
“Mrs. P.’s going to be on the planning board at Jenny’s preschool, and she needs a baby-sitter for when she has to go to meetings,” said Stacey.
“What’s so complicated about that?” I asked.
“Well, here’s the thing. She said that since Andrea is a little more active and alert now — she’s not a newborn anymore, you know — she would want the sitter to have taken an infant-care class. S
he said one’s about to start at the community center, and she’ll pay the fee for it.”
“I’d love to do that!” I said right away. I’m always up for learning more about how to be a good baby-sitter.
“Well, that’s good,” said Mary Anne. “Because you’re the only one of us who could take the job.” She’d been checking the schedule, and I guess everybody else had conflicts because of classes and things. “But you know what?” she added. “I think I’d like to take that class, too. I’ve seen the ads for it, and it looks like fun.”
“I wouldn’t mind learning more about babies, myself,” said Claud. “What if we all sign up for the course? Then we could advertise ourselves as ‘infant specialists’! Maybe we’d get some new business.”
Wow. That was a great idea — the kind I usually had. I tried not to be jealous. “Sounds great!” I said. And by the end of the meeting, we’d called the community center to sign up. All seven of us.
“Oh, wow!” Mary Anne stood looking around the room, her hand over her mouth. We had gotten to the community center early — I guess we were eager to see what the infant-care classes would be like.
“Mary Anne!” I hissed, elbowing her. “Quit staring! You’ve seen pregnant women before.”
“Yeah, but only one at a time,” she whispered. “A whole room full of them is different. It’s kind of —”
“Overwhelming?” asked a friendly voice. A red-haired woman had appeared next to me, and she was smiling at us. “I know. I’ve been teaching this course for three years now, and I’m still not used to it.”
We stood for a moment, taking in the sight of all those round women. They stood in groups, talking and laughing. There were also a few men there — I guess they were fathers-to-be. Some of them were discussing a poster that was hung on the front wall: DIAPERING TECHNIQUES, it said, and it listed all the dos and don’ts of diapering. It looked like a long list.