To top things off, as I mentioned before, Stacey has diabetes — a severe form of the disease. What that means is that something in her body called insulin can go out of whack if Stacey doesn’t stick to a strict no-sweets, calorie-counting diet, give herself injections of insulin (yuck), and monitor her blood. I know this sounds disgusting, but think how Stacey feels. And I have to admit that she hasn’t been looking good lately. There’s talk of her going to see her special doctor in New York again.
The last two members of the Baby-sitters Club are younger than the rest of us. They’re in sixth grade at SMS, and we’re in eighth grade. Their names are Mallory Pike and Jessica Ramsey, but they mostly go by Mal and Jessi. (Mallory, by the way, is someone our club used to sit for.) Anyway, Mal and Jessi are best friends, and I can see why. They have a lot in common, although they certainly have their differences, too. First of all, they’re both the oldest in their families, except that Mallory has seven younger brothers and sisters (she’s Claire and Vanessa Pike’s big sister), and Jessi has just one younger sister and a baby brother. Becca is eight, and Squirt (whose real name is John Philip Ramsey, Jr.) is a toddler. Both Mal and Jessi are at that awful age (eleven) when they want to be more grown-up than their parents will let them be. They were allowed to get their ears pierced recently, but Mal has to wear glasses and braces, so she doesn’t feel particularly pretty, and both girls feel that their parents treat them like babies sometimes. Plus, Jessi’s mother just got a job, so with both Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey working, Jessi’s Aunt Cecelia moved in. Sometimes Jessi feels like Aunt Cecelia is her baby-sitter. A few more similarities: Mal and Jessi both like to read, especially horse stories, and to write. (Well, Mal likes writing more than Jessi does, but she did convince Jessi to keep a journal, which Jessi has been doing faithfully.)
Now for the differences. Mal, the great writer, would like to be an author and illustrator of children’s books one day, while Jessi thinks she’d like to be a professional dancer. She’s been taking ballet classes for years, dances en pointe (that means on toe), and has even had leading roles in several ballets, dancing in front of big audiences. She takes lessons a couple of times a week at a special school in Stamford, Connecticut. She had to audition just to be able to take lessons there.
Furthermore, Jessi and Mal couldn’t look less alike if they tried. Jessi is black and Mal is white. Jessi has the long, graceful legs of a dancer, is thin, and has these huge, dark eyes with lashes that I’d like to have as much as I’d like Claudia’s complexion. Mal, on the other hand, has unruly red hair, and (as I mentioned before) wears glasses and braces, so she’s not too pleased with her appearance right now. Also, she has freckles, which she can’t stand.
Let’s see, I might as well finish telling you about me, as long as I’m on the subject of the members of the Baby-sitters Club. I am active, always on the go and coming up with new ideas. (Some people think I’m bossy.) Can you believe it? I’m the only club member who still doesn’t wear a bra because I don’t need one. I don’t care too much about clothes, though, anyway. I am not trendy and distant like some of my friends. I’m more of a slob. Almost every day I wear jeans, running shoes, a turtleneck, and a sweater. Those clothes are comfortable.
I miss my father. He never calls or writes anymore. I wish he were more like Dawn’s father or like Watson. They both make efforts to see their kids. And Mr. Schafer and Dawn are even separated by three thousand miles.
What else about me? I think boys are dweebs, except for Bart, Logan (Mary Anne’s boyfriend), and the boys I sit for. I even think my fifteen-year-old brother Sam is a dweeb. I like animals and we have a puppy named Shannon (after my friend Shannon), and an old cat of Watson’s named Boo-Boo. Sometimes I think my house is a zoo, but I like the activity.
So there you are. You have just met my friends and me. I know I’m lucky to have such good friends. I also know I’m lucky to have a family, even a mixed-up one. I knew that when Emily came into the den holding out a sneaker I’d lost and said proudly, “Soo.” (Shoe). I gave her a big hug.
“Thanks, Charlie!”
“See you in half an hour,” he replied.
It was almost time for a Monday club meeting and Charlie had just dropped me off at Claudia’s in his “car.” (Now that I live in a different neighborhood, Charlie has to drive me to and from BSC meetings. The club pays him to do this.)
I ran to Claudia’s front door and right on inside, without bothering to ring the bell.
“Hi, Claud!” I greeted her, as I entered her room. (I am always relieved when her sister, Janine, isn’t home. Janine is nice enough, I guess, but she’s forever correcting your grammar and vocabulary. I guess that comes with being the genius that she is.)
“Hi,” replied Claud. She was lying on her bed, reading The Clue of the Velvet Mask, and one of her legs was propped up on a pillow.
“I guess it’s going to rain, huh?” I said.
Claud broke her leg awhile ago and ever since, it has hurt her when it’s going to rain. It’s a pretty good barometer.
“Yeah,” agreed Claud. “Do you think Dawn and the others will mind sitting on the floor with Jessi and Mal today? My leg really hurts.”
“Nope,” I replied. “Is there any junk food you want me to search for?”
“Hmm.” Claud closed her Nancy Drew book with a snap and looked thoughtful. “Try — Oh, wait a sec. There’s something right here.” She reached under the comforter that was lumpily folded at the foot of her bed and retrieved a bag of potato chips and a package of Gummi Bears. “These’ll do,” she said.
“I’ll pass them around,” I told her.
Mary Anne and Dawn arrived then, so I took my presidential seat in Claudia’s director’s chair, put on the visor I wear at meetings, and stuck a pencil over one ear.
“Hi, guys,” I said.
“Hi,” they replied. They were already settling themselves on the floor.
Usually Claudia, Mary Anne, and Dawn sit on the bed, Stacey sits in Claudia’s desk chair (or sometimes Dawn sits in the chair and Stacey sits on the bed), Jessi and Mal sit on the floor, and I sit where I was already sitting, in the place of honor. (The director’s chair makes me feel tall.) Today, Stacey would probably sit at the desk, and the floor would just be a little more crowded than usual.
I looked at Claudia’s digital alarm clock, which is the official BSC timepiece. As soon as those numbers change from 5:29 to 5:30, the meeting begins, even if a club member hasn’t arrived. I’m a stickler for being on time, though, so my friends are hardly ever late.
Our club meets three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from five-thirty until six. As president, I try to run it professionally. But let me back up here and tell you how the club started, before I tell you how it works.
See, at the beginning of seventh grade, long before so many things had changed, I still lived here on Bradford Court, across the street from Claud. David Michael was only six then, and since Mom worked full-time, Sam and Charlie and I took turns baby-sitting for him after school. (I baby-sat for other kids, too, though.) Anyway, of course a day came when none of us — not Charlie, not Sam, not I — could sit for our little brother. So Mom started calling baby-sitters. It was while I was eating a piece of pizza and watching Mom on the phone that it occurred to me that my mother could save a lot of time if she could make just one call and reach a lot of sitters, instead of making all those separate calls. So I got together with Mary Anne and Claud, told them my idea, and we began the BSC!
The first thing we decided was that we needed another club member, so we asked Stacey to join. She had just moved here from New York and was getting to be friends with Claudia. Stacey was dying to join, and the club was a success from the beginning. (We advertised a lot — by word of mouth, with fliers, even with an ad in our local paper.) Soon we had so much business that we needed a new member, so we asked Dawn, who was Mary Anne’s new friend at the time, to join. Then Stacey moved back to New York, we replaced her with M
al and Jessi, and then Stacey returned to Stoneybrook. We have seven members now, and I think that’s enough. Claudia’s room is getting crowded.
Here’s how we run the club and what our responsibilities are:
I am the president, as you know. It’s my job to keep the BSC in good shape and fresh by coming up with new ideas. (Besides, I thought up the club in the first place.) Some of my ideas are Kid-Kits, the club notebook, and the club record book. Kid-Kits are cartons (we each have one) that we decorated with Claudia’s art materials and filled with our old toys, games, and books, as well as some new things, such as coloring books, sticker books, Magic Markers, etc. We sometimes take the kits on jobs with us, and our charges love them. This is good business, because when our charges are happy, then their parents are happy, and when parents are happy, they call the Baby-sitters Club with more jobs for us!
The record book is Mary Anne’s and Stacey’s department, so I’ll describe that later, but let me explain about the notebook. The notebook is more like a diary. In it, each of us is responsible for writing up every single job we go on. This is a chore, but it’s helpful because we also have to read the diary once a week to see what went on during our friends’ recent jobs. We learn about problems our charges are having, how to solve tough sitting situations, and that sort of thing.
Now let’s see. Claudia is our vice-president. This is because she has her own phone and her own personal phone number, so her room is an ideal place to hold meetings. Thanks to our advertising, our clients know when the BSC gets together so they call us during meetings. We spend a lot of time on the phone and don’t have to worry about tying up our parents’ lines. Thank goodness for Claud and her phone.
Mary Anne is our secretary and she has a pretty big job. Remember the record book I mentioned? Well, Mary Anne is in charge of it (except for the numbers section, which is Stacey’s domain). In the record book, Mary Anne has noted all of our clients, their phone numbers, addresses, the rates they pay, the number of children they have, etc. More important are the appointment pages. There, Mary Anne writes down all the jobs we have lined up and who’s got the jobs. She’s great at this. I don’t know how she does it, because she has to keep track of so many schedules — Jessi’s ballet classes, Claud’s art lessons, plus eye doctor and dentist appointments, and more. But she’s great at it. She’s never made a mistake. (Also, she has the neatest handwriting of any club member.)
As treasurer, Stacey collects our weekly dues on Mondays. She’s a whiz at math. (I hate to admit it, but where math is concerned, she’s almost as smart as Janine, Claud’s sister.) Anyway, Stacey collects the dues, puts it in the treasury (a manila envelope), makes sure the treasury doesn’t get too low, and doles out the money when it’s needed. (Stacey loves collecting and having money, even when it isn’t, technically speaking, her own — and hates parting with it.) The dues money goes to Charlie to drive me to and from meetings, helps Claud pay her monthly phone bill, buys things for our Kid-Kits when we run out of them, and every now and then covers the cost of a club pizza party or overnight. Stacey also keeps track of how much money we earn. She does this in the record book. It’s just for our own information, since we each keep whatever we earn on a job. We don’t pool the money or anything.
Dawn is our alternate officer, which means that she’s a sort of substitute teacher. She takes on the job of anyone who has to miss a meeting. We don’t miss meetings often, but Dawn’s job can be hard since she has to know everyone’s duties. However, she doesn’t have much to do at most meetings so we let her answer the phone a lot.
Jessi and Mal are junior officers. That means that they can only baby-sit after school or on weekend days. They aren’t allowed to sit at night yet unless they’re sitting for their own brothers and sisters. They’re a huge help to us, though. Not only are they good, responsible, reliable sitters, but they free up us older club members for evening jobs.
Last of all are two associate members who don’t attend meetings. They are my friend Shannon Kilbourne and Mary Anne’s boyfriend, Logan. Shannon and Logan are our backups. They are good baby-sitters who can pinch-hit in case a job is offered for a time when all seven of us regular sitters are busy. I know that sounds unlikely, but it does happen. The associate members don’t attend meetings, Shannon because she’s too busy with other activities, and Logan because he’s embarrassed to sit around in a girl’s room for half an hour three times a week. It’s one thing for him to join us at our lunch table in the cafeteria. There, he can escape if he wants to. But when he’s in Claud’s room, he feels stuck.
Anyway, that’s the BSC.
I had been keeping my eye on Claud’s clock, and when the numbers turned to 5:30, I cleared my throat. Everyone had arrived and it was time to start the meeting.
“Treasurer,” I said, “please collect the dues.”
With a look of glee, Stacey handed around the manila envelope, and each of us dropped a one-dollar bill in it. Most of us groaned as we did so. Even me.
Then Stacey dumped the contents of the envelope onto Claud’s desk, counted it up, and announced that the treasury contained more than twenty dollars.
“Well, fork over,” I said. “I’ve got to pay Charlie today.”
Stacey looked pained but gave me the money.
“And I need some stuff for my Kid-Kit,” said Dawn. “The Magic Markers have dried up, and someone — I’m not sure who, but I’m betting on Jenny Prezzioso — scribbled on every page of a new coloring book.”
“Barbie’s head fell off,” reported Jessi. “I need a new Barbie doll.”
Everyone laughed. We knew she was just kidding.
The first phone call of the day came in then, and Dawn took it.
“Hello, Baby-sitters Club,” she said. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Kuhn.”
The Kuhns are not regular clients of the BSC, but the Kuhn kids are on my Krushers team, so Mrs. Kuhn does call for a sitter every now and then. Mary Anne arranged for Mal to take an afternoon job with them.
As soon as Dawn had called Mrs. Kuhn back to tell her who would be baby-sitting, the phone rang again. And again and again and again. It was one of our busiest meetings ever.
Mmm. I just love busy meetings.
One of the last calls was from Mrs. Pike, Mal’s mother, needing two sitters (she always insists on two sitters, since there are so many Pike kids) for a Saturday afternoon. Mary Anne arranged the job for Mal and Jessi. We usually let each other sit for our own brothers and sisters, if possible. We’re pretty nice about doling out the jobs. Not much fighting goes on.
At six o’clock, we took what Claudia hoped was the last call of the meeting. (If a client calls after six, poor Claudia has to deal with things on her own. That’s one of the problems that comes with having your own phone number. On the other hand, Claud can talk up a storm in private, while the rest of us have to hide out in closets during personal calls, hoping nobody is listening in on an extension.)
As soon as Dawn hung up the phone, my friends and I said good-bye to Claud and left. Charlie was waiting for me. He demanded his money before he would drive me home.
When Charlie and I walked in the front door of our house, I was greeted by David Michael, who said, “Shannon called four times while you were gone! She said to phone her as soon as you get home. She says it’s really, really, really important.”
“What’s important?” I asked my brother.
“She wouldn’t tell me. She just said for you to call her.”
So I did. Immediately. In case it was private, I took our cordless phone into a closet we hardly ever use and called Shannon from there. The connection wasn’t so hot, even with the phone antenna stretched as far as it would go, but at least we could hear each other.
“Shannon?” I said when she got on the phone.
“Kristy? Is that you?”
Crackle, crackle. (Static.) “Yeah. What’s going on?”
“You sound like you’re calling from a tunnel.”
“I’m on the cord
less phone in a closet. David Michael made your phone message sound so mysterious I thought I better hide, just in case.”
“Oh. Well, listen. You won’t believe this. I forgot to get our mail until really late this afternoon.” (Shannon’s parents both work, so it’s up to Shannon and her sisters, Tiffany and Maria, to get the mail after school. Sometimes nobody remembers until after dinner.) “Anyway, it was a lucky thing I got the mail, because there was an envelope in it for you.”
“So?” I said, puzzled. “The mailman stuck it in the wrong box.”
“The mailman didn’t deliver it,” said Shannon, with some satisfaction. “There’s no stamp or postmark on it. There’s not even an address. It just says ‘Kristy,’ and there are heart stickers and flower stickers all over it.”
Crackle, crackle. “You’re kidding,” I said in a hushed voice.
“It looks like a love letter,” Shannon added tantalizingly.
“A” (crackle) “me? No way. No one has” (crackle) “love” (crackle).
“Kristy, would you get out of that closet or off that phone? I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
“I’m not leaving the closet.” (Crackle.) “If my brothers hear about —”
“Kristy!” It was Mom calling me.
“Shannon, I have to go. Can you” (crackle) “over after supper?”