Stacey may be cool, but she has not had an easy life. First of all, there’s her diabetes. That’s a disease in which her body doesn’t process sugar properly. She has a severe form of the disease (she’s called a brittle diabetic) and can get really sick if her blood-sugar level becomes too high or too low. To control things, she has to inject herself every day with something called insulin; test her blood several times each day; and stay on a strict, no junk-food diet. On top of this, her parents have gotten divorced, and Mr. McGill lives in New York City, while Mrs. McGill and Stacey live in Stoneybrook. (Stacey is an only child. I wish she would at least get a pet.) Stacey visits her father a lot, though. Sometimes she says she feels like a “commuter daughter.”
Stacey’s best friend is Claudia Kishi. In fact, Stacey is Claudia’s first and only best friend. (Stacey has another best friend, who still lives in New York.) It’s easy to see why Claud and Stacey are so close. They’re very much alike. Claud is just as sophisticated as Stacey, but she’s exotic-looking and, believe it or not, an even wilder dresser. Claudia is Japanese-American. Her hair is long and silky and black, and her dark eyes are almond-shaped. Her outfits are similar to Stacey’s, but with weird additions, such as some of her jewelry. (By the way, she has two holes pierced in one ear and one hole in the other.) She likes accessories — T-shirt clips, slap-wrist bracelets, and for her hair, ties, beads, ribbons, combs, you name it.
Claudia makes some of her jewelry. She’s a talented artist who’s best at drawing and painting, although she also sculpts and makes collages. Her room is a wreck! Not only does she store art supplies everywhere, but she’s addicted to junk food and to Nancy Drew — two things that her parents do not approve of, so she stashes mysteries, candy, and munchies any place where she thinks they’ll be well-hidden. Talented as she is, Claud is no student, although she could be a good one. She’s just not interested, unlike her older sister, Janine the Genius. Claud and Janine live with their parents, but no pets.
The final two members of the BSC are Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike. While the rest of us are thirteen, Jessi and Mal are eleven and in the sixth grade. They’re best friends. And like Kristy and me or Claud and Stacey, they’re very different in some ways, and very similar in others. They do not look a thing alike. Mal, who thinks she isn’t pretty, is white, with red hair and freckles. And she wears glasses and braces. (At least the braces are the clear kind, so they don’t show up much.) Jessi is black, with chocolaty skin, the long legs of a dancer, and no glasses or braces. Mal and Jessi come from pretty different families, too. Neither of them has divorced parents, but while Jessi lives with her mom; her dad; her aunt; her younger sister, Becca; and her baby brother, Squirt, Mal lives with her parents and her seven younger brothers and sisters. Three of them are identical triplets (boys). Also, Mal plans to write and illustrate children’s books one day (she’s always writing and drawing), while Jessi hopes to become a professional ballet dancer. She’s well on her way. She’s enrolled in a special school and has danced the lead in several productions. Mal and Jessi do share a love of reading, though, especially horse stories, and both think their parents treat them like babies. It’s true that they’re not allowed to baby-sit at night, nor to dress the way they’d really like, but at least their parents let them get their ears pierced. (Just one hole in each ear, of course.)
I stared out the window and sighed. With so many friends, how was it possible to feel down in the dumps? I wasn’t sure. But I hoped that baby-sitting at the Kormans’ would take my mind off things.
“Suppertime!” I called.
“Is it hot dogs?” yelled Bill from the playroom upstairs.
“Yes,” I replied. “How did you know?”
“Because that’s what we always have when baby-sitters give us dinner.” He paused. “Also, I can smell them.”
I laughed. “Come on down, you two. Skylar and I are waiting.”
It was six-thirty. I was at the Kormans’ house, and I’d been busy fixing supper. Bill, who’s nine, and Melody, who’s seven, had been playing by themselves. Skylar, who’s only a year and a half old, was sitting in her high chair. She had kept herself busy with Cheerios while I fixed supper. It’s amazing how long a handful of Cheerios will entertain Skylar. She eats them one by one, seriously and fastidiously. Delicately she picks up one between her left thumb and forefinger. (I think maybe she’s going to be left-handed.) Then she brings it slowly to her mouth and chews it for, like, ten minutes. After that, she starts in on the next one. All of this seems to take great concentration.
I was just setting the last plate of food on the kitchen table when Melody and Bill bounded in.
“I’m starving!” Melody announced.
“Me, too,” said Bill. “I don’t like our new school. It doesn’t have good lunches. Not like our old school.”
“And you know what?” said Melody, as she slid into her chair. (She lowered her voice to a whisper.) “My teacher is scary. I think she’s really a warthog, but some monster changed her into a lady and then put a Meanness Spell on her.”
The Kormans moved to Stoneybrook just a little while ago. They didn’t live too far away before; just far enough so the kids had to change schools. They go to a private school, Stoneybrook Day School. Karen, Kristy’s stepsister, and a lot of her friends go to a different private school, Stoneybrook Academy. Even so, Karen and Melody became good friends when the Kormans moved into the Delaney mansion, near Kristy. The BSC members used to sit for Amanda and Max Delaney, who were nice enough but spoiled and snobby, especially Amanda. The mansion is immense, and much fancier than Kristy’s. In the backyard are a pool and a tennis court, and in the front hallway is a working fountain shaped like a fish. Well, it could be a working fountain, but it scares Skylar half to death, so the Kormans leave it turned off. It’s funny. With the Delaneys gone, the house is as huge as ever now (of course), but it doesn’t seem nearly as ostentatious (that’s one of my spelling words; go look up the meaning) now that the Kormans live in it. The Kormans are much more down-to-earth, and I like Bill and Melody and Skylar a lot, even though I haven’t sat for them too often.
“What’s your teacher like, Bill?” I asked as I cut up half a hot dog for Skylar. I set her special plastic ABC plate on the tray of her high chair. (I handed her a fork, but I didn’t really expect her to use it.)
“I like my teacher,” said Bill. “He’s funny. He knows good jokes.”
At that moment we heard a bang and we all jumped, except for Skylar, who was trying to use her fork after all, and was completely focused on spearing a piece of hot dog with it.
Bill and Melody looked terrified, but I laughed. “That’s the dryer, you guys,” I said. “Your mom or dad must have been finishing up a load of clothes before they left.”
“Are you sure that was the dryer?” asked Melody.
“I never heard it do that before,” added Bill.
“Trust me. It’s the dryer. I used to baby-sit when the Delaneys lived here. I know all about this house. Remember?”
“It’s really scary, isn’t it?” whispered Melody. She was eating her hot dog slowly, squeezing it out one end of the bun, leaving the bun whole. I wondered whether she was going to eat the bun separately or not at all.
“You think the house is scary?” I asked lightly. (I didn’t want to make a big deal out of this, but I didn’t want to let it go, either.)
Bill and Melody glanced at one another. Then they looked back at me. “Yes.”
“Why?” I took a bite out of my hot dog, as if it deserved at least as much attention as a scary house.
“It’s a lot bigger than our old house,” said Bill.
“All sorts of closets and corners and dark places,” said Melody. “Mommy said we could get a kitten,” (for some reason, she whispered the word), “but Bill and I decided not to. It would probably get lost in this house and we’d never find it.”
“You mean,” I said in a spooky voice, “the Cat Monster would get it?”
I was sure Melody and Bill would laugh at that. Instead, they both swiveled around to look at Skylar.
Skylar burst into tears. “No tat!” she cried. “No tat, no tat.”
“What’s the matter?” I asked, alarmed. I jumped up and ran to her.
“She’s afraid of C-A-Ts,” Melody informed me.
“Yeah,” said Bill. “That’s the other reason we don’t want a you-know-what. Skylar would cry all the time.”
“Why is she so afraid of, um, C-A-Ts?” I had lifted Skylar out of her high chair. She was alternately burying her face in my shoulder, and looking around the room for dreaded C-A-Ts, crying, “No tat!”
“We’re not sure,” replied Bill. “She just is. She likes to look at them if they’re far away. But when they get near her, she cries.”
“No tat!” whimpered Skylar.
“It’s okay,” I told her, rocking her gently. “There aren’t any tats here.”
Melody began to giggle.
“What?” I asked, smiling.
“The Tat Monster!” she said.
Melody and Bill became hysterical, and then very silly. While I calmed down Skylar and set her back in the high chair, Melody let out a shriek, pointed across the kitchen, and cried, “Look! The Oven Monster!”
Bill pointed out the window. “The Pool Monster!”
I laughed, too, but said, “Calm down, you guys.” They were laughing in that way that sometimes leads to barfing at the table.
The kids paid attention. They calmed down. Bill cleaned his plate. So did Skylar. Melody finished her hot dog, but left the ketchupy bun behind. After a moment, she lifted it to her nose, began to giggle again, and exclaimed, “Watch out, everybody. I’m the Hot Dog Monster!”
“Okay, I think dinner is over,” I announced.
Melody and Bill cleared the table, while I wiped off the high chair tray, then found a clean cloth and wiped off Skylar’s face and hands.
“Do you two have any homework?” I asked Bill and Melody.
“A little,” said Bill.
“No,” said Melody.
So Melody helped me put Skylar to bed, while Bill settled himself at the desk in his room, his spelling book open in front of him.
“I don’t know how Bill can do that,” said Melody as I changed Skylar’s diaper. Melody was poofing baby powder onto her hands.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Sit alone in his room.”
“What do you think is going to happen to him?” I asked. Melody and Bill may have become silly earlier, but they were honestly uneasy in their new, big house.
Melody shrugged. She wouldn’t look at me.
I set Skylar in her crib. Then I turned around and said, “Do you think Bill is going to be attacked by the … Tickle Monster?” I grabbed Melody and began to tickle her.
“No!” she cried, laughing. “Stop it, Mary Anne!”
I stopped. I drew a blanket over Skylar, who was already half asleep. Then I said to Melody, “Come on. Let’s be Tiptoe Monsters and tiptoe to Bill’s room.”
“I heard that!” yelled Bill from down the hall.
We tiptoed to him anyway, but Bill was prepared. Just as we reached his doorway, he leaped into the hall and yelled, “BOO!”
“Aughh!” shrieked Melody.
“Shh,” I said. “Let Skylar go to sleep.”
“But he booed me!”
“Well, we were going to surprise him,” I pointed out.
“This house is just too scary,” said Melody, pouting.
“You know what?” said Bill. “Melody and I haven’t even been in the attic alone yet. It’s huge and mostly dark and —”
Creak.
“What was that?” cried Melody.
“It was the house settling,” I replied.
“Oh, that’s what Dad always says,” Bill told me. “But this house is old. It’s had plenty of time to settle.”
“All right, then maybe it’s getting creaky, like an old chair.”
“Maybe,” said Melody and Bill.
In an effort to calm them down, I read a chapter of James and the Giant Peach to the kids. Then I said, “Okay, bedtime.”
Bill went to his room and Melody went to her room, and they changed into their pajamas. They met in the hall. “I claim the bathroom first!” cried Bill, and he raced into it and closed the door. Five minutes later he came out, looking worried. “I think something’s wrong with the toilet,” he said. “It’s making weird noises. It’s sort of growling.”
“Maybe it’s the Toilet Monster,” said Melody, and she and Bill were reduced to giggles again.
Later, after the kids had gone to bed, I checked the toilet. It did sound as if it were growling. But it flushed okay and it wasn’t overflowing or anything, so I decided nothing was seriously wrong. I’d just be sure to mention the problem to the Kormans when they came home.
I started downstairs to work on some math problems. Before I had taken two steps I heard Melody call, “Mary Anne?”
“Yeah?” I tiptoed to her room. “Are you okay?”
“I can hear the toilet growling.”
“I know. I’ll remember to tell your parents about it.”
“Okay. But do you think there really is a Toilet Monster?”
“Melody! You made him up!” I exclaimed.
“Maybe when I made him up, I made him real.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. But Melody couldn’t quite be convinced. I sat with her a long time before she fell asleep.
I knew that I would tell the other members of the BSC about the Toilet Monster at our next club meeting. For one thing, it was funny. For another, if Melody seriously was afraid of a growling monster in the toilet, then my friends should know about it. We always discuss things like that at our meetings.
The Baby-sitters Club began with Kristy. It was her idea, and she organized it and got it started. What an idea! But Kristy is famous for her ideas, so the BSC shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone. (Although, personally, I think the club could go down in history as Kristy’s greatest idea ever.)
Kristy’s brainstorm came to her back at the beginning of seventh grade. That was before so many of the changes in our lives had taken place. Kristy and I still lived next door to each other and across the street from Claudia. Mrs. Thomas was just getting to know Watson Brewer. Stacey had lived in Stoneybrook for only a couple of weeks (I think), and Dawn and Jessi hadn’t even moved here yet. I had no idea that a stepsister was coming into my life, and Mal had no idea that a best friend would come into hers.
But I’m off the track. When we were twelve and Kristy and I thought our lives would go on, unchanged, forever (or at least until college), Kristy, Sam, and Charlie were responsible for taking care of David Michael after school — if they could. But the three of them are pretty busy people, and of course they weren’t always able to watch their little brother until Mrs. Thomas came home from work. One time that happened unexpectedly, and Kristy’s mom was in a pinch. She got on the phone, frantically trying to find a sitter for the following afternoon. Kristy was in the kitchen, eating pizza and watching her mother make call after call, when she got her great idea. Wouldn’t it, she wondered, be helpful if her mom could make just one phone call and reach several sitters at once, instead of wasting so much time on the phone?
So Kristy thought up the Baby-sitters Club. She and some of her friends would get together several times a week. People who needed sitters could call during a meeting. They’d be sure to find someone who was free to sit. Kristy first asked Claud and me to start the club with her. The three of us had done quite a bit of sitting, and of course we all knew each other. Then we thought we ought to have more than three members, so Claud suggested that Stacey join. Even though Stacey was a newcomer, she and Claudia were already friendly. The four of us were the original BSC members.
From the start, Kristy ran both the club and our meetings in a very businesslike manner. Immediately, she decided that each of us should ha
ve a role in the club. So Kristy became president, Claud became vice-president, I became secretary, and Stacey became treasurer. (I’ll explain what those titles mean in just a few minutes.) By the middle of the school year, business was so good that we needed another member. That’s when Dawn joined. Then Stacey and her parents temporarily moved back to New York. Only we didn’t know it was going to be temporary. We thought it was permanent. So we asked Mal and Jessi to join the club. Then Stacey’s parents divorced and Stacey and her mom returned to Stoneybrook. Of course we let Stacey right back in the club, which is how we acquired seven members. (I think the club is as big as it’s going to get.)
I mentioned before that each club member holds an office. Here are our jobs and responsibilities. Kristy got to be president mostly because the club was her idea. We thought that was only fair. Plus, Kristy keeps coming up with other good ideas — for instance, ways to run the club in a businesslike manner. From the start, Kristy made us keep a club notebook, which is like a diary. If I hadn’t been able to bring up the Toilet Monster at a meeting, it wouldn’t have mattered because I could have written about him in the notebook. See, each of us is responsible for writing up every single sitting job we go on. Then we’re supposed to read the notebook once a week to find out what happened on our friends’ jobs. So everyone would read about the Toilet Monster sooner or later. Writing in the notebook is a pain — but reading how the other club members solved sitting problems can be very helpful.
Another idea of Kristy’s was the Kid-Kit. We each have one now. A Kid-Kit is just a regular old box that we’ve decorated and then filled with our own games and toys and books, as well as a few new items that get used up, such as crayons, activity books, stickers, and art materials. Sometimes, as a treat, we bring the Kid-Kits along when we baby-sit. The kids love them. They always find somebody else’s toys more interesting than their own. The important thing is that Kid-Kits keep our sitting charges entertained and happy. So when their parents come home, they find contented kids. And then they’re more apt to call on the BSC the next time they need a sitter.