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  And food. As you probably guessed, eating is a big part of BSC meetings. But let me set the record straight. It’s not all we do. Far from it. It’s just that Claudia has this thing about junk food. She collects it. Claud’s room is a Junk-Food Treasure Island. If you tried to “mark the spot,” though, you’d have to put X’s everywhere. Since her parents are anti-junk food, Claud finds all kinds of interesting hiding places for her loot — under pillows, behind books, inside shoe boxes, between mattresses. (She also hides Nancy Drew books. She loves them, but her parents think she should only read “literature.”) The minute a meeting starts, out comes the food. Claud is very generous with it, and she even makes sure to have healthy or sugarless snacks for Dawn and me.

  How would you picture a person who is obsessed with Ring-Dings, Snickers, Twinkies, Milky Ways, and Yankee Doodles? Well, guess again. Claudia is as trim as a model, and she has perfect skin. She is gorgeous, too, with long, silky black hair and almond eyes (she’s Japanese-American). She’s also one of the two fashion plates of the BSC. The other? Hrrrmph. Yours truly. Okay, I know it sounds snobbish, but all I’m saying is that Claud and I are the most clothes-crazy of the members. We like to follow new trends (and set them, if we can). Claudia likes experimenting more than I do, though. She can throw together the wildest hats and vests and shoes — stuff you wouldn’t dream of wearing — and look sensational. She loves to wear her hair in different ways and is crazy about wild-colored barrettes.

  Creativity just spills out of Claudia. You would not believe her artwork. She can paint, sculpt, draw, and make jewelry. Once she had an art show in her garage. The show was called “Disposable Comestibles,” and it was all paintings and drawings of … junk food! Oh, that title was not Claud’s idea. Her older sister, Janine, thought of it. Janine is into big words — and Calculus and Advanced Everything. She has an IQ of 196, and she takes courses at Stoneybrook Community College (maybe with Wesley Ellenburg). Claudia, on the other hand, is not a good student. (Her spelling is atrocious.) For a long time she felt her parents favored Janine, but lately they’ve begun to realize how special Claudia’s talents are.

  Another thing. Claud is our vice-president, mainly because we use her room for headquarters. Plus sometimes she has to take calls from parents who forget our official hours.

  Our president is our founder, Kristy Thomas. She was born for the job. She’s loud and bossy (but we love her anyway). And she’s always full of ideas. Without Kristy, we’d probably be a lot less organized and efficient.

  Kristy’s mind is amazing. She tries to solve problems before they happen. Here’s an example. Not long after she started the BSC, she figured out a potential disadvantage of our club. Clients would not be guaranteed the same sitter each time. Parents would have to repeat instructions to each new sitter. Then the sitter and the kids would have to get acquainted from scratch. So Kristy dreamt up the BSC notebook. In it, we write down a summary of each job — special instructions, the kids’ needs and preferences, funny stories, anything. Kristy insists that we write in the notebook after each job, even if nothing much has happened. That can be a bit of a pain. But all of us agree that the book is a huge help.

  Kristy also invented the BSC record book. That’s where we keep a schedule of our jobs, plus a client list — including addresses, phone numbers, the rates they pay, and their kids’ names and ages.

  Another brilliant Kristy idea was Kid-Kits. They’re just cardboard boxes filled with simple toys, games, and books — mostly art supplies and stuff we scrounge from our houses. What kid would want to play with old junk like that? You’d be surprised. Our charges adore Kid-Kits.

  Then there’s Kristy’s Krushers, a softball team she organized for kids who weren’t ready for Little League. Kristy, by the way, is great at sports. She’s small and compact, and she usually wears sweats or jeans and a T-shirt or a turtleneck. She never wears makeup, though, and doesn’t do much with her long brown hair.

  Kristy is so down-to-earth, you’d never guess her stepdad was the richest man in Stoneybrook. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but he’s definitely well-off. Which is great, because most of Kristy’s life hasn’t been so privileged. She used to live in a small house across the street from Claudia’s. Not long after David Michael was born, about seven years ago, Kristy’s dad just left the family. No explanation, no nothing. He hardly ever calls his kids, so he’s persona non grata around here. (My mom uses that expression. It means “person not wanted.”) Mrs. Thomas held down a job and raised Kristy and her three brothers by herself. Then one day she fell in love with Watson Brewer. He’s a really sweet guy, very quiet, and a terrific gardener. Well, he and Mrs. Thomas got married and the Thomases moved in with the Brewers (Watson has two kids from his previous marriage, who live in his house on alternate weekends and holidays). The family has grown to include Emily Michelle, an adopted Vietnamese girl, and Kristy’s grandmother, Nannie. And they have all kinds of pets. So the Brewer house is a pretty busy place, but there’s lots of room. It’s an enormous old mansion, way on the other side of town. Kristy has to be driven to and from BSC meetings (usually by her oldest brother Charlie).

  “Hrr-rmm, hrr-rrmm.” Kristy cleared her throat. Claudia’s digital clock read 5:29. I was sitting in my usual position, cross-legged on the bed, sandwiched between Mary Anne and Claudia. Jessi and Mal were on the floor. Dawn was sitting backward on Claudia’s desk chair.

  Kristy was perched on a canvas director’s chair, wearing her trusty visor. As always, she had one eye on the clock. The moment it hit 5:30, she blurted out, “This meeting will come to order!”

  We all sat up a little straighter, waiting for Kristy’s next line (which is “Any new business?”).

  “Any new business?” (See, she never lets us down.)

  “Dues day!” I said. I am the club treasurer, the one who has to take a share of everyone’s hard-earned money on Mondays. We use the money to pay Charlie Thomas for his gas expenses, to help Claudia with her phone bill, and to buy new things for Kid-Kits. If any money is left over, we sometimes plan a pizza party or something.

  My position, of course, is the most beloved of all. You can tell from the reactions:

  “Already?”

  “Do we have to?”

  “Ugggh, that’s right …”

  “Can’t we skip this week?”

  I did my duty and collected the money. (The grumbling is sort of a tradition. My friends don’t really mean what they say. At least I hope they don’t.)

  No sooner did the last coin jingle into our treasury (an old manila envelope) then the phone rang.

  “Baby-sitters Club,” Claudia said into the receiver. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Barrett …. Next Tuesday? Oh … okay, I’ll check and call you right back…. ’Bye.” She hung up and turned to Mary Anne. “The Barrett kids, two weeks from tomorrow?”

  “Um, let me check,” Mary Anne said.

  Mary Anne is our secretary. She handles the record book. Talk about a complicated job. She has to keep our client list up-to-date, keep track of our schedules (Jessi’s ballet classes, Mal’s orthodontist appointments, Kristy’s Krushers practices, Claud’s art classes), schedule our jobs, and try to make sure each of us has a roughly equal amount of work. Needless to say, Mary Anne is very organized. Plus she has the world’s neatest handwriting.

  Personality-wise, Mary Anne is the exact opposite of Kristy. She’s shy and quiet, she hates anything athletic, and she’s very sensitive. I think the supermarket stocks extra Kleenex boxes when the Spier family goes shopping. I have seen Mary Anne cry at the sight of a limping squirrel. Her boyfriend jokes about having to take out flood insurance after they watched a tape of Love Story together.

  Guess who’s best friends with shy, retiring Mary Anne? Loud, unretiring Kristy. Go figure. (I love that expression. The newspaper-stand guy on my dad’s block in New York says it all the time. My dad will remark about something unusual, like, “Can you believe this, ninety degrees in April?” The guy will shake his h
ead and answer, “Go figure.”) Another interesting thing about Mary Anne is this: Of all the BSC members, she’s the only one with a steady boyfriend. His name’s Logan Bruno (yes, the same Logan Bruno who’s an associate BSC member). He’s handsome and outgoing and very athletic. They’ve had their ups and downs, but lately they seem very close.

  Mary Anne’s also in eighth grade, but when I first met her, I thought she was a year or two younger than me. Her hair was in pigtails and she wore little-girl dresses. At that time, she lived alone with her dad (her mom died when Mary Anne was a baby). Mr. Spier’s a nice man, but he was incredibly strict, with all kinds of rules and curfews. Luckily, all that has changed. Mary Anne has been set free! She wears tasteful, stylish clothes and recently got her hair cut in a short new style. Why? Because her dad got remarried and loosened up. The woman who helped change his life (and Mary Anne’s) was none other than …

  Dawn Schafer’s mom! Yes, they’re married. But before I tell you that saga, let me tell you about Dawn. Like me, she’s an import — meaning she came to Stoneybrook from afar. Really afar. She moved here with her mom and brother Jeff from sunny, beach-covered southern California, after her parents divorced. Dawn’s hair is light blonde (almost white) and she always has this healthy glow. (If you met her, you’d see right away why her parents called her “Dawn.”) Like me, Dawn eats no sweets. But she goes much further. She doesn’t eat red meat either, and she prefers organically grown food, and stuff like tofu and alfalfa sprouts. No, she’s not a diabetic — she likes to eat that way.

  Go figure.

  Anyway, Mrs. Schafer grew up in Stoneybrook. It turns out she used to date Mary Anne’s dad. Well, they got together again after all those years and before we knew it, they were engaged. So now they all live in the Schafers’ rambling old farmhouse (except for Jeff, who went back to California to live with his dad). And that’s how Mary Anne and Dawn became stepsisters.

  Dawn’s our alternate officer, which means she takes over for anyone who can’t make meetings. I think she’s done each job at least once. She became treasurer when I moved back to New York (and she was thrilled to give me the job again when I returned).

  Jessica Ramsey and Mallory Pike are our junior officers. “Junior” because they’re two years younger than the rest of us. They’re eleven years old and in sixth grade. They both have early curfews, so they mostly do after-school and weekend day jobs. That works out great, because it frees the rest of us for late sitting.

  Mal and Jessi are best friends. They’re excellent sitters, too. Each of them is the oldest kid in her family, which means each has had lots of training. Especially Mallory. She has seven brothers and sisters (including triplets). Jessi has two, a sister and a brother.

  You already know we have a great artist in our midst, but we also have a great writer and a great ballerina. Jessi’s the ballerina. She looks it, too, with long legs and perfect posture and hair always pulled back from her face. She’s already danced lead roles in school productions. Mal not only writes wonderful stories, but illustrates them, too. She wants to do that for a living someday.

  Jessi and Mal both love to read, and they both complain that their parents treat them like babies. (Although there has been some progress. They were allowed to get their ears pierced recently.) Physically, they couldn’t be more different. Mal has pale, freckly skin, blue eyes, and frizzy reddish hair. She also wears glasses and braces (the clear kind). Jessi’s skin is chocolately brown, and she has big dark eyes.

  Last but not least, our associate members. I’ve told you a little about Logan. He loves to baby-sit, but he’s usually involved in some after-school sport, so he can’t be a regular member. Logan has been bitten by the cute bug (definition: major hunk). Shannon Kilbourne, our other associate member, goes to a private school called Stoneybrook Day School. Lately she’s been coming to meetings a lot. (That Monday, though, she had a drama club meeting after school.)

  Okay. That covers us all. Now back to the meeting.

  There we were, munching away. The Veggie-Rice Nuggets were beginning to lose their appeal. I think Claudia could sense that, because she fished out a bag of pretzels from her sock drawer. But she had to put it down on the dresser when the phone rang.

  Claud chirped, “Hello, Baby-sitters Club,” into the phone. “Oh, hi, Dr. Johanssen…. Oh, that’s okay, don’t worry. Let me ask.” She covered the receiver and said, “Charlotte on Wednesday evening?”

  Mary Anne checked the schedule and replied, “Stacey’s free.”

  Claudia looked at me and I nodded. “Hi, it’s me again,” Claud said to Dr. Johanssen. “Stace will be there…. You’re welcome. ’Bye.”

  Now, BSC members don’t usually “reserve” their charges, but Charlotte Johanssen is a special case. She and I have become very close, almost like sisters. So no one minds if I’m given first choice to sit for Char.

  Well, the week wasn’t turning out badly after all. True, my favorite class was about to be taken over by some inexperienced dweeb. But the weather was nice, Claud had discovered a good new sugarless snack for me, and I was going to see my number one sitting charge in two days. It could have been worse.

  Sniff. Sniff. Sniff.

  Ah, spring. The next day, Tuesday, was perfect, like the day before. Mary Anne, Dawn, and I walked home from school together very slowly. Spring fever slowly. I was carrying a light load, because Mr. Zizmore hadn’t given us a homework assignment. I guess that was the one nice thing about having a new teacher the next day.

  The rest of the BSCers were busy. Jessi had gone off to ballet. Mal and Claudia had sitting jobs. Kristy had called a Krushers practice.

  As we turned onto Burnt Hill Road, Mary Anne asked, “What are you doing this afternoon?”

  “The usual,” I replied. “Fixing myself some cottage cheese and doing some homework.”

  “Sounds exciting,” Dawn said.

  “Want to come over?” Mary Anne suggested.

  “Sure!” It was a perfect idea. I didn’t feel like going home to an empty house, anyway.

  Dawn and Mary Anne’s house is on Burnt Hill, just past the intersection with my street. And it is the coolest house in Stoneybrook. Yes, even cooler than the Brewer mansion. It’s this old, old farmhouse. It was built in the late 1700s, complete with a barn out back. Here’s the best part about it: A secret passageway leads from the barn to … Dawn’s bedroom! According to legend, the house was part of the Underground Railroad. African-American slaves would stop there on their flight away from the South.

  The house looks big, but it doesn’t feel that way inside. That’s because the rooms are pretty small and the doorways are low. (People must have been tiny in the 1700s — probably because they didn’t have Veggie-Rice Nuggets.)

  “Hi, girls!” Mrs. Schafer called from upstairs as we walked in. She came clomping down the old wooden staircase into the living room. I could tell she’d had a haircut, because the curls in her blonde hair were tighter and bouncier than usual. “Stacey, nice to see you!”

  “Nice to see you, too,” I said.

  “You make yourselves at home,” Mrs. Schafer went on, looking suddenly distracted. “I was going to go shopping, but I can’t find my keys.” She walked into the kitchen, muttering, “I was in here, checking to see what we need —”

  Dawn followed her. She went straight to the fridge, opened it, and — jingle, jingle — guess what she found?

  In case you haven’t noticed, Mrs. Schafer is a little on the scatterbrained side. Dawn has developed a sixth sense about where her mom has forgotten things.

  After we said good-bye to Mrs. Schafer, Mary Anne and Dawn scrounged up a snack from the fridge — scarves and loose change (just kidding).

  We wandered out to the backyard, which is huge. Mary Anne’s kitten, Tigger, followed us. As we sat on some lawn chairs, Tiggy began putting on a show. He lunged forward. He batted invisible things with his paws. He rolled around. He ran off as if he were being chased.

  After a while,
we were giggling uncontrollably. “Tiggy, what’s gotten into you?” Mary Anne called out.

  “Spring feeee-verrr …” Dawn said.

  Soon we heard another laughing voice. We turned to see a salt-and-pepper-haired woman walking toward us.

  “He’s adorable!” she said.

  “Oh, hi, Mrs. Stone,” Dawn replied. “This is our friend, Stacey McGill. Let me get you a chair.”

  “Hi, Stacey,” Mrs. Stone said, shaking my hand. “Please, don’t bother, Dawn. I can’t stay long. I just came over to ask you girls if you could do me a favor.”

  “Sure,” Mary Anne piped up.

  Mrs. Stone laughed. “Well, don’t say yes until I tell you what it is. My husband and I are going out of town on Saturday for three weeks —”

  Dawn’s eyes lit up. “You need someone to look after your farm?”

  “Well, not exactly,” Mrs. Stone replied. “We’ve hired someone to stop by twice a day. My main concern is leaving Elvira. She’s only two months old, you know, and we’ve never been away from her.”

  “Oh,” Mary Anne said, nodding solemnly.

  Elvira? She named her baby Elvira, and now she was leaving the poor kid for three weeks? I felt sorry for the little girl. Well, at least her last name wasn’t Ellenburg.

  “You see, she has required so much extra care,” Mrs. Stone went on, “what with her mother dying during the birth, poor thing. Harold and I have had to raise her ourselves, and she depends on us.”

  “Is she all right?” Dawn asked. She and Mary Anne seemed to know this girl, but I didn’t remember them talking about her.

  “Oh, yes, she’s quite healthy, but I don’t dare leave her alone. You wouldn’t believe the things she’ll eat if she’s not supervised. She especially likes the kitchen trash and the mail. And I just don’t trust the animals with her. I’m afraid one of the horses will get annoyed and kick her.”

  My jaw dropped so fast I thought I’d pulled a muscle.