Ann Martin - Mary Anne And Camp

Kristy was my first best friend. We lived next door to each other on Bradford Court. (Claudia lived across the street from us, in the house where she still lives). Kristy and I are very, very different. Not outwardly, so much. Kristy is short, even shorter than I am, and she's a pretty casual dresser. She wears what we call her uniform: jeans, a turtleneck or T-shirt, and running shoes. She often wears a cap with a picture of a collie on it, in memory of her family's old dog Louie, who was a collie. He died not too long ago.

Having a "uniform" is one way of being organized, I think. I mean, Kristy doesn't have to spend any time worrying about what she's going to wear.

Anyway, Kristy has brown eyes, like me, and brown hair (although hers is longer), and she lives in a blended (but not bicoastal) family, too. And we're both pretty stubborn, in our own ways. Some of the fights we had as kids were monuments to stubbornness!

But that's where the similarities end. Because I'm quiet and shy and Kristy is very sure

of herself and not afraid of making her opinions known. In fact, some people have even said she has a big mouth.

Part of the reason Kristy is so outspoken, I believe, is because she grew up with two older brothers and one younger brother. Her older brothers tease Kristy pretty often. But it doesn't bother her. She just teases them back and goes on.

Kristy's father left when Kristy was a kid. She still remembers him, but he never gets in touch with her, except maybe to send a Christmas card or a birthday card (late). He has a new family now, in California. Kristy never talks about him.

After Mr. Thomas left, the Thomases had a really tough time. David Michael was still a baby, Mrs. Thomas was working hard to make ends meet, and Kristy and her brothers, Sam and Charlie, had to help out and work hard, too.

Then things changed. Oh, Kristy's mom still works hard. But they don't live on Bradford Court anymore. They live in a real, live mansion. That's because Kristy's mom met Watson Brewer (who is a real, live millionaire) and they fell in love and got married.

Now Kristy's family includes not only her three brothers and her mom, but Watson and his two children by a previous marriage, Karen

and Andrew, plus Emily Michelle, who is Vietnamese and was adopted by Kristy's mom and stepfather. There's also Nannie, who is Kristy's maternal grandmother, who came to help look after Emily Michelle, plus assorted pets, and maybe even a resident ghost!

You have to be organized and outspoken in a situation like that. So it's not surprising that Kristy is always thinking and always coming up with great ideas. Some of them backfire, but that never stops Kristy. That's probably one of the reasons the BSC is so successful.

Other big reasons? Us, of course. The other BSC members.

Claudia Kishi is our vice-president. She was one of the first members of the BSC and she is the only member who has her own phone line. That's why we hold the meetings in her room. Clients can call, and we don't have to worry about tying up the phone line so the rest of her family can't use it.

Claudia is totally cool. She wants to be an artist. She has had her own private art show and has even won a prize for her work. She sees art potential in everything, even stuff most of us would call junk — such as junk food. Claudia loves junk food and she always keeps a good supply of it stashed around her room, along with the Nancy Drew books she likes to read, and of which her parents also

disapprove. So it's hardly surprising that she's used junk food as the inspiration for some of her artwork.

Actually, Claudia herself is a work of art in progress (that's what she would say). She makes most of her own jewelry and she's always trying on outrageous combinations of clothes and colors that shouldn't look good together. On Claudia, though, the clothes and the colors work.

But although Claudia is very creative and one of the best-looking girls in the school, with her long black hair and, her perfect skin and her dark brown eyes, she is not so cool when it comes to traditional schoolwork. This is ironic, because Claudia's sister Janine is a real, live genius, who takes college courses, although she's only in high school. But Claudia would rather be almost any place except in school. She thinks creatively, and that doesn't always lead to good grades in, well, less creative subjects such as math and spelling.

Still, although English and spelling are Claudia's least favorite subjects, she once joined the staff of the school newspaper, the SMS Express. She wrote a column called "Claudia's Personals," which she started when she was looking for the perfect boy.

You've already met Dawn, sort of. Dawn started in the BSC as our alternate officer. Her

job was to fill in when one of the other officers couldn't do her job, which is what Shannon does now. However, Dawn's taken over as the treasurer since Stacey left. (Or maybe Stacey was fired. At the last meeting of the BSC that she attended, everybody said some pretty awful things. It ended with Stacey saying she quit and Kristy saying Stacey couldn't quit, she was fired. Stacey and Claudia were best friends and they still talk to each other, but mostly we don't mention Stacey. It's very sad.)

But anyway, Dawn is a good treasurer even if she's not the math whiz of the world like Stacey. She has her own, casual, easy-going style and is as striking as Claudia. Like Claudia's, Dawn's hair is long, but it is pale, pale blonde, almost white, in fact. She has light blue eyes and pale skin and gets freckles if she stays out in the sun too long.

But freckles aren't enough to stop Dawn from loving the beach. She misses her brother and father — and the California sunshine and the California beaches. She's even a member of another baby-sitting organization when she's in California, one that she helped start because the BSC is such a great idea and because Dawn missed it. It's called the We Love Kids Club.

Dawn is practically a vegetarian. She's very environmentally conscious. She brings her

lunch to school in brown paper bags (which she uses over and over again) and never wraps her sandwiches in plastic wrap. And while we consume mass quantities of junk food at Claudia's, Dawn usually munches on an apple.

In spite of her intense feelings about the environment, Dawn is very laid-back and practical. In fact, it's still a surprise to me that she loves ghost stories so much. And believes in ghosts. Maybe it's part of her willingness to accept people as they are, even ghosts.

Shannon Kilbourne, who is acting as our alternate officer now, is the only member of the BSC who goes to private school — Stoneybrook Day School. Shannon is very serious about school. She's a member of a couple of dubs, is an honor student, and takes French.

Shannon lives across the street from Kristy. She has thick, curly blonde hair, high, high cheekbones and blue eyes. She has a Bernese mountain dog named Astrid, who just had puppies. Astrid had puppies once before, and Shannon gave one of them to Kristy's family after Louie died. That's how Shannon and Kristy became friends. In fact, David Michael named the new puppy after Shannon.

Shannon is sometimes quiet, but she is very sure of herself in her own way, just like Kristy, and very organized in a Kristy-like way, too. Because she is so involved in school, she

doesn't have time to take as many baby-sitting jobs as the rest of us, but with summer coming, Shannon said she was looking forward to earning some extra money. "Except," she told us, making a face, "they've given us a summer reading list, too."