Ann Martin - Kristy's Mystery Admirer

"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 Sta-

cey 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 Sarri, 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 Mal 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 Babysitters Club with more jobs for us!

The record book is Mary Anne's and Sta-cey'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 meet-

ings. 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.