Ann Martin - Kristy And The Mothers Day Surprise

isn’t too affected by what other people think of her or tell her. Plus, Dawn is neat and organized, which makes her a good treasurer. Although Dawn has been living inConnecticut for over a year now, she still looks sort of Californian. She’s got long hair that is the blondest I’ve ever seen. It’s almost white. And her eyes are sparkly and pale blue. In the summer she gets this amazing tan. (The rest of the year she just has freckles.) And her clothes are casual and as individualistic as she is. She likes to wear layers of things — a short tank top over a long tank top, or socks over tights. Dawn is pretty cool.

The two junior members of our club are Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike. They’re junior members because they’re younger than the rest of us eighth-graders. Mal and Jessi are in sixth grade. They haven’t been club members as long as us older girls. Still, they’re beginning to feel like family to me.

Mallory used to be someone our club sat for. Isn’t that weird? Now she’s a sitter herself. Mal is the oldest of eight kids. (Talk about big families.) The Baby-sitters Club still takes care of her younger brothers and sisters pretty often. Anyway, Mal is a great sitter. She’s levelheaded and responsible — good in an emergency. And she’s the most practical person I know. Mal is struggling to grow up. Being eleven can be very difficult, and Ma! thinks her parents treat her like a baby. However, they’re starting to let up. Recently, they allowed Ma! to get her ears pierced and her hair cut. (She had to get braces, too, though, and her parents said she’s too young for contact lenses.) Mal likes reading (especially books about horses), writing, and drawing. She thinks she might want to be an author of children’s books when she grows up.

Jessi (short for Jessica) Ramsey is Mal’s best friend. Like Dawn, she’s a newcomer toStoneybrook,Connecticut . In fact, she’s a newer newcomer than Dawn is. Her family moved here fromNew Jersey at the beginning of the school year. They moved because Mr. Ramsey changed jobs. In many ways, Jessi and Mal are alike. Jessi also loves to read, she wears glasses (just for reading), and she thinks her parents treat her like a baby, although they did let her get her ears pierced when Mal had hers done. But there are some big differences between Jessi and Mal. I guess the biggest is that Jessi is black and Mal is white. This hasn’t made a bit of difference to the girls, but the Ramseys sure had some trouble when they first moved here. Not many black families live in Stoneybrook, and some people gave the Ramseys a

hard time. Jessi says things are settling down, though. Another difference between Mal and Jessi is that Mal likes to write and Jessi likes to dance. Jessi is a ballerina. She’s very talented. I’ve seen her dance — on stage. I was really impressed. The third difference is that Mal’s family is huge, while Jessi’s is average — Jessi; her parents; her younger sister, Becca; and her baby brother, Squirt.

And that’s it. Those are the people in my family. It’s a big family, when you add the members of the Baby-sitters Club. I could add a few more, too, I thought later that night as I lay in bed. There’s Nannie. There’s Stacey McGill, who used to be a member of the club, but who had to move toNew York City . There are Shannon and Logan, whom I’ll tell you about later. And there’s my real father. . . . But, no, he doesn’t count. Somebody who never writes, never calls, never remembers your birthday, never says he loves you, doesn’t count at all.

I was growing sleepy, and I forgot about my father. Instead, I thought of my gigantic family. I fell asleep smiling.

Chapter 2.

As president of the Baby-sitters Club, I get to run the meetings. I adore being in charge. Club meetings are the best times of my week.

“Order! Order, you guys!” I said.

It was Monday afternoon at five-thirty, time for our meeting to begin. Everyone had arrived and was sitting (or sprawling) in her usual place. As president, I always sit in the director’s chair and wear my visor. I stick a pencil over my ear. That way, I look like I’m in charge. Claudia, Dawn, and Mary Anne loll around on the bed, and Jessi and Mal sit on the floor.

We hold our meetings in Claudia’s room. She has her own phone.

This is how our club works: Three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from five-thirty until six, our club meets in Claudia’s bedroom. People who need sitters call us during our meetings. They’re practically guaranteed a sitter. With six club members,

one of us is bound to be free. So we wind up with lots of jobs. Pretty neat, huh?

The idea for the club was mine. (That’s how I got to be the president.) It came to me way back at the beginning of seventh grade, before Mom was really thinking about marrying Watson. We still lived in this neighborhood then. In fact, we lived right across the street from Claudia. Anyway, one day Mom needed a sitter for David Michael, who had just turned six. I wasn’t free and neither was Sam nor Charlie. So Mom got on the phone and began making call after call, trying to find a sitter. I felt bad for my mother, and even worse for David Michael, who was watching everything. And that was when I got my great idea. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Mom could make just one call and reach a whole bunch of babysitters at once? She’d find a sitter much faster that way.

So I got together with Mary Anne and Claudia and told them about my idea. We decided to form the Baby-sitters Club. We also decided we’d need more than three members, so we asked Stacey McGill, a new friend of Claudia’s, to join the club, too. Stacey had just moved to Stoneybrook from New York City because her father’s job had changed. I could see right away why she and Claudia had

become friends so fast. Stacey awed Mary Anne and me. She seemed years older than twelve — very sophisticated with trendy clothes, pierced ears, and permed hair. But she was also very nice. Furthermore, she’d had plenty of babysitting experience in New York, so we knew she’d be a good addition to the club.

After Stacey agreed to join us, we sent around fliers and ran an ad in Stoneybrook’s newspaper so people would know when to call us — and we were in business! The club was great. By the time Dawn moved to town, we needed another sitter, and later, when Stacey moved back to New York, we were doing so much business that we replaced her with both Jessi and Mal. And somewhere along the line we decided that we better have a couple of people lined up whom we could call on in case none of us could take a job. So we signed up two associate members, Shannon Kilbourne and Logan Bruno. Shannon lives across the street from me in my new neighborhood. We’re friends, sort of. Logan is a boy — and he’s Mary Anne’s boyfriend! Shannon and Logan don’t come to the meetings. We just call them when we need them, so that we don’t have to disappoint any of our clients by saying that no sitters are available.

I run our meetings in the most businesslike

way I can. As president, that’s my job. Also, I come up with ideas for the club and generally just try to keep things going smoothly.

The job of the vice-president is, well. . . To be honest, Claudia Kishi is the vice-president because she has her own phone and personal, private phone number. The club uses her phone so we don’t have to tie up some grownup’s phone three times a week. The only thing is, our clients sometimes forget when our meetings are and call at other times. Claudia has to deal with those job offers, and she handles things really well.

Mary Anne Spier, our secretary, has the biggest job of any of us. Our club has a notebook (I’ll tell you about that soon) and a record book. Mary Anne is the one who keeps the record book in order and up-to-date. She writes down our clients’ names, addresses, and phone numbers and is responsible for scheduling all our sitting jobs on the appointment pages. This is more difficult than it sounds, since she has to keep track of things like Jessi’s ballet classes, Claud’s art lessons, Mal’s orthodontist appointments, and you name