Ann Martin - Jessi Ramsey, Petsitter

"Okay."

A few more minutes and Mal and I had reached the Kishis' house. We looked at each other.

"Dum da-dum dum," sang Mal ominously.

I laughed — or tried to.

Mal opened the door. We went inside and straight up to Claud's room. Kristy was already there, busily sorting through some slips of paper.

"Hi, you guys," Claud greeted us.

"Hi," we replied, settling into our places on the floor.

"What — " Claud started to say, but she was interrupted by the arrival of Mary Anne and Dawn, both looking a little sleepy.

When everyone was sitting in her usual spot, Kristy surprised us by beginning the meeting with, "Tell us about the hamster, Jessi."

I jerked to attention. I'd been preparing for the voting. Now I had to switch gears. "Well," I said, "this is good news. The hamster isn't sick — "

"Oh, that's wonderful!" cried Dawn. "So it was a false alarm?"

"Not exactly," I answered. "The hamster turns out to be a she. By the way, I'm calling her Misty for the time being. And Misty is. . . " (I looked at Mal, dragging out the suspense.)

"Yes?" shrieked Mary Anne.

"... Going to have babies!" I exclaimed. "Probably lots of them. Doctor West said hamsters usually give birth to six to twelve young. Those were his exact words. And it should happen any minute now, because yesterday afternoon he said it would happen within the next twenty-four hours."

"That is so exciting!" squealed Dawn.

"Babies!" exclaimed Mary Anne.

"Lots of them!" added Claudia.

"The Mancusis will be thrilled!" cried Kristy.

For a moment, I felt as if I were in a regular club meeting, back before we had started fighting all the time. Then Kristy said, "When the meeting is over, maybe we could go to the Mancusis' and see how Misty is doing." (Mal elbowed me.) "But right now," she went on, "we have a job to do."

I watched the faces of the other club members turn from happy and expectant to worried and uncertain.

Kristy organized the pile of papers before her into a neat stack. "Now," she said, "I've

made those special ballots, just like I said I would. Each piece of paper is headed with the name of one of the offices. Below that are the names of the four officers. All you have to do is make an X in the box by the name of the person you'd like to see in the office. Okay?"

The rest of us nodded our heads.

"Great," said Kristy. "Let's start with treasurer." She handed blank ballots to Mary Anne, Claudia, Mal, and me, and then gave one to herself.

"Everyone votes except Dawn," she reminded us.

Mary Anne raised her hand. "Uh, Kristy," she said timidly, "I'm — I'm really sorry, but I have to say something about that."

"Yeah?" replied Kristy.

"Well, it's just — it's just that, for instance, Dawn might not want to be the treasurer anymore, but maybe she's got a good idea about who the new treasurer should be. Who would know that better than Dawn? I understand what you said about ties, but I think we should all get to vote. If there's a tie, we'll have a re vote. If we have to have too many revotes, then we'll think about letting only five people vote. But we should vote with six first."

I have to hand it to both Kristy and Mary

Anne. Kristy listened to Mary Anne's suggestion and took it seriously, and Mary Anne didn't cry.

"Okay," said Kristy, "let's vote on what Mary Anne said. Nothing fancy, just a show of hands. All those in favor of letting everyone vote in the elections, raise your hand."

Five hands went up. (Guess which one didn't?)

"Great. I guess we're all voting," said Kristy. "Luckily, I made extra ballots, in case of mistakes, so we're ready."

Kristy handed a ballot to Dawn. Then she gave each of us a blue ballpoint pen.

I looked at my ballot, my heart pounding. TREASURER was written across the top. Below it were the names Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Dawn. A box had been drawn to the left of each name.

I paused for a moment, but I knew what I was going to do. I picked up the pen and made an X next to Dawn's name. She was the best treasurer I could think of. But I was pretty sure she was going to kill me when she found out what I'd done (zfshe found out). The business of elections had started because the girls were tired of their old jobs and wanted a change. Well, too bad. I couldn't help that. Dawn was my choice for treasurer.

I glanced around Claudia's room and tried to measure the tension in the air. Funny, but there didn't seem to be much of it. The club members were busy voting, that was true, but more than that, no one was arguing. I think we were relieved that election day had finally come, no matter what it would bring.

When everyone had voted, we folded our papers in quarters and gave them back to Kristy, who carefully put them in a pile. Then she handed out the ballots for secretary, a few minutes later the ones for vice-president, and last of all, the ones for president. Each time, I voted quickly, knowing just what I had to do.

After the ballots for the office of president had been collected, Kristy said, "Let me just take a fast look through the ballots. If I see a lot of problems, I'll ask you guys to help me count."

Kristy picked up the ballots for treasurer and glanced at them.

"Hmm," she said.

She looked at the ballots for secretary.

"Huh," she said.

She looked at the ballots for vice-president.

"Well," she said,

And then she looked at the ballots for president.

She burst out laughing.

"What is it?" cried Claudia.

"You will not believe this," Kristy told us. "I hardly believe it myself."

"But?" Dawn prompted her.

"But we unanimously voted ourselves back into our old offices! We all voted for Dawn for treasurer — even Dawn did. We all voted for Mary Anne for secretary — even Mary Anne did. And so on. You guys even voted for me for president."

There was a moment of silence. Then every single one of us began to laugh. Dawn laughed so hard she cried. Kristy laughed so hard I thought she was going to fall out of the director's chair. And all the time we were laughing I was thinking. Now I understand what Mama meant when I asked her to tell me how to vote. She meant (but wanted me to figure out for myself) that we shouldn't worry about who thought what or who would be mad or who would laugh about our choices. The purpose of an election is to vote the best person into an office. Period. And we realized that. We realized that the best people were already in the offices and we wanted to keep them there.

The laughter was fading, and Kristy straightened up in her chair. "What happened?" she asked us.

I raised my hand, heart pounding. I usually

don't speak up much in meetings, but I was pretty sure I had the right answer this time. "I think," I began, "that we realized the best people had already been elected to the offices. I mean, Dawn is organized, but Mary Anne is even more organized, and Dawn is better at keeping figures straight, so Dawn's the perfect treasurer and Mary Anne's the perfect secretary. It would be tough to name anyone but Claudia as vice-president, and Kristy, you really deserve to be president since the club was your idea."

Everyone was looking at me and nodding. I added one more thing. "Can you live with the results of the election?" I asked the four officers. "You were pretty fed up with your jobs a little while ago."

"I can do it," said Dawn quickly, and the others agreed. "There are parts of my job that I don't like, but I guess I know I'm best at this job. And it would really mess up the club to start switching things around."

My friends were smiling again. Then Kristy's smile faded. "I have something to say," she began. "Okay, we realized we were in the right offices. But 1 have to admit that right office or not, I have been too bossy. Maybe I do come up with good ideas, but I shouldn't force them on you. It's — it's just this thing