Ann Martin: Jessi Ramsey, Petsitter

Dawn Schafer is the treasurer of the Baby-

sitters Club. I like Dawn. She's neat. Dawn is neither loud like Kristy nor shy like Mary Anne. She's an individual. She'd never go along with something just because other people were doing it. And she always sticks up for what she believes in. Dawn is basically aCalifornia girl. She moved toConnecticut about a year ago, but she still longs for warm weather and she loves health food. She even looks like aCalifornia girl with her white-blonde hair and her sparkling blue eyes. Although you'd never know it, Dawn has been through some tough times lately. When she moved here, she came with her mother and her younger brother, Jeff — her parents had just gotten divorced. Mrs. Schafer wanted to live in Stoneybrook because she'd grown up here, but that put three thousand miles between Dawn's mother and Dawn's father. As if the divorce and the move weren't enough, Jeff finally decided he couldn't handle the East Coast and moved back toCalifornia , so now Dawn's family is cracked in two, like a broken plate. But Dawn seems to be handling things okay. Luckily, she has her best friend (Mary Anne), and she and her mother are extremely close. Just so you know, the Schafers live in a neat old farmhouse that has a secret passage (honest), and they don't have any pets.

Then there's Mallory. Mallory Pike and I are the club's two junior officers. All that means is that we're too young to baby-sit at night unless we're sitting for our own brothers and sisters. Speaking of brothers and sisters, Mal has seven of them. She comes from the biggest family I know. Apart from that, and apart from the fact that Mal is white and I'm black, we're probably more alike than any two other club members. We both love to read books, especially horse stories, we both enjoy writing (but Mal enjoys it more than I do), we both wear glasses (mine are only for reading), and we both think our parents treat us kind of like babies. However, there was a recent breakthrough in which we convinced our parents to let us get our ears pierced! After that, Mal was even allowed to have her hair cut decently, but I'm still working on that angle. Neither of us is sure what we want to be when we grow the rest of the way up. I might want to be a professional dancer and Mal might want to be an author or an author/illustrator, but we figure we have time to decide these things. Right now, we're just happy being eleven-year-old baby-sitters.

Oh, one other similarity between Mal and me. Neither of us has a pet. I don't know if Mal wants one — she's never mentioned it —

but I bet her brothers and sisters do. Just like Becca.

"Hiss, hiss."

Becca was in my doorway. She was lying on her stomach.

"Now what are you?" I asked.

"I'll give you a hint." Becca flicked her tongue out of her mouth.

"Ew, ew!" I cried. "You're a snake. Slither away from me!"

Giggling, Becca did as she was told.

I went back to my homework, but I couldn't concentrate. Not because of Becca, but because of next week. I was going to have next week off. Well, sort of. Ordinarily, my afternoons are busy. When school is out, I go either to a ballet class or to my steady sitting job. My steady job is for Matt and Haley Braddock, two really great kids. But next week, my ballet school would be closed and the Braddocks were going on a vacation — even though school was in session. So, except for school and meetings of the Baby-sitters Club, I would be free, free, free! What would I do with all those spare hours? I wondered. Easy. I could put in extra practice time, I could read. The possibilities were endless!

Chapter 2.

"Hi! Hi, you guys! Sorry I'm late." I rushed breathlessly into the Wednesday meeting of the Baby-sitters Club.

"You're not late," said Kristy, our president. "You're just the last one here."

"As always," I added.

"Well, don't worry about it. But it is five-thirty and time to begin." Kristy sounded very businesslike.

Mallory patted the floor next to her, so I shoved aside some of Claudia's art materials and sat down. We always sit on the floor. And Dawn, Mary Anne, and Claudia always sit on Claudia's bed. Guess where Kristy sits—in a director's chair, wearing a visor, as if she were the queen or something.

Club meetings are held in Claudia Kishi's room. This is because she's the only one of us who has a phone in her bedroom, and her own personal, private phone number, which

makes it easy for our clients to reach us.

Hmmm. ... I think I better stop right here, before I get ahead of myself. I'll tell you how the club got started and how it works; then the meeting won't sound so confusing.

The club began with Kristy, as I said before. She got the idea for it over a year ago. That was when she and her mom and brothers were still living across the street from Claudia, and her mother was just starting to date Watson Brewer. Usually, when Mrs. Thomas wasn't going to be around, Kristy or Sam or Charlie would take care of David Michael. But one day when Mrs. Thomas announced that she was going to need a sitter, neither Kristy nor one of her older brothers was free. So Mrs. Thomas got on the phone and began calling around for another sitter. Kristy watched her mom make one call after another. And as she watched, that mind of hers was clicking away, thinking that Mrs. Thomas sure could save time if she could make one call and reach several sitters at once. And that was when Kristy got the idea for the Baby-sitters Club!

She talked to Mary Anne and Claudia, Claudia talked to Stacey McGill, a new friend of hers, and the four of them formed the club. (I'll tell you more about Stacey in a minute.)

The girls decided that they'd meet three times a week in Claudia's room (because of the phone). They'd advertise their club in the local paper and around the neighborhood, saying that four reliable sitters could be reached every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon from five-thirty until six.

Well, Kristy's great idea worked! Right away, the girls started getting jobs. People really liked them. In fact, the club was so successful that when Dawn moved to Stoneybrook and wanted to join, the girls needed her. And later, when Stacey McGill had to move back toNew York City , they needed to replace her. (Stacey's move, by the way, was unfortunate, because in the short time the McGills lived in Stoneybrook, she and Claudia became best friends. Now they really miss each other.) Anyway, Mal and I joined the club to help fill the hole left by Stacey, and Shannon Kilbourne and Logan Bruno were made associate members. That means that they don't come to meetings, but if a job is offered that the rest of us can't take, we call one of them to see if they're interested. They're our backups. Believe it or not, we do have to call them every now and then.

Each person in the club holds a special

position or office. There are the associate members, Shannon and Logan, and there are the junior officers, Mal and me. The other positions are more important. (I'm not putting the rest of us down or anything. This is just the truth.)

As president, Kristy is responsible for running the meetings, getting good ideas, and, well, just being in charge, I guess. Considering that president is the most important office of all, Kristy doesn't do a lot of work. I mean, not compared to what the other girls do. But then, the club was her idea, so I think she deserves to be its president.

Claudia Kishi, our vice-president, doesn't really have a lot to do, either, but the rest of us invade her room three times a week and tie up her phone line. Plus, a lot of our clients forget when our meetings are held and call at other times with sitting jobs. Claud has to handle those calls. I think she deserves to be vice-president.

As secretary, Mary Anne Spier is probably the hardest-working officer. She's in charge of the record book, which is where we keep track of all club information: our clients' addresses and phone numbers, the money in the treasury (well, that's really Dawn's department), and most importantly, the appointment calendar.