Ann Martin: Claudia And The Sad Goodbye

Mimi needs lots of help these days.

It's a little bit hard on our family.

Chapter 2.

"Claudia, Claudia!" called an urgent voice, and Mallory Pike burst into my bedroom. She looked close to tears. It was a Wednesday afternoon, just ten minutes before the beginning of a meeting of the Baby-sitters Club. "Mimi just scolded me and told me never to take her shopping again because we have to wait too long to get into the dressing rooms. She sounded really mad at me." (All my friends call my grandmother Mimi. That's what she likes.)

"Sit down," I said, leading Mallory to my bed. "I guess Mimi never yelled at you before, did she?"

"Well," said Mal shakily, "she wasn't exactly yelling, but — "

"I know what you mean." I plopped down next to Mal.

"Anyway, no, she never talked to me that

way before — and I never took her shopping. When would I have taken her shopping? And why would she thinkI'dtake her shopping instead of you or Janine or one of your parents?"

Before I could answer, Mal rushed on. "And then she seemed like her old self again. Her voice went back to normal, and she pulledthisout of her pocket and gave it to me." Mallory opened her hand and showed me a small china bird that had been part of Mimi's bird collection for as long as I could remember. "Mimi said she's known me since I was little and she really wants me to have this… You don't mind, do you? I mean, I didn't ask for it or anything."

I did mind a little, but not because Mimi had chosen Mal, not me, to have the bird. I minded because for Mimi this was a new weird behavior that I didn't understand. All I said, though, was, "No, of course not," and Mal smiled and looked like she felt better.

Then Kristy came in, or maybe I should sayblewin, and Mimi was immediately forgotten.

"Hi, you guys!" cried Kristy. "Are we the only ones here so far?" She checked her watch. "Five minutes till meeting time. Any Oreos, Claud?"

I felt winded just listening to Kristy, but I began a search for this package of Oreos which I was pretty sure was inside my hollow book, one of my best hiding places. The other good hiding places are behind a row of Nancy Drews on my shelf, and in boxes under my bed, labeled things likeart suplys. (I am not the world's greatest speller.) ,

Maybe I better tell you how our club works, before things get underway. Kristy, Mary Anne, Dawn, Mal, Jessi, and I meet Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons from five-thirty until six. We have done a lot of advertising (mostly with fliers and in the newspaper), so people know that these are the times we meet. When they need baby-sitters they call us at those times. We provide the sitters — and get tons of jobs this way.

The club started back at the beginning of seventh grade when Kristy saw how hard it was for her mom to find a sitter for David Michael (who was six then) at a time when neither Kristy nor her older brothers, Sam and Charlie, could watch him. Mrs. Thomas (well, she was Mrs. Thomas then, but now she's Mrs. Watson Brewer) had to make call after call trying to find an available sitter. And Kristy thought to herself, Wouldn't it be great

if Mom could make one phone call and find, like, a whole nest of sitters? That was the beginning of the Baby-sitters Club. She asked Mary Anne, me, and Stacey (who was my new friend then), to join her, and we started advertising to let people know what we were going to-do, and when they could reach us. We began receiving calls at our first meeting. We were amazed!

Here's how we run the meetings: officially. As president, Kristy insists on that. She is always a take-charge person, and usually a no-nonsense person. At the beginning of every meeting, she puts a visor on her head, a pencil over one ear, and plunks herself down in my director's chair. (The meetings are held in my room because I have my own phone and my own phone number.) Then she asks Dawn to collect club dues if it's a Monday, and then she just, well, runs things. She makes us keep a club notebook in which each" of us is responsible for writing up every job we go on. Once a week, we're supposed to read the past week's entries so that we all know what's happened at the houses where our friends have sat. Plus, we often find good solutions to sitting problems in the notebook. I look at it this way: Kristy deserves to be the president. She's

good at being a boss (when she's not actually being bossy), she's a natural leader, and besides, the club was her idea.

I'm the vice-president mostly because of my phone. If we held our meetings in anyone else's room we'd have to tie up some adult's phone line three times a week — and get calls for people who aren't club members. Actually, there's a little more to my job than just owning a phone. A lot of times, baby-sitting calls come in while we're not having a meeting. Then I have to take down the information about who needs a sitter when, for how long, and for how many kids, and call my friends to see who's available to take the job.

As secretary, Mary Anne has the most complicated job of all. She's perfect for it, though, because she's organized, precise, and has terribly neat handwriting. What does she do? She keeps our record book up-to-date and in order, and schedules all of our jobs. This includes keeping track of the club members' personal schedules, too — dance lessons, art classes, dentist appointments (or in Mal's case, orthodontist appointments). The record book is the most important feature of our club. It's very official, so of course it was Kristy's idea. Apart from the appointment pages where Mary

Anne does our scheduling, it has pages where she records our clients' names and addresses, the number of children they have, and vital information, such as children who have food allergies, or special fears. Also in the record book is space for recording the money we earn, and for keeping track of our treasury. That's Dawn's job, though, so on to Dawn.

Our poor treasurer has the awful job of collecting dues from us club members every week. We hate parting with any of our money, but Dawn (being Dawn) just does her job and isn't bothered by our griping. The money in the treasury is used for several things. First of all, fun stuff — throwing slumber parties or pizza parties from time to time. Our club isn'tallwork. Secondly, to pay Charlie Thomas, Kristy's oldest brother, to drive her to and from meetings now that she lives across town. The third thing we spend the money on is toys for our Kid-Kits. Kid-Kits are boxes that we decorated ourselves (we each have one) and filled with our old games, toys, and books. We take the Kid-Kits with us sometimes when we baby-sit, and the kids love them — which makesuspopular baby-sitters! Anyway, most of the stuff in the kits, like books and games, never wears out or gets used up. But we do

have to replace crayons, activity books, soap bubbles, and things like that. The treasury money is supposed to cover those expenses.

Mallory and Jessi, our junior officers, don't have real duties the way the rest of us do, but they sure help take the pressure off of us. Our club is very successful. We get so many jobs, in fact, that when Stacey (who was our first treasurer — Dawn took over after she left) moved back to New York, we decided to replace her withtwonew club members. It's kind of a pain that Jessi and Mal are too young to sit at night, but at least when they cover more of the afternoon jobs, it frees the rest of us up for the evenings.

Okay, now I'll tell you about Logan Bruno (the love of Mary Anne's life) and Shannon Kilbourne, our two associate club members. They don't come to meetings, but they are good sitters whom we know we can call on if a job comes in thatnoneof us is free to take. That might sound unlikely, but it does happen. Just last week, someone needed a sitter on an afternoon when Mallory had an orthodontist appointment, I had an art class, Jessi had a dance rehearsal, and the rest of us were going to be baby-sitting. Whew! Shannon took that job, thank goodness.