Ann Martin - Baby-Sitters Club 041

One last difference between Jessi and Mal - Jessi is black (with long, long dancer's legs, and beautiful eyes), and Mal is white (and not feeling too pretty these days. She wears glasses and braces, and has unruly red hair).

Here are the ways in which Mal and Jessi are similar.

They both like to read, especially horse stories by Marguerite Henry. And they're each the oldest kid in their family but feel that their parents treat them like babies. For instance, the Pikes absolutely will not allow Mallory to wear contacts instead of glasses. However, in a recent parent-daughter breakthrough, Mal and Jessi convinced their parents to allow them to have their ears pierced. So that was something. Maybe contacts for Mallory will come next.

I feel awfully grateful to have so many good friends. If there were such a thing, I think the BSC members would be the Seven Musketeers. Oh, sure, we've had our arguments and fights, but we're usually there for each other, through thick and thin. And we're pretty understanding of each other.

Chapter 3.

"What is that?" I asked, looking horrified.

Claudia looked pretty horrified herself.

The two of us were in her room, along with Dawn and Mallory, waiting for a meeting of the BSC to begin, and I had just pointed to something. It was a large, sticky-looking brown stain on Claudia's bedspread, and it was only partially covered by the quilt folded at the end of the bed.

"Oh, lord," said Claudia, examining it. Then she leaned over and smelled it.

"Gross!" exclaimed Mal. "How can you do that?" But Claudia looked relieved. "It's only chocolate," she said. "I hid a candy bar under the quilt. I guess it got a little warm in there." "What are your parents going to say when they see it?" asked Dawn.

Claudia shrugged. She pulled the quilt over the stain to hide it. "I'll worry about that some other time." Claudia flopped onto her bed and leaned against the wall. She was looking especially acute that day. (Acute means cool. My friends and I make up words all the time, and only we know what they mean. Distant and dibble also mean cool.) Claud was wearing an oversized raspberry-colored shirt, a short black skirt, and black leggings (the layered look)." On her feet were black cowboy boots, and dangling from an earcuff was a huge collection of beads and stones. (Claud does have pierced ears, but the holes were empty.) I settled myself in my usual spot on Claud's bed (beside Claud), but only after she had covered up the chocolate stain. Compared to Claudia, I looked like a complete nerd, even though I was wearing one of my better outfits: blue print pants that were wide on top but narrowed to cuffs at the ankles, and a short-cropped T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and this acute picture of a cactus wearing a cowboy boot.

Kristy came thundering up the stairs and into Claud's room then. (There's no mistaking when Kristy is on her way to club headquarters.) "Where is everybody?" she asked immediately. "It's already five twenty-five." "They'll get here," replied Claud calmly.

And Claud was right. By 5:29, we were all in our places. Dawn and Claudia and I were sitting in a row on Claud's bed; Jessi and Mal were cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the bed; Stacey was straddling Claud's desk chair backward; and Kristy - our president - was sitting in a director's chair, wearing a visor, a pencil stuck over one ear.

She looked almost regal, even though she was just wearing blue jeans, a turtleneck shirt, and her running shoes.

As soon as the numbers on Claud's digital alarm clock changed from 5:29 to 5:30, Kristy said loudly, "Okay. Come to order!" Kristy, being the president, gets to lead the meetings. Anyway, the original idea for the Baby-sitters Club was hers. See, a year or so ago, when Kristy still lived across the street from Claud, and before Mrs. Thomas had married Watson Brewer, Kristy and her older brothers took turns baby-sitting for David Michael after school. They didn't mind that arrangement, but of course a day came when all three of them knew they were going to be busy after school, so they wouldn't be able to take care of their little brother. That night, Kristy sat around eating pizza for dinner and watching as her mother made call after call, trying to find someone who could take care of David Michael the next afternoon. And that was how Kristy got her big idea to form a baby-sitting club. If a parent could make one call and reach several sitters at once, it would save time for the parent and also pretty much guarantee him or her a sitter. Someone was bound to be free.

Kristy told her idea to Claudia and me, and we thought it was great. We also thought a fourth member might be a good idea. Three people didn't seem like quite enough. So Claud mentioned that she was getting to be friends with Stacey McGill, a new girl at school. When we found out that Stacey had done a lot of baby-sitting in New York, we invited her to join the club.

Now we had a sitting business - but no one knew about it. We decided to advertise. We told everyone we could think of about the club. We passed out fliers. We even put an ad in the paper. Our ad and the fliers told parents that they could reach us Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons from five-thirty until six at Claudia's house.

Well, at our first meeting, everything went well. We got job calls right away. And the business just kept growing. By the middle of seventh grade we had too much business and realized we needed a fifth member. Dawn had just moved here from California then, and she and I were already friends. So Dawn joined the club. Then Stacey had to leave, so we replaced her with both Jessi and Mal. And then Stacey returned. Of course, we let her back in the club. Now the club has seven main members (there are two other members who don't come to meetings, but I'll tell you about them later), and we think seven is plenty. Claudia's room is getting crowded! Everyone in the BSC has a title. For instance, as I mentioned before, Kristy is the president. This is not only because she thought up the business in the first place, but because she gets good ideas and really knows how to run a club (even if she does get bossy sometimes). Kristy makes us keep a club notebook. In the notebook, each of us writes up every single job she goes on. Then, once a week, we're responsible for reading the notebook to see what happened while our friends were sitting. None of us really likes writing up jobs (except maybe Mallory), but we have to admit that finding out how the other sitters solved problems, and what's going on with the kids we sit for, is pretty helpful.

Kristy also decided that we should have a record book in which we keep lists of our clients, their names, addresses, phone numbers, the rates they pay, etc. Plus, we record any money we earn, and on the appointment pages we keep track of when our sitting jobs are.

Another one of Kristy's great ideas was for each of us to make a Kid-Kit. A Kid-Kit is an ordinary cardboard carton that you decorate to look cheerful and pretty and fill with things kids will like, such as our old games, toys, and books, as well as new things that have to be replaced from time to time, like art materials, coloring books, and sticker books. Then we can bring the Kid-Kits on sitting jobs if we want to. (They're especially handy on rainy days.) Kids love them, so their parents are happy, which means our clients will call the BSC again, which means more sitting jobs for us! The vice-president of the club is Claudia. Since she has her own phone and personal phone number, we use Claudia's bedroom for our headquarters. And since we therefore descend on her three times a week, tie up her phone, and eat her junk food, we felt it was only fair that Claud be our vice-president.

I am the club secretary, and I'm responsible for keeping the record book up-to-date and in order. I'm also responsible for scheduling every single sitting job. There are a lot of details involved here, but I'm good at details. Besides, Kristy thinks I have the neatest handwriting of any of us.