Ann Martin - Baby-Sitters Club 032

Guess what one of Dawn's favorite activities is - reading ghost stories. And guess where she lives - in a centuries-old farmhouse with an actual secret passage in it. This is the truth, although if s hard to believe. The passage may even be haunted, but we're not sure.

Okay, on to Claudia. Claudia Kishi, the vice-president of the BSC, is as gorgeous as Dawn, even though the two of them don't look a thing alike. Claud is Japanese-American. Both of her parents are Japanese, but Claud was born here in Stoneybrook. She has very long, silky, jet-black hair; dark, almond-shaped eyes; and a creamy complexion. Like Dawn, she's got pierced ears, too, only she has one hole in one ear and two in the other. (By the way, Mary Anne and I do not have pierced ears and intend to keep them like that - intact.) Anyway, aside from being beautiful, Claudia is also an incredibly cool dresser and an incredibly talented artist. You should see her clothes. She's always wearing short flared skirts, or leggings, or ankle socks and flat shoes, whatever is the most cool fashion at the moment. I don't know how she knows what's cool. Maybe she reads magazines or something. Claudia is also especially good at accessorizing. Again, she just knows how to do it. And she spends a lot of her baby-sitting money on the accessories - belts, jewelry, and tons of stuff for her hair - ribbons, bows, funky dips, beads. She wears her hair a million different ways. I've never seen anyone who can come up with so many styles.

Claudia makes some of her own jewelry - ceramic earrings and pins, papier-mâché bracelets, that sort of thing. Claud can draw, paint, sculpt, make pottery, you name it. I'm glad she's good at art because she's terrible in school, although she's smart. For some reason, school is just hard for Claud, and she doesn't like it. She gets only average grades and she's the world's worst speller. Unfortunately, her sister, Janine, is a genius. She's so smart that even though she's a high-school student she gets to take courses at the local community college. For pleasure, Janine reads stuff like Atomic Theory or The History of Law-making in America. Claud reads Nancy Drew books, but her parents don't approve of them, so she has to hide them in her room.

Books aren't the only thing she hides. Claudia is also a junk-food addict, something else her parents disapprove of. So there are bags of chips and candy, and packages of Twinkies and Oreos hidden in her room, too. Opening a drawer in Claud's room, or going after some- thing that's rolled under her bed, can be a surprising experience.

Claudia's best friend is Stacey McGill, and the two of them are alike in a lot of ways. Stacey is also very sophisticated, quite pretty, and extremely cool. She's as funky a dresser as Claud - short, tight pants, push-down socks, the whole bit. Every now and then she gets her hair permed, and, of course, she's got pierced ears.

Claudia and Stacey are boy-crazy.

However, Stacey's home life is different from Claud's. And if you think my family, or Mary Anne and Dawn's family, is interesting, you should hear about Stacey's. Stacey, whose full name is Anastasia Elizabeth McGill, was born and raised in New York City. No wonder she's so sophisticated. Then, just before she began seventh grade, the company her father works for transferred him to their office in Stamford, Connecticut, so the McGill's found a house in Stoneybrook and moved here. They'd only been here a year when the company moved Mr. McGill back to New York. None of us could believe it, but the McGills had to go. Then, they'd been in NYC again for less than a year when Stacey's parents got separated and then divorced. Mr. McGill stayed in NYC with his job, but Mrs. McGill wanted to come back to Connecticut. Poor Stacey had to choose where to live. She decided on Stoneybrook and us and the BSC, thank goodness, but she visits her dad in New York a lot.

Another thing about Stacey is that she has diabetes. That's a disease in which her pancreas doesn't make enough of something called insulin, so her blood sugar level gets out of control. Stacey has to give herself injections (ew, ew, ew) of insulin every day, and also stay on a strict no-sugar diet. Otherwise, she could get really sick. She could even go into a coma. It must be hard for her to have to turn down Claud's junk food all the time.

Guess what. When Stacey and her mom moved back to Connecticut, they couldn't move into their old house. That was because Jessi had moved into it! Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike are the two younger members of the BSC. They're best friends, eleven years old, and in sixth grade at Stoneybrook Middle School. The rest of us are in eighth grade.

Like Stacey and Claudia, Jessi and Mal are alike in many ways and different in many ways. They're each the oldest kid in their families, and they think their parents treat them like babies. I guess it is hard being eleven. I remember wanting so badly to be more grown-up when I was their age, but Mom didn't start really letting me grow up until I was twelve. Anyway, Jessi and Mal have campaigned hard to be allowed to do more things, and their parents did let them get their ears pierced (just one hole in each ear). However, Mal then had to have braces put on her teeth, and she wears glasses and isn't allowed to get contacts, so she's not feeling particularly pretty these days, even with her pierced ears.

Jessi and Mal both love to read, especially horse stories by Marguerite Henry. Beyond that, they're quite different. Jessi's passion is ballet, and boy, is she good. She takes special classes at a dance school in Stamford, where she had to audition just to get in, and she has danced lead roles in productions before hundreds of people. Mal's passions are writing and drawing, and she thinks she'd like to be an author and illustrator of children's books when she grows up. Jessi comes from an average-sized family - her parents, an eight-year-old sister named Becca, and a baby brother nicknamed Squirt - while Mal comes from a huge family. Her parents have eight children! Mal has four brothers (three of them are identical triplets) and three sisters. An- other difference is that Jessi is black and Mal is white. This doesn't matter to them, or to any of us in the BSC, but Jessi's skin color bothered a lot of people in Stoneybrook, I'm ashamed to say. The Ramseys' neighbors gave them a really hard time at first, although they've calmed down now. They've found that there's not a thing to dislike about the Ramseys.

Oh, I forgot one other similarity between Jessi and Mal. Each of their families has a pet hamster! Okay. So now you know the members of the Baby-sitters Club. A meeting was about to begin. I put on my visor, sat down in Claud's director's chair, stuck a pencil over my ear, and called the meeting to order.

Chapter 3.

As president of the BSC, I feel it is my duty to run our meetings professionally and in a businesslike manner. We have done that since the club first started. How did the BSC begin? Well, it began because of David Michael, really. See, back at the start of seventh grade, when Mom and Watson weren't even talking about getting married, my mother and brothers and I still lived on Bradford Court, next door to Mary Anne and across from Claudia. In those days, Sam and Charlie and I were responsible for taking care of David Michael after school until Mom came home from work. We took turns. But, of course, an evening came when we realized that none of us was free to baby-sit for him the next day, so Mom had to find another sitter on short notice. It wasn't easy. I remember we were eating pizza for dinner that night, and I sat there with my slice, watching Mom make call after call. Nobody was available - and Mom was wasting a lot of time on the phone.

That was when I got my greatest idea ever. Wouldn't it be neat if Mom could make just one call and reach a whole lot of sitters at once? As soon as I could, I told Mary Anne and Claudia that I'd thought of a business we could start. We could form a baby-sitting club and meet several times a week. Then people could call us during those times and reach three responsible, reliable sitters. (We were already baby-sitting a lot in our neighborhood.) With several people at the other end of the phone, the caller was bound to find an available sitter.