Chapter One - Kristy
November 1. 3103 words.
You know that second chapter, that everyone skips, because it's expositiony?
Yeah. I wrote it.
I don't blame you for skipping, although there's much Pike child-age at the end.
Hey, be like you were in fourth grade. Skim the bitch.
Chapter One - Kristy
It was weird to walk back the way I used to, before we moved to Watson's house. But I had a baby-sitting job at the Pikes' with Mary Anne, so I was walking right back on the way to where I lived until last year, back to Bradford Court, where Mary Anne, Claudia and I all used to walk to school together from every day until seventh grade.
It seems like so much longer than a year since I moved away from my house next door to Mary Anne and across the street from Claud, and moved with my mom and my brothers into the mansion. And it seems like even earlier before I was allowed to baby-sit, and had to be baby-sat for. I bet when I was ten, I fought with everyone all the time too, over little things that aren’t even remotely important. I bet someday, the Pike triplets will look back on this and laugh...
I guess I should start from the beginning. I mean, the very beginning. As a businesswoman, Mom taught me the most important thing to do is hold out a hand, shake firmly, and introduce yourself confidently.
So, hi. My name is Kristin Amanda Thomas, but please, call me Kristy. I'm thirteen, and like I said, I'm an eighth-grader at Stoneybrook Middle School. Almost all of my best friends go there, too: Claudia Kishi, Mary Anne Spier, Stacey McGill, Abby Stevenson, Mallory Pike, Jessi Ramsey, and Logan Bruno. Shannon Kilbourne goes to Stoneybrook Day, and Dawn Schafer goes to school in California, but the rest of us are right here.
And they're not just my friends. They're also my business associates. We're all members of the Baby-Sitters Club.
The BSC, as we call it, was without question the greatest of my World-Famous Kristy Thomas Great Ideas. Three times a week, from 5:30 to 6:00, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, we meet in Claudia Kishi's bedroom. That's when people know to call us and set up appointments. The idea is simple: Call one number and reach seven experienced baby-sitters - nine if you count our associate members; ten if you include Dawn when she's home.
I'm the president of the BSC, because it was my idea. See, up until a year ago, I didn't live in a mansion, and I didn't have the giant family I have now. I lived in a nice little house with my mom and my three brothers (Sam and Charlie, who I already mentioned, and David Michael, my baby brother, who's only seven). My dad left us years ago, when David Michael was only a baby. And we did okay, just the five of us. But one day, Mom needed a baby-sitter, and it was almost impossible for her to find someone free. With everything else - a job, plus raising four kids, plustrying to be a human being - Mom was so stressed, and I thought of how great it would be for her to just call one number and reach a bunch of baby-sitters all at once.
And thus, the BSC was born.
Soon afterwards, Mom met and fell in love with this guy, Watson. I really didn't like him at first, but he's grown on me, especially since he and Mom got married (Wow!) and we moved to his house, which is literally a mansion (double wow!). So my three brothers and I gained a little brother and sister, Andrew (who's four) and Karen (who's seven, like David Michael, but she goes to a different school) who live with us every other month.
As if that weren't enough, Mom and Watson adopted an adorable little two-year-old girl from Vietnam, Emily Michelle. And of course we needed someone to take care of her, so my grandmother, Nannie, moved in with us. And we have a lot of pets: Shannon, a beautiful Bernese mountain puppy who we got after our beloved collie, Louie, died; Karen's little kitten, Pumpkin; Bob, Andrew's hermit crab; Emily Junior, Karen's pet rat; and a few goldfish. Of course, in a mansion, there's more than enough room; if we wanted, all of our pets could probably have their own rooms too.
Now that we have Nannie, Mom doesn't need the BSC as much. But we've kind of developed a life of our own in the time since we started the club.
Our first four members were Claudia, Mary Anne, Stacey, and me. I'd known Claud and Mary Anne for as long as I could remember, and I'd always spent lots of time with Mary Anne, but the BSC brought me closer to Claud.
Mary Anne and I were a lot alike, but Claud was older than us, somehow. Claud is cool. She's absolutely gorgeous, with long black hair and almond-shaped eyes. She wants to be an artist when she grows up - actually, she's an artist now - and that really shows in everything she does. Like her clothes, for instance. You're pretty likely to find me in jeans and a sweatshirt, plus my trusty collie baseball cap, and Mary Anne is totally preppy-casual, but Claud wears clothing that is really, really her. She wears these outfits that would look horrible on anyone else- like, say, me- and they look amazing on her.
Claud's always been an individual, which is good, because she's kind of the black sheep of her family. Her mom's a librarian, and her dad works in the nearby town of Stanford, and they think education is Very Important. Claud's older sister, Janine, is a certified Genius. Capital G. Her IQ is off the charts. She's fifteen, but she takes classes at the local community college. I can't even pronounce the titles of her textbooks. She, like their parents, is really conservative and kind of boring. Nice, but boring.
So it's really hard for Claud, who's brilliant in art, but horrible in school. She was temporarily sent back to seventh grade, because she was having too many problems keeping up in class, but she's doing better now.
Still, Claud has to hide some things, like her love of Nancy Drew mysteries (Claud's mom thinks they're Trash) and junk food (same). At least they don't mind her artwork. Claud's room is a mess, with all of her projects spread out across the floor, but that's good for her, because she can store her secrets there. And because we're hungry baby-sitters, that makes us happy.
Claud's the vice president of the BSC, because we use her room and her phone. Claudia doesn't just have her own phone; she has her own phone line. Like I said, Claudia is really cool.
Stacey is Claud's best friend, and if possible, she's even cooler than Claudia is. Stacey's from New York. She's beautiful, with long blonde hair and blue eyes, and she dresses in what Claud calls "New York Chic". Claudia designs her own clothes, but Stacey just finds things out there and makes them work for her.
Stacey's not just another dumb blonde, though. She's had more than her fair share of problems. First of all, Stacey's Type I Diabetic. That means that she has a problem with her insulin, and has to give herself injections every day. But that’s not enough; she can't eat too much sugar, and she can't eat too little sugar either. I can't even imagine skipping out on homemade brownies to eat an apple instead, but Stacey handles it like a pro.
Secondly, Stacey's parents are divorced. Her dad stayed in New York, but Stacey and her mom moved back to Stoneybrook. This was a hard time for Stace, but it's great for us, because we missed her, both as a friend and as an officer of the BSC.
Stacey's, like, a math genius, so she's our treasurer. She's in charge of collecting dues once a week, and she's really good at keeping track of our finances. So we love having her back.
When the club started, it was pretty much two sets of best friends: Stacey and Claud, and Mary Anne and me. Mary Anne and I have a lot of things in common. We both have brown hair and brown eyes, and we were definitely both late with developing, especially if you compare us to Claud or Stacey, who are Boy Crazy. Mary Anne has a steady boyfriend now (Logan, one of the BSC Associate members!), but he's pretty much the only guy she's ever even had a crush on. I'm just not really interested in guys, although I guess Bart Taylor is sort of my boyfriend. But not really.
Plus, we're both really organized. I'm very good at planning, but Mary Anne is super neat and careful, which is why she's such a great BSC secretary. She keeps track of everything - our record book, where we list everyone's schedules and assign jobs; our notebook, where we talk about our clients so that everyone knows what's going on; and anything else we might need. Mary Anne's pretty amazing.
Mary Anne and I are different in some ways, though. Mary Anne is really really shy and quiet, she likes knitting, and she hates sports. I, on the other hand, am loud (some might say obnoxious) and I love gym class. Some people are kind of surprised that we're best friends. I guess that old saying Watson likes so much is true - opposites attract.
There's one other thing that we have in common, though: we spent most of our childhood living with one parent. Mary Anne's story is much sadder than mine, though. Her mom died when Mary Anne was only a baby, leaving her with just Richard, her dad, who was always super strict.
He got better, though. That's because Dawn, our former alternate officer, moved to Stoneybrook when her parents got divorced, and Mary Anne and Dawn figured out that their parents used to be high school sweethearts! Long story very short, Dawn's mom, Sharon, and Mary Anne's dad got married, and now they're stepsisters!
Dawn had her own share of problems, though. First her little brother, Jeff, hated Connecticut, so he went back to California with her dad. Then Dawn decided that she missed her dad and brother too much, so now she's back in California, and Mary Anne lives alone with her kitten, her dad, and Dawn's mom in this old farmhouse on Burnt Hill Road.
When Dawn left, we eventually replaced her with Abby Stevenson, the newest member of the BSC. Abby's had a pretty hard life too. Her dad died when Abby and Anna were nine, and finally her mom decided that moving to Stoneybrook was the best option - to get away from the memories, to forget, kind of. Like me, she loves sports, although Abby's preference is more soccer than softball.
Abby has a ton of allergies, and she has asthma, so she's almost constantly stuffed up. As she likes to say, "Life makes me sneeze." But she's really good-natured about it. Abby has the best sense of humor. She's always making silly little puns that make everyone else groan.
Jessi and Mal are the last two BSC members. They're also best friends. It's no wonder that they are; they have a lot in common. They both love horses and reading, and they both wish they were thirteen, because they want more freedom. They’re both really talented at what they do - Jessi is a ballerina, and Mal is a writer. They're both the oldest in their families, and have plenty of experience baby-sitting through that.
That's where the similarities end, though. Jessi is the oldest of three (she has a little sister, Becca, who's eight, and a baby brother, John Ramsey Junior, or Squirt for short). Mal, on the other hand, is the oldest of eight: Claire is five, Margo is seven, Nicky is eight, Vanessa is nine, and Adam, Byron, and Jordan are ten. (They're identical triplets, but if you know them at all, it's not hard to tell them apart.) We always need two sitters at the Pikes', which is why Mary Anne and I were both going.
And like I said, it doesn't matter to us, but they look nothing alike. That's because Jessi is black and Mal is white. Jessi has this gorgeous, cocoa-colored skin and deep black hair, and the long muscular limbs of a dancer. Mal, like all of her siblings, is pale and freckled. She also has glasses (like Nicky and Vanessa, but not of the rest of them) and curly reddish hair (she's the only one in her family) and braces, all of which she hates.
Mal and Jessi are junior members, because they're only in sixth grade, so they can't baby-sit at night, unless it's for their own siblings. But they baby-sit a lot on afternoons and weekends, and free the rest of us up for nighttime jobs, which is wonderful.
Then we have our associate members, Shannon and Logan. They take care of jobs when the seven of us are busy. Shannon Kilbourne lives near Abby and me, in what I guess is the “rich” section of Stoneybrook, in another mansion right near mine. She has two sisters, Tiffany and Maria (Maria, who's eight, is friends with my sister Karen), and a Bernese mountain dog of her own, Astrid. Astrid is our Shannon's mom, and yes, David Michael's puppy is named after my friend.
Logan Bruno is the only boy in the BSC, and he's Mary Anne's boyfriend. Mary Anne and Logan are in luv. I bet someday they'll get married or something. Logan's really cool. Kids love him, and he loves kids, which is great for the club. Plus, he loves baseball and football and all sorts of sports, and we spend a lot of time talking about sports while Mary Anne kind of looks on blankly.
But when we talk about kids, Mary Anne knows exactly what's going on. And as we walked together to the Pikes' house for our sitting job (Mal would have been the other sitter, but she was already scheduled for a job at the Newtons'), she was really animated.
We were both kind of apprehensive, though. Mal complains a lot about her siblings, but I'd never seen her really excited to not have to go home. At least, not until now.
"Mal says that Byron's not getting along with Adam and Jordan anymore," Mary Anne said. "And I guess it's pretty bad, if Mal doesn't want to..." She turned. "Kristy? You alive in there?"
"What?" I frowned. "I'm sorry. I'm kind of spacing out lately. Nothing big." But leave it to Mary Anne to notice that I was a little preoccupied.
"It's okay. Are you okay?"
"Sure. What were you saying about the triplets?"
"Apparently we practically need to keep Adam and Jordan separated from Byron, because they're constantly fighting."
"How about Nicky?"
Mary Anne shrugged. "Hopefully he'll want to play with Vanessa for once."
"Optimist."
She laughed. "Smile, Kristy. It's almost the weekend."
"And we have seven angry Pikes," I pointed out.
"Yeah, but on Monday we start a new Short Takes class," she said. "Aren't you at least a little excited?"
I grinned. "I am. I really am. I guess I'm just a little tired too."
"Well, look alive," she suggested.
"Hmm?"
She gestured towards the Pike yard. Most of the kids were standing outside. Margo was jumping rope, Claire was playing jacks, and the triplets fighting. "Crowd control?" I suggested.
"Can you handle the triplets?"
"Sure."
"Kristy!"
"Uh oh," Mary Anne murmured to me as Claire threw herself at us. Raising her voice, she added, "Hey, Claire. Hey, Margo. Hey, guys."
The triplets didn't even look up.
I looked down at the small figure who had pounced on me. "Hey, Claire. How are you?"
"I learned how to spell!" she told me happily. "Bat is B-A-T. Cat is C-A-T. Rat is R-A-T."
"She learned a song," Margo said contemptuously. "About how she can't spell hippopotamus. I can spell hippopotamus. Want to hear?"
I glanced at Mary Anne. "I-"
"H-I-P-P-O-"
"So what?" Claire demanded. "I could spell hippopotamus if I really wanted to."
"Could not."
"Could too."
"Could not."
"Could too."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Time out." Mary Anne formed her arms into a T. "What ever happened to Hello, Mary Anne and Kristy, it's so nice to see you again?"
"And asking us how our days at school were," I added.
"Plus, we need to see your mom," Mary Anne pointed out.
"And see why your brothers are fighting," I finished.
Claire pouted. "No fair," she muttered, and Mary Anne and I exchanged a grin over her head. I have a softball team for children too young or too unskilled to go for Little League, and Claire’s one of the kids on the team. Whenever she doesn’t like something that happens, she starts screaming that it isn’t fair, and after a while, the words start blending and it sounds like she’s screaming ‘Nofe Air!’
"Tell you what, Claire," I said. "Why don't you and Margo take Mary Anne in to find your mom, and maybe your sister and brother, and I'll see why these three are about to kill each other."
"They're just angry because Byron doesn't want to play football with them," Margo said, rolling her eyes. "And Byron's angry 'cause he doesn't want to play football."
"Shut up, Margo," Jordan yelled.
"Don't tell your sister to shut up," I said automatically.
"We're not about to kill each other," Adam called to me. "We're just talking. You don't need to do anything."
"Well, we're the baby-sitters," Mary Anne said. "So we kind of do."
"You're not our baby-sitters," Adam said. "You're just here for the little kids."
"I'm not a little kid!" Margo said grumpily.
"Mom said they're here for you too," Claire said. "Remember? She said-"
Jordan rolled his eyes. "Shut up, Claire."
"Don't tell me to shut up! Kristy said!"
"No, Kristy told us not to tell Margo to shut up. She never said anything about you."
"No telling anyone to shut up," I said before anyone could say anything else.
"Not even babies who won't play football because they're scared they'll get dirty?" Adam asked, glancing meaningfully at Byron.
"Not even brats who can't do anything without forcing their brothers to participate?" Byron was glaring right back.
Mary Anne turned to me and I shrugged uneasily. I was getting a better idea of what life must be like at the Pikes' house lately. But I didn't have any idea about what to do about it.
You know that second chapter, that everyone skips, because it's expositiony?
Yeah. I wrote it.
I don't blame you for skipping, although there's much Pike child-age at the end.
Hey, be like you were in fourth grade. Skim the bitch.
Chapter One - Kristy
It was weird to walk back the way I used to, before we moved to Watson's house. But I had a baby-sitting job at the Pikes' with Mary Anne, so I was walking right back on the way to where I lived until last year, back to Bradford Court, where Mary Anne, Claudia and I all used to walk to school together from every day until seventh grade.
It seems like so much longer than a year since I moved away from my house next door to Mary Anne and across the street from Claud, and moved with my mom and my brothers into the mansion. And it seems like even earlier before I was allowed to baby-sit, and had to be baby-sat for. I bet when I was ten, I fought with everyone all the time too, over little things that aren’t even remotely important. I bet someday, the Pike triplets will look back on this and laugh...
I guess I should start from the beginning. I mean, the very beginning. As a businesswoman, Mom taught me the most important thing to do is hold out a hand, shake firmly, and introduce yourself confidently.
So, hi. My name is Kristin Amanda Thomas, but please, call me Kristy. I'm thirteen, and like I said, I'm an eighth-grader at Stoneybrook Middle School. Almost all of my best friends go there, too: Claudia Kishi, Mary Anne Spier, Stacey McGill, Abby Stevenson, Mallory Pike, Jessi Ramsey, and Logan Bruno. Shannon Kilbourne goes to Stoneybrook Day, and Dawn Schafer goes to school in California, but the rest of us are right here.
And they're not just my friends. They're also my business associates. We're all members of the Baby-Sitters Club.
The BSC, as we call it, was without question the greatest of my World-Famous Kristy Thomas Great Ideas. Three times a week, from 5:30 to 6:00, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, we meet in Claudia Kishi's bedroom. That's when people know to call us and set up appointments. The idea is simple: Call one number and reach seven experienced baby-sitters - nine if you count our associate members; ten if you include Dawn when she's home.
I'm the president of the BSC, because it was my idea. See, up until a year ago, I didn't live in a mansion, and I didn't have the giant family I have now. I lived in a nice little house with my mom and my three brothers (Sam and Charlie, who I already mentioned, and David Michael, my baby brother, who's only seven). My dad left us years ago, when David Michael was only a baby. And we did okay, just the five of us. But one day, Mom needed a baby-sitter, and it was almost impossible for her to find someone free. With everything else - a job, plus raising four kids, plustrying to be a human being - Mom was so stressed, and I thought of how great it would be for her to just call one number and reach a bunch of baby-sitters all at once.
And thus, the BSC was born.
Soon afterwards, Mom met and fell in love with this guy, Watson. I really didn't like him at first, but he's grown on me, especially since he and Mom got married (Wow!) and we moved to his house, which is literally a mansion (double wow!). So my three brothers and I gained a little brother and sister, Andrew (who's four) and Karen (who's seven, like David Michael, but she goes to a different school) who live with us every other month.
As if that weren't enough, Mom and Watson adopted an adorable little two-year-old girl from Vietnam, Emily Michelle. And of course we needed someone to take care of her, so my grandmother, Nannie, moved in with us. And we have a lot of pets: Shannon, a beautiful Bernese mountain puppy who we got after our beloved collie, Louie, died; Karen's little kitten, Pumpkin; Bob, Andrew's hermit crab; Emily Junior, Karen's pet rat; and a few goldfish. Of course, in a mansion, there's more than enough room; if we wanted, all of our pets could probably have their own rooms too.
Now that we have Nannie, Mom doesn't need the BSC as much. But we've kind of developed a life of our own in the time since we started the club.
Our first four members were Claudia, Mary Anne, Stacey, and me. I'd known Claud and Mary Anne for as long as I could remember, and I'd always spent lots of time with Mary Anne, but the BSC brought me closer to Claud.
Mary Anne and I were a lot alike, but Claud was older than us, somehow. Claud is cool. She's absolutely gorgeous, with long black hair and almond-shaped eyes. She wants to be an artist when she grows up - actually, she's an artist now - and that really shows in everything she does. Like her clothes, for instance. You're pretty likely to find me in jeans and a sweatshirt, plus my trusty collie baseball cap, and Mary Anne is totally preppy-casual, but Claud wears clothing that is really, really her. She wears these outfits that would look horrible on anyone else- like, say, me- and they look amazing on her.
Claud's always been an individual, which is good, because she's kind of the black sheep of her family. Her mom's a librarian, and her dad works in the nearby town of Stanford, and they think education is Very Important. Claud's older sister, Janine, is a certified Genius. Capital G. Her IQ is off the charts. She's fifteen, but she takes classes at the local community college. I can't even pronounce the titles of her textbooks. She, like their parents, is really conservative and kind of boring. Nice, but boring.
So it's really hard for Claud, who's brilliant in art, but horrible in school. She was temporarily sent back to seventh grade, because she was having too many problems keeping up in class, but she's doing better now.
Still, Claud has to hide some things, like her love of Nancy Drew mysteries (Claud's mom thinks they're Trash) and junk food (same). At least they don't mind her artwork. Claud's room is a mess, with all of her projects spread out across the floor, but that's good for her, because she can store her secrets there. And because we're hungry baby-sitters, that makes us happy.
Claud's the vice president of the BSC, because we use her room and her phone. Claudia doesn't just have her own phone; she has her own phone line. Like I said, Claudia is really cool.
Stacey is Claud's best friend, and if possible, she's even cooler than Claudia is. Stacey's from New York. She's beautiful, with long blonde hair and blue eyes, and she dresses in what Claud calls "New York Chic". Claudia designs her own clothes, but Stacey just finds things out there and makes them work for her.
Stacey's not just another dumb blonde, though. She's had more than her fair share of problems. First of all, Stacey's Type I Diabetic. That means that she has a problem with her insulin, and has to give herself injections every day. But that’s not enough; she can't eat too much sugar, and she can't eat too little sugar either. I can't even imagine skipping out on homemade brownies to eat an apple instead, but Stacey handles it like a pro.
Secondly, Stacey's parents are divorced. Her dad stayed in New York, but Stacey and her mom moved back to Stoneybrook. This was a hard time for Stace, but it's great for us, because we missed her, both as a friend and as an officer of the BSC.
Stacey's, like, a math genius, so she's our treasurer. She's in charge of collecting dues once a week, and she's really good at keeping track of our finances. So we love having her back.
When the club started, it was pretty much two sets of best friends: Stacey and Claud, and Mary Anne and me. Mary Anne and I have a lot of things in common. We both have brown hair and brown eyes, and we were definitely both late with developing, especially if you compare us to Claud or Stacey, who are Boy Crazy. Mary Anne has a steady boyfriend now (Logan, one of the BSC Associate members!), but he's pretty much the only guy she's ever even had a crush on. I'm just not really interested in guys, although I guess Bart Taylor is sort of my boyfriend. But not really.
Plus, we're both really organized. I'm very good at planning, but Mary Anne is super neat and careful, which is why she's such a great BSC secretary. She keeps track of everything - our record book, where we list everyone's schedules and assign jobs; our notebook, where we talk about our clients so that everyone knows what's going on; and anything else we might need. Mary Anne's pretty amazing.
Mary Anne and I are different in some ways, though. Mary Anne is really really shy and quiet, she likes knitting, and she hates sports. I, on the other hand, am loud (some might say obnoxious) and I love gym class. Some people are kind of surprised that we're best friends. I guess that old saying Watson likes so much is true - opposites attract.
There's one other thing that we have in common, though: we spent most of our childhood living with one parent. Mary Anne's story is much sadder than mine, though. Her mom died when Mary Anne was only a baby, leaving her with just Richard, her dad, who was always super strict.
He got better, though. That's because Dawn, our former alternate officer, moved to Stoneybrook when her parents got divorced, and Mary Anne and Dawn figured out that their parents used to be high school sweethearts! Long story very short, Dawn's mom, Sharon, and Mary Anne's dad got married, and now they're stepsisters!
Dawn had her own share of problems, though. First her little brother, Jeff, hated Connecticut, so he went back to California with her dad. Then Dawn decided that she missed her dad and brother too much, so now she's back in California, and Mary Anne lives alone with her kitten, her dad, and Dawn's mom in this old farmhouse on Burnt Hill Road.
When Dawn left, we eventually replaced her with Abby Stevenson, the newest member of the BSC. Abby's had a pretty hard life too. Her dad died when Abby and Anna were nine, and finally her mom decided that moving to Stoneybrook was the best option - to get away from the memories, to forget, kind of. Like me, she loves sports, although Abby's preference is more soccer than softball.
Abby has a ton of allergies, and she has asthma, so she's almost constantly stuffed up. As she likes to say, "Life makes me sneeze." But she's really good-natured about it. Abby has the best sense of humor. She's always making silly little puns that make everyone else groan.
Jessi and Mal are the last two BSC members. They're also best friends. It's no wonder that they are; they have a lot in common. They both love horses and reading, and they both wish they were thirteen, because they want more freedom. They’re both really talented at what they do - Jessi is a ballerina, and Mal is a writer. They're both the oldest in their families, and have plenty of experience baby-sitting through that.
That's where the similarities end, though. Jessi is the oldest of three (she has a little sister, Becca, who's eight, and a baby brother, John Ramsey Junior, or Squirt for short). Mal, on the other hand, is the oldest of eight: Claire is five, Margo is seven, Nicky is eight, Vanessa is nine, and Adam, Byron, and Jordan are ten. (They're identical triplets, but if you know them at all, it's not hard to tell them apart.) We always need two sitters at the Pikes', which is why Mary Anne and I were both going.
And like I said, it doesn't matter to us, but they look nothing alike. That's because Jessi is black and Mal is white. Jessi has this gorgeous, cocoa-colored skin and deep black hair, and the long muscular limbs of a dancer. Mal, like all of her siblings, is pale and freckled. She also has glasses (like Nicky and Vanessa, but not of the rest of them) and curly reddish hair (she's the only one in her family) and braces, all of which she hates.
Mal and Jessi are junior members, because they're only in sixth grade, so they can't baby-sit at night, unless it's for their own siblings. But they baby-sit a lot on afternoons and weekends, and free the rest of us up for nighttime jobs, which is wonderful.
Then we have our associate members, Shannon and Logan. They take care of jobs when the seven of us are busy. Shannon Kilbourne lives near Abby and me, in what I guess is the “rich” section of Stoneybrook, in another mansion right near mine. She has two sisters, Tiffany and Maria (Maria, who's eight, is friends with my sister Karen), and a Bernese mountain dog of her own, Astrid. Astrid is our Shannon's mom, and yes, David Michael's puppy is named after my friend.
Logan Bruno is the only boy in the BSC, and he's Mary Anne's boyfriend. Mary Anne and Logan are in luv. I bet someday they'll get married or something. Logan's really cool. Kids love him, and he loves kids, which is great for the club. Plus, he loves baseball and football and all sorts of sports, and we spend a lot of time talking about sports while Mary Anne kind of looks on blankly.
But when we talk about kids, Mary Anne knows exactly what's going on. And as we walked together to the Pikes' house for our sitting job (Mal would have been the other sitter, but she was already scheduled for a job at the Newtons'), she was really animated.
We were both kind of apprehensive, though. Mal complains a lot about her siblings, but I'd never seen her really excited to not have to go home. At least, not until now.
"Mal says that Byron's not getting along with Adam and Jordan anymore," Mary Anne said. "And I guess it's pretty bad, if Mal doesn't want to..." She turned. "Kristy? You alive in there?"
"What?" I frowned. "I'm sorry. I'm kind of spacing out lately. Nothing big." But leave it to Mary Anne to notice that I was a little preoccupied.
"It's okay. Are you okay?"
"Sure. What were you saying about the triplets?"
"Apparently we practically need to keep Adam and Jordan separated from Byron, because they're constantly fighting."
"How about Nicky?"
Mary Anne shrugged. "Hopefully he'll want to play with Vanessa for once."
"Optimist."
She laughed. "Smile, Kristy. It's almost the weekend."
"And we have seven angry Pikes," I pointed out.
"Yeah, but on Monday we start a new Short Takes class," she said. "Aren't you at least a little excited?"
I grinned. "I am. I really am. I guess I'm just a little tired too."
"Well, look alive," she suggested.
"Hmm?"
She gestured towards the Pike yard. Most of the kids were standing outside. Margo was jumping rope, Claire was playing jacks, and the triplets fighting. "Crowd control?" I suggested.
"Can you handle the triplets?"
"Sure."
"Kristy!"
"Uh oh," Mary Anne murmured to me as Claire threw herself at us. Raising her voice, she added, "Hey, Claire. Hey, Margo. Hey, guys."
The triplets didn't even look up.
I looked down at the small figure who had pounced on me. "Hey, Claire. How are you?"
"I learned how to spell!" she told me happily. "Bat is B-A-T. Cat is C-A-T. Rat is R-A-T."
"She learned a song," Margo said contemptuously. "About how she can't spell hippopotamus. I can spell hippopotamus. Want to hear?"
I glanced at Mary Anne. "I-"
"H-I-P-P-O-"
"So what?" Claire demanded. "I could spell hippopotamus if I really wanted to."
"Could not."
"Could too."
"Could not."
"Could too."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Time out." Mary Anne formed her arms into a T. "What ever happened to Hello, Mary Anne and Kristy, it's so nice to see you again?"
"And asking us how our days at school were," I added.
"Plus, we need to see your mom," Mary Anne pointed out.
"And see why your brothers are fighting," I finished.
Claire pouted. "No fair," she muttered, and Mary Anne and I exchanged a grin over her head. I have a softball team for children too young or too unskilled to go for Little League, and Claire’s one of the kids on the team. Whenever she doesn’t like something that happens, she starts screaming that it isn’t fair, and after a while, the words start blending and it sounds like she’s screaming ‘Nofe Air!’
"Tell you what, Claire," I said. "Why don't you and Margo take Mary Anne in to find your mom, and maybe your sister and brother, and I'll see why these three are about to kill each other."
"They're just angry because Byron doesn't want to play football with them," Margo said, rolling her eyes. "And Byron's angry 'cause he doesn't want to play football."
"Shut up, Margo," Jordan yelled.
"Don't tell your sister to shut up," I said automatically.
"We're not about to kill each other," Adam called to me. "We're just talking. You don't need to do anything."
"Well, we're the baby-sitters," Mary Anne said. "So we kind of do."
"You're not our baby-sitters," Adam said. "You're just here for the little kids."
"I'm not a little kid!" Margo said grumpily.
"Mom said they're here for you too," Claire said. "Remember? She said-"
Jordan rolled his eyes. "Shut up, Claire."
"Don't tell me to shut up! Kristy said!"
"No, Kristy told us not to tell Margo to shut up. She never said anything about you."
"No telling anyone to shut up," I said before anyone could say anything else.
"Not even babies who won't play football because they're scared they'll get dirty?" Adam asked, glancing meaningfully at Byron.
"Not even brats who can't do anything without forcing their brothers to participate?" Byron was glaring right back.
Mary Anne turned to me and I shrugged uneasily. I was getting a better idea of what life must be like at the Pikes' house lately. But I didn't have any idea about what to do about it.