Dear Mom, dad, Mimi and Janine —

Hi! How are you. I’m fine. New york is so so cool. The peopel are so so cool too everyone is dressed like magazin modles. We whent to a restarant called the hard rock caffe and we whent to Blomingdals. I bought a pair of baggy sox and Mary Ann allmost got arested but don’t tell her father. We also met the kids we’ll be siting for tomorrow. Tonight Stacey is having a party for us at her apratment.

Love ya.
Claudia

The one other thing my friends and I had to do before we got ready for the party was go around my apartment building and meet the families whose kids we’d be taking care of the next day. I’d promised the parents we’d do that. They were a little concerned, and I could understand why. I mean, they didn’t know my friends, and just because I’d said the five of us used to be in a baby-sitting business together was no real reason to trust Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, and Dawn. But they trusted me. All they wanted to do was meet my friends.

So after our safe return from Bloomingdale’s, the five of us left our things in my bedroom and then headed for the twentieth floor of my building. I thought we could start at the top and work down.

“Bye, Mom!” I called as I ushered my friends into the hallway.

“Bye, girls!” my mother replied. “Have fun and be careful!”

“No problem!”

I punched the elevator button and we waited.

“Couldn’t we take the stairs?” asked Dawn after a moment.

I shook my head. “If we took the stairs from here to the twentieth floor we’d never be able to walk again.”

“But … well, have you ever gotten stuck in the elevator?” Dawn wanted to know. “It took a long time for the doors to open when we came up to your apartment.”

“Never,” I told her firmly. “I have never been stuck. You aren’t claustrophobic, are you?”

“She’s just a worrywart,” said Kristy. “For heaven’s sake, Dawn, I can think of worse things than getting stuck in an elevator. What if the cable broke and the elevator crashed all the way to the basement?”

“Kristy!” exclaimed Claudia, Mary Anne, and I. (Dawn was speechless with fear.)

The elevator arrived and we convinced Dawn to get on it. We rode to the twentieth floor. Uneventfully, I might add.

The twentieth floor is the top floor of my building. Like most older apartment buildings, it’s not just the top floor, though — it’s the penthouse. (It’s owned by Mr. and Mrs. Reames.) Unlike my floor, where there are six apartments, the penthouse is one apartment that takes up the entire story. As you can imagine, it’s huge. It’s bigger than the whole house my parents and I lived in in Connecticut. If you took our second story and laid it down next to the first, all that space would still be less than the space the Reameses have.

Another thing about the penthouse — the elevator lets you off in the Reameses’ front hall, which is decorated with paintings and vases and stuff. Also an umbrella stand. Of course, the door between the hallway and the Reameses’ actual apartment has about thirty-five locks on it, but getting off in their hall is a lot nicer than getting off in ours, which is dark and has nothing in it but the doors to the apartments and the trash compactor chute.

“Okay,” I whispered as the elevator doors opened and we stepped into the Reameses’ hallway. “This is the penthouse. It’s the biggest, most expensive apartment in the building. The Reameses are really rich. They’re nice, but rich. So don’t touch anything.”

“Should we have fun and be careful?” asked Claudia slyly.

“Just be careful. Now, there’s only one kid here. Leslie Reames. She’s four. And she’s a little like Jenny Prezzioso, so be prepared.”

“Another spoiled brat?” wailed Mary Anne.

“A picky brat … But not a bad kid.”

I rang the Reameses’ bell. Their maid answered.

“Hi, Martha,” I said.

“Hello, Stacey,” she replied. “Come on in. Leslie’s dying to see you.”

We stepped inside and every single one of my friends gasped. Kristy even said, “Will you look at this place? It’s like a museum.”

I think Martha pretended not to hear her.

The Reameses’ apartment is like a museum. It’s even more opulent than the fancy houses in Kristy’s neighborhood. My friends were falling all over themselves in a very embarrassing way. You’d think they’d never seen antiques before.

“Stacey! Stacey!”

Little Leslie Reames came tearing through all those antiques and flung herself at me. When I say little Leslie, I mean little. Leslie was premature — she weighed less than four pounds when she was born — and she’s never caught up with kids her age, size-wise. She’s teeny, like a spider, with spindly arms and legs. However, she makes up for her size by having a mouth that rivals Kristy’s.

“Hiya, Leslie,” I said. I swung her into the air and she squealed.

Mr. and Mrs. Reames came into the living room then and the introductions began. When we were finished, the Reameses spouted their Leslie list, which I’ve heard a thousand times already.

“Remember her wheat allergy,” said Mrs. Reames.

“And she must wear a jacket at all times tomorrow,” said Mr. Reames.

“Even indoors?” I heard Kristy whisper to Mary Anne.

“No prolonged running,” added Mrs. Reames.

And then Leslie spoke up: “And keep me away from dogs.”

My friends must have passed the Reameses’ inspection, because when we left, Mr. Reames said, “Martha will drop Leslie off at your apartment at about a quarter to twelve tomorrow, Anastasia.”

(Mr. Reames may be nice, but he’s the only person in the world who would even think of calling me by my full first name.)

I was lucky. My friends kept their mouths shut until we were on the elevator, the doors had closed behind us, and we’d started to move.

“Whoa!” exclaimed Mary Anne. “Wheat allergies.”

“No prolonged running?” cried Dawn, momentarily forgetting that she was on an elevator.

“Worrywarts of the world unite!” added Claudia.

And Kristy said, “ANASTASIA!” She laughed until she cried. She slumped to the elevator floor. The rest of us had to drag her to her feet as we reached eighteen and the doors opened.

“Now, calm down,” I whispered loudly as we approached apartment 18E. We were on a normal floor, under a normal buzzing fluorescent light, ringing the bell of a normal apartment.

An attractive black woman answered the door.

“Hi, Mrs. Walker,” I said. “I brought my friends to meet Henry and Grace.”

Mrs. Walker smiled and showed us into an apartment that was laid out exactly the same way as ours. But boy did it look different. Both Mr. and Mrs. Walker are artists and they work at home. (They turned their dining room into a studio.) Their apartment is filled with modern art — paintings and sculptures and wall hangings. Some of it I like, some I don’t like. (Or maybe I just don’t understand it.)

“Henry! Grace!” Mrs. Walker called as Kristy, Dawn, Claudia, Mary Anne, and I gathered in the Walkers’ living room.

A few moments later, two little kids peered at us around the kitchen doorway.

“They’re shy,” I whispered to my friends. Then I spoke up. “Guess what we’re going to do tomorrow, you guys,” I said. “We’re going to go to the museum and see the dinosaurs. And after that, maybe we’ll go to the park.”

The kids’ faces lit up. They stepped out of the kitchen.

“These are my friends,” I told Henry and Grace. I introduced everybody. “Henry is five and Grace is three,” I added.

Grace nodded and held up three fingers.

“I’m going on six,” Henry said softly.

Mr. Walker came out of the studio then. He was paint-covered, and I knew we’d interrupted him, but he just smiled and then he and his wife talked to us baby-sitters for a while.

Fifteen minutes later, we were back on the elevator, and Mary Anne was looking star-struck. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Mrs. Walker illustrates books. I met a celebrity!”

“Did you see that painting over their couch?” exclaimed Claudia. “It was fantastic. I wish I could talk about art with the Walkers sometime. Mr. Walker has even had his own show here in New York. Do you know how major that is?”

We agreed that a show was major but didn’t really have time to talk about it, since our next stop was just two floors down, on sixteen.

“The Upchurches,” I told my friends. “Two girls. Natalie is ten and Peggie is eight. Natalie will be the oldest kid in the group tomorrow. Wait till you see the Upchurches’ apartment. Oh, but don’t say anything about it, you guys. And there’s no Mrs. Upchurch. The parents are divorced and the kids live with their father, okay?”

“Okay,” said Kristy, who usually assumes that people mean her when they say not to mention something.

I just knew the Upchurch girls would surprise my friends — and they did. They are smart, worldly New York kids. They’re not sassy, they’re just sophisticated, I guess. (They’re probably a lot like I was when I was younger.)

Natalie answered the bell and us baby-sitters walked speechlessly into the apartment. It’s decorated entirely in black and white and chrome, and is exceedingly ugly. Having been told not to comment on it, my friends didn’t know what to say. Luckily, Mr. Upchurch sat us down, so we talked about our sitting experiences and what we planned to do the next day.

Then Natalie and Peggie began telling us about the creative theater group they belong to.

“We express emotions through actions,” said Peggie.

“We’ve learned that the theater is really a stage for life,” added Natalie.

Kristy waited until the five of us were on the elevator before she said, “I hope Peggie and Natalie can handle something as down-to-earth as dead dinosaurs in a museum.”

We giggled. Then it was on to the eighth floor, where we met the Barreras — Carlos, who’s nine; Blair, who’s seven; and Cissy, who’s five, knows Leslie Reames, and can’t stand her.

“They had a nice, normal apartment,” commented Dawn as we headed for the fifth floor, our last stop.

“Aren’t there any other celebrities here, Stacey?” asked Mary Anne.

“Mary Anne, this is an apartment building, not Burbank. We’re lucky to have Mr. and Mrs. Walker. If you’re looking for movie stars, forget it.”

“Sorry,” said Mary Anne huffily, not sounding one bit sorry.

Dennis and Sean Deluca, who are nine and six, were the last kids my friends met that afternoon. The Delucas haven’t lived in New York long, so Dennis and Sean were like my friends in some ways — everything was new to them … and a lot of things frightened them. I made a mental note not to let Dawn spend much time with the Delucas.

At long last we got back on the elevator and headed up to my floor.

“You know,” said Claudia, “it just occurred to me. The weather is beautiful today, and we found all those kids at home, cooped up in their apartments.”

“Well, there’s no playground nearby,” I told her.

“I thought you live near Central Park,” said Dawn.

“We do,” I replied, “but kids don’t go there alone, not even at Natalie’s age. It isn’t safe. However, that is just what’s going to make tomorrow so great. The museum and the park will be a terrific treat for all the kids. Now, come on. Here’s my floor. We’ve got a party to go to!”