“So when’s he coming?” asked Jessi, as we walked up the stairs. It was Monday afternoon, and we were headed for a meeting of that club I told you about, the Baby-sitters Club.

“Dad said on Sunday,” I answered. “We have a lot to do before then, to get ready for him. But I’m excited. Maybe you can meet him someday soon.”

“Great,” said Jessi. “I’d love to. Anybody who knows how to find nickels in people’s ears sounds okay to me!”

By that time we’d taken our usual places and we were waiting for the meeting to start. Everybody else had already arrived. Who’s “everybody else”? Well, the members of the club are: Kristy Thomas, Claudia Kishi, Stacey McGill, Mary Anne Spier, and Dawn Schafer. And me and Jessi, of course. Kristy, Claud, Stacey, Mary Anne, and Dawn are those friends I mentioned earlier, the ones who are in eighth grade. They’re thirteen. Jessi’s eleven, like me.

Dawn, Mary Anne, and Claudia were sprawled on the bed. Stacey was sitting backwards on the desk chair. Jessi and I were sitting cross-legged on the floor. And Kristy was sitting in her place of honor, the director’s chair. She had tucked a pencil over her ear, and she was watching the clock. As soon as the numbers clicked to five-thirty, she sat up straight and said, “Order!”

Kristy’s the president of the club. Why? Well, mainly because the club was her idea. She thought of it back when she was in seventh grade. She and her friends baby-sat a lot, and she figured they might as well get organized. If they met a few times a week in the same place, parents would know when and where to call for sitters. At first there were only four members in the club; now there are seven of us — nine if you count our associate members, who don’t come to meetings. The club’s worked perfectly, right from the start. Parents love the convenience of it, and we love the steady business that comes our way.

Kristy’s what they call a “born leader,” I think. She has a lot of good ideas, and she knows how to put them into practice. She runs the club like a business — like a very efficient, successful business, that is. She figured out when we should meet (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from five-thirty to six), how to advertise (with professional-looking fliers that we hand out whenever we need more business), and how to keep a record of our jobs (we have to write up every job we go on in the club notebook). Plus a whole lot more.

It’s kind of surprising that Kristy’s such an organized person. Her home life is what you might call chaotic. She has two older brothers, Charlie and Sam; plus a little brother named David Michael; plus a two-and-a-half-year-old sister named Emily Michelle (she’s Vietnamese — Kristy’s family adopted her not long ago); plus a stepbrother and stepsister (their names are Karen and Andrew, and they only stay with Kristy’s family part of the time). Kristy’s grandmother, Nannie, lives with them, too. And of course there’s Kristy’s mom and her stepfather, Watson.

Kristy was unlucky enough to have a father who ran out on her family, but she was lucky to get Watson for a stepfather. He’s a millionaire. Honest. Now her huge family lives in his mansion across town. At first, when her mom married Watson, Kristy didn’t want to leave her neighborhood (she lived near all her oldest friends). But now I have a feeling she kind of likes her new life. Not that she’s stuck up. Kristy’s the most “regular” person I know. It’s just that she’s come to love her stepfamily, so that mansion has become a real home.

Our club’s vice-president is Claudia Kishi. As you might suspect from her name, Claud is Japanese-American. Her family’s a little less complicated than Kristy’s. It consists of just Claudia, her genius (really!) sister Janine, and their parents.

Claud’s the vice-president since we hold our meetings in her room. Why? Because she has not only her own phone, but her own private phone number. So we tie up her phone instead of one that belongs to some adult. We also mess up her bed, try on her jewelry, and eat her junk food, but Claud doesn’t seem to mind.

Claudia has a lot of junk food around because she loves it, and she has a lot of jewelry because she knows how to make her own! Claud’s a great artist, with an outrageous sense of style. She knows just how to complement her naturally stunning looks (long silky black hair, almond-shaped eyes, and a perfect complexion) with the very coolest clothes and accessories. If Claud put as much energy into her schoolwork as she puts into her art and her outfits, she’d be making straight A’s. But school just isn’t that important to Claudia. She has her own priorities, and art is first on the list.

Claudia’s best friend is Stacey McGill, the club’s treasurer. Stacey’s a math whiz, which makes her perfect for the job of collecting dues and keeping track of club expenses. It’s easy to see why she and Claud are best friends: Stacey’s probably the only girl in Stoneybrook who could compete with Claud for the “Coolest Dresser” title. She grew up in New York City (her family moved here when she was in seventh grade) and she is just about as sophisticated as you might imagine. She gets her blonde hair permed, wears makeup and nail polish, and always looks very well put-together. She seems to have some kind of secret pipeline that keeps her informed about what’s hip, what’s happening, what’s “in.” But she’s not one of those cool people who make you feel like a dweeb because you’re still wearing last year’s fashions. Stacey’s really, really nice.

Stacey’s tough, too. She’s had some hard times lately, but she’s come through them well. Her parents got divorced not long ago, and her dad lives in New York. Stacey spends most of her time here in Stoneybrook with her mom, but she visits her dad as often as she can. The other thing that’s been hard for Stacey is that she has diabetes. That means her body doesn’t deal too well with sugar because this gland called the pancreas isn’t working right. She has to be really careful about what she eats. Not only that, she has to give herself shots every single day. The shots are insulin, which is what her pancreas is supposed to be producing. I can’t imagine where I’d get the strength to deal with having a disease like diabetes. Stacey never whines or complains, though. She’s pretty incredible.

The secretary of the BSC (that’s what we call the club most of the time) is Mary Anne Spier. I think she has the hardest job of anyone in the club. She has complete charge of our record book, which is where she keeps track of all our jobs. She also keeps track of our schedules; she knows what day I’m going to be at the orthodontist, when Stacey is going to be in New York with her dad, and what time Claudia’s art lesson will be over. It’s awesome! When a parent calls to set up a job, Mary Anne can tell at a glance which of us is free. She also keeps the record book up-to-date with clients’ addresses, kids’ allergies, and all kinds of information we like to keep track of.

It can be kind of hard to get to know Mary Anne, because she’s pretty shy. But once you do get to know her, she’s a really great friend. She’s sensitive, a good listener, and a lot of fun. Maybe Mary Anne is shy because she’s not used to being around a lot of people; she grew up with her dad. Mary Anne’s mom died when Mary Anne was a baby, so her dad brought her up on his own. He used to be very, very strict about clothes and makeup and other stuff, but he’s loosened up lately. I wouldn’t say Mary Anne is an outrageously trendy dresser, but she does have a few cool outfits.

Another thing Mary Anne has is a boyfriend! His name is Logan Bruno, and he’s one of those associate members I mentioned before. (The other one is a girl named Shannon Kilbourne, from Kristy’s new neighborhood.) Mary Anne’s the only one of us who’s ever really gone steady, and even though the romance has had its rocky points, I think she and Logan make a good couple.

Remember how I said that Mary Anne is a great friend? Well, maybe that’s why she has not one, but two best friends. One of them is Kristy, and the other is Dawn Schafer, the alternate officer of the club. But Mary Anne and Dawn are more than just best friends — they’re stepsisters!

Here’s how that happened: Dawn grew up in California, but her mom had grown up here in Stoneybrook. So when Dawn’s mom and dad got divorced, Mrs. Schafer decided to move back to her hometown. Thanks to Mary Anne and Dawn, she rediscovered an old boyfriend from high school, started to date him, and ended up marrying him. Who was that old boyfriend? Mary Anne’s dad. It makes a great story, doesn’t it? So romantic.

Dawn may live in Stoneybrook now, but we still think of her as a California girl. She has long, pale blonde hair and big blue eyes. (Nobody would ever mistake her and the brown-haired, brown-eyed Mary Anne for real sisters.) She dresses as though life were a beach party — sporty clothes in bright colors. And she acts, well, I guess “mellow” is the only word for the way Dawn acts. She’s pretty self-assured, very individualistic (she’s got not one, but two holes pierced in each ear!), and she’s as cool in her way as Stacey and Claudia are in theirs.

Dawn has a younger brother named Jeff, but he doesn’t live in Stoneybrook. He did for a while, but he missed his dad a lot and he ended up moving back to California to live with him. I know Dawn feels sad about the way her family has been split up, but the Spier-Schafer household is a pretty busy one, so I don’t think she spends much time dwelling on the issue.

As for her job in the club — well, “alternate officer” means that she is ready to take on any of the other members’ jobs. So if Mary Anne can’t make a meeting, Dawn becomes secretary. Or if Stacey isn’t there, Dawn collects dues. (It’s not too often that Kristy misses a meeting. She just loves being president.)

I bet you’re dying to know what my job is. Well, Jessi and I are called junior officers, and we don’t actually have jobs to do. Junior officer just means that we do almost all of our sitting in the daytime. Our parents don’t allow us to sit at night, unless we’re sitting for our own brothers and sisters. You know what? I don’t really mind being a junior officer, for now. I get plenty of work, and the other members are grateful to us for freeing them up for evening jobs.

Jessi doesn’t mind, either. She doesn’t like to stay out late anyway, since she needs to get enough sleep every night. She’s a dancer — she studies ballet — and that’s like being an athlete. You have to be in really good shape to be a ballerina, and that means not only getting enough sleep, but also eating right and taking care of your body in every way.

I’m not sure I’d ever have that kind of dedication, but Jessi does. She works really, really hard at her dancing (her classes are serious) and I think she might be a famous ballerina some day. (Maybe when that happens, I’ll write a book about her. That’s what I want to do when I’m older — write and illustrate children’s books.) Jessi’s family is very encouraging and supportive of her. The Ramseys are great. They’re a really close family. Besides Jessi, there are her parents, her little sister Becca, and Squirt, who’s her baby brother. And, as I told you before, Jessi’s Aunt Cecelia recently came to live with them, too. At first we thought she was a total monster, but it turns out that she’s not so bad.

We should have known better when we first judged Aunt Cecelia. We were being unfair. It was like when people made judgments about the Ramseys when they first moved to Stoneybrook. Just because the Ramseys are black, people were ready to think all kinds of terrible things about them. There aren’t too many black families in Stoneybrook, and when Jessi’s family arrived, people weren’t all that nice to them. But I think the Ramseys are pretty well accepted by now. Isn’t prejudice awful? If people only knew how much it can hurt.

Anyway, I’m getting off the subject here. I just wanted to explain a little bit about who’s in our club and how the club works. So now you know! Our meeting that day was pretty routine, except for one phone call near the end. It was from a Mr. Craine. The Craines had not been clients of ours before, but Kristy knew who they were. Her mom plays tennis with Mrs. Craine.

Mr. Craine was calling to line up a regular sitter for his three daughters. He explained to Kristy (who had answered the phone) that the girls had a favorite aunt who usually took care of them, but that she’d just broken her leg. The Craines were going to need someone to sit for the girls on a regular basis until their aunt’s leg was better. Mr. Craine said he was hoping the girls could have the same sitter all the time “since they need that kind of continuity,” and that most of the jobs would be on afternoons and weekends.

Guess why I’m telling you all of this. Because I got the job. Or should I say jobs? I went home feeling pretty happy and excited that day, happy that I’d have plenty of work for a while, and excited because new clients are always exciting. I couldn’t wait for Saturday, when I’d go to my first job at the Craines’.