I checked my watch as I pedalled. 5:21. That should be perfect, considering I was turning onto Bradford court already, nudging my bike in the direction of Claudia's house. I missed the days when I could just walk across the street to get to Claudia's, but since my dad married Sharon, we'd moved into the Schafers' old farmhouse.

I arrived at Claudia's house, parked my bike in the garage, and went inside. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (our club meeting days), the Kishis just leave their door unlocked for all us baby-sitters—can you imagine how annoying it would be to have to answer the door six times in ten minutes?

"Right on time," Kristy informed me as I walked into the room. I checked the clock, which said 5:25. Excellent. Kristy doesn't tolerate lateness, and any club member who enters the room after 5:30 gets what the rest of us BSCers refer to as "The Look"—and nobody wants a Look from Kristy. "Where's Dawn?" she asked me.

"Sharon took her shopping for earrings," I explained. Since I didn't have my own ears pierced, I hadn't bothered to go along. "She promised to bring Dawn here when they were done, so hopefully she'll be on time." Sharon isn't exactly the world's most organized person.

Kristy frowned. "Well, she'd better be on time. Mal and Jessi are telling me they have some club business to discuss, and I don't want her to miss out!"

I took my usual seat on Claudia's bed. "Hey, Kristy, where's Clau—"

"Snickers or Milky Ways?" Claudia asked, popping up out from under her bed and holding a bag of each of the candy bars in question.

I screamed and dropped the club record book, which I'd been holding.

"Claudia, you scared Mary Anne!" Mallory chastised in a fit of giggles, which Jessi and Kristy were sharing as well. I stuck my tongue at them, but soon started laughing with them. Claudia joined in, and by the time Dawn and Stacey walked in together, we were all rolling on the floor with laughter.

Dawn gave Stacey a look. "I have the feeling we missed something good."

"Oh, it's nothing," Kristy gasped for air. "Claudia just scared the socks off Mary Anne, that's all." She burst into another fit of laughter.

"For your information," I said, "I wasn't wearing socks to begin with!" I showed off my new sandals. "I just got these last week, and I—"

"Order! Order, order!" Kristy cried in the midst of the chaos. I glanced over and saw that Claudia's alarm clock (also known as the BSC Official Timepiece) had flipped over to 5:30, and it was time for the meeting. She scrambled into Claud's director's chair and crammed her visor onto her head (seriously, what thirteen-year-old wears a visor?) to look more "official." "This meeting of the Baby-Sitters Club is now in session. Any club business?"

Jessi rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Kristy, you've known Mal and I had club business since, like, fifteen minutes ago!"

"We-ell…" Kristy appeared to be considering, "okay. Since it's not dues day—" (the rest of us cheered at that statement, except Stacey, who said "aww") "—I guess I can let you guys share your business."

"Great!" exclaimed Mallory. "Well, as you know, we sat for my brothers and sisters the other day, and of course they were in one of their Moods. Claire was doing the silly-billy-goo-goo thing again, the triplets were crazy, and you know how it goes…"

Jessi cut in. "What Mal is saying is that we had to improvise an activity for them, and so I taught them how to make banana people."

Five blank faces stared at her. "Um, Jessi, I appreciate the fact that you're advocating the consumption of fructose-infused healthful treats, but I really don't think people are made of bananas," said Dawn.

The blank faces turned to Dawn. "What in the world was that?" asked Claudia. "Are you Janine? Hello?" she began waving her hand in front of Dawn's face, "Janine? Are you in there?"

Dawn looked insulted. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to sound intelligent. If you support a cause, people will take you seriously if you have a big vocabulary. I'm trying to get the people of the world to eat less refined sugar and more natural sugar, like the kind that's in fruit. The effects of eating too much—"

"Okay, we get it," grumbled Mallory, cutting her off. "The point is, Jessi came up with this brilliant idea to turn snack time into something fun and easy for the kids to do." She went on to explain the concept of Jessi's "banana people", and how they'd spent a good couple of hours happily putting together snacks that were fun, easy, and above all, nutritious. "Anyway, so Jessi and I were talking, and we thought it might be fun to set up some sort of cooking camp for the kids this summer, or something."

"Yeah," Jessi agreed, "We could take the kids somewhere, meet at someone's house or something, and teach the kids how to make healthful snacks that are easy to make and fun to eat."

Stacey started snickering. "Easy to make and fun to eat! That sounds like a TV commercial or something." We all chuckled at that remark.

"You know what, though, I like that idea," I said. "I mean, how many times did we raid the fridge as kids trying to find something delicious that we could cook for ourselves? Parents don't always have time to fix snacks, you know."

Kristy grinned. "I think you guys have just had one of my trademark Great Ideas! Let's start planning at the next meeting; we should probably get back to club business for now, though. I mean, someone's got to call soon." Just as she'd finished speaking, the phone rang.

I was closest to the receiver at the time, so I answered it. "Hello, Baby-Sitters Club," I said into the phone.

"Um, hello," said a male voice on the other end. "I, uh, saw your flyer downtown. I need a sitter… could you help me?"

"Sure thing," I smiled into the phone even though he couldn't see me, "kids are our speciality. I need to ask you a few questions first, since you're a new client. Could you please tell me your name, how many kids you have, their ages, and when you need a sitter?"

The guy seemed to relax a bit after that. "Well, my name is Mr. Gibson. George Gibson. We, er, I have two kids. Rachel's nine, and Lauren is four. I actually need someone to come over a few times a week for a few weeks, sort of an all day thing. Maybe ten in the morning until three pm on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays? Yeah, that should be about it. Y'see, we just moved here, and we're—I mean, I'm trying to get settled, tie up some loose ends, and all that. So can you girls help me out?"

"I'm sure we can, Mr. Gibson," I said. "Can I please have your number and I'll call you right back? Thanks!" I finished the call and hung up the phone.

"Yyyyyes!" Kristy pumped her fist into the air. "New client!"

Claudia started passing around the bag of Snickers bars, saying, "This is a perfect time to celebrate with chocolate."

"Claud, any time is a perfect time for chocolate for you!" Stacey said, bopping Claudia over the head with a pillow.

"Shh," I told them. "Don't you want to hear about the new client?" That shut everyone up. I started relaying what Mr. Gibson had said to them, and finished with the part about how he'd need a sitter once a week for half the day. The money would be good, but that was a serious chunk of time to donate to babysitting one family. Fortunately, we didn't appear to be too swamped, judging by the record book. I paged through it, checking everyone's schedules.

"It looks like Kristy, Dawn, and I are free," I said. "Stacey's got New York time, Jessi has ballet, Claudia has art classes, and Mal's in charge of walking Margo and Claire to the rec center for swim lessons on those days. What do you think?"

"Count me out," said Kristy. "I want to get the Krushers into better shape than they are now. Maybe we can get another world series against the Bashers by the end of the month! Anyway, I need time for practices." Kristy started a softball team for kids who aren't necessarily good enough to play in Little League, or are simply too young. The youngest player on the Krushers is Gabbie Perkins, who's a whole two and a half years old. They're not great players, but they have a ton of fun, and Kristy gets to share her softball obsession with the general public, so it all works out.

"Mary Anne, do you want it?" asked Dawn. "I'm kinda burned out from school last year, I don't really want to take on a full-time sitting job at this point."

I considered. I didn't have anything else planned for the summer, and babysitting would certainly be a fun way to pass the time. "Sure, I'd love to," I said. I called Mr. Gibson back and told him that I'd be his sitter, and got his address and some more information. "Great, I'll see you next week." I placed the phone back into the receiver.

The clock read 5:58. "Okay, two more minutes," said Kristy. "I make a motion that we vote on Mal and Jessi's cooking camp idea. All those in favor, say aye."

"Aye!" we all said enthusiastically. No doubt about it, the vote was unanimous.

New clients, good friends, great ideas for fun things to do with kids… this summer was just getting better and better!