Kristy is the one who thought up the idea for the BSC. She realized how convenient it would be for parents to be able to dial one phone number and reach a whole bunch of experienced sitters, instead of having to make a zillion calls every time they needed someone to watch their kids. Like most of Kristy's ideas, this one was very simple, but it worked perfectly. The BSC has always had plenty of business. At first we advertised, with fliers and newspaper ads, but now we hardly ever need to do that. Satisfied parents are the only ad-ertising we need.

Anyway, back to Kristy. She has long brown hair and brown eyes, and she's kind of short. She's not interested in fashion or makeup at

all; she dresses in jeans and a turtleneck shirt just about every day. She says she's too busy to bother with dressing up, and I guess she is. She runs the BSC, coaches a softball team for little kids, and gets involved with all kinds of projects. Also, she has a huge family, so sometimes her house is chaotic. Kristy has two older brothers, Charlie and Sam, and one younger one, David Michael. That’s the family she grew up with: her brothers and her mother. Her dad cut out on the family way back when David Michael was a baby.

But Kristy's family has changed — and grown — a lot in the last year or so. It all started when Kristy's mom fell in love with a man named Watson Brewer, who happens to be mega-rich. When they got married, Kristy and her brothers moved across town to live in Watson's mansion. (They used to live across the street from me.) Watson has two children from his first marriage, Karen and Andrew, who live with him part-time. And soon after their marriage, Watson and Kristy's mom decided to adopt a baby, so Emily Michelle came to live with them, too. She's an incredibly cute two-and-a-half-year-old Vietnamese girl. Soon after she arrived, Kristy's grandmother (everybody calls her Nannie) moved in to help out with everything. Full house, right? And that’s