"You look like a Valentine," Vanessa told me, but I didn't care.

I put on my penny loafers.

"Mallory!" said Mom, as I sat down at the breakfast table a little while later. "You look lovely. . . . This isn't school-picture day, is it?" she added, glancing suspiciously at my brothers and sisters. They certainly were not dressed in their best clothes.

"No, Mom. Don't worry," I told her. "I'm going to the Baby-sitters Club meeting, remember?"

"Oh, that's right. Well, have fun."

Have fun, I thought. Sure. I was as jumpy as a cat.

When I got toStoneybrookMiddle School that morning I looked around for Kristy, Dawn, Mary Anne, and Claudia. I thought that if I saw them, I could just walk up to them, as

cool as anything, and say, "Hi, you guys. How is everything? Can't wait for the meeting." I could pretend I was a big eighth-grader instead of a twerpy sixth-grader.

But the sixth-grade wing is at the opposite end of the building from the eighth-grade wing. There was no chance I'd see them unless I took a little walk. I pretended I needed to go to the library, which is near the eighth-grade wing. As I wandered through the halls, I looked and looked for the girls, but I didn't see them. Not in the library, not outside the cafeteria, not hanging around the gym. I was still only halfway back to my homeroom when the bell rang.

The bell! I'd been fooling around longer than I thought. I tore through the halls to my classroom and darted through the door just before Mrs. Frederickson closed it. I was the last to arrive and slid into my seat between bossy Benny Ott and Rachel Robinson. (Mrs. Frederickson seats us alphabetically.)

Wait a second. I wasn't between Benny and Rachel. I was between Benny and some girl I'd never seen before. Rachel was one seat away from me. What was wrong? I checked my desk. Yup. It was the one I always sit at, with the big E.L. carved in an upper corner and the heart carved in a lower one.