were taking left at four-thirty, so there was no way around it.

Just then, Kristy checked the digital dock, which had just flipped to five-thirty, tapped her pencil on the arm of her chair, and called, "Order! And that means everybody, jet-setters and us hicks!" It was time for the meeting to start.

Here's how the club works: we meet in Claudia's room every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from five-thirty until six." During those times, parents can call us to set up jobs, and believe me, they do call. We always have plenty of business. At first the club advertised with fliers and the occasional ad in the paper, but now that’s hardly ever necessary. We have lots of regular clients, and we're always getting new ones who have heard about us from our satisfied customers.

The idea for the club was Kristy's, which is why she's the president. Actually, she's also the president because she's just naturally a good leader. She knows how to organize people and how to inspire them, and she's always coming up with awesome ideas for projects. Kristy can be a little bossy at times, but I guess that goes along with the other parts of her personality.

Kristy is short for her age (she's thirteen and in the eighth grade, like everyone else in the club except for Mal and me), and she has

brown hair and eyes. She does not take advantage of the fact that she is thirteen, however. If I were thirteen, I'd be wearing all kinds of cool outfits and fixing my hair a different way every day. But not Kristy. She wears practically the same outfit all the time: jeans, turtleneck shirt or T-shirt (depending on the weather), and running shoes. And she never does anything interesting with her hair. I bet she hardly bothers to look in the mirror in the morning. Which is not to say that she's not pretty: she is. She just doesn't put any work into it.