Then there's Mallory. Mallory Pike and I are the club's two junior officers. All that means is that we're too young to baby-sit at night unless we're sitting for our own brothers and sisters. Speaking of brothers and sisters, Mal has seven of them. She comes from the biggest family I know. Apart from that, and apart from the fact that Mal is white and I'm black, we're probably more alike than any two other club members. We both love to read books, especially horse stories, we both enjoy writing (but Mal enjoys it more than I do), we both wear glasses (mine are only for reading), and we both think our parents treat us kind of like babies. However, there was a recent breakthrough in which we convinced our parents to let us get our ears pierced! After that, Mal was even allowed to have her hair cut decently, but I'm still working on that angle. Neither of us is sure what we want to be when we grow the rest of the way up. I might want to be a professional dancer and Mal might want to be an author or an author/illustrator, but we figure we have time to decide these things. Right now, we're just happy being eleven-year-old baby-sitters.

Oh, one other similarity between Mal and me. Neither of us has a pet. I don't know if Mal wants one — she's never mentioned it —

but I bet her brothers and sisters do. Just like Becca.

"Hiss, hiss."

Becca was in my doorway. She was lying on her stomach.

"Now what are you?" I asked.

"I'll give you a hint." Becca flicked her tongue out of her mouth.

"Ew, ew!" I cried. "You're a snake. Slither away from me!"

Giggling, Becca did as she was told.

I went back to my homework, but I couldn't concentrate. Not because of Becca, but because of next week. I was going to have next week off. Well, sort of. Ordinarily, my afternoons are busy. When school is out, I go either to a ballet class or to my steady sitting job. My steady job is for Matt and Haley Braddock, two really great kids. But next week, my ballet school would be closed and the Braddocks were going on a vacation — even though school was in session. So, except for school and meetings of the Baby-sitters Club, I would be free, free, free! What would I do with all those spare hours? I wondered. Easy. I could put in extra practice time, I could read. The possibilities were endless!