"Fine," I answered. "How was work?"

"Don't ask!" Daddy said, laughing. Lately we say the same thing after ballet class. It's like a ritual. The best part is Daddy's laugh, which is deep and booming. He sounds sort of like James Earl Jones, the famous actor.

Daddy drove away from the curb and headed toward the expressway. We live in Stoneybrook, which is just a few exits away. Stoneybrook's a nice place, but I didn't think so at first. We're black, and Stoneybrook is, like, ninety percent white. We used to live inOakley,New Jersey , in a neighborhood where blacks and whites lived together and everybody got along just fine.

Stoneybrook isn't like that. When we first moved here, it was a real shock. Some people were nasty to us, just because of our skin

color. The things they said and did were so prejudiced and stupid. I wanted to move back to Oakley so much. But my mom and dad always believed things would work out, and they were right.

First of all, people have gotten used to us (doesn't that sound weird?). Second of all, I became best friends with a girl named Mallory Pike. And third of all, Mallory and I became members of the Baby-sitters Club. (I'll tell you more about Mal and the BSC later.)

My dad mopped his forehead with a handkerchief as we pulled onto the expressway. He was sweating — I mean perspiring — like crazy. Even though it was still spring, it felt like midsummer. We had to drive right under a billboard advertising some soda as the "official drink of the Summer Olympics." There was a huge picture of a swimmer splashing through the water, in the middle of a stroke. She was working hard, but boy, did she look coooool. For a minute I thought I was crazy to like ballet. Why pound your body into a wood floor when you could plunge it into water instead?

Daddy was looking at the billboard, too. He sighed and said, "What do you say we use the air conditioner?"