Mallory has curly red hair, glasses, and braces. She sometimes refers to her glasses and braces as "the bane of her existence," a phrase she picked up somewhere which means, basically, that she hates them. She'd like to get contacts, but her parents say she's too young. Fortunately, her braces are the clear kind, so they don't even show much — a fact she has a hard time believing. Mal comes from a gigantic family. She has seven younger brothers and sisters! (I've already told you about two of them; Nicky, who's a Krasher, and Vanessa, who's a cheerleader for the team.)

Jessi's family is much smaller. She has a younger sister and a baby brother. Also, her aunt lives with the family, just to help out. Jessi is black, with beautiful cocoa-colored skin and these long, long ballet-dancer legs. I'm really glad that both she and Mallory are in the club.

Finally, the BSC has two associate members. They don't usually come to meetings, but they're ready to help out whenever we're swamped with too much work. One of them is a girl named Shannon Kilbourne, who lives

in my new neighborhood, and the other is Logan Bruno, who happens to be Mary Anne's boyfriend!

There. Now you know everything there is to know about the BSC. And now I can finish telling you about what happened after the game that day. That fateful day, as Mallory might say, if she were writing one of her stories.

Chapter 3.

At the ball field, the rain began to fall harder, and the clouds were growing darker by the minute. The air was heavy, and the sky was turning a funny greenish color. My friends ran for their parents' cars, yelling good-bye as they dashed through the rain. Nicky Pike pulled on my arm. "Kristy," he said, "I'm going to ride home with my parents, okay?"

"Sure, Nicky," I replied. "That van was pretty crowded, wasn't it?"

He nodded.

"Got your glove?" I asked.

He held it up. "Okay, then," I said. "See you soon. Congratulations on a great game!" I gave him a high five, and he ran off toward the Pike station wagon.