The girl and I eyed each other, but didn't say anything.

A few minutes later, three other girls joined the first one. They were all wearing the exact same outfit - a private-school uniform. They were slender, three of them had blonde hair, and they were wearing makeup and stockings. They looked sleek, sophisticated, and self-con-

fident. They stood in a huddle, whispering and giggling. Every now and then one of them would glance over at me.

Where, oh, where was my bus?

I tried not to look at the girls. I pretended the cover of my notebook was absolutely fascinating.

But the girls would not allow me to ignore them. One of the blondes, who wore her hair in a cascade of thick curls, called to me, "You're Mr. Brewer's new kid, aren't you?"

"I'm one of them," I replied warily.

"Are you the one who's been sending those fliers around? For some baby-sitting club?"

"Yeah," I said. (Every now and then our club tries to find new people to baby-sit for, so we send around advertisements. We'd put one in every box in my new neighborhood not long ago.)

"What does your little club do?" asked another blonde.

"What do you think?" I replied testily. "We baby-sit."

"How cute," said the blonde with the curls.

The others giggled.

"Nice outfit," called the one non-blonde, putting her hands on her hips.

I blushed. Too bad I'd chosen the jeans with the hole in the knee that day.

10 .

But if there's one thing to be said about me, it's that I have a big mouth. I always have. I'm better about controlling it than I used to be, but I'm not afraid to use it. So I put my hands on my hips and said, "Your outfits are nice, too. You look like clones. Snob clones."