Besides knowing all of our personal schedules, I schedule every single baby-sitting job. When a client calls, we jot down the important information — who, when, where, how many

children, and so on — and then I check the record book to see which of our club members is free. If the record book were wrong, things could get pretty crazy. This may sound like bragging, but I'm proud to say that I have never made a mistake.

Mallory Pike and Jessica Ramsey joined our dub later and are the BSC's junior officers. We call them that because they are eleven and in the sixth grade, and they're not allowed to baby-sit at night, except for their own families.

Besides being best friends, they are totally horse crazy. They love horse movies, The Black Stallion and Black Beauty being among their favorites, and horse books, especially the ones written by Marguerite Henry. Neither of them has ever owned a horse, but they dream about it.

Both girls have special talents and big dreams for the future. Mal would like to be a children's book author and illustrator someday. (She's off to a good start, too, having won best all-around fiction for the sixth grade on Young Authors' Day.) Jessi, with her beautiful long legs and graceful body, is a ballet dancer. She's danced leading roles in several productions and hopes to dance with a major company like the New York City Ballet one day. I'm certain she'll do it, too.

Though they have a lot in common, Jessi

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and Mal are also very different. First of all, Jessi is black and Mallory is white. Jessi has two siblings: Becca, who's eight and a half, and her baby brother Squirt (his real name, John Philip Ramsey, Jr., is awfully big for such a little guy).

Mallory has seven brothers and sisters. Mallory is the oldest (she's eleven), followed by the triplets, Byron, Adam, and Jordan, who are ten. Then comes nine-year-old Vanessa, eight-year-old Nicky, Margo, who's seven, and last, but certainly not least, five-year-old Claire. They all have reddish-brown hair and blue eyes, and three of them — Mallory, Vanessa, and Nicky — wear glasses. (Mal longs to trade in her frames for a pair of contacts, but her parents say she has to wait until she's older.)