There's just Mom and Dad and Janine and me. My dad's an investment banker, my mom's a librarian, and my sister, Janine, is a genius. I mean it! She's a junior at Stoneybrook High, but she's taking college courses already. It's, well, it's interesting to have a genius in the family. More about Janine later.

Mimi, the one in the picture, was my grandmother. (Of course she wasn't my grandmother yet when that picture was taken.) She died not long ago, but I love that photo of her as a young girl. She looked a lot like me way back then.

I miss Mimi all the time. How can I explain how wonderful she was? Always calm, always gentle - that was Mimi. She understood me better than anyone else ever has. Sometimes I just can't believe that I'll really never see her again. But she'll always be in my heart, and just thinking of her and looking at her picture can make me feel close to her.

Now, where was I? Oh, right. Things that I'm crazy about. Well, I love to baby-sit - so much so that I belong to a club called the Babysitters Club - but more about that later, too. I also love to read Nancy Drew mysteries, and I adore junk food. Doritos, M&M's, Twinkies - I never say no to any of it.

My parents, however, don't like me to read Nancy Drew books (they would prefer that I read "classics") and they really don't like me to eat junk food. "Proper nutrition is important . . ." You know the line.) So I've learned to hide my secret vices. The Nancy Drew books get stuck under my mattress, or on the top shelf of my closet, or underneath a pile of dirty clothes. The junk food gets stashed anywhere and everywhere - it's always turning up where I least expect it. Last night, for example, when I was looking for my favorite watercolor set, I found a box of Milk Duds that I had hidden about three months ago. (They were still good.) On this night, though, I wasn't eating any junk food or reading any Nancy Drew books. I was studying for a big test, a huge test, a killer test. This math test was going to count for a big part of my final grade. I just had to do well on it.