Let me tell you about my friends, the BSC members. I'll start with Kristy Thomas, for two reasons. One, she is my oldest friend in the world. (I mean, we're the same age, but we've known each other since we were born.) Two, Kristy had the idea for the BSC, organized it, and got it running. That's just the way Kristy is. She's a doer, an organizer, and she's got a mind full of ideas - which she usually carries out. She's also got a big mouth. I don't mean that she blabs on and on and won't stop talking. I mean that she doesn't always think before she speaks. If something pops into her head, she says it. Occasionally, she hurts people's feelings, although she never intends to. Kristy is part of the most unusual family I know. She used to be part of a regular family - a mother, a father, two older brothers, and a baby brother named David Michael. Then, shortly after David Michael was born, Mr. Thomas walked out on his family. He just left them. Kristy and I lived next door to each other then (and across the street from Claudia), so I know how hard this was for her family. But Mrs. Thomas pulled things together quickly. She got a good job and she managed to hold her family together. Then, when Kristy and I were twelve and in seventh grade, Mrs. Thomas began to be serious about Watson Brewer, this man she'd been going out with. Watson (most of us refer to him as Watson because that's what Kristy calls him) just happens to be a millionaire. He lives in a mansion across town in a much wealthier neighborhood than the one Kristy and I lived in. And at the end of school last year, he and Mrs. Thomas decided to get married. So they did! Watson moved the Thomases out of their cramped house and into his huge one. You'd think Kristy would have just died to be living in a mansion with bedrooms galore and a rich stepfather, but she wasn't too happy at first.