Neat idea, huh?

    It's more like a business than a club, really. But we call it a club because we're all friends as well as coworkers.

    The BSC was Kristy Thomas's idea. She thought it up one day while watching her mother go crazy trying to find a sitter for her younger brother. She told her great idea - of having one number where people could reach several sitters - to her best friend Mary Anne Spier. They told their other friend Claudia Kishi and she suggested I join them, too. Claudia has her own phone and her own phone number, so that was perfect for us. We put up fliers advertising our business all over Stoneybrook.

    The club was an instant success! It was such a success that we needed more help. That's when we invited Dawn Schafer, who'd just moved here from California, to join.

    Things went great for a while, then my dad's company transferred him back to New York City. I felt all mixed up when that happened. I love Manhattan (as you already know). But I'd also made close friends here in Stoneybrook. I hated leaving them. There was nothing I could do about it, though. Off we went, back to Manhattan.

    While I was gone, BSC business continued to boom. They needed more help and fast. That was when Kristy recruited Mallory Pike and Jessi Ramsey.

    They're eleven, which is why they're junior officers. (The rest of us are thirteen.) As junior officers they baby-sit during the afternoons, and at night only for their own siblings. That leaves the other members free to take the evening jobs, so it works out well.

    Anyway, getting back to the club history - things were not going so great for me in Manhattan. Mom and Dad started fighting all the time. Before too long I got the bad news: divorce.