"BSC048 - Jessi's Wish - Martin, Ann M" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Ann M)

sitters. Mary Anne and Claudia loved the idea but thought they needed a fourth member. Claud suggested Stacey, with whom she was just becoming friends. So Stacey met Kristy and Mary Anne and was made the fourth member of the BSC.
The club was a success from the beginning. I think this was for two reasons. One, Kristy knows how to advertise. Two, Kristy is the perfect club president, since she also knows how to run things. Why was advertising so important in the beginning? Because that's how people learned about the BSC. The club members had decided to meet Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons from five-thirty until six. But how would anyone else know that? They made up fliers and distributed them in the neighborhood. They placed an ad in the local paper. And they told everyone they could think of about their new business.
What a success! By the middle of that school year, when Dawn moved to town, the girls were doing so much business that they needed a fifth club member. And later, when Stacey had moved back to New York, she was replaced by both Mal (who was finally old enough to sit) and me. Of course, after her parents' divorce, when Stacey returned to Sto-neybrook, she rejoined the club immediately. We have seven members now (plus two as-
sociate members whom I'll describe later) and I think that's enough!
Remember when I said that Kristy is the perfect president? This is why: Besides deciding that the club should meet three times a week and that we should advertise our services, she decided that everyone should have certain responsibilities, or hold a certain position in the club. So Kristy became the president. (After all, the BSC was her idea.) As president, she's responsible for running things smoothly, and for continuing to come up with great ideas. Here are some of her ideas:
Ч To keep a club notebook. The notebook is more of a diary. Kristy insists that each of us write up every single job we go on, and that we read everyone's entries once a week. I'll tell you something. Most of us do not like writing in that diary. It's boring. But Ч we all like reading the notebook. Now that's interesting. We find out what happened when our friends were sitting, how they solved sticky sitting situations, and what's going on with the families we sit for regularly. (It's always helpful to know if a child has developed a new fear, has been sick, is having trouble in school, or if a child has a new interest, has done well at something, has a new friend, etc.)
Ч To keep a club record book containing information about the clients of the BSC. For
instance, their names, addresses, and phone numbers, the ages of their kids, and the rates they pay. Also included in the record book are the appointment pages, where Mary Anne (the club secretary) schedules all of our jobs; and a section where Stacey (the club treasurer) records how much money we earn while sitting.
Ч To create Kid-Kits. Here is Kristy at her brilliant best! Kristy took a simple idea (that, for whatever reason, kids like playing with other people's toys better than their own), and turned it into, well, another great idea. A Kid-Kit is a box (we each have one) that we fill with our own (old) games, books, and toys, as well as some new things that have to be replaced from time to time, such as crayons and other art materials, coloring books, sticker books, etc. We sometimes take the kits with us when we baby-sit. They're great for rainy days, for entertaining new sitting charges, and sometimes for absolutely no special reason! The kids love Kid-Kits, so when their parents come home, they find happy faces, which makes them more likely to call the BSC the next time they need a sitter.
Whew! Sometimes Kristy's brain is hard to keep up with.
Okay. On to the vice-president of the BSC. That's Claudia. She gets to be vice-president
because we hold our meetings in her bedroom. Her room was chosen because Claud has her own telephone and her own phone number. This is important (and lucky). During our meetings we spend a lot of time on the phone. It's nice to know that when we use Claud's phone, we aren't tying up some adult's line for a half an hour three times a week. Claud is very generous Ч with her room, her phone, and her junk food (club snacks). She deserves to be vice-president.
As I mentioned before, Mary Anne is our secretary. This is a fairly complicated task. In order to schedule sitting jobs, Mary Anne has to keep track of my ballet lessons, Claud's art classes, Mal's orthodontist appointments, Sta-cey's weekends with her father, etc. Then she records our, jobs on the appointment pages. That's not easy. Plus, she's in charge of keeping the information in the record book up-to-date.
In fact, Mary Anne is in charge of the entire record book Ч except for one section. That section is Stacey's, where, as our treasurer, she makes a list of the money we earn. This is just for our information. Each of us gets to keep all the money from every job we take. (We don't try to divide up the money or anything.) We do, however, have to contribute club dues at the Monday meetings. We all hate
parting with our money, but dues are important. Stacey puts the money in our treasury (a manila envelope) and doles it out as needed. We spend dues money on lots of things. We use it to buy more items for the Kid-Kits. We use it to help pay Claud's phone bill. We use it to pay Charlie Thomas to drive Kristy to and from meetings now that she no longer lives in the neighborhood. And sometimes we use it for something fun, such as food for a BSC sleepover. Stacey is a good treasurer because she's an excellent math student. (She actually likes math.)
Dawn is called an alternate officer, which is like being an understudy in a play. She knows the duties and responsibilities of every club member, so she can fill in if someone has to miss a meeting. (When Stacey temporarily moved back to New York, Dawn became the treasurer. She gladly gave up that job when Stacey returned. She couldn't stand our grumbling each time she collected dues. Besides, she hates math.)
Guess what Mallory and I are in charge of. Nothing. Well, I don't really mean nothing. We're good baby-sitters. It's just that because we're eleven, and the unfortunate product of overprotective parents, we're not allowed to sit at night (unless we're sitting for our own brothers and sisters). Mostly, we sit after
school and on weekend days. Because of this, we are the club's junior officers. Sometimes I feel a little unimportant since when Mal or I miss a meeting, Dawn doesn't have to do anything to replace us. However, Kristy assures us that we're necessary. Without Mal and me to.take on so many daytime jobs, she says, she and the older club members would have to turn down some of the evening jobs.
I know that makes us sound busy, and we are. (Busy, I mean.) We're busy enough so that we had to sign on those two associate members I told you about earlier. An associate member doesn't come to club meetings but is a reliable sitter we can call on in case a job is offered to the club that none of us full-time members can take. You'd think that with seven people and seven schedules, that wouldn't happen. But it does. Occasionally. And when it does, we offer the job to one of our associates. (That way, we don't have to disappoint our clients.) Our associate members are Shannon Kilbourne, a friend of Kristy's who lives in her new neighborhood, and Logan Bruno. Logan is Mary Anne's boyfriend!
This is how a club meeting typically starts. My friends and I trickle into Claud's room between five-fifteen and five-thirty. I usually
arrive dangerously close to five-thirty. That's because often I rush to a club meeting after I've had a ballet lesson in Stamford.
Kristy is always sitting in Claud's director's chair, wearing a visor, a pencil stuck over one ear. This is her Presidential Look. She keeps an eye on the digital alarm clock, which is our official club timepiece. As soon as those numbers turn from 5:29 to 5:30, Kristy is on the case. She sits up straight, trying to appear as tall as possible. Then she says, "Any club business?" This is the clue for Stacey to collect dues (if it's Monday). It's also the time for us to raise questions or to talk about problems. Usually these are baby-sitting questions or problems. But not always.
The day after Becca came home with her sad news about the Kids Club, I was still thinking about Mr. Katz and Ms. Simon. When Kristy said,' "Any club business?" I cleared my throat.
"Yes, Jessi?" said Kristy.
"I've been thinking. You know the Kids Club?" I began. Everyone nodded, so I explained what was happening.
"That's pretty rotten," Kristy commented when I had finished talking.
"Yeah. Nicky and Vanessa are really upset," added Mallory.
"So's Becca," I said. "And that's what I was thinking about. There must be some way to keep the club going."
"I can't believe no one will volunteer to take Ms. Simon's place/' said Dawn.
"Me, neither. . . . But I have this idea."
"What?" asked Mary Anne.
"I could take Ms. Simon's place."
Silence.
"I want to help out/' I began.
"Jessi, what aren't you telling us?" said Kristy.
"My idea. I haven't told you the whole idea yet. This is Ч oh, all right. I'll just say it. I thought that maybe, instead of baby-sitting for the next month or so, we could do some volunteer work. I'd really like to help with the Kids Club."
I had absolutely no idea how the other members of the BSC were going to react to this. Mal and I don't usually make major suggestions, us being junior members and all. It occurred to me that Kristy might kill me.
I didn't dare look up. But after a few moments of silence, Mal poked me in the ribs. "What?" I asked her. And then I looked up.
Everyone was grinning.
"That," said Stacey, "is a terrific idea. You know what my mom was telling me the other day? She said that a diabetes clinic is going to
open soon in Stoneybrook. And they're looking for kids or teenagers with diabetes who will meet kids who've just been diagnosed, and talk to them and give them advice and stuff. I'd like to do that. I wish someone had talked to me when I first got sick."
"I bet we could all find something to do," said Kristy.
"Maybe I could teach art!" exclaimed Claud.
"What about the club, though?" asked Dawn, frowning. "We can't run the BSC and volunteer, can we? I mean, I want to help out, but . . ."
"We'll think of something," said Kristy, who was obviously too excited to think straight about anything. Her mind was running in a zillion directions. "I wonder if I could help out in the class for special kids at school. Or, remember when we baby-sat for Susan?" (Susan's family lives not far from Claud. Susan has a disorder called autism.) "Maybe I could work with autistic kids somehow. Or, wait! I could tutor! Let's see. What subject am I really good in? Okay, you guys. We have a mission. I call an emergency club meeting for Saturday afternoon. By then, we all should have looked into places that need volunteers."
Wow! I had sent us on a mission!
Chapter 4.
"Thank you for saving my life," said Becca dramatically.
I smiled. "Any time."
"You know what this means?" asked my sister. "It means that now we won't be even until I've saved your life."