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New York,New York!

Ann M. Martin

Claudia.

Chapter 1.

Well, I'll start with that last part. I am Claudia Kishi. I'm thirteen years old and I'm an eighth-grader at Stoneybrook Middle School. So are my friends Stacey McGill, Mary Anne Spier, Kristy Thomas, and Dawn Schafer. Mallory Pike and Jessi (short for Jessica) Ramsey, 'are sixth-graders at SMS. (They're best friends. ) And we are the main members of the BSC. Kristy Thomas founded the club. It was her idea to get together a group of her friends who like to baby-sit, and for us to hold meetings three times a week. While we're meeting (in my room — club headquarters), parents call and line up sitters for their kids. They know they're bound to find a sitter, since when they phone during a meeting they reach all seven of us. Our club has turned into a business, and it's very successful. It's fun, too. My friends and I love children, and we've had some interesting sitting adventures. Plus, we've had lots of good times together as a club. We've had sleepovers and pizza parties, studied together, gone shopping together, and taken trips together.

Now we would soon be off on another trip. ToNew York City . The home of museums, theaters, the Hard Rock Cafe, Bloomingdale's, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Macy's, South Street Seaport, Lord and Taylor, Madison Square Garden, Saks Fifth Avenue, and HIM. McKenzie Clarke.

Even though it was only Wednesday, and the BSC members wouldn't be leaving on their wonderful two-week'trip until Saturday, I had started packing. My suitcase was open on my bed. And already it was as cluttered and messy as my room usually is.

Anyway, my suitcase was cluttered with about three years' worth of clothing, and a whole pile of things that I couldn't decide whether to pack. Would I need suntan lotion and three bathing suits? Probably not. I took them out and dropped them on the floor. Then I began weeding out articles of clothing, entire outfits. I wondered if my other friends were having as hard a time packing as I was. We had all decided to pack that afternoon. Then we were going to ask Stacey her opinion of the things we were bringing. (Stacey is aNew York expert, since she grew up there. ) We figured that if Stacey said we'd made any horrible packing boo-boos, we'd have almost three days to straighten them out before we left on our trip.

Stacey, I knew, would be methodically placing just the right things in her suitcase. Since she's a little wild, her clothing would be sophisticated and extremely chilly. (My friends and I now say that something is "chilly" when it's really, really cool. ) Stacey would be packing black leggings (some with stirrups on the feet, some without) and baggy black and white and red tops. She would probably pack or wear her black cowboy boots. Stacey and I both look good in black and white. Stace's hair is blonde and curly, usually as the result of a perm (the curliness, I mean; not its color). Her eyes are a deep blue, and she has neat dimples when she smiles. Stacey wears very chilly jewelry, (so do I; we both have pierced ears), and she loves to do things that make herself look a little unusual. She might sprinkle glitter in her hair, or paint her nails silver.