“I now call this meeting of the Baby Sitters Club to order” said Kristy Thomas, president of the Baby-Sitters Club. She took her job as president seriously. She often wore a visor and sat in a director’s chair when she ran the meetings. Today she was wearing a turtleneck and her favorite “I’m CEO, bitch!” sweatshirt. “All accounted for?” she asked adjusting the iPad in her lap.“Present,” piped up the other members, Mary Anne Spier and Dawn Shaefer.
“pMMMNNNTT” came a muffled voice from under the bed. The voice came from a pair of legs and a backside, which belonged to Claudia Kishi, who was searching furiously for something under her bed. Claudia hid her goodies in her bedroom because her parents didn’t approve of them. The meetings were held in Claudia’s room, because she was the only one in the group that had her own wireless network that allowed bitTorrents. For that reason, Claudia was also Vice President.
“What is that smell?” Dawn said, scrunching her nose and flipping her long dreadlocks over her shoulder. Dawn was the group’s bleeding heart, tree-hugging liberal.
“Nevermind that,” said Kristy impatiently. “Where’s Stacey?”
Suddenly, Claud’s head emerged from under the bed. “She’s skyping in from the N.Y.C. She went back this weekend to go to some loft party in DUMBO.”
“CLAUD!” the girls shrieked. “You’re wearing MEAT!”
“Yea, it’s so Gaga, don’t you think?” she said, smiling. Claudia, who was Japanese-American and had almond shaped eyes, was an artist and her clothing often looked like a work of art. She could be found wearing things like neon suspenders with bike shorts, earrings made out of fruit, sweaters knitted from human hair, a pair of pants made from discarded Zune players. But this time, she wore a fitted dress made from slabs of meat. She even fashioned a necklace made out of veins and entrails.
“I think I;m gonna be sick,” whined Dawn. “MEAT IS MURDER!”
“Wow,” said Mary Anne. “My dad would never let me wear anything like that,” she said wistfully. Mary Anne’s mother died when she was very little and was raised by her father, who was very conservative. She was not even allowed to watch Entourage! However, Mary Anne was the first one of them to have a steady boyfriend. Logan Bruno was nineteen and lived in a house with his electroclash band.
Kristy fiddled with her iPad and dialed Stacey on Skype. “Official business first.” The rest of the girls settled in, and Claudia dug into the stash she just found, breaking it into lines across the cover of her copy of Breaking Dawn.
Kristy set the iPad upright on Claud’s drafting table and Stacey’s face popped on the screen, except that the picture was shaking and the background sped past. “Sorry guys I’m on my iPhone at the Heatherette store. I need to look for something to wear for the party.” Stacey and Claudia, although were both thirteen years old like Kristy and Claudia, but oftentimes seemed more sophisticated. They certainly had more interest in clothes and boys than the rest of them.
“Oh Stace, while you are there, can you pick up those feather eyelashes for Karen? She has a pageant coming up next week.”
“I thought we were only supposed to be talking about official business” snapped Dawn, who was sitting on Claudia’s beanbag chair assembling Molotov Cocktails for a protest she was attending against Stoneybrook’s town hall.
“I know,” said Kristy shortly. There was still some tension between Kristy and Dawn. Kristy and Mary Anne had been best friends since they were just in diapers. When Dawn moved to Stoneybrook last year, she and Mary Anne had become best friends. There were both still a little bit jealous of each other. Not to mention that Kristy was a Mac user and Dawn was a PC user. Kristy supported Sarah Palin and Dawn was a geo-anarchist.
“Claud!” yelled Stacey from the iPad. “We just spent our BSC dues on an intervention! Do we need to do another one?” Claudia lifted her head up from snorting a line, some powder still on her nose. “No,” she said sheepishly. “My parents told me that if they have to pay for rehab one more time, they were going to stop paying for my art classes.”
“Claud, your art! You are so talented!” said Mary Anne.
“You’re right.” Claudia finally gave in. “I guess I should get rid of those Crystal Meth rocks.”
“Oh that’s what I was sitting on!” exclaimed Dawn, pulling the baggie of rocks out from under her behind.”I thought they were Jamie Newton’s marble collection!”
The girls burst into a fit of giggles. Kristy laughed too, in spite of herself.
“ok, ok. We should get started with the meeting. First order of business. How’s the treasury look, Stace?”
Stacey, who was a whiz at math, stopped looking through a rack of sequined thongs at Bergdorfs, sighed. “Not great you guys. Between the interventions for Claud and the pizza parties, not to mention the extra we spent on the gluten free pizzas, we are close to zilch.”
“Kristy, why don’t you just ask Watson for the money?” asked Claudia, adjusting the rump roast-slash-sleeve. Watson was Kristy’s stepfather, who was a real-life billionaire.
Kirsty stuck out her tongue at the suggestion. “No, I don’t want any of his help. He’s done enough to my family as it is, trying to get us to agree to that reality show. I think it’s time to launch another Kickstarter campaign, you guys.”
“I could offer some of my artwork as investor incentives” offered Claudia.
“I could offer a makeover,” said Stacey.
“I could offer my virginity” said Mary Anne.
“That sounds great everyone! We’ll launch next week.” Kristy checked the iPad for the agenda. “Now, let’s check the ticket queue for baby-sitting requests.”
“Let’s see: said Mary Anne, who was the Secretary of the Club and managed all the appointments. “Cokie Mason needs a sitter for little Jeffrey on Saturday.”
“Ugh, again?” asked Dawn, her mouth full of quinoa, kale and Four Loko..
“Yea, she has another callback to be cast on Teen Mom.”
Mary Anne read off the other requests and the girls scheduled the appointments. It was a hard job to keep track of all their schedules, with Stacey’s doctor’s appointments for her celliac’s disease, Claudia’s benders, Mary Anne’s pole dance aerobics, Karen’s pageants (Kristy was her handler) and Dawn’s protests.
“How are the Kid Kits looking these days?” asked Kristy.
“Pretty good,” answered Stacey, who was now at a restaurant in the Meatpacking District that only served 60 different varieties of rice pudding. “But the app seems to have some glitches with you run it with the new iPhone. There are some movies that you can’t stream directly.”
“We really need to make it an app for Android too” added Kristy. “We’ll have to ask the Pike triplets to program it.” Byron, Adam, and Jordan were identical triplets, frequent clients, and computer prodigies. Mary Anne, can you ask them when you sit for them tomorrow?…..Mary Anne? MARY ANNE??”
“Sorry,” Mary Anne blushed. “I was texting with Logan.”
Kristy made a vomit noise and stuck her tongue down her throat. Kristy had no time for silly things like gross boys. She had other things to think about, like her startup idea.
“One day you’ll start to see that boys are not so bad” said Stacy, now back at home in her bedroom with the posters of Sookie and Eric covering her walls.
“She’s just saving herself for Mark Zuckerberg,” teased Claud. Once again the girls dissolved into giggles.
Just then, Charlie, Kristy’s older brother pulled up outside to drive her home to the rich part of town. “I think the meeting is officially adjourned.”
As she ran down the stairs and out the front door, she logged onto her twitter account.
@msKristyThomas Another great BSC meeting #itsgoodtobeprez
Her mind wandered back to the time when she had the Great Idea for the BabySittersClub.biz…..
