I never wanted to move to Connecticut.

I mean it. When my dad came home in January and said his company was sending him to an office in Stamford, and we were going to live in a town called Stoneybrook, I went up to my room and lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling for two hours. My best friend Danielle came over and stared at the ceiling with me. We were both pretty sure my life was over.

I guess I should tell you about myself. My name is Kathryn Whitt, and I am thirteen and in eighth grade. I have long brown hair that I wear in a braid most of the time, and freckles, and I'm kind of tall for my age, which is fine except at school dances. I love horses even though I have never owned one. I love to write in my notebook. And I love kids. Back in Ohio I baby-sat for practically my whole street. I even took a baby-sitting course at the Y and got a certificate, which is in a frame on my wall.

The only other person in my family who is a kid is my little brother, Sam. He is seven. He is a pest, but he is a cute pest, so I let him get away with a lot.

We moved in on a Saturday in April. Our new house is on Hollow Brook Lane. It is white with green shutters and a big maple tree in the front yard, and I have to admit my new room is bigger than my old one. It has a window seat. I always wanted a window seat.

We weren't even done carrying in boxes when the doorbell rang. It was our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Saucier, with a plate of oatmeal cookies and two kids hiding behind her. The boy was Martin, who is eight and had a Band-Aid on his chin. The girl was Kelsey, who is six and was holding a stuffed rabbit with one ear.

"This is Mr. Buttons," Kelsey told me. "He's shy."

"So am I, sometimes," I told her, and she smiled at me. I liked her right away.

Mrs. Saucier noticed. "Do you baby-sit, Kathryn?" she asked.

I said yes, a lot, and told her about my certificate.

"Well, that's wonderful," she said. "Most of the time I call the Baby-sitters Club. But it's nice to know there's somebody right next door."

"The what?" I said.

So Mrs. Saucier told me. There is a club of girls in Stoneybrook who all baby-sit. They meet three times a week, and parents call them during the meetings, and the parents get a great sitter every time. "They're wonderful girls," she said. "Martin and Kelsey love them."

After they went home, Sam ate four cookies and I went up to my new room and sat in the window seat. A whole club. Of girls who love baby-sitting, just like me.

That night I opened my notebook and wrote on a brand-new page:

GOAL: JOIN THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB.

Then I underlined it three times.

My first day at Stoneybrook Middle School, I got lost three times. The third time I ended up in the art room by accident, which turned out to be the luckiest accident of my life.

Because that is where I met Claudia Kishi.

You could not miss Claudia. She was wearing a big white shirt she had painted sunflowers on herself, and purple leggings, and earrings shaped like tiny paintbrushes, and her long black hair was up in a braid that went around her head like a crown. I had never seen anybody so cool in my whole life.

"Are you new?" she asked. "You look lost. Sit here." So I did. We painted pears. Claudia's pear looked like it was in a museum. Mine looked like a potato. Claudia said it was "very interesting," which I think was her being nice.

At lunch Claudia waved me over to her table, and that's how I met the rest of them. There was Kristy Thomas, who is short and has a ponytail and talks really fast, mostly about softball. There was Mary Anne Spier, who is quiet and asked me all about Ohio and actually listened. And there was Stacey McGill, who has curly blond hair and looks like she walked out of a magazine. Abby Stevenson came by for a minute and made everybody laugh, and then she had to go to soccer.

And they were the Baby-sitters Club. All of them!

Here is how the BSC works, in case you have never read one of the books. (If you have, you can skip this part.) Kristy started the club because her mom had a really hard time finding a sitter one night. She thought, what if parents could call one number and reach a whole bunch of sitters at once? So now the club meets every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 5:30 to 6:00 in Claudia's room, because Claudia has her own phone. Parents call during the meetings. Mary Anne keeps track of everybody's schedules in the record book, and Stacey collects dues every Monday to pay for things like Claudia's phone bill. And everybody writes up their jobs in the club notebook so the others know what's going on with every kid. Kristy is very organized.

Anyway, at lunch I got up all my courage and asked, "Does the club ever take new members?"

It got very quiet. Kristy and Mary Anne looked at each other.

"Sometimes," Kristy said finally. "We'd have to talk about it."

My heart sank all the way down into my sneakers.

But then on Saturday morning, Mrs. Saucier knocked on our door looking frantic. She had to drive to the hospital to see her sister, who had just had a baby, and every single BSC member was busy at a Krushers game. "Kathryn, could you possibly?" she said.

I could possibly!

Martin and I built a fort out of couch cushions that was so good he made me promise never to take it apart. Then Kelsey started crying, because Mr. Buttons was missing. We looked everywhere. Under the beds, in the toy box, in the bathtub, in the refrigerator (Martin's idea). Then I remembered that Mrs. Saucier had said she'd done laundry that morning. I opened the dryer, and there was Mr. Buttons, warm and fluffy and very clean.

"He took a bath!" Kelsey shouted. She hugged him for about ten minutes.

When Mrs. Saucier came home, she said I was a lifesaver. I walked back across the yard feeling about ten feet tall.

On Monday Claudia found me at my locker. "Kristy says come to the meeting Wednesday," she said. "Five-thirty. Don't be late. I mean it. Kristy is really, really serious about being on time."

On Wednesday I was on Claudia's front step at 5:22. I was so nervous I had to sit on my hands.

Claudia's room is the best room I have ever seen. There are paintings and drawings all over the walls, and jars of brushes everywhere, and a pottery lamp she made herself. Claudia pulled a bag of pretzels out from under her mattress and a box of cookies out of a shoebox marked ART SUPPLIES and passed them around. Mary Anne sat on the bed with the record book in her lap. Stacey sat next to her and took a pretzel, but no cookies. Two younger girls sat on the floor and said hi. That was Mallory Pike, who has red hair and glasses and was writing something in a notebook (I liked her right away), and Jessi Ramsey, who sat with her legs out in a perfect ballet stretch like it was nothing.

And Kristy sat in a director's chair, wearing a visor, with a pencil stuck over her ear. At exactly 5:30 by Claudia's digital clock, she said, "Okay. This meeting is called to order."

Then she turned to me. "Kathryn, we have some questions for you."

It was like a job interview! Kristy asked how long I had baby-sat. (Three years.) She asked what I would do if a kid had a bad nosebleed. (Sit them up, lean them forward a little, pinch the soft part of the nose, and stay calm. They taught us that at the Y.) She asked what I would do if two brothers would not stop fighting. (Give them each a job, in different rooms.) She asked if I was allergic to anything. (Cats, a little.) She wrote down every answer.

Then the phone rang.

Claudia picked it up. "Baby-sitters Club!" she said. Then her eyes got big and she held out the phone to Kristy, and Kristy listened, and then Kristy looked at me with a very strange expression.

"That was Mrs. Saucier," she said. "She needs a sitter Friday night." Kristy took a deep breath. "She asked for you. By name."

Mary Anne smiled at me. Mallory gave me a thumbs-up from the floor.

Kristy cleared her throat. "We'll vote on Friday," she said. "At the meeting. Club rules." But I am almost positive I saw her smile a little bit when she wrote it down.

After the meeting I walked home the long way, past the elementary school and the little park with the duck pond, because I was too excited to go inside. Sam was waiting for me on our front step.

"Are you in the club?" he asked.

"Not yet," I said. "Maybe Friday."

He thought about it. "If they say no, you can be in my club," he said. "It's a dinosaur club. You have to roar."

I told him I would keep it in mind.

Would they vote yes? Would I finally get to be a member of the Baby-sitters Club? I didn't know. I wouldn't know until Friday.

Friday was a whole two days away.

TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK #2:
KATHRYN'S FIRST JOB!