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From McSweeney’s: Taylor Kay Phillips imagines a world in which Hemingway writes The Babysitter’s Club.

The four girls were friends. In a small town, friends make the days long and the sadness short, though it is still there. The turtlenecked girl wore a cap and a ponytail. She sat in the beautiful girl’s room; the beautiful girl’s vices tucked in the nooks and the folds and the curves of the room. The beautiful girl offered another girl, the shy girl, a Snickers. The shy girl offered to break the thing in half and give half to yet another girl, the new girl. The new girl shook her permed hair no and sat on her hands. She thought of the needle in her bag.

The turtlenecked girl had an idea. The mother of the turtlenecked girl had many children. The night before, she had stood at the telephone trying to find care for the smallest boy. She had earned some peace, she told herself. But the girl down the street had homework, and the daughter of her colleague fell ill, and they were playing football down at the school that night so all the cheerleaders would be wrapped in the same colors as the men hurling themselves through the air into arms of love or hate. The turtlenecked girl watched her mother’s face fall and fall. At last, the phone went back in the cradle and they finished the green beans and the roast chicken. The turtlenecked girl’s mother sighed. One of the sons asked to be excused because he could eat no more. The turtlenecked girl took a pen and paper and scrawled her idea in the way that youth scrawls.

It would be a club. A club of baby-sitters. The mothers and fathers could call the beautiful girl’s room where all four girls would be, their feet tucked under them as they sat cross-legged on the floor, their backpacks piled in a corner like logs or shedded snakeskin. The girls would be available to babysit on the requested date or they would not. An available girl would take the job. This would happen three days a week. The next week, on the same days and at the same times, the mothers and fathers could call again. The turtlenecked girl told her idea to the others. They agreed. The meeting ended.

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