Taffy Sinclair 002 - Taffy Sinclair Strikes Again (3 page)

Sunday afternoon Pink came over, and he and Mom watched "Bowling for Bucks" on television. Pink is always saying that he is going to try to get on that show someday, and Mom always says that he's good enough to win a lot of money if he does. I couldn't help watching Mom and Pink more than usual. I could see they really liked each other. Mom made popcorn with lots of butter, and twice she put extra ice in his soda glass. I wondered if my FORMER friends would think
she
was boy crazy because she did those things.

Pink was nice to her, too. He stirred the popcorn while she poured the melted butter in, and he told her that her hair looked nice. I started to get really sad and lonely again, watching them together and wondering if
Randy Kirwan or some other cute boy and I would ever be like that. But then I remembered my great new plan and felt better.

I could hardly wait to get to school on Monday to put it into action, but when I got there, I discovered I had a problem to deal with first—the enemy.

The first one I saw was Katie. She was slouched against the front gate, looking about as friendly as a prison warden and giving dirty looks to everybody who went through. I couldn't help thinking how right I had been that she was probably a radical, and I stuck my nose up in the air and sailed right past her. I certainly didn't need her for a friend.

Then I heard a funny noise and turned around. It was Beth, and she was looking at me and making loud smooching sounds that were beginning to draw a crowd.

"If it isn't Randy Kirwan's lover girl," she said, cooing.

I could feel my whole body going numb. What if Randy was standing close enough to hear her? Then what would he think of me? I hated Beth Barry more than I'd ever hated anyone in my life.

"A lot you know!" I screamed. "You've got the mentality of a house plant!"

I whirled around and almost ran smack into Taffy Sinclair. She had been standing there eavesdropping, and she would probably tell everybody in the whole school what Beth had said. I took off for the school
building with tears smarting my eyes, but it was like running through a mine field. Christie was standing beside the swings glaring in my direction. And Melanie sat on the steps, watching me like a b
ig, pop-
eyed toad as I went by. When I got inside the school and closed the doors behind me, I felt like I'd been in a war. I hated all my FORMER friends, and it was plain to see they hated me, too.

I don't know why I turned around and looked through the big glass doors to the school yard again, but I'm glad I did. What I saw made me burst out laughing with surprise. Beth was sticking her tongue out at Christie who was shouting something at her that I couldn't hear. Katie must have come up to the school right behind me because Melanie had gotten up and the two of them were standing toe to toe, and practically nose to nose, yelling at each other.

It serves them right, I thought as I headed for the sixth-grade room. I had noticed Taffy Sinclair watching the whole thing, and she had a funny smile on her face, like the cat that has just eaten the canary, I thought. She was obviously enjoying our problems, but I didn't have time to worry about her right then. The rest of the morning was sort of fun. We all took special pains to snub one another. We kept our noses so high in the air that if the sprinkler system had come on, all five of us would probably have drowned.

Lunchtime was a little harder. My FORMER friends and I had sat together in the cafeteria practically all of our lives. I stood just inside the lunchroom door shifting my lunch bag from one hand to the other and feeling very self-conscious. I looked around to see who else I might sit with. There was Mary Sweeney. She had picked me second to be on her field hockey team in gym class the week before. But she was sitting with Gloria Drexler and Marcie Bee, who were her best friends, and they were whispering and giggling together and not looking at anybody else.

Just then Curtis Trowbridge walked by, carrying a hot lunch tray. He gave me a bucktoothed smile. "Hi, Jana," he said. "Have you heard what's happening this afternoon?"

"No," I said, trying to sound as disinterested as I possibly could. Curtis Trowbridge was the nerd of the world, and I did not want to be seen talking to him.

"We're going to get Wiggins," he said, and his grin got even bigger and toothier than before. "Watch the clock over her desk. At exactly one-fifteen everybody is supposed to sneeze. Isn't that great?"

I had to admit it was. It was fun to play tricks on Wiggins. Sneezing in unison was a new one, and I wondered what she would do about it.

Unconsciously I must have smiled at Curtis or done something equally weird that gave him the idea I liked him because the next thing he said made me cringe.

"Who are you having lunch with? Want to sit with me?"

"Sorry—um—" I stammered. "I'm sitting over there with my friend." I started walking in the direction opposite from the one he was heading in, hoping I'd find somebody to sit with—in a hurry.

"Maybe there's room for me," he said, turning and following me.

Leave it to an airhead like Curtis Trowbridge not to know when he isn't wanted. He's a mathematical genius, just like Christie, except he lives on another planet.

In my hurry I almost bumped into Melanie. She was just coming through the door and was looking around for someone to sit with, too. Our noses shot into the air so fast you would have thought someone was pulling them up with strings. Now I really had to find someone to sit with. I couldn't let Melanie think that I didn't have any other friends or that Curtis Trowbridge was the best I could do.

Looking around the cafeteria one more time, I spotted the perfect place. I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before. Over in the corner and sitting all by herself was Taffy Sinclair. There is room for at least eight kids at each lunchroom table, and the little kids in the lower grades can cram in ten or twelve. But nobody else was sitting with Taffy, not even Mona Vaughn, which was really unusual because Mona absolutely worshipped Taffy and followed her around like a pet dog. Anyway, there was plenty of room, and maybe I wouldn't have to sit too close to either Taffy or Curtis. No matter what, it would have to do for then. I headed for Taffy's table, walking slowly and trying to look as casual as I could. I was also trying to figure out just where to sit down. If I sat too close, Taffy might get mad and do something really snotty. After all, we weren't exactly the best of friends. But I didn't want to sit too close to Curtis, either. On the other hand, if I sat too far from Taffy, my FORMER friends would know we weren't together and think I didn't have any friends at all. I decided to compromise and sit across from her, but in the middle of the table.

Taffy was busy breaking her sandwich into about eight pieces. I supposed that grown-ups would call it dainty, the way she barely opened her mouth and took little bitty bites of those little bitty sandwiches, but I thought it was pretty strange. I wouldn't even call it normal.

"Hi, Jana," Taffy said, giving me a big smile, crooked bicuspid and all.

"Huh?" I said. "Oh, hi, Taffy." Her smile caught me by surprise and that was all I could think of to say.

"Hi, Taffy," Curtis said as he sat next to her. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her move away the tiniest bit.

I pulled my cream-cheese-and-jelly sandwich out of my bag and plopped it down on the table. Then I started eating and tried to figure out what to do next. I didn't want my FORMER friends to think Taffy and I were
really
good friends. She was just the best I could do right then, and I was going to have to think of something else fast. I jumped at the sound of breaking glass and turned around. Some little kid had dropped a hot lunch tray. That wouldn't have mattered except that I came face to face with Christie sitting about three tables away. She glared at me, and I glared at her. She was sitting with Alexis Duvall, a new girl in school, and she shot me a look of triumph. I had to say something to Taffy to show we were together, and I had to say it right then.

I turned to her and said, sputtering, "Guess what?" Taffy looked at me with those big blue eyes and smiled at me again. I wasn't sure I could take much more of that.

"What?"

For a minute I just stared at her, trying to think of something to say. I was about to panic when I remembered the great news I'd gotten from Curtis Trowbridge a few minutes before.

"Curtis says we're going to get Wiggins this afternoon. Isn't that right, Curtis?"

"Sure is." It was his turn to grin. I was getting tired of seeing so many teeth.

Taffy's eyes brightened and I hoped all my FORMER friends were looking. I scooted a little closer to her end of the table just in case they were.

"At exactly one-fifteen everybody in the whole class is supposed to sneeze!"

Taffy was smiling. Curtis was smiling, and it only
seemed right that I should smile, too, so I did. There the three of us sat, smiling like idiots.

"That sounds like fun," said Taffy. "I can hardly wait."

As I said, I was feeling pretty stupid with that big grin on my face, but just then something happened that was too wonderful to be true.

Randy Kirwan walked by our table. He had already finished eating and was heading toward the door. At the very same moment that I looked up at him with that fake smile pasted all across my face, he looked at me and smiled back. I was so happy I thought I'd die
.

Everybody was whispering about the great sneeze caper in the classroom after lunch, but when Wiggins came in, we clammed up in a hurry. I could tell by the way she acted that she didn't suspect a thing. I had a hard time keeping a straight face when she passed out worksheets about compound sentences at 1:10. Five minutes to go. I thought I'd probably explode before that.

Also, I couldn't figure out why Taffy Sinclair had acted so jolly in the cafeteria. It just wasn't like her. Maybe she was coming down with the flu or something.

Wiggins sat back down at her desk and began writing in a notebook. Little did she know, it was a
lmost zero hour.
1:12. I could hardly sit still. I couldn't do my worksheet, and I was afraid to look at anyone else to see what they were doing. 1:13. I was ge
tting dizzy from watching that
sweep second
hand go around the clock. 1:14.
The final countdown. Forty seconds. Thirty seconds. Twenty seconds. Ten seconds. I opened my mouth so I'd be ready. 1:15.

"A-A-A-CHO-O-O-O!"

We had done it. We had sneezed in unison at 1:15. Wiggins looked surprised for an instant, but then her eyes took on a devilish glow.

"Gesundheit," she said.

That broke the tension, and everybody started squirming and saying "gesundheit" to everybody else. Hardly anybody noticed when she stood up
.

"Class," she said in her general's voice.

We all got quiet, wondering what she was going to do.

"I'm sorry to hear that you've all caught colds."

She said it so sweetly that my heart started thumping. I knew she was softening us up for something. Just then she grabbed the tissue box off the corner of her desk and started marching up and down the aisles, pulling tissues out of that box and dropping one in each kid's lap. When she went past me, she was moving so fast she was almost skipping. It was really something to see. After she had handed
tissues out to everyone, she pu
lled another one out and held it to her nose.

"Okay, class. Tissues to your noses, please," she instructed.

When we had all done that, she held a long, bony finger in the air and said, "On the count of three, everybody blow. One. Two.
Three
."

Everybody blew, all right. It sounded as if a herd of bull moose had invaded Mark Twain Elementary. We all kept on giggling and blowing our noses until she held up her hand for silence.

"Now that we all feel better, let's get busy with our worksheets again," she said in a very calm voice.

Good old Wiggins. You could always count on her. She never got mad. But then, we could never
get
her, either. She was just too clever
.

On
the way home from school I had the perfect chance to watch Taffy Sinclair in action. I had taken a different route in order to avoid being seen walking alone by any of my FORMER friends, and when I turned one corner, there she was about a half a block ahead of me, walking w
ith Scott Daly and Mark Peters.
Scott and Mark are two of the other cute boys whose pictures I had considered having blown up to poster size. The three of them were walking along with Taffy in the middle, and the boys were paying so much attention to her that they probably wouldn't have looked up if a parade had gone by. It almost made me sick until I realize
d that
very soon cute boys would jump at the chance to walk with
me.

The first thing I noticed about Taffy was that when she turned her head to look from one of them to the other, she sort of flipped her long, blond hair so that it brushed across a shoulder. That looked easy enough. Then I remembered that my hair was too short to brush across a shoulder, but I practiced moving my head that way a couple of times, anyway, since I planned to let my hair grow long like Taffy's.

The next thing I noticed was the way she walked. She was moving slowly, and each time she took a step with her right foot, she sort of twisted her hips in that direction. Then when she took a step with her left foot, she twisted back that way. I watched her walk like that for a minute, thinking that she was twisting her hips back and forth so much she was probably covering more territory sideways than she was going forward. Walking like that was going to take some practice.

I thought about how I walked. I sort of leaned forward and took short, fast steps. In fact, Pink had once said that I walked li
ke someone in one of those old-
fashioned movies when the film goes really fast. I had seen one of those old movies once, and now I could understand why no cute boys ever wanted to walk with me.

I tried to remember how Mom walked when she was with Pink, but for the life of me I couldn't. I guess I had just never paid that much attention before. I made a mental note to watch her the next time I had the chance.

Anyway, I slowed down and started walking like Taffy Sinclair. I had to concentrate really hard at first to remember which hip to swing out, and I couldn't help wondering how she could walk that way and flip her hair, too. It would be a little like that old game of trying to rub your stomach and pat your head at the same time. But I decided to try it, and it wasn't so hard after all. I got the hang of it after a couple of tries.

I was walking along behind Taffy and Scott and Mark, swinging my hips and flipping my hair like crazy, when disaster struck. I hadn't realized they had almost reached a corner, and all of a sudden they stopped for a red light. That wouldn't have been so bad except that Scott
looked back over his shoulder—
straight at me.

I froze with my right hip stuck out and my imaginary long hair flipped over my right shoulder, and I could feel my ears getting hot.

"Hi, Jana," he said, but he had a funny look on his face.

"Hi," I said back. I tried to straighten up as fast as I could, but I didn't make it before Taffy and Mark turned around, too. I thought about saying something about how much fun it had been to sneeze in unison in Wiggins's class that afternoon, but Taffy gave me a look that would have frozen red-hot lava, so I kept my mouth shut. Finally, the light turned green and they went on.

It really burned me up that Taffy had given me such a snotty look after she had been so friendly in the cafeteria. Probably she had noticed how much attention Scott had paid to me just then and she was jealous. It would have served her right if he had decided to walk the rest of the way home with me.

When I got to our apartment I found that Mom wasn't home from work yet, so I pitched my books on my bed and hurried into her bedroom to practice walking like Taffy Sinclair in front of her full-length mirror. I have to admit that at first I looked pretty funny, and I crossed and uncrossed my fingers three times that Scott hadn't thought so, too. After a little while I figured out just how far to swing my hips to look like I was walking naturally, and it started to be fun. Then I added flipping my hair once or twice, but it looked slightly strange. I decided that would have to wait until it grew longer.

After I had finished practicing, I went to my room and started my homework, but I had trouble concentrating. I kept thinking about my FORMER friends and how jealous they were going to be. But more than that, they would be sorry for the things they had said. They would probably apologize, but first they would just follow me around, looking sad. I would be nice to them, of course, and even accept their apologies, but I would be too busy talking to cute boys to spend much time with them anymore.

Just then I heard Mom come home. She must have had a pretty good day because I could hear her singing to herself as she put her coat away. She had been in a good mood a lot lately. I was glad of that because she could be a holy terror when she wasn't.

"Jana? Are you home?"

"Yeah, Mom," I called. I was happy for the excuse to stop doing homework so I closed my notebook and went into the living room where she was tearing around picking up newspapers and straightening the cushions on the sofa.

"What's up?" I asked. Mom never tore around like that after work. She was always too tired.

"Oh, nothing much," she said. "I just i
nvited Pink over for supper.
"

"On a week night? He usually only comes over on the weekend."

Mom sort of blushed. "I thought he might enjoy a regular meal for a change. He just about lives on hot dogs and canned soup. Anyway, would you run to the store for me? There are a couple of things I need."

A couple of things turned out to be practically an
entire cart full of food, but I
didn't mind going after it. It gave me another chance to practice my Taffy Sinclair walk.

Pink was at the apartment when I got back. He was sitting on the kitchen stool watching Mom cook and grinning all over the place. I tried to see if Mom was walking any differently now that Pink was there, but our kitchen is so small that she fried the chicken, cooked the vegetables, and made the salad practically without taking a step.

I watched Mom all through supper to see if she would flip her hair or anything. She didn't, but Pink probably wouldn't have noticed if she had. From the way he ate, you would have thought he was nearly starved. I didn't really get the chance to see Mom walk all evening. They sat in front of the TV the rest of the time. I never realized before how much those two sat around. Finally, I excused myself and went to my room.

I finished my homework and got ready for bed before I took my Miss Piggy poster off the wall. There was Randy, smiling at me as usual. I strolled around the room a couple of times doing my Taffy Sinclair routine. This is going to be fun, I thought as I snuggled into bed
.

The next morning I decided to walk to school the same route I'd come home the day before so I could avoid my FORMER friends again. When I got to the first corner, I was really surprised to find Taffy Sinclair standing there as if she were waiting for somebody. What surprised me even more was that when she saw me coming she smiled again. I thought about turning around to see if there was somebody walking behind me that she was smiling at, but before I could she started talking.

"Hi, Jana. Want to walk to school together?"

"I don't care," I said. I couldn't believe she had asked me that. Not after the way we'd always hated each other. I knew she didn't have many friends, and I remembered how once, a long time ago, Mom had said maybe she just didn't know how to make them, but this was almost too much. Here she was walking to school with me, and all I had done was talk to her in the cafeteria the day before and tell her about the big sneeze.

"Guess what?" she said as the light changed and we headed across the street.

"What?" I asked. I couldn't imagine what Taffy Sinclair could possibly know that would be of interest to me.

"I know why those girls are mad at you and are telling everybody you're boy crazy and everything."

I stopped right in the middle of the intersection. Had my FORMER friends actually told Taffy about our so-called self-improvement club? A Greyhound bus could have knocked me flat and I wouldn't have felt a thing. Were they ganging up on me and telling lies about me? Something was going on. Otherwise, how would Taffy know about this? Then I remembered that Taffy had said she knew
why
they were saying those things behind my back.

"Why?" I shouted, but Taffy didn't hear me because she had kept right on walking and was already at the curb. I ran to catch up. "Why?" I shouted again. "Come on and tell me."

Taffy looked at me and smiled mysteriously. "I can't. It's a secret—exc
ept that a lot of people know."

"If so many people already know, then it's not a secret and you have to tell me. Come on, Taffy. What is it?"

"All I can tell you is that they're jealous."

"Jealous?" By now I was just about to go berserk. What could she possibly know that would make my FORMER friends jealous? You would have thought I hadn't said a word. Taffy just kept on walking and looking straight ahead.

"I won't tell anybody you told me," I said. "I promise I won't." I knew I was begging, but I didn't care. I had to know.

"I guess it would serve them right if you found out," she said, and I almost fainted with relief. "There's this boy who has a crush on you, and they all think he's really cute. They're so jealous that he likes you that they've really flipped."

Now it all made sense. No wonder they had said such mean and awful things about me. They were jealous because a cute boy was crazy about me, and they had all written "boy crazy" on my lists of faults just to get even with me. But that hadn't been enough, and now this cute boy was crazier about me than ever, and they were still trying to get even. I couldn't wait to find out who he was.

"Who is he?" I asked casually, trying to sound as if I got that kind of news every day.

"I can't tell."

"Why not?"

"He made me promise I wouldn't."

I gasped. "You mean that
he
actually told
you
he liked
me
?
"

"Of course." Taffy batted her long eyelashes at me as if it were the most logical thing in the world. "But then he made me promise not to tell you. I thin
k he wants to tell you himself.
"

"Do you think he's really cute?" I asked.

"Of course," said Taffy.
"He's one of the cutest boys in the whole sixth grade."

All the rest of the way to school my heart was pounding like mad. I tried to think of which cute boys I had seen Taffy talking to recently. Of course I had seen her with Mark and Scott the day before after school. But I had also
seen her talking to Randy Kir
wan, the cutest one of all, just a few days before, and he had been talking to her in private. He had probably been telling her he had a crush on me.

I was beginning to have a different opinion of Taffy Sinclair. I was starting to think that maybe she wasn't such a bad person after all. I knew how it felt to be misunderstood, and now maybe I was finding out who my true friend really was.

For the next couple of days I watched Randy Kirwan every chance I got for signs that he had a crush on me and wanted to tell me about it himself. Of course, I didn't sit in class and stare at him or anything obvious like that. Mostly I pretended to be casual. Sometimes I'd drop my pencil so that I'd have to turn toward him to pick it up and just happen to glance his way. I also spent quite a lot of time with Taffy Sinclair. We walked back and forth to school and sat together in the cafeteria. I could tell it was driving my FORMER friends wild. I didn't care. Randy Kirwan liked me, and any day now he would come up to me and tell me himself.

"You probably didn't know it, but your friends have been saying things behind your back for a long time," said Taffy while we were eating lunch on Thursday.

"They're not my friends," I said. "They're my FORMER friends. Anyway, what have they
been say
ing?"

Taffy shrugged. "Oh, just snotty things. You know."

I did know. They had probably been going around for a long time telling everybody I was boy crazy and immature. They must have told the whole school if they had even told Taffy Sinclair.

"Come on. Let's go," I said. I didn't really want to hear any more about my FORMER friends. I blew up my sandwich bag and popped it and stuffed it and my napkin and my apple core into my lunch bag before I got up. I knew we would have to walk right past Christie Winchell to get out of the room. I stuck my nose up in the air, but when I got even with her table, I said in a big, loud voice, "Show-off!"

"Boy crazy!" she yelled back.

Then Taffy and I grinned at each
other and sailed right on past.