Taffy Sinclair 002 - Taffy Sinclair Strikes Again (6 page)

A
fter what seemed like an hour, I finally got rid of Curtis Trowbridge and made it home. Mom had left a note on the fridge saying she would be late because she was getting her hair cut. I was glad. That gave me plenty of extra time in case Randy was slow getting home from school or his line was busy.

I went straight to my room and pitched my books on my bed. Then I peeled off my jacket and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked awful. My hair was a mess, and a bright red zit was starting to puff up beside my nose. How could I call Randy looking like such a wreck? I tore into the bathroom and washed my face. That only made my zit look redder. Then I spotted Mom's tawny beige makeup and dabbed a blob
on my zit. I smiled at myself with satisfaction and ran the hairbrush through my hair. I was ready. It was now or never.

I marched into the living room and stood squarely in front of the phone. Suddenly I felt prickly, as if a thousand spiders were creeping up my spine.

What if Randy
wasn't
glad I called, the way I imagined he would be in my daydreams at school? What if he had changed his mind about me since he talked to Taffy Sinclair? What if he even hung up when he found out who was calling? I would be so embarrassed I'd die. I would never be able to face him again. I would stop going to school and hide out in the basement of our apartment building. Then I would start the sixth grade all over again next year after Randy had gone on to junior high.

Suddenly I got this great idea. I would call Randy, but I would disguise my voice. I would tell him I was a friend of Jana Morgan, and I would talk so differently that he would never know who I was. That way I could still find out how he felt about me, but if he said something awful, he would never know he had said it to me.

I tried to remember all the movies I had seen where people disguised their voices on the phone. Didn't they always put a handkerchief or something over the part you talk into? I raced to my room. I didn't have a handkerchief but I had lots of knee socks. There were at least a dozen scattered around the floor. I grabbed a clean one out of the drawer, hurried back to the phone and pulled the sock onto the receiver until the toe was over the mouthpiece. Then I pushed down the button to shut off the sound of the dial tone and practiced my disguise.

"Hi. May I speak to Randy, please?"

Naturally my voice sounded high and squeaky and exactly like me. I didn't believe a knee sock over the mouthpiece would do much about that. I had to think of something else.

I stomped around the apartment for the next few minutes, looking for ideas. Nothing in the living room, the kitchen, or the bedrooms gave me a single clue. Then I stepped into the bathroom to dab some more makeup on my zit, and I saw what I was looking for. Cotton balls. Mom kept a little bowl of them on the vanity to use when she creamed her face. I grabbed a handful and started stuffing them into my mouth. They would surely change the way my voice sounded.

"Argh!"

I gagged and spit them into the sink. I tried to think of something else I could stuff into my mouth that wouldn't make me gag, but I couldn't think of anything. I would have to use them. Calling Randy was too important. I couldn't give up now.

As soon as I stopped gagging, I poked them inside my cheeks one at a time and then stood back to look at myself. I was certainly glad that telephones with TV screens were still in the future. My face looked as
swollen as if I had mononucleosis. I giggled at that. Everybody said mono was the kissing disease.

I knew Randy's phone number by heart. I had memorized it a long time ago when I first started to like him. I had memorized a lot of other things about him, too. Actually, I had memorized everything I could find out about him. For instance, I knew that his full name was Randal Spencer Kirwan and tha
t his birthday was January 31. I
knew that his father's name is Robert and that he's an electrician. His mother's name is Helen, and she sells real estate. He has an older sister, Kathy, in college and a dog, a registered keeshond named Heidi. I even saw his father's car once and memorized everything about it including the license plate number which is RK 4097.

Anyway, I picked up the receiver and held it so that my mouth was right over the toe of my knee sock while I dialed his number. It was hard to dial because my hands were shaky and my heart was pounding as if it were about to explode.

The phone rang. I held my breath and waited. Maybe I had picked a bad time to call. Maybe Randy was busy. Maybe his whole family was busy. Much too busy to answer the phone.

It rang again. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but the cotton balls made my mouth too dry. Maybe they were so busy that if they took the time to answer the phone they would be really mad at whoever was calling.

The third ring. I knew I had better hang up before disaster struck.

"Hello."

It was Randy!
He had answered the phone himself! I tried to say hello, but all that came out was a rush of air.

"Hello!" he repeated. "Is anyone there?"

I had been right. He had been too busy to answer the phone, and now he was mad. Maybe I should just hang up and not bother him any longer. No, I thought. This was my big chance. I had to go through with it.

"He-wo," I said, realizing I had forgotten to practice talking with cotton balls in my mouth. My tongue wouldn't go where it was supposed to, and my lips wouldn't meet, but I couldn't back out now. "Is this Wandy?"

"Yeah, but who is this?"

My disguise was working. Not only that, but I, Jana Morgan, was actually having a conversation with Randy Kirwan on the phone. I took a deep breath and went on.

"I'b a fwied of Ja-ha Orga, ad I'b cawig to ask you
how you weally feew about her.
"

"A friend of who? And why are you talking so funny, anyway?"

I grinned as well as I could with such a fat face. He really didn't know who I was.

"Ja-ha Orga," I said as clearly as I could, "ad I hab a code ad a stuffy node."

"Oh," he said sounding really puzzled. "Well, what's your name? Do yo
u go to Mark Twain Elementary?"

"You dote dow be. I'b frub out of towd. I just watt to dow how you feew about Ja-ha Orga."

"Look," he said crossly, and I winced. "How I feel about Jana Morgan is none of your business. How I feel about anyone is private and something I'll tell that person when I want to." Then he hung up.

I was so excited I thought I'd die. I just stood there, holding that receiver to my ear. The dial tone sounded like music. He had said it. He had said that he would tell me how he felt about me when he wanted to. That could mean only one thing. Randy Kirwan was crazy about me just like Taffy Sinclair had said he was.

I
could hardly wait to walk to school with Taffy Sinclair the next morning and tell her about calling Randy on the phone.

"You actually did it?" she asked. And I could tell she was really impressed.

"Of course," I answered smugly.

"Well, what did he say?"

I we
nt on to tell her how I had fooled him by disguising my voice and how he planned to tell me himself how he felt about me. I even told her how grateful I was that she had taught me body language. She gave me a funny look when I said that.

Anyway, by the time I got to school, I was feeling that my life was just about perfect, and I crossed and
uncrossed my fingers three times that this would be the day Randy would talk to me. I didn't see him on the school ground, but when I went to my room, he was already there. I sat down at my desk, trying to decide if I should send him a message in body language before the last bell rang.

Just then Beth came into the room and right behind her were Melanie and Katie and Christie. They walked in like they owned the place. But that's not all. They were wearing blue T-shirts that said The Fabulous FOUR!

I thought I'd die. I knew my face must be turning a thousand shades of red, and my ears were so hot they felt as if they would melt and run down onto my desk. My FORMER friends really had ganged up against me after all.
The Fabulous Four!
They hated me and wanted everyone in the whole school to know it. They hated me so much they didn't even care if Wiggins knew.

Just then Wiggins turned and faced our class. Of course, she spotted the T-shirts right away. I held my breath. What in the world would she do?

She looked at them for a minute as if she were thinking it over. "Well, since there are only four of you, you're certainly not a basketball team, are you?"

"No, ma'am," said Christie. I couldn't believe how fast she answered. "We've formed this really
private
club, and we call ourselves The Fabulous Four."

From the way Christie said it, I could tell she had practiced that speech. The four of them had probably spent days deciding what to say to Wiggins and fixing it so she couldn't trap them into telling the truth. Well, I was betting on Wiggins, and I couldn't wait to hear what she would say next.

Wiggins didn't say anything. I couldn't believe it. She opened her mouth as if she was going to, but then she shot a funny glance at me and waved them to their seats. I could tell they were looking at me as they went by, but I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of looking back.

At that moment I would have bet that the day couldn't get any worse, but it did. Wiggins made it worse as soon as we got back into our room after lunch.

"I'd like to
suggest
that the Halloween party committee stay in during afternoon recess to plan the refreshments and decorations. After all, Halloween is less than a week away."

We all knew what it meant when Wiggins made a
suggestion,
and so when the recess bell rang, the six of us stayed in our seats while everybody else, including Wiggins, piled out of the room to get their coats and go outside.

Curtis Trowbridge jumped up like a jack-in-the-box and marched over to the reading table in the library corner.

"We'll meet over here," he said importantly.

Sally Schmidt was the first one to follow him. Randy and Taffy were next. I knew I should go over there, but I felt as if my feet were set in concrete. The last thing I wanted to do was to sit across a table from Beth Barry, but Beth hadn't gone over either.

"Hey, you guys," called Curtis. "We don't have all day."

Suddenly Beth jumped up and ran to the table. I didn't understand why she did that until I noticed that the only empty seat left was between her and Curtis Trowbridge. She had done that on purpose so I would have to sit next to the nerd!

When everybody was finally sitting down, Curtis started the meeting. Randy suggested that we decorate the gym with orange and black crepe paper streamers. Taffy suggested potato chips and cider for refreshments, and Sally said her mother could probably bake a cake. I didn't say anything, and neither did Beth. We just sat there, hating each other.

Just then I began having this funny feeling that someone was looking at me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see who it was. My heart stopped. It was Randy, and he was more than looking. He was staring. Was he doing that because of the phone call yesterday? Was he still wondering who had called? Did he know it was me? He didn't look mad. Maybe he was grateful someone had called. Maybe he was sitting there right then trying to get up his nerve to talk to me.

All of a sudden I could feel Beth's foot pushing against my foot, and she sort of scooted her chair sideways until it was touching mine. She was looking straight at me, and I gave her a hateful look and scooted my chair away from her. Then she started grinning, and I knew what she had done. She had made me scoot my chair closer to Curtis Trowbridge.

I couldn't let her get away with a thing like that. She thought she was so s
mart wearing a Fabulous Four T-
shirt and practically pushing me into Curtis Trowbridge's lap right in front of Randy Kirwan.

I made my eyes into poison darts and leaned toward her. "Just wait," I whispered. "I'm going to tell
everybody
what I heard about you!" I really hadn't heard anything, but Beth didn't know that. Anyway, it was the best thing I could think of at the moment.

Beth's eyes got really big, and she opened her mouth to say something back, but just then Wiggins came charging into the room.

"Well, now, committee. What plans have you made?"

Curtis told her, making everything sound like his idea, and then we all went back to our seats while the rest of the class came in from recess.

When I got to our apartment after school, I went straight to my room and pulled my boot box from under my bed. Then I got out my Fabulous Five notebook and my black Magic Marker and went to work. First, I tore out all the pages about The Fabulous Five and pitched them into my wastebasket. I never wanted to see them again. On a blank page I wrote The Fabulous Four across the top and under that I wrote each of my FORMER friends' names. Now I was ready, I thought. On the first line I wrote "jealous" under every name. On the second line I wrote "snotty," "snotty," "snotty," "snotty." On the third line I wrote "gross" four times, and on the fourth I wrote "nerd." Even Curtis Trowbridge couldn't compete with them. By the time Mom got home I was down to line ten after adding "dumb," "stupid," "mean," "conceited," and "ugly." I was feeling a lot better by then. I didn't care what Mom said about looking for good points instead of faults. Faults were all that my FORMER friends had.

"I hope you won't mind if Pink has dinner with us again," said Mom after I stashed my notebook in the boot box and went out to the kitchen.

"Sure," I said sort of absently. I could have cared less if Pink came over or went to the moon. I had plenty of other things on my mind.

"Good. I've decided to cook Chinese. Care to help me chop?"

"Sure," I said again. Mom got out the celery and onions and mushrooms and a cutting board and knife for me and then started boning chicken breasts and cutting the meat into little pieces. I really sort of liked helping Mom chop up all the stuff and stir fry it in the wok. I just hoped she wouldn't try to start up a conversation the way she usually did, by asking me how my day was. She didn't. Instead she brought up my Jolly Green Giant costume again.

"I bought a green sweater and leotards for you to wear under this little jumper th
ing I'm making out of the green
felt," she said. "I've also cut about thirty leaves out of the felt, and tonight after Pink goes home, I'll staple them on. You know, sort of overlapping them like shingles on a roof. You're going to look adorable."

Just then I thought of another fault to add to my friends' lists. "Sure, Mom," I said. "I'll be back in a minute." I dried my hands and hurried to my room. I got out my notebook again and wrote "bratty" on line ten. I looked at the page. It was getting better all the time. Then I wrote "spoiled," "spoiled," "spoiled," "spoiled." They were coming faster now. "Impolite," "impolite," "impolite," "impolite," and I was halfway down the page.

I nearly starved before Pink arrived. Mom and I usually ate around a quarter to six, but according to my watch it was eight minutes and thirty-five seconds after seven before he knocked on the door.

Pink did most of the talking during dinner, which was fine with me. Just as Mom and I were clearing the table, I thought of another word to add to the lists of faults.

"Excuse me for just a minute," I said and shot off to my room. I was giggling when I pulled my notebook out that time. In fact, I was laughing so hard it was all I could do to write "flat chested" four times. I thought about not writing it under Melanie's name, but I did it anyway. She still had a long way to go.

I couldn't think of any other faults just then and was putting my notebook away when the phone rang. I knew I couldn't reach it before the second ring, so I didn't try. Somehow my telephone answering record didn't seem so important anymore. A minute later Mom knocked on my bedroom door.

"Jana, it's for you."

"For me?" I asked half aloud. Who in the world would be calling me? It wouldn't be Taffy Sinclair. She wasn't allowed to talk on the phone after supper. Then I started tingling all over. It was Randy! It had to be. He was finally calling to tell me he was crazy about me
.