by Betsy Haynes
"Hey, I just thought of something," said Scott, jumping to his feet.
Scott absolutely loved to tease, and Melanie could tell by the impish grin on his face that he was up to something now. "Old Dracula says snakes are nocturnal. What if Sirloin wakes up from his nap and decides to come to our committee meeting?"
Dekeisha gasped and jumped onto her chair while everyone else scrambled to search the dimly lighted library floor.
Scott tramped around the room, holding his hand straight out above his eyes like the visor of a cap, and acted as if he were searching for the snake. When he reached the darkest corner, he stopped and shouted, "Tracks!"
This time Dekeisha screamed. Melanie threw Scott a look that said "knock it off" and pretended to be calm. She knew that Scott was only faking, but she couldn't help glancing around. To her great relief, no snake was in sight. She glanced at Jana, too, thinking maybe talk of the missing snake might make her join in the conversation. No such luck. She kept on looking away from the group.
"I think we'd better get started with the meeting," said Curtis. Everybody nodded and mumbled their agreement. Shrugging, Scott gave up on his joke and sat down, too.
Melanie forgot about Jana for the time being as Curtis talked about getting art supplies and making posters at the next meeting. That will be fun, thought Melanie. Just as Whitney Larkin was making a suggestion about what should go on the posters, something thunked against her notebook. It was a tightly folded piece of paper. A note, probably, she thought. She twisted around and looked behind Dekeisha. Scott was looking back. Then he grinned and motioned toward the note in her hand. She opened it quickly.
Melanie,
Let's walk home together after the meeting.
Scott
Melanie thought a moment and then nodded back to Scott. She was supposed to call her dad to pick her up, but surely he wouldn't mind if Scott walked her home tonight. Besides, she thought slyly, Jana could hardly miss seeing her leave the school with Scott, and of course she would tell the rest of The Fabulous Five.
Just as Melanie had predicted, Jana was standing by the front door when she and Scott went out. Melanie felt triumphant. Surely Jana would get on the phone to the rest of The Fabulous Five the moment she got home. They would have to start noticing how popular she was getting. It wouldn't be long before they realized that if they didn't need her, she certainly didn't need them.
Scott was unusually quiet on the walk home. He probably thinks I'm mad at him for teasing about the snake, she thought, smiling to herself. If my feelings are important to him, that means he really cares.
"That was a pretty funny joke you pulled on the publicity committee," she said, hoping that saying so would make him feel better.
"I thought things were starting out pretty dull," he said with a grin. "I decided to liven them up. I'm glad you aren't mad."
"You certainly did liven things up," Melanie said. "I really wish they'd find that snake, though. I know he's just a garden snake and not poisonous or a vampire or anything like that, but he's making everybody nervous."
"He's probably long gone by now," said Scott.
"What do you mean?"
"He probably found an open window and just slithered out. Or maybe he crawled into a garbage can in the cafeteria looking for something to eat and got thrown into the Dumpster. Lots of things could have happened. With Mr. Dracovitch and the rest of the teachers and all the kids looking for him, don't you think he would have been found if he was still around?"
"Maybe," Melanie conceded. She hoped he was right, but she didn't feel quite so confident.
When they reached her house, she smiled at Scott and said, "Thanks for walking home with me. I'm really excited about the dance, and I think it's going to be fun working on the publicity committee."
"Me, too," he said. Then, acting suddenly shy, he looked down at the ground and began drawing invisible circles with the toe of his sneaker.
What's wrong? she wondered, but before she could run through a list of possibilities, he looked up at her again and said, "Would you go to the dance with me?"
Melanie stared at him in surprise. She had been so busy with all the committees and with trying to impress The Fabulous Five with her popularity that she hadn't even thought about a date for the dance.
"Gosh! I'd love to!" she burst out.
"Great," he said. His momentary shyness seemed to disappear, and he moved closer to her. Then he put his arms around her and kissed her.
Melanie was walking on air when she went inside. Her life was just about as perfect as it could get. Not only had Scott asked her to the dance, he had kissed her! And she was making new friends and getting more popular every day. She paused when she got to her room and thought, Maybe I don't need The Fabulous Five anymore, after all.
CHAPTER 12
When Melanie woke up the next morning, her head ached and her throat was sore, but she hardly noticed. It had taken forever to go to sleep. She had lain awake instead, remembering Scott's good-night kiss over and over again. Then she had closed her eyes and, as she drifted off to sleep, imagined how
Melanie Edwards
+
Scott Daly
would look written in twinkling stars on the velvety black sky.
But now with harsh sunlight streaming in her window, all she could think about was the rush she was in. For the third night in a row she hadn't been able to finish her homework. If I don't take time to iron the outfit I had planned to wear today, thought Melanie, I could wear something else and maybe have time to finish the list of history questions before I leave for school.
The day went by in a haze. She felt as if she had weights tied to her arms and legs as she moved from class to class, and her headache refused to go away. Even though she sat with the rest of The Fabulous Five in the cafeteria at noon, she didn't have the energy to join in the conversation. Normally she would have told them about her date with Scott for the dance, and that Shane was coming over tonight to select the music, and Katie would have groaned and told her she was boy crazy again. Instead, she listened to their chatter about all the things they were doing and thought for the zillionth time that it seemed as though they were all going their own separate ways.
When Shane got to her house around seven o'clock that evening, Melanie was feeling better. After supper she had showered and taken a couple of aspirins for her headache. She wasn't going to let anything spoil an evening with Shane if she could help it.
"Wow! You really do have a lot of music," she said when she opened the door and saw him standing there with a huge stack of albums in one arm and a cassette carrier in the other.
"You ain't seen nothin' yet," he assured her, setting the tape carrier inside the door. "If you can grab these albums, I'll get the rest out of the car."
Melanie took the albums and watched as Shane hurried out to the curb where an ancient orange Volkswagen bug with flowers and butterflies painted on the side sat idling. He pulled out another armload of albums and waved good-bye to his father, who drove away in a cloud of black exhaust and fumes.
Leave it to Shane's hippie parents to have a car like that, she thought, chuckling to herself.
Her mother had whipped up a batch of her famous brownies when she heard that Shane would be over, and Melanie proudly set them in the middle of the kitchen table and fixed glasses of soda while Shane hauled in all the albums and tapes and arranged them in neat stacks.
Just then Jeffy bounded into the kitchen and skidded to a stop beside Shane. He looked at the albums on the table and then asked in a high-pitched little voice, "Do you have a Wee Sing album?"
"Sorry, partner," Shane said, tousling Jeffy's reddish-brown hair. "No Wee Sing. I've got Brain Damage, though. Do you like them?"
"Bwain Damage! Bwain Damage!" Jeffy shouted, jumping up and down. "My sister was in their show!"
Melanie couldn't help smiling at her little brother. She loved being reminded of the time during The Fabulous Five's bragging war wit
h The Fantastic Foursome when she and her four best friends had been called up onto the stage during Brain Damage's concert to join the zany British rock group in a song. Would The Fabulous Five ever go to a concert together again? she wondered wistfully.
While she had been lost in thought, her parents had come into the kitchen to say hello to Shane and to coax Jeffy into the family room so that Melanie could entertain Shane in peace. Glancing at the plate, Melanie noticed that it had cost the largest brownie to get Jeffy out of the room, but it would be worth it.
Melanie shook her head at the mountains of music. "The dance is only four hours long, you know," she teased.
"Which means we have our work cut out for us," said Shane, reaching for a brownie. "So we'd better have some of these to keep our energy level up."
For the next hour and a half they chattered happily as they went through the albums and tapes, sorting them into piles of Yes, No, and Maybe. Then they went through the Maybe pile and divided them into Probably No, Probably Yes, and Maybe Maybe.
"I think we can definitely eliminate the Probably Nos and probably the Maybe Maybes," said Melanie.
"And maybe even the Probably Yeses," said Shane. "After all, as you said, the dance is only four hours long."
Melanie frowned. "But there is some awfully good music in the Probably Yes pile. Maybe we could put it on the bottom of the Definitely Yes stack, just in case you have enough time to play it."
Shane's eyes started to twinkle. "Now let me see if I've got this straight," he teased. "There's the Definitely Yes and the Probably Yes, and maybe we'll use all of them and maybe we won't, but we should probably stack them together." He choked back a laugh, then went on, "Then there's the Maybe Mavbes and the Probably Nos. We could probably put them together with the Definitely Nos. Or do you think maybe we should definitely keep them separate?"
"Maybe we should . . ." Melanie began, but she was laughing too hard to go any further. She swayed toward Shane and felt his arm slip around her. They stood together, laughing softly for a moment. Then, as their laughter subsided, Shane tipped her chin upward and kissed her gently on the lips.
It was a wonderful kiss, Melanie thought. A perfect kiss. She felt tingly all over. As she opened her eyes, she was aware of soft sounds in the background and wandered briefly what she would say if her parents walked in at this very moment. Or if Jeffy came in and shrieked, "They're kissing! They're kissing!" Trying not to panic, she pulled her gaze away from Shane and looked quickly toward the door to the family room. Thankfully no one was there. She breathed a huge sigh of relief.
"I wonder if I could ask you a favor?" Shane said. He asked the question casually, but his arm was still around her.
She smiled up at him again. "Sure."
"Well," he began, "since the records are all separated into categories, I thought maybe I should leave the Definitely Yeses and the Probably Yeses with you so that I won't have to worry about getting them mixed up again."
"But most of your favorite songs are Yeses," said Melanie. "What if you want to listen to them?"
"Couldn't I come over here and listen to them?"
Melanie blushed. "Of course," she said, hoping he realized how sincerely she meant it. "You can come over anytime you want to."
"Great," he said. "I was hoping that's what you'd say."
They finished the plate of brownies and talked for a little while longer before Shane called his dad to come after him. When he had gone, Melanie picked up the stack of records and carried them to her room for safekeeping. Last night Scott had kissed her. Tonight Shane had. They were two of the cutest and most super boys in Wacko Junior High, and they both liked her. She hugged the records and whirled around the room, feeling like the luckiest girl alive.
CHAPTER 13
At the football game the next afternoon, Melanie made sure she spent the time when the squad wasn't cheering with Dekeisha, Alexis, and Mandy. She also got in lots of flirt time with both Scott and Shane and shot big smiles at Garrett Boldt whenever he was close by photographing the action on the field.
She was doing it all for The Fabulous Five's benefit, of course. Well, mostly, anyway. She couldn't tell if Jana, Katie, and Christie had seen it all from their seats in the bleachers, but Beth, who was on the cheerleading squad, too, couldn't possibly have missed it. It had to be getting obvious to them that their cool treatment of her wasn't fazing her one little bit. Who knows? she thought wryly. Maybe I'm starting to be the one who doesn't have time for them.
To make matters even better, just before halftime Derek Travelstead called out hello to her from the stands, and she waved her pom-pons at him. She had been noticing him more and more lately, thinking how cute he was and trying to decide if he really did look like Kirk Cameron, after all.
After the game Melanie trudged back to the locker room alongside Mandy and Dekeisha. They were talking about the game, but she stayed quiet. She hadn't been able to shake the tiredness she had been feeling for several days. Some of the acrobatics in the cheers had seemed harder than usual, and now she was even considering skipping Bumpers. Just a teensy little nap would make her feel so much better. But still, if she didn't go to Bumpers after the game, she would not only miss a victory celebration, but also a perfect chance to show off her popularity to the rest of The Fabulous Five.
At Bumpers the jukebox was playing full blast when she picked up her Coke at the order counter and headed for the cheerleaders' table. A quick swallow of the frosty beverage felt good on her fiery throat. The sore throat she had awakened with yesterday had persisted, and yelling her lungs out at the football game hadn't helped it one bit.
She sat down between Alexis and Mandy just as Laura McCall was saying, "Did you see that terrific tackle Shane made in the second quarter? He's such a hunk. I certainly would have hated to be the guy he tackled. Well . . . sort of, anyway." She glanced around the table with a grin that said clearly that she wasn't talking about a football tackle this time.
Girls were laughing and mentioning other cute boys on the Wakeman team and commenting on what hunks they were, but Melanie sat fuming and gulping her Coke. How dare Laura talk about Shane like that, she thought. She acts as if he's her personal property.
"Does anybody have a date for the dance yet?" asked Tammy Lucero before Melanie could think of a good reply for Laura. Tammy was the world's biggest gossip, and she was always digging for information.
"I do," piped up Dekeisha. "Dan Bankston took me to the movie last night, and on the way home he asked me to go with him." She looked around proudly as a couple of cheerleaders hammed it up, swooning over the mention of Dan Bankston, who was the center on the Wakeman Warriors and known sometimes as The Hulk.
"Scott asked me after the publicity committee meeting Thursday night," bragged Melanie. "And when I said yes, he kissed me." She had put that last part in for Laura's benefit, and she could see by Laura's expression that her words had hit their mark.
"Big deal!" spat Laura. She tossed a superior look toward Melanie. "I think Shane is going to ask me. He certainly acts like it, and he's been hanging around a lot."
Melanie was so angry that she wouldn't have been surprised if smoke had billowed out of her ears and flames had shot out of her mouth when she opened it to speak.
"Well, he certainly wasn't hanging around you last night. He was at my house." She paused, gleefully watching Laura try to regain her composure. "We were picking out the music for the dance since we're both on the music committee. He didn't act as if he was interested in asking you or anyone else to the dance . . . especially when he kissed me good night."
In the moment of silence that followed this announcement, Melanie stood, picked up her Coke, and marched triumphantly out the door. She would have loved to stick around and see Laura's face when the words sunk in and hear how jealous everyone was of her popularity, but it was much more dramatic to make an exit now. It's the same sort of theatrical thing Beth would do, she mused. Of course Beth had been sitting at the table,
too, and she would run and tell The Fabulous Five that Melanie was so popular that she had been kissed by two boys in one week. Things couldn't be working out better, she thought.
She went to bed early that evening, remembering fleetingly that this was the night she had asked her friends to sleep over. They had all turned her down, saying they were busy with other things. The memory still hurt, but so did her throat, and her head was throbbing again, too. In some ways she was almost relieved to be able to slip between the covers and drift off to sleep whenever she felt like it.
She tried to do her homework Sunday afternoon, but she kept dozing off every time she started to read. Late in the afternoon Shane called to check on an album that he thought he might accidentally have left at her house Friday night. When she told him it wasn't there, she thought about inviting him over for a while, but she was too tired to make conversation, even with Shane.
She managed to drag herself to school Monday morning. Her mother had tried to get her to stay home, saying that she looked like death warmed over, but there was going to be a quiz in English and it was the final day of dissecting in biology. There was no way she could afford to miss it.
That night she even made it to the refreshments committee meeting, again over her parents' protests. She was a little surprised when Christie motioned her to an empty chair on her left and chatted during the meeting as if everything were the same in The Fabulous Five. Christie even suggested that Melanie volunteer some of her mother's famous brownies for the dance.
Melanie was the last one to reach the pay phone after the meeting broke up at a little after ten o'clock. Randy was just hanging up.