Taffy Sinclair 001 - The Against Taffy Sinclair Club

by Betsy Haynes

  "First, we'll each make a chart on the back page of our Against Taffy Sinclair Club notebooks. Then we'll measure our chests and record the measurement under today's date. After that, we'll start doing some special chest-developing exercises that I happen to know about. Every day we'll do our exercises and once a week we'll measure. That way we can keep track of our progress. Okay, who wants to measure first?"

  I looked down at the floor so that no one would think that I was volunteering. I'm about the size of your standard third grader, which isn't so bad if you're in the third grade, or even the fourth. But if you're in the fifth, it's dismal, and I certainly didn't want anybody to know my measurements.

  Nobody else volunteered, either.

  "Well, you don't have to do it in front of everybody," Beth finally said with disgust. "Go into the bathroom. You go first, Jana, since you're the president."

  Grudgingly I took the tape measure and went into the bathroom. I closed the door and punched the lock in the doorknob, even though I knew that nobody would try to barge in. I slipped the tape around my chest, took a deep breath and looked. I couldn't believe my eyes. I measured thirty-four inches!

  I knew it was too good to be true. The tape was twisted. I straightened it out and looked again. I was a lousy twenty-six.

  After everybody had measured and recorded their measurements in their notebooks, Beth demonstrated the exercises. First, she showed us how to straighten out the fingers on each hand and press the tips together as hard as we could. One-two-three-four. Rest. One-two-three-four. Rest. Then we clasped our hands together and pulled as if we were trying to break a tug of war. One-two-three-four. Rest. One-two-three-four. Rest. Over and over again we pushed and pulled. Those exercises sure used the right muscles—I could tell that much—but it was hard to believe that they would do much good.

  Anyway, that night after I had finished my essay and had it ready to turn in, I did each exercise an extra twenty times. I measured again. Still twenty-six. Well, it was a little too soon to get results. Finally I slipped into bed, and until I fell asleep, I tried as hard as I could to think of some way to raise $19.95.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The idea came to me the next day in the school lunchroom. It was so great and so simple that I don't know why none of us had thought of it before.

  I had just finished a jelly and cream-cheese sandwich, a hard-boiled egg, a bag of potato chips, a Coke, and an apple, and I was still a little bit hungry. Melanie was sitting across the table from me stuffing a gorgeous brownie into her mouth. It looked so delicious I thought I'd die. Finally I got up and went to the candy machine, but everything there was twenty cents and I only had fifteen.

  Then I got this great idea. We could sell brownies in the lunchroom! It would be a cinch. We could get Melanie's mother's recipe. Then we could pool our allowances to buy the stuff we needed. If we went to my apartment right after school, we could get the brownies made before Mom got home from work. That way none of our parents would know about it and ask a lot of embarrassing questions about what we were going to buy with the money we earned. We could each take home some of the brownies so that they would be easier to hide. Then the next day we could bring them to school and sell them. How could anything be simpler?

  "I'll bet every kid in school will buy one," said Beth when I'd finished explaining my plan. "We'll get rich!"

  Everybody liked my idea except Katie. She said that it was another example of role stereotyping and that we should do something with less social stigma attached, like mowing lawns or washing cars. We decided to make brownies anyway, but since it was Friday and most of us get our allowances on Saturday, we decided to wait until after school Monday to go to the grocery store. That would give Melanie all weekend to sneak her mother's recipe. Tuesday we would make the brownies, and Wednesday would be the big day.

  Saturday afternoon the phone rang. It was Melanie. She sounded as if she were crying.

  "Mom is making brownies," she said between sniffs. "And guess what?"

  I couldn't.

  "She doesn't use a recipe! I asked her why and she said that she makes them so often that she knows how much of everything to use. What are we going to do?"

  My heart sank into my shoes. We couldn't make brownies without a recipe, but Melanie was crying again so I tried to reassure her.

  "Don't worry, Melanie," I said. "We'll think of something."

  I hung up the phone and sauntered into the kitchen. Mom was there humming to herself while she got a roast ready for the oven. Mom never makes brownies. She doesn't have time since she works every day. Not that she doesn't do special things for me. She does. It's just that making brownies isn't one of them. I started to leave. Then I noticed the shelf of cookbooks over the stove. Why hadn't I thought of that before! Surely there would be a brownie recipe in one of them.

  I got a drink of water, and looked at the cookbooks out of the corner of my eye. Reading cookbooks was something I never did. Mom would get suspicious and start asking a lot of questions if I just grabbed one and started thumbing through it. I got another drink of water while I thought about the situation. There wasn't much I could do except wait until Mom wasn't around.

  She was around all weekend. I couldn't remember when she had been around so much. Worst of all, it seemed that she was always in the kitchen. She even cleaned out the cupboards, which she hardly ever does. I almost got the feeling that she knew I was up to something.

  By Sunday night I was feeling desperate. I couldn't let everybody down. After all, I was the president of the club and selling brownies had been my idea. But I couldn't think of any way to get that cookbook without Mom seeing me. I tried to sit down and watch television with her, but I was so antsy that I could just barely sit there.

  Then Pink came over. Pink is short for Wallace Pinkerton, and he and Mom go out together once in a while. They both work at the newspaper. Mom is the Classified Advertising manager and Pink is one of the printers. He's tall and blond and very nice looking. I like him a lot, but there's just one problem with Pink. He has breath that would stop a tidal wave. Mom once said that their relationship was purely platonic, and after one whiff of his breath, I had to believe her. Either that or else her olfactory nerves have konked out.

  Anyway, when Pink came in, it gave me a perfect excuse to go to my room. I said a quick hello and ducked out before he had a chance to breathe on me. Once I got into the privacy of my own room I began to pace up and down like mad. I had to think of something—and fast.

  Every so often I'd open my bedroom door a crack to see what Mom and Pink were doing. They were always doing the same thing, just sitting right there in plain sight of the cookbooks watching a horror movie on television. If only Pink would do something to distract her, I thought, like kiss her or something. Maybe then I could tear into the kitchen and grab a cookbook and she would never know it. Then I remembered his breath and I knew that that was out.

  Once, while I was pacing, a lady in the movie let out a blood-curdling scream, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. How could I ever get an inspiration with a thing like that going on? I couldn't. Finally I wound my alarm clock, did my exercises, recorded my measurements, and went to bed in defeat.

  Then I got this great idea. My alarm was set for seven o'clock in the morning. I changed it to midnight. Mom would be asleep by then. I would get up, slip into the kitchen, and get one of her cookbooks. I would bring it to my room, copy a brownie recipe, and then sneak the cookbook back into the kitchen without Mom ever knowing it.

  Little shivers raced up and down my back as I reset my alarm clock. This was going to be exciting. I had only been up until midnight a couple of times in my whole life. It would be pitch dark in the apartment, but I wasn't going to be afraid.

  I was too excited to go to sleep, so I lay there in the darkness listening for Pink to go home. I thought that he would never leave. Didn't he know that Mom had to get up and go to work the next day? I was beginning to think that he would stay all night
when I finally heard him go. I looked at my clock. It was ten forty-five. Just one hour and fifteen minutes to zero.

  After that, I just couldn't lie still. I felt as if I were hovering about half an inch above the bed. I must have finally dozed off, because when the alarm sounded I nearly went through the ceiling. It was never that loud in the morning. What if Mom had heard it? After I shut it off, I lay there for a long time listening, but I didn't hear anything. Mom must have slept right through it.

  The first thing I did after I got up was fall down. I tripped over my sneakers which, as usual, I had left in the middle of the floor. When I fell it sounded as though the building were caving in so I lay there for a while listening for Mom. I opened my eyes wide in the dark and swept a hand across the floor feeling for anything else that I might have pitched around. I didn't find anything so I whispered "Neatness counts" five times under my breath, got up again, and tiptoed toward the door.

  I felt like a cat burglar sneaking across the living room and into the kitchen. It gave me a creepy feeling, but at the same time, it was sort of fun. My eyes were getting used to the darkness, so I was able to walk like a normal person instead of like a sleepwalker with my arms stuck out in front. Just as I pulled a cookbook off the shelf and started for my room, I heard this thunk. Mom was awake!

  I ducked behind a chair and listened. I could hear traffic in the street and my own heart beating but no more thunks. Probably she had just rolled over in her sleep and kicked the wall or something. When I got back to my room I closed the door without a sound and turned on my desk light. I looked at the cookbook in my hand. The Pleasures of Chinese Cooking. I couldn't believe it. I knew there wouldn't be any brownie recipe in a Chinese cookbook, but I looked anyway. I was right. There was nothing to do but get another book.

  When I turned off my light the place looked darker than ever. I inched along like a snail, praying that I hadn't left any of my junk around on the living room floor. As I slipped into the kitchen, I knew what I would have to do. I would have to turn on the light just long enough to find an American cookbook, one that would have a brownie recipe in it. Otherwise, I could spend the whole night running back and forth in the dark with cookbooks.

  I hesitated for a minute. Turning on the light was going to be dangerous, but it was the only thing to do.

  I took a deep breath and flipped the switch. The light was so bright that I had to squint my eyes and look out through my lashes. The third book from the left was the book. I was absolutely certain of it. It was the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook. I slipped it under my arm, turned the light off, and felt my way back to my room.

  I was right about the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook. It had three brownie recipes in it, Jiffy, Nutty, and Remarkable. I wanted to pick Remarkable because it sounded the best, but I settled on Jiffy because it was the easiest.

  After I had copied the recipe and put the cookbook back on the shelf, I looked at my clock. It was twelve thirty-six A.M. I wasn't a bit sleepy, so I reset my alarm and did my bust-developing exercises another twenty times before I got into bed.

  I didn't hear my alarm, and Mom had to shake me to wake me up. I couldn't believe that it was morning. I felt as if I'd been up all night. Sitting at my school desk was really grim. Even the sight of gorgeous Mr. Neal couldn't keep my eyelids open. I thought about getting a drink and splashing some of the water on my face. But he'd think I had to go to the bathroom if I raised my hand to leave the room. So, instead, I crossed my arms and sat there pinching my sides until I wasn't feeling so sleepy anymore.

  At noon I showed everybody the recipe and Christie figured that by quadrupling the ingredients and charging fifteen cents apiece for the brownies we would make $21.05. That would be more than enough to pay for the bust developer.

  It was too good to be true. We were so delirious that the lunchroom monitor had to tell us to be quiet. We couldn't have cared less. Just two more days and the Milo Venus Bust Developer would be ours.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I have this theory about lying. If you make up a big-enough lie, people are going to believe it. What I mean is that anybody can make up a little lie. That's no big deal. But most people swallow a whopper because they don't think anyone has the brains to make it up, much less the nerve to tell it. Take my essay, for instance. Now that was a whopper. I have never been west of Morristown, New Jersey, where my grandmother lives, and the closest thing to horseback riding that I've ever done is the pony ride at the Danbury Fair.

  Mr. Neal believed my essay. He believed it so much that he gave me an A minus. The minus was for misspelling "terrain." I spelled it "terrane." He told the class how good my essay was. He said it was the best essay in the whole fifth grade.

  I sure was sorry that it was so good. I would have given anything if it had been lousy. Then he would have handed it back to me the way he did all the others, and I could have burned it or torn it up into little tiny pieces and swallowed it so that nobody could read it. Instead, he announced to the class that he had given my essay to Mrs. Lockwood, the faculty adviser for the school newspaper, and that it was going to be printed on the front page for the whole school to read.

  I thought I'd die. All of my friends knew that I hadn't spent my summer vacation out west. Probably even Taffy Sinclair knew the truth. She might tell Mr. Neal! And what made it even worse, the paper would come out on Wednesday, the day we were going to sell brownies.

  After school Beth, Christie, Melanie, Katie, and I met on the playground to pool our money for the ingredients for the brownies. Me and my great ideas. The last thing I wanted was to sell brownies on the same day the whole school found out that I was a liar. I could just picture myself slinking around the lunchroom like some kind of criminal.

  "Why don't we wait until next week?" I said, trying to sound lighthearted. "This week everybody will be too busy reading the paper to care about eating brownies."

  "Are you kidding?" shrieked Melanie. "Most kids would stop to eat brownies if the school was on fire."

  "Well, maybe it's against the law to sell food without a license or something," I offered.

  "Naw," said Katie, making a face. "Remember last year when our Girl Scout troop had a bake sale? We didn't need a license then. Why should we need one now?"

  I knew that I was defeated, so I dug down into the pocket of my jeans and pulled out a crumpled dollar bill.

  "Here," I said, and I handed it to Christie, who was laboriously marking down every contribution in her notebook.

  "That does it," she announced triumphantly. "Fellow members of Lambda Rho, our mission is almost accomplished."

  Everybody started cheering and giggling and jumping around. I tried to join in, but my heart just wasn't in it. Everybody kept giving me funny looks. I knew they were wondering why I was so quiet. As far as they were concerned my life was just about perfect. My essay was going to be printed on the front page of the school newspaper; we were going to make a lot of money selling brownies; and the Milo Venus Bust Developer was almost ours. Fame, fortune, and a figure. They probably thought I should be dancing in the streets.

  I really wanted to talk to them about my problem, but it was too embarrassing to admit even to my four best friends. I made up an excuse about having an earache and said I thought I'd go on home. They didn't need me anyway. Katie and Christie had volunteered to do the grocery shopping.

  Suddenly it was Tuesday. I kept telling myself that at least it wasn't Wednesday, but that wasn't much consolation. The school day went pretty well except for math class. Mr. Neal called on me three times, and I didn't know the answer even once. That was the first time all year that I'd been called on and hadn't known the answer.

  After school everybody raced to my apartment to make the brownies. Beth was in command and she whipped out her copy of Redbook as soon as we got there. She turned to the advertisement for the Milo Venus Bust Developer and propped the magazine up on the counter. "For inspiration!" she said. "Okay, where's the recipe and the
ingredients and the pots and pans? Let's get started."

  "Yuk!" said Katie, who was rummaging around in her book bag. "I accidentally put my social-studies book on top of the cream cheese and it got all smushed. I think we can still use it, though." Using two fingers, she pulled a squashed package of cream cheese out of the book bag and dropped it on the counter. Then she brought out a sack of sugar, a sack of flour, a package of walnuts, and a bar of unsweetened chocolate squares. "I hope you have vanilla, Jana. We didn't buy any."

  I nodded and tried to swallow away the lump that was forming in my throat. We were really going to make the brownies. And tomorrow was really going to get here. And my essay was really going to be on the front page of the school paper for everybody to read. And there wasn't a single thing that I could do about it.

  I got out all the stuff they needed and stood back in the corner. I didn't want to help. I stood there listening to Beth read the recipe out loud. She could have won an Oscar for the way she read it. I never heard anyone read a recipe like that. It sounded like something out of Shakespeare.

  Everybody was measuring and stirring and giggling. I just stood there.

  "Quickly stir in the melted chocolate," said Beth.

  Suddenly I couldn't stand it any longer. I took a deep breath and yelled as loudly as I could, "My essay that's going to be on the front page of the school paper tomorrow is a big, fat lie!"

  There was instant silence. The measuring, stirring, and giggling all stopped. From the looks on their faces you would have thought that I had just announced that I had a rare, fatal blood disease or something. A contagious, rare, fatal blood disease.

  "A lie?" whispered Beth. "What are you going to do?"

  They all looked so silly standing there with their mouths hanging open, except for Melanie, who was licking chocolate off a spoon and staring at me with doleful eyes, that I suddenly felt calm. "I'm going to blow up the school," I said. "What else can I do?"