Fabulous Five 001 - Seventh-Grade Rumors

by Betsy Haynes

  THE FABULOUS FIVE #1

  SEVENTH-GRADE RUMORS

  BETSY HAYNES

  BANTAM BOOKS

  NEW YORK • TORONTO • LONDON • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND

  RL 5, 009-012

  SEVENTH-GRADE RUMORS

  A Bantam Skylark Book / September 1988

  Skylark Books is a registered trademark of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and elsewhere.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1988 by Betsy Haynes.

  Cover art copyright © 1988 by Ralph Amatrudi.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.

  ISBN 0-553-15625-X

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  CW 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10

  CHAPTER 1

  "Come on, Melanie. An iguana is a lizard. I mean, we're talking MAJOR lizard here. Not your standard garden variety, and I'm telling you, nobody has one of those things for a pet," said Katie Shannon, rolling her eyes heavenward to show her disbelief.

  Melanie Edwards was unperturbed. "Shane Arrington does," she insisted. "At least that's what I hear. They say his parents are hippies, and that he has a pet iguana named Igor."

  "Big deal," said Christie Winchell. "Did you hear about Jon Smith?"

  "What a boring name," sniffed Melanie.

  "His name may be boring, but his parents aren't. They're celebrities!" said Christie in a rush of excitement. "You know who they are. Chip Smith, the sports director on the local television station. Mrs. Smith goes by the name Marge Whitworth. She's the news anchorwoman who also has her own afternoon talk show that's juicier than The Oprah Winfrey Show."

  "Wow! I know her," shouted Jana Morgan. "She's the one who interviewed Taffy Sinclair and me on TV when we found baby Ashley. I didn't know she had a son!"

  "Can't you talk about anything but boys?" Katie asked sourly. "I don't suppose any of you have heard about Whitney Larkin? She has this mega-high IQ, somewhere around a zillion, and she's supposed to be in sixth grade this year, not seventh. She's skipping a grade because she's so brilliant. Can you imagine what it would be like to have her in one of your classes?"

  "That's nothing. Wait until you hear this!" Beth Barry butted in. "Laura McCall is this really big deal girl from Riverfield Elementary and I heard that she's as pretty as Taffy Sinclair and maybe even prettier. But that's not all. Get this. She has all the girls from her school eating out of her hand because her parents are divorced and she lives with her father, who is hardly ever home, and she can do anything she wants. What I hear is"—Beth paused for dramatic effect—"going to her house is a real blast."

  "Great." Jana groaned, giving her favorite stuffed bear a big hug. It was Labor Day weekend, the last Saturday before school started, and she and her four best friends would enter Wakeman Junior High, or Wacko Junior High, as most kids called it. The girls were having a regular meeting of their self-improvement club, The Fabulous Five, in Jana's bedroom. Today the conversation kept drifting away from self-improvement and toward rumors they had heard about the kids from Riverfield and Copper Beach Elementary schools whom they would be meeting for the first time on Tuesday morning.

  The five friends had stuck together through thick and thin, weathered every grade school crisis together, especially when that crisis involved their arch-rival, Taffy Sinclair. Beautiful, snooty Taffy, who did everything she could to make life miserable for The Fabulous Five.

  "I heard a rumor about Laura McCall, too," Melanie was saying. "I heard that she and her friends have a club called The Fantastic Foursome and that Laura is the leader. What I heard is that to stay in the club, you have to do whatever Laura tells you to do. If you won't do it, you're out!"

  "Wow," said Jana. "What does she make them do?"

  Melanie shrugged. "I don't know. I couldn't find out any more."

  "This probably sounds weird," said Christie, "but sometimes I wish we were going back to Mark Twain Elementary this year instead of on to junior high. I mean, we had things under control there. Everybody knew us. Things like that."

  "Right," said Melanie. "I know just how you feel. I'm tired of being treated like a baby, especially by my parents, but I'm not sure I'm ready for junior high. To be perfectly honest, I don't feel that much older than I did when school was out in June."

  Beth scowled. "Get serious, Edwards. Of course you're older. We all are."

  "Hey, do you think we look older?" asked Jana. She jumped to her feet and swung open the closet door where her full-length mirror hung. Giggles erupted behind her as her friends crowded forward to strike poses and peer at their reflections.

  Jana stepped aside and looked at the others. Beth had been her best friend practically forever. They had started kindergarten together, and Jana had liked her bright personality instantly. Beth the clown, Jana thought with a smile, remembering how her dark-haired friend had kept everyone in stitches with her antics. She hadn't changed much either, except that now, instead of a clown, she was a dramatic actress, grabbing attention with her wild clothes and her theatrical flourishes.

  Naturally, Christie Winchell had been in that kindergarten class, too, since her mother was principal of the school. Taller than any of the others, thin, blond, and athletic, Christie was the smart one of the group, practically a mathematical genius, but she was also a super friend—quiet but caring.

  Melanie Edwards, who had moved to their town in second grade, was in love with love. That figured since everything about her was romantic, from her huge blue eyes to her soft reddish-brown hair that lay in wispy curls around her face, and especially her attitude about boys. She was also a little gullible, believing practically anything, which made it fun sometimes to tell her something bizarre.

  In all the years they had been friends, thought Jana, Katie Shannon was the only one who had really changed. She had been a shy little red-haired girl when she entered Mark Twain Elementary in third grade. But then in fourth, her mother had become active in the women's movement, and Katie had blossomed into a pint-size feminist, announcing her views loudly to anyone who would listen.

  "I'll bet we look just as old as Laura McCall and her friends." Melanie swept her hair on top of her head and tilted her chin. "They may think that they're big deals, but we'll show them. Look out for The Fabulous Five, Laura McCall!"

  Everyone laughed.

  "The thing I'm worried about is that Wakeman is so huge," said Christie. "We won't know half the kids."

  "Or where our classes are," added Katie.

  "Or where the girls' bathrooms are!" Beth said, giggling.

  "What that really means is that we have to stick together even more than before." Jana knew she sounded more confident than she felt. "We can't let anyone know how nervous we are, and we definitely can't let those other kids run over us."

  Christie frowned. "Don't forget. To them, we're the other kids."

  "Okay, gang. Let's get organized," said Katie. "When we hit Wacko Junior High on Tuesday morning, we're going to do it with a
unified front."

  Jana tried to swallow a giggle. Katie's front was as flat as a pancake. "What did you have in mind?" she asked with a grin.

  "To start with, we need to make a list of all the essential things to remember," said Katie. "Like the gum tree."

  "Right!" said Melanie. "We can't forget that."

  Jana opened a brand-new spiral notebook lying on her desk and wrote "1. Gum Tree" on the first page. The gum tree was important. Mr. Bell, the Wakeman principal, was an absolute fanatic when it came to the way he hated chewing gum, and the students had selected the oak tree beside the front door and dubbed it the gum tree a few years before. Ever since then, every morning when the first bell rang, all the kids who were chewing gum stuck it to the tree before going in. Even Mr. Bell had liked the idea, and it had become a school tradition.

  "Put this down on the list," instructed Melanie. "Never, NEVER ask a ninth-grader for directions to a classroom. My cousin Darcy did that last year. She ended up at the opposite end of the building standing outside the boys' bathroom. By the time she found the right room, she was ten minutes late to class."

  "And I can't forget to put down the movie on Friday night and going to Bumpers afterwards," Jana added, writing as fast as she could. Bumpers was a fast food restaurant that was also the exclusive hangout of the kids from Wakeman Junior High after school and on Friday nights. She could hardly wait to go there.

  "I'm even going to miss Mama Mia's Pizzeria." Christie sighed. "We had a lot of good times there."

  Jana felt a little sad when she thought about not going to Mama Mia's anymore. She and Randy Kirwan had had their first date there, and he had kissed her later. She felt dreamy when she thought about him. She hoped he would still be her boyfriend at Wakeman Junior High.

  Nobody could think of anything else to put on the list. "I'm still nervous," said Jana as she made copies for everybody on sheets of notebook paper. "I mean, we're so used to Mark Twain Elementary, and everybody there was used to us. The other kids looked up to us because we were the oldest. We even had our own spot by the fence where we could talk privately. Everybody knew it was our spot and nobody bothered us."

  Beth jumped to her feet. "Wow! What a COLOSSAL idea! Morgan, you're a genius."

  "What are you talking about?" Jana asked.

  "Come on, guys," said Beth. "Let's go over to Wakeman right now. There won't be anybody there on Saturday afternoon, so we can pick out our own private spot by the Wakeman fence. Don't you get it? It will be just like Mark Twain Elementary."

  The girls scrambled out of Jana's apartment and hurried the six blocks to the junior high. It was a sprawling, rectangular, single-story building with a courtyard in the center resembling a squared-off donut, and it was made of cream-colored brick. The school ground was surrounded by a chain link fence, just as Mark Twain Elementary had been, with a sign at the front proudly proclaiming it to be "Wakeman Junior High, Home of the Wakeman Warriors." Beth had been right about the place's being deserted, and soon the five of them were darting from one end of the fence to the other looking for the perfect spot.

  "Hey, guys, come here," Jana called at last. "I think I've found it." The place Jana referred to was in the front left corner of the grounds. "This is perfect," she said as the others hurried to her. "We can see everything that's going on at the front of the school and also anybody who's heading this way from two different directions or getting off the buses."

  To Jana's relief, the others looked around and then agreed.

  "So now we've got our list of critical things to remember and our special spot by the fence," said Christie. "I think we should meet somewhere on Tuesday morning and walk to school together. You know, with a unified front, like Katie said."

  "Do you mean meet somewhere away from school where nobody will see us so we can get our act together before we face junior high?" asked Jana.

  Christie nodded. "I was thinking about the corner by Nugent's grocery around eight-thirty."

  "Great," said Melanie. "We'll come straight to this spot and wait for the bell. It will be just the same as Mark Twain Elementary."

  The others nodded.

  "Well, Fabulous Five," said Katie. "I think we're ready."

  "As ready as we'll ever be," said Jana. But later, when she thought back on it, she realized that they hadn't been ready for junior high at all.

  CHAPTER 2

  "Oh, my gosh!" shrieked Beth. "Look! They're standing in our spot!"

  Jana and her friends had just entered the gates of Wakeman Junior High on Tuesday morning and were making their way across the crowded school ground toward the front left corner of the fence, just as they had planned. At Beth's outburst they stopped in their tracks and looked with surprise in the direction she was pointing.

  "Oh, no!" cried Jana. It was true. Four girls were standing in the very spot that The Fabulous Five had picked for their own on Saturday, looking as if the world belonged to them. One was a tall blonde whose hair had been caught on top of her head and fell over one shoulder in a braid that came almost to her waist. Beside her stood her exact opposite, a small dark-haired girl who had a short haircut and enormous brown eyes. Next to her was another blonde, and finally stood a wide-eyed brunette with long, wavy hair. It was obvious who was in control—the tall blonde with the waist-length braid. The moment she spoke the other three turned toward her with the precision of a drill team and seemed to hang on every word.

  "Laura McCall," Melanie muttered. "I know it's her. It has to be."

  "What are they doing in our place?" Beth demanded. "Come on. Let's get them out of there."

  "How?" asked Christie. "This is a public school. They have as much right to be there as we do." Beth didn't seem to hear. She was heading straight toward the other girls with a look of grim determination on her face.

  "Beth!" insisted Jana, running after her best friend. The others hurried after her. When Jana caught up to Beth less than ten feet from where the others stood, she grabbed her by the arm. "Wait. We can't just go barreling up to them and tell them to get out of our private spot. After all, Christie's right. This is a public school."

  "Whatever we do, we have to stick together," said Melanie.

  "Yeah," said Katie. "Remember that we're The Fabulous Five." Then she paused, throwing an angry look toward Laura McCall and her followers. "The Fantastic Foursome," she scoffed. "Big deal."

  By now it was obvious to Jana that The Fantastic Foursome had noticed The Fabulous Five. They were gazing at them with scorn.

  "I don't like this," said Melanie in a voice that was almost a whimper. "Let's get out of here."

  "Don't be ridiculous," barked Beth. "They're not going to scare me off."

  Katie moved up to stand beside Beth. "Me either," she said.

  At the same instant, Laura McCall stepped forward. "What do you want?" she challenged.

  "Did you lose something?" asked the short dark-haired girl beside her.

  "Of course not," Beth threw back at her. "We just wanted to look you over since we've heard so much about you."

  Laura McCall froze instantly. Her eyes hardened as she looked straight at Beth. "You'd better watch it!"

  She spat out the words menacingly, and before Beth could respond, the other blonde chimed in, "You must be Beth Barry. WE can TELL."

  The three girls standing beside Laura giggled among themselves. "You're the show-off," Laura assured her.

  Jana felt a burst of anger at Laura for saying such a thing. Beth was dressed in chartreuse stirrup pants and a chartreuse and electric-pink shirt that hung past her knees. It was funny how you stopped really looking at someone you knew so well, thought Jana. You stopped noticing things that were pretty obvious to everyone else, such as Beth's wild taste in clothes. But that didn't make her a show-off. She was just a little theatrical, that was all. Jana opened her mouth to come to her friend's defense, but Beth was ready with a challenge of her own.

  "What do you mean by that?" she said.

  "Figure
it out," said Laura. Then she turned abruptly and strode off in the direction of the school with the other three marching along behind.

  "Hey, don't pay any attention to them. It's all sour grapes. Besides, we've got our spot back," called Katie as she rushed toward the corner of the fence. "Way to go, Beth!"

  Beth didn't answer. She was looking angrily over her shoulder at Laura McCall and her friends.

  "They think they know everything," Christie mumbled. "Boy, are they in for a surprise."

  Everybody nodded and eagerly followed Katie to the fence. All except Jana. She ambled after the others, but her thoughts were on her best friend again. She couldn't get over Beth's strange behavior. Jana frowned. Beth was always loud and dramatic, but she never purposely picked a fight. Especially with someone she didn't know and certainly had no quarrel with. That just wasn't like her. She must really be nervous about junior high, thought Jana. Beth was the one who was always laughing and making everyone else relax, but this morning she was totally uptight.

  Also, Jana couldn't help wondering if someone was spreading rumors about Beth. If so, maybe those rumors extended to herself and the rest of her friends. After all, Laura hadn't said you're A show-off. She had said you're THE show-off, as if she had more labels that she was just waiting to slap onto other kids whenever she felt like it. I wonder what my label is? The what?

  Jana leaned against the fence and tried to relax, but her insides were quivering. In fact, she couldn't remember when she had felt so insecure. Somehow, standing in their special corner now that the others were gone didn't feel the same as it had at Mark Twain Elementary. The sea of unfamiliar faces around her grew larger and larger as it got nearer to time for the bell.

  She glanced down at the denim skirt and layered top she was wearing. Even deciding what to wear on the first day of school had been a trauma because first impressions were so important. They affected what people thought of you. Even what labels they stuck on you, she thought with a shudder.

  An unexpected heat wave had made the new wool pants outfit she had so carefully picked out for the first day of school out of the question, and her mother had immediately vetoed jeans. Jana had pulled practically everything she owned out of her closet and pitched it onto the bed. Then she had tried on things in one combination after another until she had finally settled on the denim skirt. Still, the moment she had stepped out the front door and knew that it was too late to change again, she panicked. What if she looked weird? What if nobody else in the entire junior high wore a denim skirt today? Or even worse, what if all the wrong kids wore them and all the neat kids had on wool pants outfits?