by Betsy Haynes
THE FABULOUS FIVE #15
MELANIE'S IDENTITY CRISIS
BETSY HAYNES
A BANTAM SKYLARK BOOK®
NEW YORK • TORONTO • LONDON • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND
RL 5, IL age 9-12
MELANIE'S IDENTITY CRISIS
A Bantam Skylark Book / February 1990
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 © 1990 by Betsy Haynes and James Haynes.
Cover art copyright © 1990 by Ralph Amatrudi.
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CWO 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CHAPTER 1
"Eeek! I'm having an identity crisis!" squealed Melanie Edwards. She held her ballpoint pen by two fingers and let it drop like a bomb onto the open notebook in her lap as she looked helplessly at her friends. "I can't answer all these questions about myself."
"Maybe I can help you," Katie Shannon said with a grin. "Name: Melanie Edwards. Favorite sport: flirting with boys. Favorite indoor activity: thinking about boys. Favorite outdoor activity: looking at boys. Favorite subject: studying boys."
"Shhh!" Melanie said quickly, looking around the crowded gymnasium where most of the Wakeman Junior High students were spending a rainy lunch period after leaving the cafeteria. "Someone might hear you and think I'm boy crazy."
"Don't worry. Everybody already knows," said Beth Barry with a laugh, and then she ducked as Melanie pretended to throw a book at her.
"I agree with Melanie about the questionnaire," admitted Jana Morgan. "It's hard. I don't know my library card number, and I'm not sure about some of the other things either, especially the questions about my favorites."
"But remember what Mrs. Blankenship said in Family Living class," Christie Winchell reminded them. "Answering these questions will help us know ourselves a little better before we begin looking for our ancestors in the genealogy project." Then she added, "I think it's going to be fun. I've always wondered if there were any skeletons in the old family closet."
Beth's eyes gleamed. "Yeah. Murderers. Pirates. Bank robbers."
Melanie nodded to Christie. "Mrs. Clark said the same thing in our class. She also said that if we traced our families only as far back as 1625, we'd find over sixteen thousand people directly related to us, and that's only parents and grandparents. It doesn't count brothers and sisters or aunts and uncles."
"Wow. I wonder how many great-great-greats that is?" asked Beth.
"I don't know," said Melanie. "But I thought it was neat when she said that we're all unique because each one of our ancestors contributed a little bit of themselves in the genes they passed on to us, and that's why we're all so different from each other."
"Different, but still best friends," Jana said emphatically. "No matter what, we'll always be The Fabulous Five."
Everybody agreed with that, then went back to working on the questionnaires. Melanie tried to concentrate on the next two questions—Favorite food? Food you dislike most?—but instead she glanced at the groups of kids milling around in the gym while thunder crashed outside and rain streamed down the windows. Some sat in the bleachers just as she and her friends were doing. Others stood beside the big double doors leading into the hall or near the rest rooms. Mostly the girls were talking quietly, and lots of the boys were horsing around, but just as the Family Living teachers had said, no two were alike. Unless you counted the Dalworth twins, of course, thought Melanie. Mike and Mitch were so much alike that even their teachers couldn't tell them apart, but they were identical twins and shared the same genes.
When the bell rang, Melanie headed for her afternoon classes, promising the others that she would meet them after school to go to Bumpers, the fast-food restaurant where the junior high kids hung out. As she walked through the halls, she thought about what Jana had said about The Fabulous Five. They certainly were all different. Jana was the unofficial leader, the one who could hold everything together in a crisis. Christie was the studious one and the math brain. Katie was the feminist and the person who worried most about things being fair. Beth was the actress who did everything with dramatic flair. And of course, everybody always says that I'm boy crazy, Melanie thought, when the truth is that I'm just interested in boys.
Thinking of boys reminded her that if she speeded up a little and turned the next corner at the right instant, she might just meet Garrett Boldt heading in her direction. She usually only managed to get her timing right once or twice a week, but Garrett was so totally handsome and terrific that she almost slid around the corner in anticipation of seeing him.
"Hi, Garrett," she yelled when his head appeared above the crowd. He was in the eighth grade and one of the tallest boys in Wakeman, which made him easy to spot. She bounced on her tiptoes and tried to get his attention with a wave. "Gar-rett!" she called insistently. "Hey, Flash," she added, using the nickname he had earned as sports photographer for the school yearbook, The Wigwam.
But Garrett moved on past her, looking straight ahead. The crowd was moving too fast in each direction for her to have time to call out again. He hadn't heard her, and yet she felt sure she had yelled loud enough. Could he have been ignoring me? she wondered.
When she got to her seat in biology class, the first thing she did was look for Shane Arrington. Shane was one of her major crushes along with Scott Daly, her old boyfriend from Mark Twain Elementary. Shane liked her, too. Well enough, anyway, to ask her out now and then and kiss her good-night when he brought her home. And he was soooo handsome, a dead ringer for River Phoenix.
"Hmmm," she murmured to herself as she watched him walk in the door. "I wonder what my Family Living teacher would say about that. They can't possibly have the same genes."
She had planned to wait for Shane to walk by her desk so that she could ambush him with a flirty smile. Then she would start a conversation by asking him if he had found a girlfriend yet for Igor, his pet iguana, whom he claimed had been so lovesick that he hadn't eaten for days. But Shane stopped to talk to Shawnie Pendergast, and an instant later Mr. Dracovitch called the class to order.
Rats! One perfectly good ambush down the drain, she thought as she watched Shane slide into his seat without looking in her direction.
Melanie slumped in her seat and halfheartedly listened to the biology teacher begin the lesson. Nothing was going her way today. Garrett had passed her in the hall without noticing her. Shane had talked to Shawnie instead of her, and this morning before school, Scott Daly had streaked by her on his bicycle without even saying hello.
She sagged a little lower in her desk as she thought about the three boys. Scott is my very best boyfriend. But Shane is too cute for words, and he's so kooky. Who else would have an iguana for a pet? And Garrett Boldt is dreamy. So what if he's an eighth-grader and popular? He likes
me a little bit. At least I thought he did. What's the matter with all three of them, anyway? They're acting as if I don't exist!
Melanie sighed so loudly that three students turned around to look at her. Fortunately, Mr. Dracovitch had his back to the class writing on the board, and he didn't notice.
Mrs. Clark was so revved up over the genealogy project that Melanie thought she was acting almost hyper when she called the Family Living class to order the last period of the day.
"Boys and girls, I'm so excited about the things we're going to do over the next few weeks that I can hardly wait to get started." She raked her fingers through her short, salt-and-pepper hair as she paced up and down at the front of the room. "Maybe some of you will find out that you're related to someone famous or that your ancestors came over on the Mayflower. Wouldn't that be fun?"
Some kids nodded and a few even cheered.
"But before we begin our detective work," she went on, holding up a sample of the questionnaire she had given to each student, "we still have some work to do. Now, who can tell me what they learned about themselves from filling out one of these?"
"That I don't like to fill out questionnaires," blurted out Joel Murphy.
Mrs. Clark gave him a tolerant nod. "And?" she said, trying to coax something more out of Joel.
Joel shrugged, and Mrs. Clark looked around the class for another volunteer.
Melanie ducked her head behind Tony Calcaterra's to avoid being called on. She had only answered half of the questions. I already know everything there is to know about myself, she thought grumpily. It was boys she wanted to know more about. Maybe Mrs. Clark ought to collect everybody's questionnaire and then put all the ones the boys turned in into a book that she could run off on the copy machine and give to any girl who wanted it. What a great idea! she thought. The list of things she would like to know about certain boys was practically endless.
There were other people she wanted to know about, too. What made Laura McCall so snooty? Or why did Katie Shannon have such opposite opinions from hers about boys? And what made Christie Winchell and Whitney Larkin extra smart? But still, she thought, it was boys she was the most interested in finding out about.
Across the room, Kim Baxter was waving her hand in the air, and Melanie turned her attention back to what was going on in class.
"Yes, Kim. What did you find out about yourself?" asked Mrs. Clark.
"Well, this isn't on the questionnaire, but my mom reminded me that I'm the only one in our family who has red hair."
Clarence Marshall snickered loudly, and Mrs. Clark gave him a warning frown before saying, "Isn't that interesting, Kim? I'll bet when you begin searching, you'll find that one of your ancestors had the same color hair as you."
"My older brother throws up every time he eats fish," offered a boy at the back of the room whom Melanie knew only as Tom something-or-other.
This time the whole class broke out laughing.
"Now, class!" said Mrs. Clark sternly. "I hope that you have all used these questionnaires about yourselves to see that we all have specific traits that make us different from each other and that those traits can sometimes be traced to our ancestors. Now it is time for us to become detectives and begin digging up our ancestors. We're going to start looking for clues to why we are certain ways and who was responsible for our being that way. In order to do that, I am going to give each one of you genealogy charts to trace your own family tree."
The laughter turned to groans as she passed stacks of papers down each row.
"More paperwork," muttered Curtis.
Mrs. Clark nodded. "That's right. But you'll see. It's going to be fun."
Melanie perked up as she looked at the chart in her hand. It really was a family tree just as Mrs. Clark had said. The main trunk coming up from the ground contained space for her own name, date of birth, and place of birth. Two branches grew out of the trunk. In one of them it said Mother's name, and that was followed by spaces for her date and place of birth, whom she married, and for use in the future, when she died and where she was buried. The same information was asked for on her father's branch. On each parent's branch were two branches for their parents, and so on until the top of the tree contained dozens of small branches for more distant relatives.
"Cool," murmured Tony Calcaterra from the seat in front of her.
Melanie had to agree. It was going to be fun to fill in all those blanks.
"For tomorrow's assignment, I want you to talk to your parents and fill in as much information as you can on your family tree. Once you've listed everything your mother and father can tell you, I'll teach you the next place that family detectives always go to find clues."
Melanie glanced at her family tree again. I wonder what I'll find out when I start digging into our family's history? she mused. Maybe I'm related to a famous person, just as Mrs. Clark suggested someone might be. Or maybe I'll trace our ancestors back to royalty.
"Princess Melanie," she whispered, and giggled softly. Whatever it turned out to be, it was going to be fun.
CHAPTER 2
Bumpers was packed by the time Melanie and her friends got there after school. They made their way through the maze of booths, tables, and bumper cars that were relics from an old amusement park and gave the place its name, looking for some place to sit. Finally Katie spotted an empty table near the back and led them to it. All around them kids were talking about the genealogy project and tracing their family trees.
"Well, at least I understand Brittany now," said Beth emphatically.
"Your older sister?" asked Christie. "What does she have to do with tracing your family tree?"
"She's so weird that I always felt sure we weren't related," Beth said with a grin. "You know, that when Mom brought Brittany home from the hospital, she had the wrong baby. Now I know that we just inherited genes from different ancestors. What a relief!"
Everyone giggled.
"I was thinking about Mr. Dracovitch," admitted Katie. "Talk about scrambled genes. Can you imagine what kind of relatives it took to produce him? Maybe he really is a descendant of Count Dracula. Otherwise, why would a grown man wear a shiny black toupee that makes him look like Dracula and cook garbage on a Bunsen burner in his classroom?"
"If you ask me, he's pretty neat," said Christie. "I think it's his way of saying that it's okay to be different."
The next morning Melanie joined the group of boys and girls standing in The Fabulous Five's regular spot by the school fence just in time to hear Tony Calcaterra say, "I hope I find out that I'm related to Sylvester Stallone. You know, the Italian Stallion." He flexed his muscles and strutted around imitating the actor. "You guys will have to admit that there's a definite family resemblance."
"Yeah, two eyes, two ears, two feet. There's a family resemblance, all right," Katie scoffed good-naturedly. "Don't get big ideas just because you are Italian and have black hair."
"The way I see it, I'm bound to find the answer to all the questions about UFOs," bragged Shane, waving his arms toward the heavens.
"Unidentified flying objects?" asked Christie, making a face. "Why?"
"Hey, my parents had to come from another planet. Right? They're so far out that there's no other explanation."
"Man, that's cosmic," teased Beth, making a peace sign. Then she turned to Jana and said, "And maybe you'll discover that you really are related to Trevor Morgan after all and that you can get all of us front-row tickets for Brain Damage's concerts."
Jana raised an eyebrow at her friend. "Dream on," she said. "Imagine me and a rock star related."
Melanie listened to them talk, but she didn't join in the conversation. How could she when Shane was ignoring her again? She didn't even feel like asking him about Igor.
What's wrong with me? she wondered. Have I suddenly become invisible?
Melanie looked over her genealogy chart while she waited for Family Living class to start later that day. She had shown the family tree to her parents after dinner
the night before and had asked them to tell her everything they knew about her ancestors so she could fill in all the spaces.
"Well, you got your brains from your mother's side and your good looks from my side," joked her father.
"Come on, Larry," her mother chided. "This is serious." Then her eyes twinkled and she added, "Besides, she got both her brains and her good looks from my side."
Melanie loved it when her parents joked like that. It made her feel so warm and specially loved. She smiled at both of them and then said, "I know Grandma and Grandpa Pennington and Grandma and Grandpa Edwards, but I don't know when they were born or married or any of that other stuff, and I don't even remember the names of their parents." For the next hour and a half the three of them sat around the kitchen table, filling in spaces on the family tree until Mrs. Edwards had traced her mother's family all the way back to Melanie's great-great-grandmother Cordia Mae Lee, who had been born in 1896.
"Wow," said Melanie. "That was almost one hundred years ago."
"And from what I've heard, she was really a character," her mother said, and chuckled.
"In your family, everyone's a character," said Mr. Edwards, teasing again. "Now in my family everybody has always been serious, and hardworking, and the sort of people who stayed out of mischief." They had laughed hard over that, and the warm feeling had washed over Melanie again. Still, she wanted to know more.
"Tell me about Great-great-grandmother Cordia," Melanie insisted. "What do you mean, she was a character?"
Her mother was thoughtful for a moment. "Well, I don't really know very much about her. I've just always heard stories from my mother and grandmother about how she was always getting into mischief when she was young, especially where boys were concerned."
"Boys?" Melanie whispered as little tingles traveled up her spine.
"That's right," said her mother. "According to the stories, she had so many boyfriends that her girlfriends were jealous."
But that was all her mother had been able to tell her about Great-great-grandmother Cordia, and now, sitting in class and looking at the chart with over half of the blanks filled in, Melanie was curious again about the ancestor who had gotten into mischief because of boys. She couldn't help remembering Mrs. Clark's words: "What you are is partly because of your ancestors, who each contributed a little bit of themselves in the form of the genes they passed on to you. You are all of them, and you are like no one else. You are yourself." What had her great-great-grandmother really been like? she wondered. And had some of Cordia Mae Lee's personality been passed on down to her?