by Betsy Haynes
To make matters worse, the cafeteria was a madhouse. One table of fourth-graders was zinging peas back and forth at each other until Mr. Scott, the assistant principal, made them stop. Then he stood guard beside them and blocked our view of the table where Randy and Scott and all their friends were sitting.
Melanie must have seen the agony on my face. "Don't worry, Jana. I'm keeping an eye on the door. The minute I see Scott leave, I'll go talk to him."
I nodded and pulled my sandwich apart for the millionth time.
A few minutes later Melanie sprang to attention. "There he goes," she said, ducking down again and peering around Beth's shoulder at the door. "Okay, everybody. Give me a few minutes to talk to Scott and then meet me at our usual place beside the fence."
Katie and Beth and Christie and I all nodded. This was it. My stomach was churning so fast that I knew if I had eaten my lunch, I would throw it all up now.
My friends and I scrambled to clean our lunch things off the table and get out of the cafeteria. Then we hurried to the spot by the fence where we always meet when we want to talk about something private.
Melanie and Scott were standing by the building, and I hopped from one foot to the other as I watched them. "I wonder how long it will take her to talk to him?" I said.
Nobody answered, and a couple of minutes later Melanie headed in our direction. I couldn't help noticing that she wasn't smiling. In fact, she looked as if something were terribly wrong. "Oh, no," I whispered to myself.
"Did you ask him?" I demanded. "What did he say?"
Melanie took a deep breath. She looked so miserable that I knew what was coming before the first word was out of her mouth. "Scott said that he asked Randy if he was planning to take you to the movie Saturday, and he said no. Oh, Jana!" She rushed up and put her arms around me. "I can't believe it. He's your boyfriend!"
My friends all made sympathetic sounds and looked down at their feet. I could tell that they didn't know what to say. I just stood there, feeling as if my heart would burst. I didn't know what to say, either. What had happened? Why didn't Randy like me anymore? How could I possibly face anybody now?
"Is he taking Taffy?" I asked.
"I don't know," said Melanie. "Scott didn't say, but I could ask him if you want me to."
I shook my head. As badly as I wanted to know, I couldn't stand for Melanie to ask Scott. If he would tell her, he might blab it all over school.
I went inside the building when the bell rang and sank into my seat. I couldn't look toward Randy or at Wiggins when she announced the social studies assignment, and I could barely find the right page in my book. All I could think about was how I had to get away from school before everybody found out. If I could just get home, I could fake being sick. I could stay away for the rest of the year. Then next year, when everyone in my class had gone on to junior high, I could come back and finish sixth grade at Mark Twain Elementary.
I spent most of afternoon recess in the girls' bathroom, hiding out in one of the stalls. Even though my friends were sympathetic, they didn't know how I felt. They couldn't. No one could. Randy Kirwan wasn't going to take me to the movie on Saturday—which meant he didn't like me anymore. I was so miserable I thought I'd die.
When I got back to my seat after recess, there was a note lying on my desk. It looked like an ordinary note. White, lined notebook paper folded a jillion times, exactly like the notes The Fabulous Five passes back and forth in class whenever something really important happens.
Wiggins was writing spelling words on the blackboard so her back was turned while we got settled in our seats again. Before I opened the note, I looked at each of my four best friends to see if one of them had sent it. Maybe they had heard more news about Randy while I was in the girls' bathroom. Unfortunately, none of them was looking at me.
Then I thought about Randy. Maybe he had changed his mind and decided to ask me to the movie, after all. Maybe he had looked for me at recess, and when he couldn't find me on the playground, he had written a note and left it on my desk. But he wasn't looking at me, either.
Wiggins was still writing spelling words on the board, so I unfolded the note and spread it out on my desk. The first thing I noticed was that it was typed, but I forgot all about that as soon as I read what it said:
Dear Jana,
I am writing to tell you that I have been noticing you for a long time. I think you are very nice and very pretty.
I know that you like Randy Kirwan, but I will keep hoping that someday you will like me instead.
Your Secret Admirer
I blinked a couple of times just in case I was dreaming and read it again. I caught my breath. It was true. I, Jana Morgan, had a secret admirer.
CHAPTER THREE
I sat at my desk as stiff as a statue thinking about that note. I had folded it again so that no one could peek over my shoulder and read it, but I could still see the words in my mind: Dear Jana, I have been noticing you for a long time. . . .
Thinking about those words made little tingles race up and down my spine. Who was the note from? He had to be in my class since he had left it on my desk. And he was probably watching me the very instant I read it.
"Jana Morgan! Pay attention, please."
I snapped to attention so fast that I bounced in my seat. Wiggins was facing the class now, and she was glaring at me over the tops of her wire-framed glasses."The word you are to spell is 'unbelievable.'" Un-be-liev-able, I thought, sounding out the syllables to myself. I looked down at my desk, feeling embarrassed. "Unbelievable" was from yesterday's spelling list. I had studied the words last night, but right now my mind was a total blank.
"We are all waiting," said Wiggins, and I heard someone behind me giggle.
"U-N," I began, "B-E-L-E-I—"
"You're forgetting the I-before-E rule," Wiggins interrupted sharply.
My ears were getting hot. The whole class was staring at me because I had forgotten the stupid old I-before-E rule—I before E except after C—and they were probably all thinking about how dumb I was. Randy Kirwan was staring, and all my friends were staring, and even my secret admirer was probably staring at me. MY SECRET ADMIRER. I was so embarrassed I thought I'd die.
"U-N-B-E-L-I-E-V-A-B-L-E," I said. Then I went over the letters again in my mind to make sure I had been right this time.
"Thank you, Jana," Wiggins said. "Clarence Marshall. Spell 'pursuit.'"
I sank lower in my seat, relieved that everyone had taken his eyes off me and was now looking at Clarence Marshall. But just as I was starting to relax, Taffy Sinclair turned around in her seat four desks in front of mine and gave me a nasty smile. I knew it was her way of saying that she would have spelled "unbelievable" right the first time. I shot a poison-dart look back at her and tried to concentrate on copying today's spelling words into my notebook, but it was hard. I couldn't help thinking about my secret admirer and wondering who he might be.
Nerd-of-the-world Curtis Trowbridge has had a crush on me for ages, but he has never tried to keep it a secret. Who else might it be? I looked around the room out of the corners of my eyes, first one direction and then the other. There were eleven boys in my class. Some of them, such as Keith Masterson and Scott Daly, were really cute. But some others, such as Clarence Marshall, were the pits.
Then I thought about Randy Kirwan. He was definitely cute and kind and sensitive, but he was a little bit conceited, too. I had learned that during the Romance Machine Disaster. I liked him anyway, but still it would serve him right for dumping me if he found out that I had a secret admirer. And Randy had never done anything as romantic as writing me a note such as the one I had just gotten. I darted a quick glance at him. He was looking down at a paper on his desk. He has probably forgotten that I even exist, I thought.
I could hardly wait for school to be dismissed so that I could show my four best friends the note.
"What!" shrieked Beth the minute we were far enough away from the school ground for me to tell them wit
hout someone else's overhearing. "You're kidding! A secret admirer? How do you know?!"
"Here," I said slyly. Then I slowly extracted the note from my jeans pocket. "This was on my desk when I got in from afternoon recess. Read it yourselves."
Katie gave me a disgusted look as if to say that anything to do with boys was too gross for words, but she snatched the note just as Beth's hand shot out to grab it for herself. Katie unfolded it and read it without comment, and then passed it on.
Melanie sighed loudly and fluttered her eyelids. "Oh, Jana, it's so romantic." Then she got a puzzled look on her face. "It's sort of strange that your secret admirer decided to send you this note today. I mean, everybody in the sixth grade is talking about Saturday and all the kids who have dates. Do you think he is getting up his nerve to ask you out for Saturday, too?"
"Melanie, you're a genius," shouted Christie. "That has to be it."
"Right," said Beth. "He was probably watching you when you read the note to see your reaction. Now think. Did you smile or get a dreamy look on your face or anything?"
"I can't remember," I confessed. "I was so surprised. When I first saw the note lying on my desk I thought that one of you sent it. Then I sort of hoped it was from Randy and that he had changed his mind about asking me out. Then when I saw that it was from a secret admirer, I couldn't believe my eyes."
"And did you notice that it's typed? Maybe he's older," said Christie. "I mean, most kids don't type. They write notes in pencil or ballpoint pen." I knew instantly why Christie had said that. Her mother, Mrs. Winchell, is the principal of our school, and Christie has had this mega-crush on Mr. Scott, the new assistant principal, since the beginning of the school year.
"It's from a kid, all right," I assured her. "Just look at all the crossed-out letters."
"Well, he sounds mature," insisted Christie. "Immature little kids don't write love letters."
"Whoever he is, he must be pretty shy to send you a note instead of talking to you in person," said Katie.
"Not necessarily," I countered. "After all, he said that he knew I liked Randy Kirwan, so he probably thought he didn't stand a chance."
"Tomorrow I think we should all keep our eyes peeled to see if we can spot any boy who is looking at Jana a lot," said Beth.
"Good idea," said Melanie. "If he likes her enough to send her a secret admirer note, he probably can't take his eyes off her. That should make it easy to find out who he is."
"Well, I just hope that he's somebody really cute who will make Randy Kirwan so-o-o-o jealous when he finds out that he will practically go berserk!" said Beth. "That would serve him right."
"Yeah," I whispered as a shimmery feeling went through me. It was getting more exciting by the minute.
My friends and I talked for a little while longer, making plans to be detectives at school the next day and find out who my secret admirer was. After I got home I spread the note on the kitchen table and studied it for a long time. I was thinking about all the detective shows I had seen on television where the bad guy types a note on a typewriter with a crooked letter, and as soon as they find the typewriter, they know who he is and arrest him. Unfortunately, there weren't any crooked letters in this note. All I could hope for was that he would stare at me a lot tomorrow.
CHAPTER FOUR
I could hardly wait for Mom to get home from work so that I could show her my secret admirer note. I wondered if she would have any suggestions for finding out who he was. I had been racking my brain and hadn't come up with one single idea.
When I heard her come into the apartment, I grabbed the note and went to meet her.
"Hi, sweetheart," she chirped. "Wait until you see what I have."
I couldn't imagine what she was talking about. As soon as she hung up her coat, she began pulling brightly colored brochures out of her purse and spreading them on the kitchen table.
"Just look at this." She thrust a flyer toward me with a beautiful lady in a bathing suit on the front. "Bermuda! And here's one for Disney World in Florida."
I stuffed my secret admirer note into my back pocket and took the brochure, but I didn't look at it. All these vacation flyers could mean only one thing. "Are you and Pink planning your honeymoon?" I said around the lump that was growing in my throat.
Pink is short for Wallace Pinkerton, and he and my mother are engaged. I like Pink a lot, but it's hard for me to think of him as part of our family since my father lives less than one hundred miles away in Poughkeepsie, New York. Of course, he's an alcoholic and never comes to see me or very seldom writes, but still, he's the one who is really my father, not Pink.
Mom got a surprised look on her face. "Oh, no, honey," she insisted. "These have nothing to do with Pink and me. We haven't even set a wedding date yet. They're for us. I should have explained."
I was more confused than ever. "What do you mean, they're for us? We could never go places like these. They're EXPENSIVE!"
I shook my head. It was no secret that we had trouble getting by on what Mom made as classified ad manager at the Bridgeport Post, especially when my father didn't send the monthly support check. There was certainly no way that we could afford to go to a place like Disney World.
"I know," Mom admitted. "But I walk by a travel agency every day on my way to and from work, and the pictures on their windows always look so exciting. I just thought it might be fun to look at some of their brochures and pretend that we were going on a big adventure." Then she grinned sheepishly and said, "That was sort of silly, wasn't it?"
"Gosh, no. I'd love to go on an exciting vacation. Maybe if we started saving change in an empty jar we could go someday."
Mom laughed and gave me a hug. Then she picked up the brochures and dropped them into the wastebasket. "That's a good idea. I even have an empty mayonnaise jar we can use. Let's see how much we save before we start planning," she said cheerfully. "Now you finish your homework while I get supper started."
When I got back to my room, I opened my math book, but I couldn't concentrate on the problems. I was thinking about Mom. I had never realized what a boring life she led. No wonder she was crabby sometimes. She just went to work every day and then came home and cooked dinner and took care of me. Oh, sure, she had Pink. But he wasn't exactly Mr. Excitement. He's a supernice man, and he's a printer at the same newspaper where Mom works, but that's about it. He's also a bowling nut, and he takes Mom bowling at the very same bowling alley every single Saturday night. It's no wonder that she was dreaming of exciting places.
Just then I remembered that I had forgotten to show Mom the note from my secret admirer. I started to get up and go back to the kitchen, but I stopped in midair. I sank into my chair again, feeling a little guilty. Having a secret admirer was pretty exciting, and poor Mom was dying for some excitement in her life. Wasn't that why she had brought home all those brochures? Maybe I should wait awhile to show it to her, at least until we had a little change in our vacation jar.
The next morning Christie met me a block from school. She looked as if she were dying of excitement.
"You're going to love this," she said, balancing her notebook on one knee and flipping it open. "Here." She pointed to a page with some names written on it. "I've made a list of every boy in our class, eleven boys to be exact. Then I've made blanks for every period of the day, every recess, and even lunch period. I'll give one of these lists to each member of The Fabulous Five, and we can each make a check in the right blank every time a boy looks at you during the day. That way, at the end of the day, we'll be able to see exactly who has been looking at you the most. Isn't it great?"
Christie didn't wait for me to answer. She removed the top sheet and handed it to me proudly. I know my mouth was hanging open, but I couldn't help it. Leave it to Christie. She is a mathematical genius and loves figuring things out. She had even made the lists on graph paper so that all the blanks were exactly the same size.
"Wow," I said. "This is really great."
"I thought so, to
o," she said confidently. "And with each one of us keeping track of every single boy, we shouldn't miss any important glances or stares."
A couple of minutes later the rest of our friends walked up, and I read over the list of boys while she explained her plan to them.
1. Randy Kirwan
2. Scott Daly
3. Mark Peters
4. Clarence Marshall
5. Curtis Trowbridge
6. Joel Murphy
7. Keith Masterson
8. Richie Corrierro
9. Gregory Harper
10. Eric Silverman
11. Matt Zeboski
"Of course, Randy Kirwan can be eliminated immediately," I huffed. "I'm going to cross him off the list as soon as I get to my desk."
"Well, what about Scott?" Melanie asked indignantly. "Surely nobody thinks he's the secret admirer."
"And Joel has already asked Sara, and Mark asked Alexis," added Beth.
"Come on, you guys," Christie pleaded. "I wrote down every boy in the class just to make sure I didn't leave anybody out. It isn't going to hurt anything."
Melanie gave Christie a frosty look and then made a big ceremony of folding her sheet and sticking it into her social studies book. It was obvious that her feelings were hurt, and I crossed my fingers behind my back that we wouldn't all be mad at each other before this mystery was solved.
I stopped off in the girls' bathroom to brush my hair before I went to class. I wanted to make sure that I looked my very best for my secret admirer—whoever he was. I was also thinking about the eleven boys in my class. Four of them had been eliminated right away—Randy, Scott, Mark, and Joel—so that left only seven. In my mind I went down the list of the ones who were left. Clarence Marshall, jerk. Curtis Trowbridge, nerd. Keith Masterson, cute! Richie Corrierro, cute! Gregory Harper, too quiet. Eric Silverman, semicute. Matt Zeboski, almost semicute. One of those seven had to be my secret admirer.