Taffy Sinclair 008 - Taffy Sinclair and the Melanie Make-Over

by Betsy Haynes

  "They're both wearing white slacks and white sweaters," said Christie.

  Beth let out a low whistle. "They're trying to look just like Laura MacLeod."

  It was true. Of course their slacks weren't leather and their sweaters weren't as gorgeous as the one Laura had worn to class last week, but there was no doubt about it, they were copying her. Naturally, Taffy looked the best. She was wearing white wool slacks and an oversize sweater that came almost to her knees. Melanie had on white jeans and a really cute pullover.

  I looked down at my own clothes. I was wearing my best jeans because last week most of the other girls had worn them. I also had on my favorite blue chambray shirt. The one I saved for times when I wanted to look especially nice. So, why did I feel so tacky next to Taffy Sinclair? It was the same old problem I had thought of in modeling class last week when Laura asked us to tell her some of the times when we felt self-conscious or embarrassed. I had tried so hard to look nice, and here I was, feeling grungy and ugly again.

  Just then Taffy and Melanie walked past us with their noses in the air. Not only that, but their shoulders were down, their tummies in, their arms by their sides, and they were walking in small, even steps, putting their heels down first and then their toes. They looked absolutely perfect. It made me so mad that I thought I'd die.

  Laura MacLeod opened the door to the Special Events Room and motioned for the class to come inside. She looked fabulous again. Today she was dressed in red from head to toe. The skirt of her dress was long and full, and it swirled around her ankles as she walked. One side of her hair was pulled away from her face and held in place by a huge red bow.

  She whirled across the room like a princess and stood at the podium, watching as we found seats and got settled. Beth and Katie and Christie and I found chairs together along the left side near the back of the room. Naturally, Taffy and Melanie sat right up at the front.

  "Hurry! Hurry!" Laura chirped. "We have lots to do today." Next she took roll, and we bobbed up and down in our seats when our names were called.

  "Today we're going to work on hairstyling, makeup, and visual poise—such as getting in and out of a car, sitting down properly, and things like that. But first, I want to talk to you a little bit about what real beauty consists of."

  Beth and I exchanged glances when she said that, and several girls giggled. Then I looked at Taffy and Melanie. They were sitting there with little smiles on their faces as if they already knew what she was going to say and they expected to be used as examples.

  Laura took a deep breath and looked around the room thoughtfully. "Real beauty," she began, "is more than how you look, if you have a pretty face, dress well, and things like that. It's even more than learning all the things about grooming and poise that I'm teaching in this class. What real beauty is," she paused for emphasis, "is something that comes from your heart. It is your internal glow that produces the external beauty that makes people want to be near you. In other words, it's how you feel on the inside that makes you beautiful on the outside. I want you to write that first sentence in the blank space at the top of page seven in your Runway to Beauty booklets." Laura waited a moment while we all shuffled the pages of our booklets and dug in our purses for pencils or ballpoint pens.

  "I didn't bring anything to write with," complained Molly.

  "Me, either," said Kristin.

  I had an extra ballpoint which I loaned to Kristin, and Laura gave her pencil to Molly.

  "Now," said Laura. "I'll repeat what I want you to write down. It is your internal glow," she said slowly, and then paused as we wrote like crazy.

  Suddenly Susan's hand shot up. "How do you spell 'internal'?" she asked.

  Laura patiently spelled the word and then went on, ". . . that produces the external beauty . . ." She paused again as Susan's hand shot up for a second time.

  "How do you spell 'external'?"

  Laura chuckled and spelled that word too. ". . . that makes people want to be near you."

  I thought the sentence over as I finished writing it. In a way, it didn't make much sense. If it was something different than what she was teaching us, why was she giving the class in the first place? I thought about raising my hand and asking, but she was starting to talk again.

  "You see, the problem is that some girls place too much importance on superficial attractiveness, or how they look, and not enough on getting the good feelings about themselves that make them glow from within. And that's what I'm going to talk to you about for the next few minutes. Another word for internal glow is self-confidence. It's the same self-confidence that makes it easy to walk across a room when people are watching, to open your mouth and say the right thing or be able to laugh if you don't, and to always feel that you are at your best no matter who else may be around you without being self-conscious or embarrassed."

  Now we're getting somewhere, I thought. This was exactly what I wanted to know.

  For the next few minutes Laura talked about liking yourself and accepting yourself for who you are.

  "No one is ever satisfied with how she looks," she said.

  That's a laugh, I thought, thinking about Taffy Sinclair.

  But Laura was still talking. "For one thing, my ears are too big. That's why I wear my hair to cover them. And my nose is too pointy."

  I looked quickly at Laura's nose. I had never noticed that it was pointy before, but she was right. Still, on her it looked good.

  "Also," she said, lowering her voice to confidential tones, "my feet are huge."

  Everybody laughed, and a few girls tucked their own feet under their chairs.

  "The secret is to concentrate on the good things about yourself. Not just the good things about your looks, although those are important, too. But concentrate on the things you like about yourself. Your good personality. Your friendliness. Your kindness. Because if you concentrate on those things, so will everyone else.

  "I'm going to give you an assignment for next week," she went on, and a few people groaned. "I want you to make a list of all the things you like about yourself. And I want you to copy that list underneath the sentence you just wrote on page seven of your booklet."

  Then she went on to talk about the value of exercise to keep us trim and our energy level high, and about cleanliness and good grooming. Finally, as she got into the importance of nutrition, she said something that made me snap to attention.

  "There are no tricks that will make you thin. Fad diets and extremes of all kinds may sound good and promise fast results, but they are very dangerous to your health. The only thing that will make you slim and keep you that way is good nutrition and plenty of exercise."

  Katie nudged me, and I felt my face go red at the thought of all those apples, hard-boiled eggs, and carrot sticks I had been living on for the past few days. I sneaked a look at her out of the corner of my eye, and naturally, she was wearing a superior expression. Still, I had to admit that when Laura said it, it all made sense. Then I thought about how Melanie had told us that Taffy confided to her the tricks models used to get slim and beautiful. Taffy must have been lying. Laura said that there weren't any tricks, and I believed Laura!

  "All right, everybody!" Laura shouted. "On your feet. We're going to start our exercise program. I want you to do this at home every single day. Hands above your head and touch your toes! One! Two! Three! Four!"

  There were grunts and giggles as everyone hopped up and started exercising. We touched our toes, did jumping jacks, deep knee-bends, and stretches. Once, when I looked at Taffy and Melanie, I had to laugh. Taffy's beautiful blond hair had flopped into her face, and she was puffing and panting like crazy. Melanie was having trouble bending over because her pants were so tight. Taffy's dieting tricks must not be working yet, I thought with satisfaction as I looked away.

  A moment later I heard a loud crash. Then a scream. I looked up in alarm. Everyone was crowding around someone on the floor. It was Melanie. Her eyes were closed and she was lying very still.


  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A hush fell over the class as everyone stared at Melanie, lying pale and still on the floor. Laura rushed to her. "Stand back everyone," she demanded. "Give her air."

  As Laura dropped to her knees beside her, Melanie began to stir.

  "Don't try to sit up," Laura ordered. "Just lie where you are."

  Melanie opened her eyes. "What happened?" she whispered. Then, as if to answer her own question, she went on, "I was doing the exercises and I started feeling dizzy."

  "It looks as if you just fainted," said Laura. "But to be on the safe side, I want you to stay where you are while I call your mother to come and get you. Would you like a drink of water?"

  Melanie nodded and looked around the ring of faces peering down at her. When her eyes met mine, I realized how scared I had been when I saw her lying there unconscious. I slid to the floor and grabbed her hand, holding it tightly in both of mine.

  "You're probably just coming down with the flu," I said. "Or maybe it's the cheese you had for lunch yesterday. You know, the stuff you're allergic to that made you throw up." I realized that I was jabbering so fast that she probably didn't understand a word I was saying, but I couldn't help it. I was scared. How long would it take Mrs. Edwards to get here? What if she wasn't home?

  I looked around for Laura to tell her that if Mrs. Edwards didn't answer the phone, to call my mom. She would be glad to come. By Laura was nowhere in sight. She had obviously gone to call Melanie's mother. Just then I noticed Taffy Sinclair. She was standing away from everyone, instead of crowding around Melanie the way the rest of us were doing, and darting nervous glances around the room as if she were afraid someone would accuse her of making Melanie faint. Not only that, she didn't seem the least bit interested in Melanie or how she was feeling. That seemed strange to me, especially since she had been acting as if the two of them were such great friends.

  A moment later Darcy appeared with a paper cup of water. "I got it in the beauty parlor next door," she said proudly.

  I forgot about Taffy and helped Melanie sit up a little. Then I held her head as she drank. I was glad to see that the color was coming back into her face. But that time Laura had come back.

  "I feel okay now," said Melanie, trying to sit up. "Honest I do. I just got a little dizzy for a minute. That's all."

  "That's super, but I don't want you to get up yet anyway. Your mother is on the way. As for everyone else," Laura said, raising her voice so that the whole class could hear, "I'm going to dismiss class for today. I think we've had enough excitement, and you can practice walking and work on the list in your workbooks. I'll see all of you next Saturday."

  She shooed us out of the room so quickly that I didn't have time to say anything else to Melanie. Still, I don't know what I would have said. She was hanging around with Taffy now and had even dressed like Taffy's twin and come to class with her. She didn't look at me once until after she fainted.

  Christie and Beth and Katie came home with me again. Mom had left a note on the fridge that she had gone shopping, so we had the apartment to ourselves.

  I tossed my jacket into my room and flopped down on the sofa. "I wonder what happened to Melanie?" I asked.

  "She said she just got dizzy doing the exercises," said Christie. "That happens to me sometimes if I stand up too fast, but I'll have to admit, I've never fainted."

  "She's probably been hanging around Taffy Sinclair too much," Beth said sarcastically. "That could make anybody sick enough to faint."

  We all laughed at that, and I could see that my friends felt the same about Melanie and Taffy's becoming friends as I did.

  "Forget Melanie for now," I said. "What about Mona? She really needs our help, you know."

  "Only she doesn't want our help," said Katie, shaking her head.

  "That's only because she doesn't understand, and we approached her in the wrong way," I insisted. "She thinks we feel sorry for her."

  "Well, don't we?" asked Christie.

  "Sure, but . . ." My voice trailed off. Maybe my friends were right. Maybe we were wasting our time. Maybe Mona was a lost cause, anyway. Then I remembered how she was always trying to get Taffy's attention and how Taffy ignored her. In some ways, it made me think about my father and how I had been trying all these years to get his attention. I had done all sorts of desperate things. Once I even wrote him a letter and pretended that I was on my deathbed. I knew how it felt to be ignored.

  "I think we should try again," I said. "Only this time we have to think of a way to convince her that we really want to be friends."

  "She really is okay," said Beth. "She's always nice to everybody."

  "And remember how she stuck up for Taffy that time we planted the note for Wiggins to find when Taffy was trying to blackmail you?" Katie asked, looking straight at me. "She said that just because Taffy had done something wrong, that didn't make it right to do something wrong to Taffy."

  "We should have noticed sooner that she would make a good friend," Christie said softly.

  "I've got an idea," I said. "Let's call a special meeting of The Fabulous Five for Monday after school and invite Mona to come. We won't ask Melanie, though. Not the way things are. Anyway, clubs are special. Everybody knows that, including Mona, and you don't invite someone to come to your club meeting just because you feel sorry for her."

  Everybody agreed that my idea was a good one, and Christie said she would be the one to invite Mona. We practiced our model's walk and weighed in and talked awhile, and then my friends went home.

  I thought about calling Melanie's house to find out how she was feeling and to ask what was wrong with her, but I didn't. She seemed okay by the time Laura dismissed modeling class. Besides, I couldn't stand the way she was hanging around with Taffy Sinclair. If Melanie wanted to choose between The Fabulous Five and Taffy, that was her business. And if I called her, she would think I was begging her to come back.

  A little while later the phone rang. It was Christie, and I could tell by the sound of her voice that she had good news.

  "Mona says she'll come!" Christie gushed. "I can't believe it. She sounded a little surprised at first, but when I told her that we really did want her at our meeting, she thought about it for a minute and then said okay."

  "Terrific!" I said, bouncing up and down on my tiptoes.

  "I can't wait to get started on her. Like Beth said, we'll be changing an ugly duckling into a swan."

  "Yeah," I said. "And wait until Taffy Sinclair sees that."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  So far, anyway, the things I was learning in modeling school hadn't done much for my relationship with Randy. He not only hadn't given me one of his 1,000-watt smiles in a long time, but when I got to school Monday morning, he glanced at me for an instant and then looked away so quickly that my heart almost stopped.

  "I think Randy is avoiding me," I confided to my friends as soon as I reached our special spot by the fence where they were waiting.

  "Don't be silly," said Beth. "Randy Kirwan is crazy about you. Hasn't he kissed you TWICE? Why would he avoid you?"

  I frowned. "He's probably so impressed with Taffy that he doesn't care about me anymore. I mean, have you noticed that ever since modeling school started she always walks absolutely perfectly and sits down absolutely perfectly and does EVERYTHING as perfectly as Laura MacLeod?" Then I went on to tell them about how Randy had started to look at me and then turned away. "I definitely think he did that on purpose," I confessed.

  "You thought he had lost interest in you when Taffy pulled that secret-admirer trick on you, too, but he hadn't," said Christie.

  "I know," I responded, "but he really did turn away. That means something must be wrong or else why would he do it?"

  "Psst, guys," Katie whispered loudly. "Here comes Mona. Everybody smile."

  Mona was trudging up the front walk with her shoulders slumped forward and her hair hanging in her eyes, as usual. She reminded me of a sad puppy.

  "Hi, Mona," I sai
d, trying my best to sound cheerful.

  "Hi, Mona," echoed my friends.

  She looked up and gave us an embarrassed smile. Then she made a quick left and hurried toward the side entrance.

  "What are we going to do when she comes to our club meeting after school?" Beth moaned. "What will we say to her? Did you see how she just acted? She's scared to death of us."

  Christie sighed. "We can't just start right in trying to make her over. We're going to have to get some conversation going. Make her trust us and stuff."

  "Sure," I agreed. "But how?"

  We worried about that for the rest of the day. I even forgot about Randy's avoiding me and about Taffy and Melanie's hanging around together. I could think about those things later. But Mona was coming to my apartment after school.

  At morning recess we huddled in the cold beside the fence and stared at each other with blank expressions. At noon we were so worried that we couldn't look at Mona across the cafeteria or finish our lunches, and by afternoon recess panic had set in.

  "I guess changing Mona from an ugly duckling into a swan wasn't such a super idea after all," conceded Beth as we headed for my apartment after school. "We can't even think of a way to begin."

  "Yes, it was," I insisted. "Have you forgotten how it's going to make Taffy feel?"

  "You're right," said Katie. "We've got to do it. Let's act as if it's just any ordinary day and we've been good friends with Mona forever."

  A little later when the doorbell rang, my friends pushed me toward the door. "It's your house," Christie reminded me. "So you have to answer it."

  I took a deep breath and opened the door. Mona was standing there looking more forlorn than ever. I could see that she was wishing she had never come. I started to panic again as I struggled to think of something to say, but then I remembered that getting even with Taffy Sinclair wasn't the only reason we had invited Mona to our meeting.

  I asked her in, and while I hung up her jacket, I noticed that everyone was smiling and talking and being nice to her. She looked as if she might be relaxing just a little. I was glad about that.