by Betsy Haynes
Anyway, I slowed down and started walking like Taffy Sinclair. I had to concentrate really hard at first to remember which hip to swing out, and I couldn't help wondering how she could walk that way and flip her hair, too. It would be a little like that old game of trying to rub your stomach and pat your head at the same time. But I decided to try it, and it wasn't so hard after all. I got the hang of it after a couple of tries.
I was walking along behind Taffy and Scott and Mark, swinging my hips and flipping my hair like crazy, when disaster struck. I hadn't realized they had almost reached a corner, and all of a sudden they stopped for a red light. That wouldn't have been so bad except that Scott looked back over his shoulder—straight at me.
I froze with my right hip stuck out and my imaginary long hair flipped over my right shoulder, and I could feel my ears getting hot.
"Hi, Jana," he said, but he had a funny look on his face.
"Hi," I said back. I tried to straighten up as fast as I could, but I didn't make it before Taffy and Mark turned around, too. I thought about saying something about how much fun it had been to sneeze in unison in Wiggins's class that afternoon, but Taffy gave me a look that would have frozen red-hot lava, so I kept my mouth shut. Finally, the light turned green and they went on.
It really burned me up that Taffy had given me such a snotty look after she had been so friendly in the cafeteria. Probably she had noticed how much attention Scott had paid to me just then and she was jealous. It would have served her right if he had decided to walk the rest of the way home with me.
When I got to our apartment I found that Mom wasn't home from work yet, so I pitched my books on my bed and hurried into her bedroom to practice walking like Taffy Sinclair in front of her full-length mirror. I have to admit that at first I looked pretty funny, and I crossed and uncrossed my fingers three times that Scott hadn't thought so, too. After a little while I figured out just how far to swing my hips to look like I was walking naturally, and it started to be fun. Then I added flipping my hair once or twice, but it looked slightly strange. I decided that would have to wait until it grew longer.
After I had finished practicing, I went to my room and started my homework, but I had trouble concentrating. I kept thinking about my FORMER friends and how jealous they were going to be. But more than that, they would be sorry for the things they had said. They would probably apologize, but first they would just follow me around, looking sad. I would be nice to them, of course, and even accept their apologies, but I would be too busy talking to cute boys to spend much time with them anymore.
Just then I heard Mom come home. She must have had a pretty good day because I could hear her singing to herself as she put her coat away. She had been in a good mood a lot lately. I was glad of that because she could be a holy terror when she wasn't.
"Jana? Are you home?"
"Yeah, Mom," I called. I was happy for the excuse to stop doing homework so I closed my notebook and went into the living room where she was tearing around picking up newspapers and straightening the cushions on the sofa.
"What's up?" I asked. Mom never tore around like that after work. She was always too tired.
"Oh, nothing much," she said. "I just invited Pink over for supper."
"On a week night? He usually only comes over on the weekend."
Mom sort of blushed. "I thought he might enjoy a regular meal for a change. He just about lives on hot dogs and canned soup. Anyway, would you run to the store for me? There are a couple of things I need."
A couple of things turned out to be practically an entire cart full of food, but I didn't mind going after it. It gave me another chance to practice my Taffy Sinclair walk.
Pink was at the apartment when I got back. He was sitting on the kitchen stool watching Mom cook and grinning all over the place. I tried to see if Mom was walking any differently now that Pink was there, but our kitchen is so small that she fried the chicken, cooked the vegetables, and made the salad practically without taking a step.
I watched Mom all through supper to see if she would flip her hair or anything. She didn't, but Pink probably wouldn't have noticed if she had. From the way he ate, you would have thought he was nearly starved. I didn't really get the chance to see Mom walk all evening. They sat in front of the TV the rest of the time. I never realized before how much those two sat around. Finally, I excused myself and went to my room.
I finished my homework and got ready for bed before I took my Miss Piggy poster off the wall. There was Randy, smiling at me as usual. I strolled around the room a couple of times doing my Taffy Sinclair routine. This is going to be fun, I thought as I snuggled into bed.
The next morning I decided to walk to school the same route I'd come home the day before so I could avoid my FORMER friends again. When I got to the first corner, I was really surprised to find Taffy Sinclair standing there as if she were waiting for somebody. What surprised me even more was that when she saw me coming she smiled again. I thought about turning around to see if there was somebody walking behind me that she was smiling at, but before I could she started talking.
"Hi, Jana. Want to walk to school together?"
"I don't care," I said. I couldn't believe she had asked me that. Not after the way we'd always hated each other. I knew she didn't have many friends, and I remembered how once, a long time ago, Mom had said maybe she just didn't know how to make them, but this was almost too much. Here she was walking to school with me, and all I had done was talk to her in the cafeteria the day before and tell her about the big sneeze.
"Guess what?" she said as the light changed and we headed across the street.
"What?" I asked. I couldn't imagine what Taffy Sinclair could possibly know that would be of interest to me.
"I know why those girls are mad at you and are telling everybody you're boy crazy and everything."
I stopped right in the middle of the intersection. Had my FORMER friends actually told Taffy about our so-called self-improvement club? A Greyhound bus could have knocked me flat and I wouldn't have felt a thing. Were they ganging up on me and telling lies about me? Something was going on. Otherwise, how would Taffy know about this? Then I remembered that Taffy had said she knew why they were saying those things behind my back.
"Why?" I shouted, but Taffy didn't hear me because she had kept right on walking and was already at the curb. I ran to catch up. "Why?" I shouted again. "Come on and tell me."
Taffy looked at me and smiled mysteriously. "I can't. It's a secret—except that a lot of people know."
"If so many people already know, then it's not a secret and you have to tell me. Come on, Taffy. What is it?"
"All I can tell you is that they're jealous."
"Jealous?" By now I was just about to go berserk. What could she possibly know that would make my FORMER friends jealous? You would have thought I hadn't said a word. Taffy just kept on walking and looking straight ahead.
"I won't tell anybody you told me," I said. "I promise I won't." I knew I was begging, but I didn't care. I had to know.
"I guess it would serve them right if you found out," she said, and I almost fainted with relief. "There's this boy who has a crush on you, and they all think he's really cute. They're so jealous that he likes you that they've really flipped."
Now it all made sense. No wonder they had said such mean and awful things about me. They were jealous because a cute boy was crazy about me, and they had all written "boy crazy" on my lists of faults just to get even with me. But that hadn't been enough, and now this cute boy was crazier about me than ever, and they were still trying to get even. I couldn't wait to find out who he was.
"Who is he?" I asked casually, trying to sound as if I got that kind of news every day.
"I can't tell."
"Why not?"
"He made me promise I wouldn't."
I gasped. "You mean that he actually told you he liked me?"
"Of course." Taffy batted her long eyelashes at me as if it were the most log
ical thing in the world. "But then he made me promise not to tell you. I think he wants to tell you himself."
"Do you think he's really cute?" I asked.
"Of course," said Taffy. "He's one of the cutest boys in the whole sixth grade."
All the rest of the way to school my heart was pounding like mad. I tried to think of which cute boys I had seen Taffy talking to recently. Of course I had seen her with Mark and Scott the day before after school. But I had also seen her talking to Randy Kirwan, the cutest one of all, just a few days before, and he had been talking to her in private. He had probably been telling her he had a crush on me.
I was beginning to have a different opinion of Taffy Sinclair. I was starting to think that maybe she wasn't such a bad person after all. I knew how it felt to be misunderstood, and now maybe I was finding out who my true friend really was.
For the next couple of days I watched Randy Kirwan every chance I got for signs that he had a crush on me and wanted to tell me about it himself. Of course, I didn't sit in class and stare at him or anything obvious like that. Mostly I pretended to be casual. Sometimes I'd drop my pencil so that I'd have to turn toward him to pick it up and just happen to glance his way. I also spent quite a lot of time with Taffy Sinclair. We walked back and forth to school and sat together in the cafeteria. I could tell it was driving my FORMER friends wild. I didn't care. Randy Kirwan liked me, and any day now he would come up to me and tell me himself.
"You probably didn't know it, but your friends have been saying things behind your back for a long time," said Taffy while we were eating lunch on Thursday.
"They're not my friends," I said. "They're my FORMER friends. Anyway, what have they been saying?"
Taffy shrugged. "Oh, just snotty things. You know."
I did know. They had probably been going around for a long time telling everybody I was boy crazy and immature. They must have told the whole school if they had even told Taffy Sinclair.
"Come on. Let's go," I said. I didn't really want to hear any more about my FORMER friends. I blew up my sandwich bag and popped it and stuffed it and my napkin and my apple core into my lunch bag before I got up. I knew we would have to walk right past Christie Winchell to get out of the room. I stuck my nose up in the air, but when I got even with her table, I said in a big, loud voice, "Show-off!"
"Boy crazy!" she yelled back.
Then Taffy and I grinned at each other and sailed right on past.
CHAPTER SEVEN
There is this bulletin board in the cafeteria where menus for the week, notices of club and scout meetings, ball game schedules, and things like that are posted. When Taffy and I walked in at lunchtime on Friday, the first thing I saw was a crowd of kids around that bulletin board. I couldn't see what was on it, but they were all whispering and giggling so I knew whatever it was had to be pretty funny.
I nudged Taffy. "Let's go see what they're all laughing about," I said.
She shrugged and followed along. When we got to the edge of the crowd, one of the kids, a fourth-grader named Shana something-or-other, started poking other kids and pointing toward us. In just about half of a second everybody was staring at us with funny looks on their faces. Suddenly I had the awful feeling that something terrible was on that bulletin board, something about Taffy and me.
I went storming through that crowd, and there it was. Thumbtacked to the bulletin board was this really gross picture of two girls, one blond and one brunette, that someone had drawn in crayon. They had the ugliest faces I had ever seen and huge noses that were stuck up in the air. Taffy's name was under the picture of the blond, and my name was under the brunette. But that wasn't all. Across the top was this poem.
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Taffy and Jana,
Nobody is as snotty as you!
I was so mad I thought I would explode. I tore that picture off the bulletin board and then into a million pieces, which I threw onto the floor and stomped on as hard as I could. Taffy was just standing there, but her face was getting redder by the minute. I had a pretty good idea who had put that picture there. Only one of my FORMER friends could be that low. Just then I realized that the kids who had been crowded around the bulletin board had sat down at lunch tables and nobody was making a sound. They were all staring at us.
"Come on, Jana. Let's eat our lunch," said Taffy, and I couldn't believe my ears. It was practically Taffy Sinclair and me against the world, but she didn't sound mad at all. Her face had this really angelic look on it even though it had been just about purple a minute before. Then she turned around and headed for an empty table in a corner as if nothing had happened. I didn't want to stand there by myself with everybody looking at me, so I followed her. I started fishing around in my lunch bag as I went so that I wouldn't have to look at anybody. I was so embarrassed I thought I'd die.
"How can you act like nothing happened?" I asked after we sat down.
"You can't let them know they've gotten through to you. If they think they made you mad or hurt your feelings, they'll just do something else. You've got to make them think you can't be bothered with such childish stuff, and the best way to get the message across is with body language."
I didn't have the slightest idea what body language was, and I must have had a really dumb look on my face because she started explaining.
"Body language is talking to somebody by moving a certain way. It's like when you stick your nose in the air to snub somebody. Only it's a lot more than that. You can say just about anything to somebody and that person will get it without you even saying one word."
It was starting to sound interesting, but I still wasn't totally convinced. "How do you know so much about body language?" I asked.
"My mother taught me. She used to be an actress, and actresses and actors use it all the time."
"Do you mean a person can say anything with body language?"
"Sure. If you wanted to, you could send really snotty messages to your FORMER friends. Wouldn't that be fun?"
"Boy, would it," I said. I could just imagine saying every hateful, nasty thing I could think of to them, without doing much more than moving my little finger.
"And that's not all," said Taffy. "You can do all kinds of things with body language." Taffy looked around to see if anybody was looking before she whispered, "Best of all, you can send messages to boys."
"Boys!" I was really sorry I had almost shouted that because now people were looking at us again. I cupped a hand around my mouth and whispered, "Boys? Are you sure?"
"Of course," she said. "I send messages to them all the time." She hesitated a minute and then said, "If you want me to, I could show you how."
"Great!" I said. "Why don't you come over to my house tomorrow morning?"
Taffy said okay, and I started thinking about how it was body language she had been using all along. That was why she walked the way she did and flipped her hair over her shoulders. I had been seeing it, but I just hadn't understood what it meant. Now it all made sense, and pretty soon I would know how to use it, too.
I could see it all now. I was going to be able to tell off my FORMER friends, and I'd be able to send messages to Randy Kirwan and tell him I knew he had a crush on me—all without ever opening my mouth. After that, I might work on Mom. I needed more freedom than she gave me, and I could definitely use a bigger allowance. I couldn't help thinking that my life was going to be just about perfect, and I owed it all to my new best friend, Taffy Sinclair.
Mom acted really surprised the next day when I told her that Taffy was coming over, but then she made a typical mother-type remark.
"I think it's wonderful that you're expanding your circle of friends to include Taffy after all the trouble you girls had getting along before. It shows you're getting very mature."
It was all I could do to keep from laughing. If only she knew. She hadn't even noticed that my FORMER friends and I were not going around together anymore.
While I waited
for Taffy to come over, I made a mental list of all the things I wanted to learn to say in body language. Of course the very first thing I wanted to learn was how to send messages to cute boys, especially Randy Kirwan. I could hardly wait for Taffy to get there.
A little while later I heard Mom letting her into the apartment. When I opened the door to my room, Taffy was giving Mom a really angelic smile and Mom was practically melting down into her shoes. Good old body language, I thought. Boy, did I have a lot to learn. Anyway, Taffy came into my room, and we closed the door so Mom couldn't hear what was going on.
Taffy took off her gorgeous pale blue jacket with the white fur trim and laid it on my bed. Then she sort of glanced around my room. I glanced around, too. It was just an ordinary room with blue-and-gold plaid curtains and bedspread. Taffy's room probably wasn't ordinary. She probably slept in a white canopy bed and had a pink carpet on the floor. Just then I remembered that exactly one week ago that very day The Fabulous Five had met in this very room to tell each other our faults.
Taffy must have been thinking about my FORMER friends also. "Pretend you're Beth Barry, and I'll pretend I'm you," she said.
"Okay." I could feel little tingles racing up my spine. This was fun already.
Taffy took a deep breath. Then she turned so that her back was almost to me. Slowly she stood up very straight and stiff, turning to look over her shoulder. Her eyes were like a pair of poison darts, and they were pointed straight at me. I gulped and felt my face grow red. She wasn't just giving me a dirty look. It was worse than that. I was sure she hated me. But that wasn't the thing that bothered me the most. She had given me that look before, at least a hundred times, back during the days when I was president of The Against Taffy Sinclair Club. She must have known about body language even then.
Then she started walking toward me. She didn't have that awful hate look in her eyes anymore, but she didn't look very friendly, either. She got really close and then just kept inching toward me until I couldn't help but back up. She inched forward again, and I backed up again. Finally she backed up herself and started to grin.