Fabulous Five 007 - The Kissing Disaster (3 page)

With Shane's help Melanie managed to get through the rest of
biology class. She made herself look at the specimen, as Mr. Dracovitch had
called it, which was almost as big as a baseball. The white part and the pupil
looked like any other eye, only bigger, but the rest of it was covered with a
sort of bluish-black gel. "Gross," she whispered over and over again,
and she could hear other kids reacting the same way.

All that the class was supposed to do the first day was
weigh and measure the eyeball, which fortunately Shane did for both of them. He
even wrote the results in both of their notebooks and whisked pan number seven
into the refrigerator and out of her sight.

When the bell rang, Shane was out of the classroom door
ahead of her, and she hurried to catch up.

"Thanks a million," she said. "A
zillion
,
actually. Igor would have been proud of you."

The mention of Igor always made Shane's face light up. "Do
you really think so?" he asked, flashing a big smile and slowing to walk beside
her.

That was just what Melanie had planned. "Why don't you
ask him?" she said. Crossing her fingers behind her back, she went on with
the rest of her plan. "By the way, did you write down all of Dracula's
instructions? You know, the stuff he was saying at the beginning of class."

Shane nodded.

"Great," she said, beaming her best smile straight
at him. "I missed some of it, and I really want to get a good grade in
this class. Especially since I embarrassed myself in front of Mr. Dracovitch by
almost fainting." She paused a moment and lowered her eyes, hoping that he
would remember putting his arm around her and rescuing her. "Anyway, do
you think I could look at your notes and copy the parts I missed?"

"Sure," he said, opening his notebook to the section
marked BIOLOGY. "You can take them with you and give them back to me
later."

"I can't do that," Melanie insisted. "What I
mean is that I have class the rest of the afternoon and won't have time to copy
them. What if I get them after school . . . say at Bumpers? You'll be there,
won't you?"

Melanie held her breath. This had to work. It just had to.

"Okay," he said. "I'll see you at Bumpers.
Bye."

Shane peeled off in the direction of his next class, leaving
Melanie feeling weak-kneed with relief.
Of course
The Fabulous Five
would be at Bumpers after school. And
of course
they would see her with
Shane. So what if they don't have time for me anymore, she thought. I don't
have time for them anymore, either. That's life. No, she corrected herself.
That's junior high.

After school, everything went just the way she had planned.
She sauntered into Bumpers, trying to look totally casual. Out of the corner of
one eye she could see Beth and Katie sitting at a table. They had spotted her,
too, and Katie was waving in her direction.

"They probably just want me to come over to their table
so that they can have someone to ignore," Melanie grumbled under her
breath.

Shane also spotted her just then. "Hey, Melanie,"
he called out. "Come on over."

Even though Bumpers was noisy, Shane had shouted so loud
that Melanie was sure her friends had heard.

Shane was sitting with four other boys from the seventh-grade
football team: Tony Sanchez, Keith Masterson, Bill Kingman, and Randy Kirwan,
and he was telling them about the cow's-eyeball project when she walked up.

". . . and then old Dracula gets this big bowl of
eyeballs out of the fridge and starts plopping them into the pans on everybody's
table, and when he gets to our table . . . hey, Mel. Tell them what happened
when he got to our table."

Melanie felt herself blushing. "It was gross," she
said with a nervous laugh. "Let's change the subject, okay? We could talk
about the seventh-grade dance."

"Sure," said Shane, looking apologetic, but the
other guys wanted to hear more about the cow's eyeball.

"Come on, Melanie. Tell us what happened in biology
class," said Keith.

"You can talk about it," insisted Tony. "It's
all over with now."

Suddenly Melanie realized that she had their complete
attention. She glanced quickly toward The Fabulous Five's table to make sure
they had all noticed that she was in the spotlight with five gorgeous football
players, but Beth and Katie were still by themselves. Where were Jana and
Christie? she wondered. Then she spotted Christie and Jon at the order counter.
Well, anyway Beth and Katie had noticed her. And so had a lot of other kids
sitting around at nearby tables. Laura McCall and her three friends were
glaring in her direction. Taffy Sinclair and Mona Vaughn had actually gotten up
from their table and were standing close enough to hear.

"Well," she began, feeling like a movie star
giving her first live television interview, "as Shane said, Dracula just
plopped that great big
gruesome
eyeball into the pan on our table. It
was actually
staring
at me!" Melanie added for effect.

"Yew!"
cried Mona.

"Did you throw up?" asked Bill Kingman.

"No, silly," said Melanie. "I just . .
."

"Well, I almost did," interrupted Shawnie Pendergast.
Melanie hadn't even noticed that she was nearby, but Shawnie immediately began
telling everybody how she had had to run out of the room the day the project
was announced.

Gradually the crowd around the table got bigger as more and
more kids heard bits and pieces of the conversation and came over to listen.
Shane and she talked the most, telling in great detail about the bluish-black
gel on the backs of the eyeballs and the sickening smell of formaldehyde that hung
in the air and about Dracula's standing over them in his black, shiny toupee.

Melanie tried to keep tabs on each of The Fabulous Five, but
she missed seeing when any of them left. Still, it had been a wonderful
afternoon. She felt more popular than she ever had in her life. Kids were
crowding around her, clamoring to ask questions and hanging on to every word
she said. And it wasn't until after Shane had walked her home and said good-bye
that she remembered she had forgotten to borrow his notebook and copy his notes.

It was midnight before Melanie finally finished her homework
and switched off her bedside lamp. She was beat. The meeting of the decorations
committee had been fun, especially since Derek Travelstead had paid a lot of
attention to her, but it had lasted far longer than she had expected. That was
mainly because Taffy Sinclair had had so many crazy ideas—such as decorating in
pastel colors. Melanie closed her eyes to go to sleep, but she could still see
Taffy's face and hear her voice as she argued her point.

"Just because the dance theme is 'Wacko Wonderland' and
everyone is coming dressed as a monster doesn't mean that the decorations have
to be black and orange like Halloween," she had insisted. "If kids
used their imaginations, they could come up with some really
neat
monsters instead of the same old thing."

"Hey, I was picturing bats and spiders and stuff like
that dangling from the ceiling," said Derek Travelstead, grinning at
Melanie and then winking.

"Me, too," said Jill Weinberg. "Whoever heard
of pastel monsters?"

"Did you see
Ghostbusters?
" Taffy
challenged. "The monster in that may not have been pastel, but it was
white."

The argument had gone on and on, with Melanie reminding
everybody of Shane's green and purple and yellow dinosaur for the parent
project. Curtis mentioned that Alf was orange, and someone else said that Alf
was an alien from another planet and not a monster. Then the subject had
switched to Mr. Dracovitch.

"I suppose that if we all come as pastel monsters,
someone will have to talk Dracula into showing up in a blond wig instead of his
regular black one," offered Chandra.

Alexis had laughed like crazy. "It certainly might help
his image," she said.

The meeting had finally broken up without any real decisions
made. Everybody had agreed to think things over before the meeting next
Tuesday.

Chuckling to herself, Melanie turned over to go to sleep,
wondering if her dreams would be filled with pastel monsters.

Jana was standing alone at The Fabulous Five's spot by the
fence the next morning when Melanie got to school. She had wondered where Jana
was at Bumpers the day before and if she had seen the way Shane and she had
entertained the crowd with stories about Dracula and the eyeball project.

She was debating whether or not to join Jana at the fence
when Garrett Boldt came loping toward her, his camera swinging from the strap
over his shoulder. Garrett was an eighth-grader and sports photographer for the
yearbook, and he was totally gorgeous. He was also one of the boys Melanie had
a crush on.

"Hey, Melanie. How's it going?"

"Hey, yourself," she shot back, and gave him her
most dazzling smile. "Everything's great."

He fell into step beside her. "That was one funny story
you and Shane told at Bumpers yesterday. Leave it to old Dracula to come up
with something new this year. When I took biology last year, all we got to
dissect was your standard frog."

"Frogs. Eyeballs. If you ask me, they're all gross,"
Melanie admitted.

Garrett stopped and looked thoughtful. "You know,"
he began, "you should talk to Jana and Funny about getting some pictures
of you guys working on your eyeballs for the seventh-grade section of
The
Wigwam.
It would be a riot."

Melanie cast a sidelong glance toward Jana. "Terrific
idea," she said, wondering why she hadn't thought of it herself. "I'd
better go talk to Jana about it right now," she added.

Garrett went off toward some friends, and Melanie headed for
the fence where Jana stood. This time it was Dekeisha Adams and Mandy McDermott
who stopped her.

"I can't stop laughing about you guys and your cows'
eyeballs," said Mandy, immediately breaking into a fit of giggles.

"Me, either," said Dekeisha. "That's the
funniest story I ever heard. I almost wish I was in that class."

"Not me!" insisted Mandy. "I'd die if I had
to touch one of those things."

Then Dekeisha began talking about the dance and how glad she
was that she was on the publicity committee with Melanie, so that by the time
Melanie was able to get away from them, the first bell was ringing. And when
she looked toward the spot by the fence, Jana was already gone. As upset as she
was at The Fabulous Five for practically snubbing her lately, she couldn't help
feeling a little bit disappointed that she had to walk to the lockers alone. It
seemed strange not to be doing everything together. Oh, well, she thought with
a sigh, I'll get a chance to talk to them in the cafeteria at lunch. I can ask
Jana then about taking the biology-class picture for the yearbook.

All through her morning classes Melanie kept thinking about
her friends. Maybe she had been wrong to believe they weren't interested in her
anymore. Maybe they even thought
she
was snubbing them. Still, she
reasoned, no matter what subject she had tried to bring up lately, they all
seemed to want to talk about something else. And The Fabulous Five hadn't been
spending much time together these days, either. It was as if they were all
starting to go their own separate ways. The stories she had heard must be true.
This was the way it was supposed to be in junior high.

When the lunch bell rang, she pushed her way through the
crowded halls toward the cafeteria. She had made up her mind to give them one
last chance. She would sit with her friends and act as if nothing were wrong
between them.

"Hi, gang," she said, plopping her lunch bag down
on the table. Christie and Jana were already there, and they both looked up and
returned her greeting. Katie and Beth had come in behind her, and Melanie
waited patiently for everyone to get settled at the table before she began her
story about biology class.

"Wait until I tell you guys what old Dracula is making
us dissect in biology class," she began.

"A cow's eyeball," said Katie. "We heard all
about it from Shawnie Pendergast."

"Oh," said Melanie, feeling deflated. "Well,
it's really a gross thing to look at, all bluish-black and yucky."

"Do we have to talk about it at lunch?" asked Christie.
She faked sticking her finger down her throat to throw up and rolled her eyes
at Melanie.

"I agree," said Jana. "It's disgusting."

Melanie shrugged and took a bite of her tuna sandwich. It
tasted like cardboard. So what if cows' eyeballs were disgusting? she thought.
It would still make a funny picture for the yearbook. She sighed and then
remembered the seventh-grade dance. Surely they would want to talk about that.

She started to speak and then stopped. Around the table
conversation was starting again. Katie was telling Jana about a case that had
come before Teen Court the week before. Christie and Beth were discussing a
math assignment. But no one was saying a word to her. They were ignoring her.
Acting as if she weren't even there. Plus, no one had even mentioned her
invitation to sleep over Saturday night after they had all acted so sad when
they turned her down. It was as if she didn't exist anymore.

Melanie looked down at her sandwich. She had only taken one
bite, but one bite was enough. There was no way she could eat any more of it.
She gathered up her belongings and glanced around the table one more time
before standing up to leave. Her old friends were still deep in their own
conversations. No one would even notice when she was gone.

This is junior high, she reminded herself. Friendships
change. It's going to be
fun
being friends with Mandy and Dekeisha and
Alexis and Jill and all the others. And she hurried away to look for her new
friends.