Fabulous Five 015 - Melanie's Identity Crisis (6 page)

Just then Mrs. Clark came bustling up. "What color crayon
would you like?" she asked, handing Melanie the other supplies she needed
for her rubbing.

"Gold," Melanie said proudly. "This is my
great-great-grandmother's tombstone."

Mrs. Clark nodded appreciatively. "Have you learned a
lot of interesting things about her from your family that you can share with
the class?"

Melanie swallowed a giggle. "Yes . . . um . . . I think
so."

The teacher gave her a gold crayon, nodded again, and moved
on.

Melanie busied herself taping the heavy paper over the
lettering, wishing again that she could talk to Cordia.

"If you were here," she said softly, "I'd
tell you about my boyfriends and ask you how to get them to pay more attention
to me." Melanie sighed. "Shane didn't even look at me when he was
telling the story about Igor on the bus," she went on. "I don't think
he likes me anymore."

She picked up the gold crayon and gently rubbed it against
the surface, watching the letters and numbers magically appear on the paper. "And
Scott acts as if I'm invisible. I'll bet you'd know what to do. You were a real
expert on things like that."

Suddenly she pushed too hard and her crayon zipped right off
the edge of the stone, landing in the grass. When she reached for it, she
noticed for the first time that Scott was working on a rubbing only two stones
away. Had he chosen that tombstone on purpose so that he could be near her?

Melanie giggled as she reached for the crayon. It was almost
as if she had received a message from Great-great-grandmother Cordia to look in
that direction. Otherwise she might not have noticed him for ages.

The idea gave her a creepy feeling and she started to work
on her rubbing again when another thought occurred to her. Maybe Cordia was
answering her questions about her boyfriends. Maybe she was saying that Melanie
should flirt with Scott even though he had been ignoring her. Maybe she was
even saying that she should concentrate on Scott and forget about Shane—at
least for now. Of course, she thought gleefully. That has to be it! The rotten
mood she had been in earlier suddenly disappeared.

Melanie smoothed her long hair with one hand. Then she took
a deep breath and called as sweetly as she could, "Hi, Scott, what color
crayon are you using?"

"Green," he replied matter-of-factly, but Melanie
was certain she could detect a tiny smile playing around the corners of his
mouth. She had been right. She was supposed to flirt with him, after all.

"Mine's gold because this is where my great-great-grandmother
is buried," she bragged. "Come here a minute and I'll show you how
gorgeous this rubbing is going to be when I'm finished."

Scott got to his feet slowly, but Melanie couldn't help
noticing that he reached her in an instant and knelt beside her in the grass.
Then he took a long look at the rubbing as if it were the most interesting
thing he had seen in a long time.

"Yeah, that's really nice," he said, darting quick
looks at her out of the corner of his eyes.

Melanie had to fight down an urge to giggle with delight.
What would I ever have done without Great-great-grandmother Cordia? she
wondered.

She scooted a little bit closer to him and said softly, "Her
life was
sooooo
romantic. I know because I read all of her love letters.
They're tied together with a pink ribbon, and my grandmother keeps them in an
old trunk."

"Wow," said Scott, looking at her in astonishment.
"But didn't you feel funny reading them? I mean . . . aren't they kind of
personal?"

Melanie's mind raced to find an answer. She didn't want him
to think she was a snoop. "Don't forget what Mrs. Clark said about
learning things from studying our ancestors," she said quickly. Then she
added coyly, "I'm learning a lot of things about love from reading her
letters."

Scott fidgeted slightly, then raised his eyes to meet hers. "You
are?" he asked shyly, but Melanie was sure she detected a hopeful sound in
his voice.

She nodded, glancing gratefully at Cordia's gravestone and
then back at Scott again. Next, she would simply ask to see his gravestone
rubbing and compliment him on how beautiful it was. Then she would ask him
about his ancestors, and by then he would probably have forgotten all about
whatever it was that had made him ignore her lately. In fact, he might even be
ready to ask her out again.

Suddenly Mrs. Clark spoiled everything by peeking around a
tall monument with a winged angel on top and shouting, "Scott Daly. Are
you finished with your rubbing?"

Scott jumped to his feet. "Not yet," he said in a
flustered voice.

"We're leaving in twenty minutes, so you'd better get
busy."

Scott nodded to Mrs. Clark and bounded toward his own
gravestone, stopping halfway there to look back at Melanie.

"I've got to get busy," he said, echoing Mrs.
Clark.

"Sure," said Melanie demurely. "I understand.
I'll talk to you later."

Scott nodded again and set to work on his rubbing. Melanie
knelt in front of her great-great-grandmother's gravestone again and picked up
the gold crayon. Glancing around quickly to make sure no one was near enough to
notice, she leaned toward the stone and whispered, "Thanks. That really
worked. I think he likes me again."

She waited for a moment, although she didn't really expect
an answer from Cordia, and then she began working on the rubbing again, humming
to herself as she worked. It took only a few more moments to finish the
rubbing, and she rocked back onto her heels and looked at it with pleasure.

"It's beautiful," she said out loud. But then she
noticed one spot on the upper right-hand side where she had missed. She leaned
forward and poised the gold crayon in front of her when something caught her
eye just above the tombstone. She squinted and looked again over the spot she
had forgotten to color on the rubbing. She sucked in her breath. She was
looking straight at Shane!

Melanie gulped. Was she getting another message from
Great-great-grandmother Cordia?

"Of course I am," she whispered, and then she
thought, otherwise why would I have forgotten to color in that teensy, tiny
little bit of the gravestone rubbing? Cordia didn't want me just to notice Scott.
She wanted me to notice Shane, too!

She chewed her lower lip and tried to decide what to do. But
before she could come up with anything clever, Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Blankenship
were both marching around the tombstones shouting for everyone to pick up their
things and get ready to leave.

"The buses will be here in five minutes," called
Mrs. Clark. "Untape your rubbings carefully. If you need to do more work
to them, we can finish them in class Monday."

Melanie glanced back over her shoulder at Cordia's
gravestone as she tucked her rubbing under her arm and headed for the buses. So
what if she hadn't gotten to talk to Shane here? She would find another chance
to get his attention. After all, she thought with a smile, she was positive
that was exactly what her great-great-grandmother would have done.

On the bus ride back to school, Melanie thought back over
the afternoon at the cemetery. She knew down deep that she hadn't really gotten
any messages from her great-great-grandmother, who had been dead all these
years. But still, if it hadn't been for Cordia, she might never have gotten up
the courage to flirt with Scott and Shane again. Well, probably not
never,
she corrected herself. She only wished that she could have gotten the chance to
talk to Shane before now.

The only other thing that had kept the afternoon from being
perfect was the fact that she hadn't had the opportunity to talk to Funny and
set her new plan in motion. As they were getting off the bus, she grabbed Funny's
arm and asked, "Are you going to Bumpers after school?"

"Sure," Funny replied happily. "It's Friday.
You know, TGIF. You're going, too, aren't you?"

Melanie nodded. "Look for me when you get there. I need
to talk to you."

Funny said she would and headed for her locker since it was
time for the bell dismissing classes for the day. Melanie watched her go,
hoping she could pull things off the way she had planned.

When she and the rest of The Fabulous Five got to Bumpers,
they had to squeeze their way through the crowd of wall-to-wall kids.

"How are we ever going to find a table?" wailed
Beth over music blaring from the jukebox. "This place is a zoo."

"I know," said Katie. "I've had my foot
stepped on three times already, and we're barely in the door."

"Yeah, but look at all the cute boys who are here,"
Melanie reminded them. She was bouncing on her toes, trying to look every
direction at once. "I see Shane and Randy over there, and Tony is talking
to Scott by the order counter. And isn't that Keith in the yellow bumper car?"

The girls pressed their way through the crowd, stopping
every few steps to talk to friends. Finally a group of eighth-graders vacated a
table near the door, and Melanie and her friends dove for it before anyone else
could claim it.

"Hey, is there room for us?" shouted Shane. He was
waving in their direction, but Melanie could see that he was looking straight
at her.

"Sure!" she shouted back, not caring that there
weren't enough chairs to go around. She would gladly give up hers if it meant
that Shane was paying attention to her again. Maybe she would even sit on his
lap.

Shane and Randy made their way through the crowd, holding
sodas and fries high above their heads. When they reached the table, Shane
plunked his food down beside Melanie and said, grinning, "Help yourself to
this stuff. I'll go get something else for myself."

When he and Randy went back to the order counter, Melanie
grabbed a french fry and breathed a huge sigh. "I can't believe it!"
she screeched. "It's been ages since he's so much as looked in my
direction. I had even decided that he didn't like me anymore." Then, thinking
of her great-great-grandmother Cordia, she added, "It must be fate!"
and giggled.

"Don't be silly," said Katie. "Guys get
interested in boy-type things, and they need breathing room sometimes, just the
way girls do."

Melanie gave her a puzzled look. "Who needs breathing
room?"

Katie rolled her eyes to the ceiling and started to answer
when Funny called from across the room.

"Hi, Melanie. What did you want to talk to me about?"

Melanie scrambled to her feet. "Shane can sit in my
chair, and tell him I'll be right back," she instructed her friends. Then
she hurried to Funny, who was trying to squeeze her way through one of the
aisles.

"Let's go to the girls' bathroom," said Melanie. "It's
more private."

When the door closed behind them, Melanie crossed her
fingers behind her back. She hated to lie to anyone, but this was important.
Taking a deep breath, she said, "I feel a little strange asking, but I was
wondering if I could spend the night at your house tonight. My parents are
going to be away overnight, and all of my other friends are busy. I know it's a
lot to ask, and if you think The Fantastic Foursome would get mad, just say so,
and I'll understand."

"Don't be silly," said Funny. "Of course they
won't get mad. Besides," she said, raising an eyebrow, "who's going
to tell them?"

Both girls laughed at the thought of The Fabulous Five's
archrivals, The Fantastic Foursome, not knowing that the two of them were
spending the night together.

"Well, do you think your parents would mind?"
Melanie pressed.

"I don't know why they would," said Funny. "Of
course, I'll have to ask them before I can be sure, but it sounds like fun to
me. Is it okay if I talk to them as soon as I get home and then call you?"

"Great," said Melanie. "You may have just
saved my life. Otherwise I'd have to go with my parents and Jeffy, and that
would be totally boring." Melanie uncrossed her fingers as she left the
girls' bathroom and headed back to the table. Now if Funny's parents said yes
to her spending the night, she could do her second bit of spying. She could
find out how a
chosen
child was treated, and then she'd know for sure
just how unwanted she really was.

She noticed that the crowd at Bumpers was beginning to thin,
but thankfully her friends and most of the cute boys were still there. She
could see that Shane and Randy had gotten back to the table with their orders,
and that Keith, Tony, and Jon had pulled up chairs and joined the group. Her
friends seemed to have forgotten about the rotten mood she had been in lately,
and her heart skipped a beat at the thought of all five of The Fabulous Five
together with boyfriends. Rushing back to her friends, she was aware that everyone
at the table was laughing.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Didn't you hear?" cried Jana. "Tony found
out that he isn't related to Sylvester Stallone after all. You know, the
Italian Stallion."

"So, what's so funny about that?" asked Melanie.

"It's who he
is
related to that makes it funny,"
Katie insisted. "Madonna!"

"I still don't get it," said Melanie.

Finally Tony spoke up. "It's because she's a skinny
girl and a singer instead of a macho-type guy," he said good-naturedly. "But
she is
Italian,
" he added, grinning broadly. "Her real name is
Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone, and we're umpteenth cousins twice removed on
my mother's side."

"Well, at least she's famous," offered Melanie,
and this time she joined in the laughter.

"Has anyone else found any famous relatives?"
asked Christie. "Jana, what about Trevor Morgan?"

Jana shrugged. "I'm not sure. My Morgan relatives came
from Manchester in England, which is where Trevor is from, but that's as much
as I've been able to find out."

"Hey, you have to be related," shouted Keith. "How
big a place can Manchester be?"

Jana shook her head. "It's a major city. It would be
like saying we have to be related because both of our families came from
Chicago or Boston."

"Well, keep digging," said Keith, giving her a
grin.

"Let me tell you about my great-great-grandmother,"
Katie said proudly. "She worked for the passage of the Constitutional
amendment in 1920 giving women the right to vote."

"Aaaarrrrgghh,"
groaned Tony, slapping his
forehead. "We should have known."

Katie puffed out her chest and started to respond, but
Melanie jumped into the conversation ahead of her. This was the moment she had
been waiting for.

"I had a very interesting great-great-grandmother, too,"
she said, giving Shane a flirty smile. "Her name was Cordia Mae Lee, and I've
been reading her love letters, which she kept tied with a pink ribbon. My
grandmother keeps them in an old trunk at her house. All the boys were crazy
about Cordia, and one even threatened to jump off the church steeple if she
wouldn't go for a buggy ride with him."

Melanie looked at Shane again, hoping he would say something
romantic, but instead it was Katie who spoke up again.

"Did you know that in the early 1800s only one letter
in a hundred was addressed to a woman? Isn't that terrible? I read that in my
genealogy research." Leave it to Katie, Melanie thought, shaking her head.

After she and her friends left Bumpers, Melanie rushed home
to wait for Funny's call. She had only been home a few minutes when the phone
rang. It was Funny, saying that her parents had agreed to let Melanie spend the
night.

"Actually they're awfully pleased," said Funny. "They
said that they were glad I was expanding my circle of friends."

Melanie chewed her lower lip nervously when her parents
dropped her off at Funny's house after dinner. They, too, had expressed
approval that she was spending time with a new friend. If they only knew, she
thought.

Mrs. Hawthorne answered the door. She was a tall woman with
short, graying hair, and she was smiling so broadly that her face crinkled
around her eyes. "Come on in, Melanie. We're so glad you'll be spending
the night with us."

Just then Funny came bounding up, and her mother slipped an
arm around her waist and went on talking. "Funny told us how you helped
her overcome her shyness about talking to us about the genealogy project. We
can't thank you enough."

Melanie nodded self-consciously and set her sleeping bag
down on the floor. She could hardly stand to watch Funny and her mother hugging
each other and smiling. It was happening just the way she had thought it would.