Fabulous Five 017 - Celebrity Auction (4 page)

"Not one single person that I talked to liked the idea
of a garage sale," complained Melanie at the fence before school the next
morning.

"Who did you talk to?" asked Beth. She was still
fuming about her conversation with Keith the night before.

"Scott, Shane, and Garrett," said Melanie. "They
all said that garage sales were either stupid or just for girls. They also
thought the idea of raising the money to pay for the damages to the school was
pretty bad, too. They think that we shouldn't have to do a thing like that."

"That's exactly what Keith said," Beth grumbled. "I
couldn't believe it."

"I didn't have much better luck with my calls either,"
admitted Christie. "I called Alexis Duvall and Kim Baxter and they both
thought paying for the damages was some kind of joke. They liked the idea of a garage
sale, though," she added. "But they wanted to keep the profits from
the things they sold."

"The same with Funny Hawthorne and Dekeisha Adams,"
said Jana. "Oh, yes, and Mona Vaughn."

"I can't believe this," Beth stormed. "What's
the matter with everybody? Do they
like
being called irresponsible and
materialistic?"

"I agree with you," said Katie. "I got the
same reaction from Shawnie Pendergast, and Tony nearly laughed my ear off when
I called him. But what are we going to do? Obviously having a garage sale isn't
the answer."

"Well, one thing's certain. We can't give up,"
said Beth. "We just
can't
take the rap for Steve Melchoir and his
crowd. I guess it's back to the drawing board. Everybody think, and we'll talk
about it again at lunch."

Standing before her open locker a few minutes later, Beth
saw Keith coming toward her, and she felt herself getting angry at him all over
again. Giving her locker door a slam, she wheeled around to face him.

"Hey, why did you hang up on me last night? All I did
was express my opinion," Keith protested. "I don't see why you had to
get so mad about it."

Beth rolled her eyes to the ceiling in exasperation and
slowly counted to three. "Keith, don't you understand? We have to do
something to get ourselves off the hook. The television, the newspaper, even
our own teachers are blasting us and saying we're all alike. I don't know about
you, but I resent that, and I want to do something about it."

"Not all of our teachers are saying things like that,"
said Keith. "Mr. Dracovitch made a big speech in biology class yesterday
about what a great job we did cleaning up the mess. He said that the kids who
stayed around to help were an example of what's good about teenagers and that
more people should recognize that. And if any teacher should be mad, he should.
Half his science equipment got broken."

"One teacher. Big deal," Beth mumbled. She wanted
to add, why did it have to be Mr. Dracovitch, of all people? But she didn't.
The science teacher was called Dracula behind his back because he wore a shiny,
black toupee and did strange things such as having his classes dissect cows'
eyeballs and burning garbage in his lab to try to find a way to make plastics
biodegradable. She knew he did those things to draw attention to his science
classes and get kids interested, but some kids still thought he was just plain
weird.

Keith shrugged. "Can we change the subject?"

Now it was Beth's turn to shrug. "Sure. What do you
want to talk about?"

"I was wondering if I could come over to your house
tonight after supper. I've got a new Brain Damage tape, and is it terrific."

Beth's heart fluttered. "Great. I love Brain Damage. I'll
get my homework done right after I get home, and I'm sure my parents won't
mind."

Just then the first bell rang and Keith said goodbye and
headed toward his homeroom. Beth smiled to herself as she hurried to her own
homeroom. Brain Damage was her absolutely favorite rock group. They had been
ever since they played a concert in town a few months earlier. That was when
Laura McCall and she were involved in a bragging war. Laura was the leader of a
clique, The Fantastic Foursome, which was The Fabulous Five's biggest rival.
Sometimes it made her blush to remember the tricks she had tried to get in to
see Trevor Morgan, Brain Damage's lead singer, in his hotel room. But it had
been fun, and Trevor had been super, and she knew he thought of her as more
than just another fan.

Besides, she thought as she slid into her desk in homeroom,
she was glad Keith wanted to come over. They got along so well when they were
alone. He always seemed to need to show off when his macho friends were around,
but he could be awfully sweet when just the two of them were together. Maybe
she would be able to convince him to get involved with the garage sale, or whatever
project they finally came up with.

She would plan carefully, she decided, maybe even bribe
Alicia and Todd to leave them alone in the family room. She wouldn't have to
worry about Brittany or Brian. They would probably both be out, or if they were
at home, Brittany would be on the phone, and Brian would be making the walls of
his room pulsate with rock music on his stereo. It would be perfect.

"We have to give people something for their money,"
Beth said to the rest of The Fabulous Five, who were eating lunch together in
the cafeteria. "That's why I thought a garage sale might work."

"And what else do a bunch of junior high school
students have that's worth five thousand dollars?" Christie asked
dejectedly.

"We could have a booth at the next basketball game and
sell kisses at a dollar apiece," offered Melanie. "I'd even be
willing to work in the booth," she added with a giggle.

Jana ignored Melanie's suggestion and turned to Beth. "I
don't know, but it seems to me as if we're going to have to give up on this
whole idea. We can't think of anything to do to raise the money ourselves, and
none of the other kids is the least bit interested in helping."

"I'll bet they would be if we could just come up with
the right money-making scheme," said Katie. "What would a lot of
people be willing to pay for?"

Beth chuckled. "I was thinking this morning about the
Brain Damage concert and how hard we worked to get tickets to the show. Has
anyone heard of any rock groups coming to town soon?"

Heads shook around the table.

"What good would that do us?" asked Christie.

"Oh, I was just thinking that maybe we could buy a
special block of tickets at a discount and sell them at a profit."

"Naw," said Katie. "That would never work. I'm
sure we wouldn't be able to get a discount."

"Remember how you tricked Trevor Morgan into letting
you into his hotel room?" Melanie asked. "It's a shame you didn't
bring back a souvenir. You could probably sell it for the entire five thousand
dollars."

Beth put her sandwich down and looked at Melanie. "Hey,
maybe you've got something."

"Do you mean to say that you did get a souvenir, and
you didn't tell us?" shrieked Melanie.

"No, silly. But maybe he would send us something if we
asked him. He likes us, and I'd be willing to write him a letter. And we could
write to other celebrities, too. Rock stars. The President. There are tons of
people who are famous, and if they each sent us something, we could sell it and
raise all the money we need."

Beth's excitement was growing, and she went on before anyone
else could say anything. "Now that I think about it, I read a magazine
article about some people in another state who did that to raise money for a
little kid who needed some kind of operation. They got stuff from professional
sports figures and movie stars and all kinds of people like that. Then they
auctioned everything off and made a lot of money."

"I love it! I love it!" cried Melanie. "There's
this gorgeous hunk on the soap opera I watch sometimes. He is
sooo
sexy
and
sooo
cool. I want to write to
him!
" She clasped her
hands under her chin and got a starry look in her eyes. "Imagine getting
something of
his
that he actually
touched
!
"

"I think she likes the idea," Katie said
sarcastically. "But so do I," she admitted. "I might write to
Sandra Day O'Connor. It would be neat to have something that belonged to a
justice of the Supreme Court, especially a woman justice."

"I'll bet Curtis Trowbridge would write to the
President of the United States
and
the president of IBM," chuckled
Jana.

"I'd write to Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova and
Chris Evert," said Christie. "If they sent autographed tennis balls,
I'd buy all of them."

"Don't forget. You'd have to bid on them the same as
everyone else," Beth reminded her.

"Did you notice how we always seem to forget something
major?" asked Katie.

"Like what?" asked Jana.

Katie shrugged. "Where do we get these people's
addresses? I mean, you can't just look them up in the phone book."

Faces fell around the table.

"Of course, the President of the United States' address
isn't hard to find," Katie went on. "It's sixteen hundred
Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. And I guess I could find out the address
of the Supreme Court, but what about other celebrities? Don't they keep their
addresses a secret so people won't hound them to death?"

"Some of the teen fan magazines list the addresses of
the movie studios in Hollywood where you can write to people like Kirk Cameron
and Fred Savage," offered Melanie. "At least that would be a start."

"But we don't want all the money we make to come from
just Wacko students," reasoned Katie. "If we're going to make
big-time money, we need to appeal to adults, too. How many of them would buy a
Kirk Cameron poster?"

"My mom's crazy about Fred Savage," admitted
Melanie. "She watches
The Wonder Years
all the time and reminisces
about what it was like in junior high in her day. She'd probably even buy his
poster."

"I'll bet we could get grown-ups besides Wacko parents
to bid on the stuff if we had the right things and some newspaper publicity,"
Beth said, looking at Jana, who nodded back at her. Jana's mother worked at the
local paper and had helped them get publicity before. "Who knows, we might
make a million dollars!" Beth went on.

"Leave it to Beth," said Katie, rolling her eyes. "Next
she'll be going nationwide."

Everyone broke up laughing over that. When the giggles died
down, Beth stroked her chin and then asked, "But seriously, how will we
get enough addresses to make this idea work? Katie's right about getting things
that would appeal to adults, too."

"Maybe I could find out," said Christie. "I
could ask Jon to ask his parents. Since they work for a television station that's
affiliated with a major network, they'd have to know how to get that kind of
information."

"There's Jon over there," said Jana, pointing to a
table across the lunchroom. "Why don't you ask him now? I'll go with you."

"Me, too," chorused the others.

Christie nodded, and everyone scrambled to their feet,
stuffing apple cores and bread crusts into lunch bags. Then the five of them
marched across the crowded cafeteria to the table where Jon was eating with
Keith Masterson, Richie Corrierro, Derek Travelstead, and Tony Sanchez.

"Hey, look out, guys. We're being invaded," cried
Richie when the girls reached the table. He threw up his hands to shield his
eyes. "We surrender. Don't punish us!"

"We didn't come over here to punish you, but now that
you mention it . . ." Christie said with a grin.

"They came to steal our lunches," piped up Keith.

"No, we didn't," Beth insisted. "We've got a
great idea for raising money to pay for the damages."

"Oh, no. Not that again," said Keith. "I
suppose now we're all going to sit around and make doll clothes or something
dumb like that."

"Keith, you're so imma
ture,
" spat out Beth.
"We're going to have a celebrity auction and write to lots of rock stars
and sports figures and people like that and ask them to donate something to
sell. The trouble is we need more information, and we thought maybe Jon could
help."

"A celebrity auction, huh?" said Tony. "You
mean get football jerseys from guys like Joe Montana and Herschel Walker?"

"Right," said Katie.

"Wow!" said Tony. "I'll go for that!"

"Me, too," said Jon, "but what did you mean,
maybe I could help?"

Christie went on to explain to Jon about the addresses, and
Tony and Richie started arguing about who got to write to Joe Montana and
Herschel Walker.

Beth turned to Keith and smiled sweetly. "Actually it's
because of you that this great idea came up. If you hadn't said that you wanted
to come over to my house tonight so I could hear your new Brain Damage tape,
nobody would ever have thought of contacting celebrities."

Beth had thought that no one else was listening to their
private conversation, but the instant those words were out of her mouth Richie
and Derek threw their arms around each other and began laughing like crazy.

"Oh, honey," Richie cried in a high soprano voice.
"You're coming over to my house tonight so that we can smooch!"

Then Derek made a loud smooching noise and broke up laughing
so hard that he fell backward off the lunch table bench, almost pulling Richie
with him.

"All right, you jerks! Knock it off," Beth
shouted. "Keith is coming over to play a tape."

"Oh, Keithy, honey! I love your tape!" Derek
cooed.

Beth doubled up her fists and glared at the two boys as
Christie and Jana grabbed her by each arm and hurried her away.

"By the look on your face, I thought you were going to
slug those two," said Katie as The Fabulous Five walked along together on
the school ground a few minutes later.

"Believe me, I would have if you guys hadn't gotten to
me when you did," said Beth. "And did you see Keith? He just sat
there and let those imbeciles say those things!"

"Boys," grumbled Katie.

"You can say that again," said Beth.

"Well, one good thing happened anyway," said
Christie. "Jon thinks he can get us the addresses we need. If he can, we're
in business!"

The five girls congratulated each other and exchanged high
fives. And since the boys were enthusiastic about the celebrity auction, Beth
thought, maybe—just
maybe
—all the other kids at school would be, too.

She was relieved that they had solved the address problem so
easily. Now if only she could solve her problem with Keith's immature behavior
half so easily, she would be really happy.