Fabulous Five 018 - Teen Taxi (2 page)

Melanie was wrong. The first person stopped her in the hall
between first and second periods.

"Is it true that your mother is starting a taxi
service, of all things?" asked Laura McCall, raising her eyebrows as if
she were shocked. Behind her, Tammy Lucero and Melissa McConnell giggled and
exchanged knowing glances.

"She's thinking about it," scoffed Melanie. It
burned her up that the others were laughing. But then, they were members of The
Fantastic Foursome, arch-rivals of The Fabulous Five, and they never missed an
opportunity to make life miserable for Melanie and her friends. "So what?"
she challenged.

"It's just weird, that's all," said Laura, and
behind her, the others nodded. "I mean, whoever heard of someone's mother
driving a taxi to school?"

Melanie spun around and stomped off down the hall. "That's
all you know!" she shouted back over her shoulder. She knew it sounded
dumb, but it was all she could think to say. She had never heard of a mother
taxiing kids to and from school before either, but she certainly couldn't admit
that to Laura.

A couple of other kids stopped her in the cafeteria at noon,
but at least they asked more politely. Jana and Christie both told her that
they had had inquiries, too.

For the rest of the day Melanie waited for someone else to
come up to her and make the dreaded announcement that they had heard about her
mother's teen taxi. She cringed each time anyone stopped to speak to her or ask
her a question, and she froze every time she heard anyone laughing behind her,
afraid to turn around and find that they were laughing at her instead. And what
about the teachers? What did they think? The question was on her mind when she
stopped in Mr. Neal's room after lunch to talk to him about joining the
yearbook staff, but if he had an opinion, he kept it to himself.

Still, what good did it really do to postpone her total
embarrassment one more day? she wondered. Everyone would have to find out about
it sooner or later. Unless . . . Maybe there was still time, she thought. If
she could only think of a way to talk her mother out of the whole thing.

"Mom?" she called out as sweetly as she could when
she got home from school in the afternoon. "Mom? Where are you? I need to
talk to you."

"Up here, dear," her mother called back from
upstairs. "I'm in the bedroom."

Melanie grabbed an apple from the bowl in the middle of the
kitchen table and took the stairs two at a time, finding her mother sitting at
her desk in the corner of the master bedroom. Papers were spread across the
desk, and Mrs. Edwards was poking away at a small calculator with the eraser
end of a pencil and humming under her breath. She looked up when Melanie
entered the room and smiled broadly.

"More good news," she said brightly before Melanie
could swallow her bite of apple and say hello. "I've been doing some
figuring, and it looks as if my new business is going to be even more
profitable than I had expected."

"Really?" mumbled Melanie. This certainly wasn't
the way she had wanted the conversation to start.

Her mother nodded. "That's right. Mr. Bell said that in
Wakeman there are approximately seventy-seven latchkey kids—you know, kids whose
parents work so there's no one home to drive them—who are not eligible for bus
service." She pushed her glasses up and squinted at her figures. "Now,"
she went on, "if I can just get five passengers at twenty-five dollars
round-trip per week, that's one hundred twenty-five dollars per week
altogether, less car expenses. I also might be able to take another load of
five students home every day when the after-school activities let out if their
parents could drop them off in the morning. If I charge them fifteen dollars a
week one way, that would be another seventy-five dollars." She rose to her
feet with an air of triumph and waved a finger into the air. "
Or
a
cool two hundred dollars a week. Isn't that
spectacular
?
"

Melanie let out her breath in one huge burst of air. It was
spectacular, all right. But not at all the way her mother meant it. What was
spectacular was that she was about to become the laughingstock of Wakeman
Junior High so that her mother could earn a measly two hundred dollars a week.

"Now, of course it's going to take some sacrificing on
everyone's part," her mother went on. "I'll have to keep my attention
strictly on my driving, so I'm going to have to ask you to ride along both in
the morning and after school to supervise Jeffy."

"What!" shrieked Melanie. "Ride along? After
school
?
But Mom! I can't do that. I'm . . . I'm . . . I'm
busy.
"

Her mother nodded patiently. "As I said, it's going to
take some sacrificing by everyone, but in return we get a beautiful new van,
and I finally get a small career. A business of my own that will let me get out
of the house some of the time and still be here when I'm needed. Of course,
dinner will be later in the evening. And you're going to have to miss one or
two things after school. . . ."

"One or two things?" Melanie asked incredulously. "But
Mom. What about cheerleading? You know we practice after school, and I just
told Garrett Boldt that I'd be his photography assistant for the yearbook.
Sometimes he has to shoot things after school."

"But we're between sport seasons right now, dear, and
there aren't any games, so you aren't practicing as much. In fact, I've already
spoken to Miss Wolfe about it. By the time your practices pick up again, we'll
have something else arranged."

"Like what?" challenged Melanie. "And what
about times when I have to help Garrett with a photography assignment?"

"I'm not sure yet, dear," her mother said
soothingly. "But we'll work out something."

"And what about going to Bumpers after school with
everyone? I'll never see my friends except in class. You'll ruin my social
life!"

Mrs. Edwards stepped forward, encircling Melanie's shoulders
with an arm and looking at her sympathetically. "I know it seems that way
right now, sweetheart," she said softly. "But it won't be that bad.
You'll see. As I said before, we'll work things out."

Not that bad?
Melanie thought. How could her mother
say such a thing? Here she had come home, hoping to talk her mother out of the
entire business of running a teen taxi, and instead, she was losing her total
social life. How would she face kids at school? And what would she tell
Garrett? She'd die if he needed her after school and she couldn't be his
assistant. Was her mother going to wreck that, too?

Melanie blinked and looked back at her mother, who was
pacing back and forth across the bedroom, still talking up a storm. ". . .
and I've even thought of adding a kindergarten run," she was saying, "except
you wouldn't be available to help supervise the children, and they'd be just
about as easy to control from the driver's seat as Rainbow's puppies."

Melanie's pulse quickened at the mention of the eight little
dogs. They were probably snuggled up in a heap, sound asleep in their box in
the basement at this very moment. She could see them now. Beth and Katie and
Christie and Jana. Scott and Shane and Garrett and Jason. A pile of fat little
tummies, long, floppy ears, and soft baby snores.

"What
about
Rainbow's puppies?" Melanie
insisted, feeling tears spurt into her eyes. "You can't just go off and
leave them alone all the time. They need to go outside sometimes and things
like that." She looked at her mother pleadingly. If anything could get to
her, surely this would be it.

"Why, Melanie, you know we've been planning all along
to give them away. In fact, I called the newspaper this morning to put an ad in
the classified section."

Her mother's words stabbed at Melanie's heart, and she
sucked in her breath and ran out of the room. She flew down the stairs to the
first floor, ignored Jeffy, who called out to her from the kitchen table where
he was coloring, and plunged into the basement. In the dim light of the
overhead bulb she could see the eight tiny puppies, heaped together and sound
asleep, just as she had known they would be. They were beautiful, and she loved
them so much that she thought her heart would burst.

"Oh, Rainbow," she whispered, cupping the mother
dog's face in her hands and looking into her gentle, trusting eyes. "What
are we going to do?"

The next morning Melanie had a plan. Sabotage. Plain and
simple. She would talk to kids who were potential customers and convince them
not to sign up. The night before she had overheard her mother talking on the
phone to the parents of three Wacko students, Shawnie Pendergast, Kevin
Walker-Noles, and Michelle Troyer. Melanie knew that there had to be more
families her mother was planning to contact, but at least she had somewhere to
start. She would try to catch each of them alone, since she dreaded bringing up
the subject of the taxi in public. She wished she didn't have to talk about the
taxi at all, but she didn't see that she had much choice.

"Hi, Shawnie," she called as she sauntered onto
the school ground and saw Shawnie Pendergast lingering by a tree. "Has my
mother called your parents about her new taxi service?"

"She sure has," said Shawnie, bursting into a
grin. "My mom's pretty excited about it. And so am I. It means I get to
sleep another half-hour every morning."

Melanie took a deep breath and crossed her fingers behind
her back. Shawnie was playing right into her hands. "Well, with my mom driving,
you'll certainly be awake by the time you get to school."

Shawnie cocked an eyebrow and looked at Melanie. "What
do you mean?" she asked slowly.

"Oh, nothing," said Melanie with a shrug. "It's
just that it's a real adventure riding with my mom. Don't tell
your
mom,
though. Okay? She probably wouldn't let you ride if she knew what kind of
driver my mom is."

She left Shawnie standing in the middle of the school ground
with a strange look on her face. This is working, she thought gleefully. The
next person she looked for was Kevin Walker-Noles. He was definitely a
candidate for the taxi service. He had hated being a latchkey kid so much that
he had harassed Christie on the homework hot line just to get attention. She
knew he rode his bike to school, but his parents were doing everything they
could for him now that they understood his problem.

She found Kevin locking his bike into the rack by the side
of the building. "Hi, Kev," she said, trying to sound casual.

"Oh, hi, Melanie," he said, snapping the lock in
place and walking toward her. "Guess I won't be doing this much longer,"
he added, nodding toward his bike. "I'll probably start riding with your
mom."

"Really?" Melanie concentrated on putting a
worried expression on her face. "What's your first class in the morning?"

"Biology. Why?"

Melanie shook her head. "Wow. That's too bad. You'd
better explain to Mr. Dracovitch that you'll probably be late most mornings. My
mom's never been on time a day in her life."

"Late?" Kevin burst out. "I can't be late to
biology. Besides, homeroom comes before first period. There's no way your mom
would be that late."

"You don't know my mom," said Melanie.

She spotted Michelle Troyer sitting alone on the steps a few
minutes later. Michelle was terribly shy and never spoke up in class and never
never
talked to boys. Taking a deep breath, Melanie approached her.

"Hi, Michelle," she called out. "I heard my
mom talking to your mom last night. Are you going to ride in the teen taxi?"

Michelle nodded, but she didn't say anything.

"Great," said Melanie, plastering a big grin on
her face. "It's going to be a blast. The way Mom's signing up riders, we'll
be packed in like sardines. I wouldn't be surprised if we end up sitting on
each other's lap, but that's okay. She's signed up mostly boys."

Melanie felt a twinge of guilt as the color drained out of
Michelle's face. "Boys?" Michelle whispered.

"Right," said Melanie. "Hunks from the
football team and a bunch of other cute guys. I can't wait, can you?"

"Um . . . I'll see you later," Michelle stammered
as she got to her feet and gathered her books in her arms. "I have to go
to my locker."

Melanie's friends were already at their usual meeting spot
by the fence, so after she left Michelle she hurried to them, telling herself
that even though the things she had told Shawnie, Kevin, and Michelle were big
fat lies, she had had to do it.

"How's baby Jana and the rest of the puppies?"
Jana asked the minute she walked up.

"Okay, but Mom said the ad to give them away will be in
the paper tonight." Melanie moaned. "I just can't
stand
the
idea. Poor little Christie and Beth and Jana and Katie and Scott and Shane and
Garrett and Jason!" she said, all in one breath. Gulping in more air, she
went on, "How will we know if the people who take them will be good to
them? I've read awful stories about people getting pets and then mistreating
them."

"Maybe you won't be able to give them away,"
offered Beth. "Remember how much trouble we had finding homes for the dogs
and cats from the animal shelter?"

"And all of those animals were paper trained and had
their shots," added Jana.

"Maybe you're right," Melanie mumbled. "But
Mom's going ahead full steam with her taxi business just as if she already had
homes for the puppies. She got the sign put on both sides of the van yesterday
and spent all evening making calls to parents who might want to use her
service."

"How many riders did she get?" asked Katie.

Melanie shrugged. "I didn't ask. Believe me, it's the
last thing in the world I want to talk about. But I did overhear her telling
Dad that she wants to start up her taxi service next Monday morning."

"Wow," said Christie. "This is Thursday. That
doesn't give you much time. Does it?"

Melanie smiled slyly. "Maybe, and maybe not. I've been
doing some work on my own."

Her friends looked at her quizzically.

"You know how my mom drives," she said.

"Yeah," said Beth, nodding her head and laughing. "She
certainly doesn't poke around."

"Exactly," said Melanie. "She's always above
the speed limit. And you also know how often she's running late. Well,"
she said slowly, ". . . I've just been spreading the word to kids who
might sign up for the taxi service, among other things."

"Melanie! You haven't," shrieked Katie.

Melanie nodded and grinned at her friend. "What's wrong
with that? I didn't lie. At least, not very much. And besides, they ought to
know what they're getting into."

"I don't know," said Christie. "I'm not sure
you should have done that."

"Me, either," said Jana. "You know your
mother takes her responsibility seriously. She's never driven dangerously. I'm
sure she'll stay under the speed limit and always be on time with her new taxi
service."

Melanie sighed and shook her head woefully. "But I
already told you about having to ride along after school," she wailed. "I
can just see all of you going to Bumpers every day without me. I keep seeing
pictures in my mind of other girls flirting with Scott, Shane, and Garrett."
Her eyes narrowed in anger. "I've got to do something."

"We'll call you every night and tell you what happened
at Bumpers," Christie offered sympathetically.

"And if we see anybody flirting with those guys, we'll
do our best to break it up," promised Beth.

Melanie was glad when the bell rang. She didn't want to talk
to her friends anymore about her predicament. They didn't understand how it
felt. Their mothers weren't wrecking everything by embarrassing them at school,
messing up their social lives, and giving away eight of the sweetest puppies
ever born. She would just have to handle the problem on her own.