Taffy Sinclair 004 - Taffy Sinclair and the Romance Machine Disaster (2 page)

After we finished washing the dishes I pretended to do my homework, but my mind was still on my tongue. I rolled it around in my mouth and thought about it. I kept remembering how it felt last summer when Dr. Anderson gave me a shot of Novocain before he filled my tooth. It was awful. I could barely talk, and I definitely couldn
'
t eat. Eat! I thought. How could I possibly eat pizza with Randy if my tongue was numb? What if I tried to take a bite of pizza and bit my tongue instead? I
'
d be so embarrassed that I
'
d die.

That night I had a dream about Taffy Sinclair. It wasn
'
t the kind of dream you have when you
'
re asleep. I was in bed, but I was wide awake, tossing and turning and trying to get comfortable. My sheets and blankets were a mess and my pillow felt like a rock. I couldn
'
t go to sleep, but finally I closed my eyes and when I did, there she was. As real as anything. And she was laughing so hard that you could see her one crooked bicuspid. It was at Mama Mia
'
s Pizzeria after the football game on Saturday afternoon, and Taffy was standing beside the table where Randy and I were sitting. She was pointing at me while she laughed, and suddenly she turned around and shouted to all the other kids in Mama Mia
'
s,
"
Jana Morgan can
'
t even talk to Randy because her tongue is numb!
"

I thought I
'
d die. What good would it do to be the first girl in the sixth grade to have a date with Randy Kirwan, the most wonderful boy in the world, if Taffy Sinclair was going to spoil it? In my dream I could hear everybody laughing. I couldn
'
t look at Randy. I didn
'
t want to know if he was laughing, too. I
'
d get that Taffy Sinclair. I
'
d get her if it
was the last thing I ever did.

Beth
had been right. I was a celebrity. When I got to school the next morning girls came running up to ask me about my big date.

"
Is it true? Is it true?
"
shrieked Alexis Duvall.
"
Do you really have a date with Randy Kirwan?
"

By the time I could even begin to answer Alexis, a crowd had already gathered around me. I tried to act casual, as if this sort of thing happened to me every day of the week.

"
It
'
s true,
"
I said.
"
Randy called me yesterday afternoon and asked me to watch his football game tomorrow and then go out for pizza with him afterward.
"

"
Oh, Jana! You
'
re so lucky,
"
cried Kim Baxter. She rolled her eyes backwards and wobbled her knees as if she were going to faint, but I knew she was only faking.

"
Randy Kirwan is so-o-o-o cute,
"
said Sara Sawyer.
"
I
'
d give anything to have a date with him.
"

There were murmurs of
"
Yeah,
"
and
"
So would I.
"
I fought hard to keep a big fat smile from spreading across my face. I had to admit that it was fun being a celebrity. There was only one thing wrong. I couldn
'
t find Taffy Sinclair anywhere. I was dying to see her face.

"
Listen. I have to go now,
"
I said.
"
I
'
ll talk to you later.
"

I started moving away in the direction of my friends, but Kim caught my hand, stopping me.
"
You
'
ve got to promise that you
'
ll tell us everything that happens on your date. Promise?
"
she begged. She had such a grip on my hand that I knew I
'
d better promise or I
'
d never get away from her.

"
Sure. I promise to tell you all about it.
"

I darted away from them before someone else had a great idea and grabbed me again. I wanted to talk to my friends and ask them if they
'
d seen Taffy Sinclair. I was walking across the school ground toward them when disaster struck.

"
Hi, Jana!
"

Oh, no, I thought. This can
'
t be happening to me, today of all days. It was nerd of the world, Curtis Trowbridge. I ignored the alligator-size grin on Curtis
'
s face and tried not to remember how he had been following me around for practically a whole year acting as if he were my boyfriend. Not only that, but Curtis was so brainy that he lived on another planet. What if Randy saw me talking to him? Would he think I really
liked
Curtis?

Curtis came trotting up beside me with his glasses bouncing on his nose.
"
Going to your locker? I
'
ll walk with you.
"

Great, I thought. Now what would I do? For an instant I thought about sending him off on a wild goose chase, tracking down an imaginary idea for a story for the
Mark Twain Sentinel.
Curtis takes being sixth-grade editor for the school newspaper pretty seriously. He would do anything to get a story. But then I changed my mind. I couldn
'
t do a thing like that to Curtis. Underneath that brainy exterior was a pretty nice person, and I really didn
'
t want to hurt his feelings. Besides, I wanted Randy to see me as the kind and sensitive person that I really am.

"
I
'
ll walk as far as the front door with you,
"
I offered.
"
My friends are waiting for me there.
"

I fell in step with him just as he whipped out a notebook and pencil.
"
What was all the excitement about?
"
he asked.
"
You really drew a crowd when you got to school. Is it anything that would make a good story for the paper?
"

"
Gosh, no. It was nothing,
"
I blurted. Then I looked away so that Curtis couldn
'
t see the blush spreading over my face. Knowing how Curtis felt about me, how could I tell him that all the excitement was because I was going out with Randy Kirwan?

Fortunately we had gotten to where my friends were standing.
"
See you later, Curtis,
"
I said.

"
Bye, Jana,
"
Curtis said.
"
See you in class.
"

"
Have you seen Taffy Sinclair?
"
asked Melanie.
"
We can
'
t find her anywhere, and we
'
re dying to see the look on her face this morning.
"

I shook my head and started scanning the school ground. I wanted to see her more than anyone, but she was nowhere in sight.

"
I
'
ll bet she
'
s waiting until the first bell rings to show up,
"
said Katie.
"
You know how she likes to make a grand entrance.
"

As if on cue, the first bell rang, and we scrambled to our room and took our seats. I didn
'
t think Taffy Sinclair would ever get there. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if she was going to be absent. All the kids were in their seats, including Randy. He had come into the room with Mark Peters and Scott Daly, and they had been horsing around as usual, which is probably why he didn
'
t look at me or say hi or anything. Anyway, Taffy finally got there, strutting to her seat as if she expected applause to break out any minute. My heart was pounding as she sat down at her desk. I held my breath as I waited to see what she would do.

You could tell she knew that she had an audience because she turned around very slowly in her seat and looked back over her shoulder and smiled. I knew who she was looking at, but still, when she said his name out loud I thought I would explode.
"
Hi, Randy,
"
she said in her icky sweet voice.

I think I heard him say hi back to her, but my heart was pounding so loudly in my ears by then that I couldn
'
t be sure. Then Taffy turned around the other way and looked over her shoulder at me. I thought I
'
d die. She was giving me the worst poison-dart look I had ever seen. It wasn
'
t just her standard
"
drop dead
"
poison-dart look. It was an
"
I
'
ll get even with you
"
look, if I ever saw one.

I scrunched down in my seat and hid behind my notebook, wondering how she planned to get even with me. I had never seen her looking so mad. Maybe letting Beth call her on the phone and disguise her voice to tell her about my date hadn
'
t been such a good idea after all.

I peeked over my notebook at Randy to see if he was looking at me, too, but he wasn
'
t. Not at first, anyway. But then he turned a little bit in his seat until he was looking in my direction. I thought that he mig
ht be looking out the window, whi
ch was also in my direction, and I tried to look away. I didn
'
t want him to catch me staring at him and think I was a nerd. But suddenly he
was
looking at me—with both big blue eyes—and he was smiling that 1,000-watt smile that always makes my heart turn flip-flops. I tried to smile back, but my mouth had turned to Silly Putty, and I wasn
'
t sure if the corners were pointing up or down. It didn
'
t matter. What did matter was that he was smiling at me and not at Taffy Sinclair. I was so happy I thought I
'
d die
.

The crowd was already gathering when my friends and I got to the football field behind the junior high school the next afternoon. There were a lot of kids from Mark Twain Elementary in the bleachers on our side of the field, especially girls who came to watch all the cute boys play football. And there was Curtis Trowbridge pacing up and down the sidelines carrying a notebook and pencil and wearing a hand-lettered sign saying PRESS stuck to the front of his ski hat. Of course there was Taffy Sinclair prancing around by the concession stand, flirting with some boys from the other school and acting conceited the way she always does. But mostly there were parents. I had seen Randy
'
s parents a couple of times, so I glanced across the crowd, trying to look as casual as possible, to see if I could spot them.

"
Look, Jana! There are Randy
'
s parents!
"
Melanie shouted. She was standing so close to me that she nearly blew my left ear right off.

I gave her a poison-dart look.
"
Shut up, Melanie,
"
I growled.
"
They
'
ll hear you and think it was me.
"

Fortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Kirwan had stopped to talk to some other parents and didn
'
t hear Melanie. I tried not to stare at them as we followed Katie up the center stairs to the seats where most of the sixth-grade girls sat.

I looked up just as our team ran out onto the field wearing all-white uniforms. His num
ber was twenty-
two, and with his dark hair and eyes, Randy looked so handsome I thought I
'
d die. When they lined up in the middle of the field to warm up Randy looked over at the crowd in the bleachers and grinned when he saw me looking back. I smiled at him, too, and it felt as if my smile was stretching so big that it wrapped around behind my ears.

All through his warm-up Randy kept doing little eyeball maneuvers in my direction. I was just about to burst with happiness, and I sat there wondering if I could possibly live through the entire game. After a while I checked my tongue. It was still okay. So far, so good.

I watched more of that football game than all of the other ones I
'
d seen in my life put together. At first it scared me when Randy got tackled. What if he was hurt? What if he couldn
'
t get up? What if I lost my chance to be the first girl in sixth grade to have a date? But after a while I started to relax, and just before the half Randy caught a pass and ran all the way to the end zone for a touchdown. The crowd went crazy, and I looked at Randy
'
s father out of the corner of m
y eye. He had jumped up and was
towering over everybody, waving his arms and yelling his head off.

Randy made two more touchdowns in the second half. I saw those, too, but also I kept watching the clock on the scoreboard and thinking about how nervous I was. I had never been alone with Randy before. Of course we wouldn
'
t be totally alone. There would be tons of kids in Mama Mia
'
s. But we would be alone when we walked from the football field to Mama Mia
'
s. And we would sit at a table by ourselves. And we would walk home alone afterwards. And all that time, I would have to talk to him. What on earth was I going to say?

I tried to shut out the crowd noises as I thought about it. I closed my eyes and remembered all the daydreams I had had about Randy and me. We had been alone together in all of those. And we had plenty to say to each other in them, too. But what? I racked my brain, trying to ignore kids going wild and shouting all around me, but I couldn
'
t remember a single thing we had talked about.

The game was over in what seemed like only a few minutes, and kids were jumping up and pouring out of the stands.

"
We won!
"
shouted Katie. Then she gave me a big smile and asked,
"
How does it feel to have a date with the star of the game?
"

"
Great,
"
I said, hoping no one would notice how nervous I was.
"
I
'
ll see you guys later. Okay?
"