Taffy Sinclair 005 - Blackmailed by Taffy Sinclair (5 page)

I
could see right then that Taffy Sinclair was going to make a big
deal out of pretending to be my
friend. Even worse, I would have to swallow my pride and pretend to be her friend, too. It was going to be awful.

When we left the cafeteria together, a lot of kids were watching us. I heard Lisa Snow say to Kim Baxter, "Look at Jana and Taffy. When did they get so chummy?" I wanted to die.

Taffy led me through the halls and outside to the playground. Naturally the sun had come out, and it was so warm that practically everyone in school was out there. I took a deep breath and followed her as she pranced along. She was acting as if we were some sort of parade. She couldn't just stop and stand somewhere like a normal person. Not Taffy Sinclair. She kept on walking around with me right beside her so that everyone would be sure to see us.

Finally, Taffy turned to me and said, "Everyone is looking at us. Isn't this fun?" She was smiling so big that I could see her one crooked bicuspid, which she doesn't like anyone to see. It's the only thing about her that isn't perfect.

I knew I had to smile back so I did it as fast as I could. "Sure," I said sarcastically. "This is the
most fun I've had since I had my
tonsils out.
"

At first my best friends acted as if I had positively flipped. They followed us around, staying at a safe distance so that Taffy couldn't hear what they were saying. When they knew she wasn't looking, they made weird faces and pointed in her direction. Then pretty soon they started giving me sympathetic looks. I knew they had figured out that Taffy was blackmailing me again.

Knowing that my friends understood made me feel a little bit better until I realized that Randy Kirwan was noticing us, too. My heart started pounding. He pretended not to, but I caught him looking at us more than once. He was by the ball diamond with Mark and Scott. They were horsing around, but I could tell that Randy was more interested in watching Taffy and me than playing with his friends.

I started to worry about what he was thinking. He knew that I didn't like Taffy Sinclair one bit, and he knew that Taffy didn't like me one bit, either. But he couldn't possibly know that she was blackmailing me. Did he think that I had turned into a two-faced person? Randy is so kind and sensitive. He could never like a girl who was two-faced. Not in a million years.

Then I noticed that Taffy Sinclair was watching me. She had a nasty grin on her face. She knew that I was thinking about Randy. It hit me like a bolt of lightning. That was what she wanted all along. She wanted Randy to see us together. She wanted to embarrass me by making him think that we were friends! That was when she waved for him to come over.

I had to get out of there. I turned around and ran for the door. I didn't know if Taffy yelled at me or not. I just ducked into the school building and raced down the hall. After I turned the first corner, I stopped and caught my breath. I knew I had to be careful. It was against the rules to run in the halls. Besides that, Radar Rollins would be patrolling. He's the science teacher, and kids call him Radar because he has an uncanny way of appearing out of nowhere whenever kids speed in the halls.

The school building was quiet, so I tiptoed up the hall to the next corner and ducked around it, too, in case Taffy Sinclair was looking for me. I wanted to get as far away from her as I could. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes, remembering how Randy had stared at us. He had a funny look on his face as if he didn't understand what was going on. I knew he thought I was two-faced. He probably thought I hated him because I ran when Taffy called for him to come over to us. He had to think that I was the most terrible girl in the world. My life was ruined. Randy and I would never go out on a date again or kiss again—
ever.

I thought about Taffy Sinclair, too, and my heart dropped into my shoes. I should never have run away from her. It had probably made her twice as mad as before. What would she do to me now? What if she told Randy about Wiggins's wallet? I needed a plan, something to tell Taffy so that she wouldn't be mad that I ran away. I racked my brain for some kind of excuse.

Suddenly I heard footsteps.
They were approaching from the same direction I had come. It was probably Taffy, and she was looking for me. I listened again. It didn't sound like Taffy. She always made a fast, clickety sound when she walked. This sound was slower and heavier. Was it Radar Rollins out on patrol? At least I wasn't speeding.

Just then Mona Vaughn came around the corner. She looked surprised when she saw me.

"Hi, Mona," I said. I was trying to be casual and act as if standing around in the empty hall at noontime was a natural thing to do, but my voice came out in a nervous squeak.

Mona hesitated for a moment. Then she frowned at me and hurried on past. Who cares? I thought, but a moment later I understood. Mona had seen Taffy and me together. She worshipped Taffy and was probably jealous of all the attention I was getting from her.

"Well, she can have it," I mumbled half-aloud.

I was still watching Mona when she disappeared into the girls' bathroom. I slapped my forehead with the heel of my hand. The girls' bathroom! Why hadn't I thought of that? I'd wait there until Taffy found me, and then I would have a perfect excuse for running away from her.

Mona gave me an even bigger frown when I pushed open the bathroom door and went inside, so I ducked into a stall and waited until I heard her leave. Then I went to a sink and turned on the water. I would stand there, pretending to wash my hands, until Taffy found me. I threw a quick grin at myself in the mirror. It wasn't the cleverest plan in the world, but I knew it would work.

An instant later the door opened. I held my breath. It was only a couple of fourth-graders. They were giggling so hard over some private joke that I don't think they even saw me standing there. Stephanie Holgrem came in next. She's in my class, but I don't know her very well.

I kept on washing my hands. I couldn't remember when they had been so clean. I kept squirting smelly green soap on them and rinsing it off and squirting on soap and rinsing it off until my fingers started to wrinkle and turn white and the front of my jacket was splattered with water. Finally the door opened again. This time it was Taffy Sinclair.

"Okay, Jana Morgan!" she began. She had her hands on her hips and was giving me a terrible poison-dart look. "What was the big idea of running away from
me?
"

"Emergency," I said. Then I squirted another glob of smelly green soap onto my hands and scrubbed like crazy. It was all I could do to keep from giggling. I stared at my hands and tried to concentrate on washing them so that the laugh that was flooding into my throat wouldn't come bursting out.

Taffy didn't say anything for a minute, but she must have believed me. She dropped her hands away from her hips and sighed. Then she said in a pouty voice, "It's too late to go back outside now. The
bell will ring any minute. But y
ou'd better not run away from me again at recess."

Before I could answer, the first bell rang, ending lunch period. I grabbed a paper towel and dried my hands. Taffy must have been perfectly content that she had humiliated me in front of the entire school. Why else would she want to parade me around again at recess? I left her standing in the girls' bathroom and hurried to class, sinking into my seat and wishing I had somewhere to hide. I dug around in my desk as if I were searching for something important so that I wouldn't have to look at any of the other kids as they came into the room. Especially not Randy Kirwan.

I stayed scrunched dow
n in my seat all through social studies period.
I w
as glad no one passed me a note asking what Taffy and I had been doing together at noon, but I was afraid that after they saw us together during the afternoon recess, somebody would.

I looked out the window right after social studies and was surprised to see that it had begun to rain. Ther
e hadn't been a cloud in the sky
at lunchtime, but there it
was coming down softly. As I watched, the rain got harder and harder so that it was practically pouring by the time the bell rang for afternoon recess. I could hardly believe my good luck. I breathed such a loud sigh of relief that Taffy Sinclair turned around in her seat and glared at me as if I were personally responsible for the rain.

"There will be indoor recess this afternoon," Wiggins announced. "You may talk quietl
y
to the people sitting around you, or you may go to the back of the room and choose a book."

Practically everybody in the whole class went zooming to the bookshelves at the back of the room. I did, too, since none of my best friends sits close to me, and I needed to talk to them badly. We pretended to look for books, trying to hide behind other kids so that we could talk.

"What was going on at noon?" Katie whispered.

"Yeah," said Beth. "It looked as if Taffy Sinclair had you on a leash. And, boy, did you run when she waved at Randy. He didn't go to her, though. He just watched you."

"She's making me fake being her friend!" I tried to whisper, but my words came out like an explosion.

"Too much talking at the back of the room," Wiggins called.
"
Just get your b
ooks and return to your seats."

Beth was looking toward Wiggins, so I ducked behind Clarence Marshall and poked her on the shoulder. "Tomorrow is Saturday," I said, only instead of saying the words out loud I just moved my lips. "Come to my house at one o'clock for a Fabulous Five meeting. It's urgent!"

Beth screwed her face into a confused frown. "What?" she whispered.

I repeated the words very slowly, exaggerating the way I moved my mouth until she finally understood. She nodded and went to her seat. I gave my other friends the same message, letting them read my lips, too, so that we wouldn't get into trouble with Wiggins.

After I got back to my seat, I realized that I had forgotten to bring a book. I started to go to the bookshelves again, but then I changed my mind. Instead, I began looking around the room and thinking about the real thief. As long as the true identity of the real thief stayed a secret, Taffy could go on making my life miserable forever. It was time for me to do something. That was why I had called a meeting of the Fabulous Five for tomorrow afternoon.

I looked up and down each row of seats. It had to be someone in this class, but the only thing I really felt sure of was that the thief was a girl. I closed my eyes and tried to picture a girl sneaking into the room and stealing the wallet, but the picture was so fuzzy that I couldn't see any particular person. I knew that girls could steal things just the same as boys, but who in our class would do a thing like that?

Just then the door burst open and Mr. Scott, the new assistant principal, came into the room looking very stern. Ordinarily I would have looked at Christie since she has had a crush on Mr. Scott since the beginning of the school year, but he had such an angry look on his face that I watched him instead.

Mr. Scott marched straight to Wiggins's desk, and the two of them talked secretly for a couple of minutes. I could see that Wiggins was getting angry, too. Her face was turning as red as her curls. My heart started to pound. What on earth was going on?

Wiggins stayed seated at her desk until Mr. Scott left the room. Then she got slowly to her feet and raised one hand for attention, which she didn't have to do because everybody was already looking at her. The room was deathly quiet as we waited for her to speak.

"There has been another theft," she said sternly. "This time someone apparently sneaked into the office during lunch period and took all the dollar bills out of the box of lunch money on Mrs. Winchell's desk. I'm asking anyone who knows anything about it to see me after school. We have not yet called the authorities about
the wallet theft, but I'm afraid if no one comes forward by Monday, we will have no choice but to call them."

As I sat there staring straight ahead, my whole body went numb. Monday they were going to call the police. This was Friday. Monday was only three days away. I didn't steal that lunch money. Why did I feel so guilty? I knew the answer to that, and it made me feel so terrible that I wanted to put my head down on my desk and cry.

I had come into the school building all alone during lunch period. Worst of all, Taffy Sinclair knew it, too.

"N
ow you're stealing lunch money, huh?" said Taffy Sinclair as we left the building to walk home together after school. The rain had stopped, but the sky still looked as angry as my mood.

I wanted to scream at Taffy and tell her that I had never stolen anything in my life, but since there were still lots of people on the school ground, I had to keep on faking that I was her friend and smiling at kids and
saying, "Bye," and "See you M
onday," and things like that.

Taffy was smiling at everybody we passed, too, and talking to me out of the side of her mouth at the same
time. "It was pretty smart of you to take only the dollar bills. You can hide those easily. Besides, coins might jingle when you walk."

My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely hold my books. How dare she say a thing like that? We left the school ground and turned a corner. I stopped and looked around quickly. No kids from our school were anywhere in sight. This was my chance.

"I didn't steal that money, and you know it!" I said. "I was in the bathroom. Ask Mona Vaughn. She saw me. And Stephanie Holgrem. She was in there, too."

Taffy had stopped, also. She just looked at me for a moment and then she said, "I've already ta
lked to Mona. She said she saw y
ou in the hall."

"So?" I growled. "You have to go through the hall to get to the bathroom."

Taffy smiled her nastiest smile. "Mona said you acted awfully funny. She said you were leaning against the wall, trying to catch your breath, and that you got really nervous when you saw her."

"That doesn't prove a thing," I insisted.

"Maybe the police would think it does," she chirped. "I'll see you Monday." Then she walked away, leaving me standing there alone.

All the way home I was a nervous wreck. When I got to the apartment I pitched my books onto my bed and headed for the kitchen. I wasn't really hungry, but I couldn't sit still to do my homewor
k, either. I was too antsy
. And too
worried.
Would Taffy Sinclair really
tal
k
to the police on Monday? What would she say? I knew. She would say that she caught me red-handed putting Wiggins's empty wallet beside the trash can in the girls' bathroom. She would also say that I was alone in the school building during lunch period today and that Mona Vaughn had seen me and that I was acting nervous. Then the
y would talk to Mona, and she w
ould say anything Taffy wanted her to—even though I knew I was telling the truth.

I poured myself a glass of milk and sat down at the table. Next the police would probably question me. What could I say? I
had
put Wiggins's wallet beside the trash can. And I
had
been nervous when Mona saw me in the hall. I was running away from Taffy Sinclair. But they would never believe that. Not unless the real thief had already confessed, which I knew wasn't going to happen. I swallowed hard as I imagined myself being led off to jail.

I was staring out into space, thinking about living in a tiny cell, when the doorbell rang. It startled me so much that I almost jumped out of my skin. Who on earth could that be? I wondered. Nobody ever came to our house this time of day. Was it the police, coming to get me already? I didn't want to go to the door, but I knew I had to. I stood on my tiptoes so that I could see out the
peephole. I almost collapsed w
ith relief.

"Okay, Mrs. Lawson," I called. It was only the landlady.

She was leaning against the other side of the hall puffing and panting when I opened the door. "Whew," she said, handing me an envelope. "It's getting harder and harder to climb these stairs with my old legs, but since this is a special delivery letter, I thought I'd better bring it up."

"Special delivery?" I whispered. I couldn't remember ever getting a special delivery letter before, and my pulse quickened as I saw that it was postmarked Poughkeepsie, New York. That was where my father lived.

"Thanks, Mrs. Lawson," I murmured quickly and closed the door practically in her face. I hadn't meant to do anything so impolite, but this was an emergency. It was a letter from my father.

I sat down on the sofa and stared at the envelope. It was from my father, all right. I'd know his handwriting anywhere. I wanted to open it, but it was addressed to Mrs. Patricia Morgan. That's Mom. It was still an hour until time for her to come home from work. I couldn't wait that long to find out what it said. I switched on the lamp sitting on the table beside the sofa and held it up to the light the way they always do in detective shows, but it didn't work. The writing didn't show through.

I picked at the flap on the back with my fingernail, hoping that it would come loose and open easily. It was stuck tight. That left only one thing to do. I would have to call Mom at work.

"What is it, honey?" she asked after her supervisor called her to the phone. "Are you okay? You aren't sick, are you?"

"No, Mom. It's nothing like that," I said. "It's just that we got a special delivery letter. It's from my father. I thought you might want to know. "

Mom didn't say anything for a minute. "You'd better read it to me," she said finally.

I opened the envelope and pulled out the letter. It wasn't very long. I took a deep breath and began reading: "Dear Pat, I am sorry to have to tell you this, but I'll be arriving in Bridgeport Monday on the 6 P.M. bus. I don't have any other choice. I'll only be there until I can get a job and get on my feet again. I know you'll understand. Tell Jana," my voice crackled and I had to stop a minute and clear my throat, "tell Jana that I love her and I'm looking forward to seeing her. Love, Bill."

I heard Mom sigh on the other end of the line. Finally she said, "Thanks, honey. We'll talk about it when I get home."

After we hung up, I read the letter again. Actually I must have read it at l
east five hundred times. Finally
I had to stop because the words were getting blurry from all the tears in my eyes. This was the moment I had dreamed of. My father was coming to live with us. We would get to know each other and do things together. And maybe my parents would even get married again.
So why did I feel miserable? Why wasn't I so happy that I was dancing around the room? I knew why. It was all because of Taffy Sinclair
.