Taffy Sinclair 002 - Taffy Sinclair Strikes Again (4 page)

T
here is this bulletin board in the cafeteria where menus for the week, notices of club and scout meetings, ball game schedules, and things like that are posted. When Taffy and I walked in at lunchtime on Friday, the first thing I saw was a crowd of kids around that bulletin board. I couldn't see what was on it, but they were all whispering and giggling so I knew whatever it was had to be pretty funny.

I nudged Taffy. "Let's go see what they're all laughing about," I said.

She shrugged and followed along. When we got to the edge of the crowd, one of the kids, a fourth-grader named Shana something-or-other, started poking other kids and pointing toward us. In just about half of a
second everybody was staring at us with funny looks on their faces. Suddenly I had the awful feeling that something terrible was on that bulletin board, something about Taffy and me.

I went storming through that crowd, and there it was. Thumbtacked to the bulletin board was this really gross picture of two girls, one blond and one brunette, that someone had drawn in crayon. They had the ugliest faces I had ever seen and huge noses that were stuck up in the air. Taffy's name was under the picture of the blond, and my name was under the brunette. But that wasn't all. Across the top was this poem.

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Taffy and Jana,
Nobody is as snotty as you!

I was so mad I thought I would explode. I tore that picture off the bulletin board and then into a million pieces, which I threw onto the floor and stomped on as hard as I could. Taffy was just standing there, but her face was getting redder by the minute. I had a pretty good idea who had put that picture there. Only one of my FORMER friends could be that low. Just then I realized that the kids who had been crowded around the bulletin board had sat down at lunch tables and nobody was making a sound. They were all staring at us.

"Come on, Jana. Let's eat our lunch," said Taffy, and I couldn't believe my ears. It was practically Taffy Sinclair and me against the world, but she didn't sound mad at all. Her face had this really angelic look on it even though it had been just about purple a minute before. Then she turned around and headed for an empty table in a corner as if nothing had happened. I didn't want to stand there by myself with everybody looking at me, so I followed her. I started fishing around in my lunch bag as I went so that I wouldn't have to look at anybody. I was so embarrassed I thought I'd die.

"How can you act like nothing happened?" I asked after we sat down.

"You can't let them know they've gotten through to you. If they think they made you mad or hurt your feelings, they'll just do something else. You've got to make them think you can't be bothered with such childish stuff, and the best way to get the message across is with body language."

I didn't have the slightest idea what body language was, and I must have had a really dumb look on my face because she started explaining.

"Body language is talking to somebody by moving a certain way. It's like when you stick your nose in the air to snub somebody. Only it's a lot more than that. You can say just about anything to somebody and that person will get it without you even saying one word."

It was starting to sound interesting, but I still wasn't totally convinced. "How do you know so much about body language?" I asked.

"My mother taught me. She used to be an actress, and actresses and actors use it all the time."

"Do you mean a person can say
anything
with body language?"

"Sure. If you wanted to, you could send really snotty messages to your FORMER friends. Wouldn't that be fun?"

"Boy, would it," I said. I could just imagine saying every hateful, nasty thing I could think of to them, without doing much more than moving my little finger.

"And that's not all," said Taffy. "You can do all kind
s of things with body language."
Taffy looked around to see if anybody was looking before she whispered, "Best of all, you can send messages to boys."

"Boys!" I was really sorry I had almost shouted that because now people were looking at us again. I cupped a hand around my mouth and whispered, "Boys? Are you sure?"

"Of course," she said. "I send messages to them all the time." She hesitated a minute and then said, "If you want me to, I could show you how."

"Great!" I said. "Why don't you come over to my house tomorrow morning?"

Taffy said okay, and I started thinking about how it was body language she had been using all along. That was why she walked the way she did and flipped her hair over her shoulders. I had been seeing it, but I just hadn't understood what it meant. Now it all made sense, and pretty soon I would know how to use it, too.

I could see it all now. I was going to be able to tell off my FORMER friends, and I'd be able to send messages to Randy Kirwan and tell him I knew he had a crush on me—all without ever opening my mouth. After that, I might work on Mom. I needed more freedom than she gave me, and I could definitely use a bigger allowance. I couldn't help thinking that my life was going to be just about perfect, and I owed it all to my new best friend, Taffy Sinclair.

Mom acted really surprised the next day when I told her that Taffy was
coming over, but then she made
a typical mother-type remark.

"I think it's wonderful that you're expanding your circle of friends to include Taffy after all the trouble you girls had getting along before. It shows you're getting very mature."

It was all I could do to keep from laughing. If only she knew. She hadn't even noticed that my FORMER friends and I were not going around together anymore.

While I waited for Taffy to come over, I made a mental list of all the things I wanted to learn to say in body language. Of course the very first thing I wanted
to learn was how to send messages to cute boys, especially Randy Kirwan. I could hardly wait for Taffy to get there.

A little while later I heard Mom letting her into the apartment. When I opened the door to my room, Taffy was giving Mom a really angelic smile and Mom was practically melting down into her shoes. Good old body language, I thought. Boy, did I have a lot to learn. Anyway, Taffy came into my room, and we closed the door so Mom couldn't hear what was going on.

Taffy took off her gorgeous pale blue jacket with the white fur trim and laid it on my bed. Then she sort of glanced around my room. I glanced around, too. It was just an ordinary room with blue-and-gold plaid curtains and bedspread. Taffy's room probably wasn't ordinary. She probably slept in a white canopy bed and had a pink carpet on the floor. Just then I remembered that exactly one week ago that very day The Fabulous Five had met in this very room to tell each other our faults.

Taffy must have been thinking about my FORMER friends also. "Pretend you're Beth Barry, and I'll pretend I'm you," she said.

"Okay." I could feel little tingles racing up my spine. This was fun already.

Taffy took a deep breath. Then she turned so that her back was almost to me. Slowly she stood up very straight and stiff, turning to look over her shoulder.
Her eyes were like a pair of poison darts, and they were pointed straight at me. I gulped and felt my face grow red. She wasn't just giving me a dirty look. It was worse than that. I was sure she hated me. But that wasn't the thing that bothered me the most. She had given me that look before, at least a hundred times, back during the days when I was president of The Against Taffy Sinclair Club. She must have known about body language even then.

Then she started walking toward me. She didn't have that awful hate look in her eyes anymore, but she didn't look very friendly, either. She got really close and then just kept inching toward me until I couldn't help but back up. She inched forward again, and I backed up again. Finally she backed up herself and started to grin.

"That's called invading someone's private space," she said. "And you can really push people around when you do that."

"I have to admit it worked on me," I said. I thought about what she had just showed me, and then I said, "But why did your mother show you how to do this kind of stuff?"

Taffy blushed and lowered her eyes. "She started teaching me body language when I was having so much trouble with everyone at school."

I didn't say anything for a minute because I knew that part of that "everyone" had been me. I was glad I had made friends with Taffy now because I could see that she was really a very lonely person. She must have known I was embarrassed because she started the conversation again, telling me ways to stand and walk that would make me look like I was super-important. I was really starting to get excited about trying it out. She taught me a few more ways to be nasty to my FORMER friends, and then she showed me secret ways to send messages to cute boys. She said her mother hadn't shown her that. She had just sort of figured it out for herself.

After that, we listened to records for a while and talked about what we were going to be for Halloween. I felt a little silly telling her I was going to be the Jolly Green Giant, especially after she told me that she was going to be the tooth fairy. Finally she went home. When she was gone I spent practically the whole afternoon practicing body language in front of my mirror. Sometimes I imagined my FORMER friends were there and sometimes Randy Kirwan. I could hardly wait to get to school on Monday to try it out
.

"H
ow about making a quick trip out to Southgate Mall to get you some new sneakers?" Mom asked me later that afternoon.

Naturally I said yes. I was desperate for new sneakers, and I loved going to Southgate Mall. Inside, they have big pools with goldfish swimming in them and trees and flowers and stuff growing all around. Sometimes my FORMER friends and I were allowed to ride out there on our bicycles to go to this really neat shop that has forty-five flavors of ice cream. My two favorite flavors are bubble gum and peanut butter and jelly, only I can't stand to look at the peanut butter and jelly. Brown ice cream with purple streaks in it is just too gross.

Anyway, we waited on the corner for the bus marked Shoppers Special that went right up to the front door of the mall. Mom seemed awfully quiet, as if she had a lot of things on her mind. I hoped she and Pink weren't mad or something, but I really wasn't all that interested in conversation myself. I was still thinking about what I had learned that morning from Taffy Sinclair.

We found new sneakers in t
he first shoestore we looked in. The salesman who waited on us was probably in high school or maybe in college. He was so cute I thought about sending him a message in body language, but I didn't know if I was good enough yet, and I wouldn't want Mom to catch on to a thing like that. So I just stood really still while he put my old shoes into a box and Mom paid for the new ones. Then we went to a fabric store, and Mom bought tons of green felt for my Jolly Green Giant costume.

"Want to get an ice-cream cone before we head for home?" she asked as we walked back out into the mall.

"Sure," I said. I had never refused an offer like that in my life.

Mom ordered a single dip of coconut almond mocha and I eenie-meenie-minie-moed between my two favorite flavors. Peanut butter and jelly won, and I ordered a triple dip. Since Mom knows I always eat it with my eyes closed so that I can't see how gross it looks, she led me to a booth.

"You know, Jana," Mom began just as I took my first lick. "I've been thinking about something ever since Taffy came over this morning."

I opened my eyes and looked at her. I couldn't imagine what was coming.

"I know the two of you have never really liked each other and that you even had a club against her once. I think it's great that you're getting along so well now, but what about your other friends? I just realized they haven't been over or even called for several days. I don't mean to be nosy, but are you girls having problems?"

I closed my eyes and licked my ice-cream cone again. Mom had noticed after all. I didn't know what to say. I just couldn't tell her what my FORMER friends had done to me. I'd be so embarrassed I'd die. I sat there with my eyes closed, licking away on my ice
-
cream cone for quite a while. I knew Mom wouldn't ask any more questions if I didn't want her to. She was always pretty good about things like that. I wondered if she were still looking at me, and I started to get a lump in my throat. That lump just kept getting bigger and bigger until I was afraid I wouldn't be able to swallow my ice cream anymore. Finally, I looked at her and said, "Mom, what would you do if somebody pointed out something about you, like a fault or something, only it wasn't really true?"

Mom sighed and gave me a sympathetic look. "Oh, honey. Is that what the trouble is? I'm sorry." Then she reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
"Well, I guess if someone did that to me, I'd get busy and prove to that person she was wrong. You know, sometimes people get carried away looking for other people's faults and that's all they see. They even see faults that aren't there and miss all the really good points a person has."

"Thanks, Mom," I said, and I gave her a genuine smile. She couldn't know how much better she had made me feel. I was doing the right thing after all. I was proving to my FORMER friends that instead of me being boy crazy, boys were crazy over me. Even my own mom said that's what I should do. I also wondered how long it had been since my FORMER friends had thought about all my good points. They probably never thought about anybody's good points since they were always looking for faults.

After we finished our ice-cream cones, we took the Shoppers Special back home. Not long after that, Pink came to pick Mom up and brought me my deep-dish pepperoni, green pepper, and mushroom pizza, and I spent practically the whole evening practicing body language in front of the mirror again.

When Monday morning arrived, I was ready for my FORMER friends. I could turn my eyes into poison darts in just about half a second, but all the way to school I kept practicing anyway. I also practiced the special smile Taffy had said drove cute boys wild. I would do one poison dart eyes and t
hen one cute boy smil
e and then one poison dart eyes and on and on like that over and over again. I hoped I wouldn't get mixed up and give my FORMER friends the cute boy smile and look at Randy Kirwan with poison dart eyes, but deep down I knew I wouldn't.

When Taffy Sinclair and I got to the school ground, we stopped and looked around. I was looking for Randy Kirwan or some other cute boys, but Taffy must have been looking for my FORMER friends because she said, "Over there," pointing toward the slide.

Beth was standing there looking lost. I guessed that was how a person looks when she doesn't have any friends, I thought. Anyway, Taffy and I headed straight for her. We even both started off on the same foot the way they do in the marching band. Just as we got even with her, we turned our shoulders toward her and looked at her with our poison dart eyes. Then we stuck our noses in the air and marched away. Next we found Katie and did the same thing to her. Melanie stuck her tongue out when we marched past her, and Christie almost looked like she was going to cry.

Unfortunately, Randy Kirwan was absent, but during the day I got several other chances to send hate messages to my FORMER friends. Once, across the cafeteria, I thought I saw Melanie and Katie talking to each other, and I wondered if they were talking about me. They were probably wishing they hadn't been so mean to me. I didn't care. It would serve them right
for always looking for people's faults instead of their good points. Still, seeing them together again gave me a funny feeling that I c
ouldn't get rid of all that day.