Fabulous Five 007 - The Kissing Disaster

THE
FABULOUS FIVE #7

THE KISSING DISASTER

BETSY HAYNES

BANTAM BOOKS

NEW YORK • TORONTO •
LONDON • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND

RL 5, 009-012

THE KISSING DISASTER

A Bantam Skylark
Book
/ April 1989

Skylark Books is a
registered trademark of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell
Publishing Group
, Inc. Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
and elsewhere.

All rights
reserved.

Copyright © 1989
by Betsy Haynes.

Cover art
copyright
© 1989 by Ralph Amatrudi.

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book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information
address: Bantam Books.

ISBN 0-553-15710-8

Published
simultaneously in the United States and Canada

Bantam Books are
published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing
Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words
"Bantam Books"
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED
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CW         0 9 8 7 6
5 4 3 2

Melanie Edwards stifled a yawn. Biology class sure was
boring. She tuned out the lecture and started to study her teacher instead. Mr.
Dracovitch was tall and thin with a pale complexion, and he wore a toupee that
was too dark and too shiny and was always pulled down too far on his forehead.
It was no wonder that the kids called him Dracula behind his back, she mused,
and made up gruesome stories about what happened to the poor creatures in the
cages lining the walls of his biology lab. There were a variety of rodents such
as mice and hamsters, plus two crows and a green garden snake.

"Class, tomorrow you will begin dissecting the eyeball
of a cow."

Mr. Dracovitch's announcement pierced Melanie's dreamlike
trance and made her sit up abruptly. The eyeball of a
cow!
she wanted to
shriek.

In the seat beside her, Elizabeth Harvey made a face and
moaned, "E-e-e-
y-e-w.
"

"Gross!" and "Yuck!" came from several
directions, and Shawnie Pendergast turned green, covered her mouth with both
hands, and made a quick dash out of the room.

Mr. Dracovitch waited for the furor to die down before
speaking again. "Yes, you heard me right. I did say the eyeball of a cow.
But I guarantee that you'll all be fascinated by what we learn, and I want you
to read Chapter Thirteen in your textbooks tonight in preparation."

Melanie looked longingly at the door through which Shawnie
had made her exit. Her own stomach had lurched a couple of times, too.
Cut
up the eyeball of a cow?
Maybe her mild-mannered biology teacher
was
the
infamous Count Dracula, after all.

"For this project," Mr. Dracovitch went on, "I
will divide the class into teams. Each team will consist of two students and will
have one eyeball to dissect together."

Melanie was certain she saw an eyebrow raise menacingly when
he said the word "eyeball," and she shuddered at the thought of
actually having to touch such a thing.

"These students will be partners," Mr. Dracovitch said.
"Bill Soliday and Sara Sawyer. Eric Silverman and Elizabeth Harvey. Tammy
Lucero and Chandra Sharp. Shawnie Pendergast and Joel Murphy. Shane Arrington
and Melanie Edwards. . . ."

Melanie shot to attention for the second time. Shane
Arrington was going to be her partner? Cool, gorgeous Shane? He was one of
several boys she had crushes on, and he was definitely the most interesting.
His parents were hippies, which probably accounted for his laid-back
personality, and he had a pet iguana named Igor, whom he claimed was his best
friend. On top of that, he could pass for River Phoenix's identical twin any
day of the week. It would be worth touching the eyeball of a cow to be partners
with Shane. Well, she thought, almost.

Catching her glance from across the room, Shane gave her a
thumbs-up signal. Melanie returned it with a smile and then looked quickly at
Tammy Lucero to see if she had noticed. She had, Melanie thought gleefully.
Tiny, dark-haired Tammy had the reputation of being the biggest gossip in the
seventh grade. Usually that was a pain, but not now. Tammy was also a member of
The Fantastic Foursome, the clique that was the rival of The Fabulous Five,
which was what Melanie and her four best friends had called themselves since
fifth grade. Laura McCall, the leader of The Fantastic Foursome, had a big
crush on Shane. Naturally Tammy would report back to Laura that Melanie and
Shane were partners.

Melanie could hardly wait to meet her friends at Bumpers
after school and tell them about the project and about Shane. It seemed strange
to be the only member of The Fabulous Five to be taking biology. In Mark Twain
Elementary they had done absolutely everything together, even though they had
totally different personalities.

She knew that her friends thought she was boy crazy because
she had crushes on so many boys. She could almost hear Katie telling her so for
the zillionth time when she heard how excited Melanie was to have Shane for her
biology partner. Melanie put up with their opinions in silence, even though she
considered herself romantic—not boy crazy.

Certainly she was more romantic than Katie Shannon, who was
a feminist and a member of Wakeman Junior High's newly organized Teen Court.
Katie pretended not to like boys at all, but everybody knew that she secretly
liked Tony Calcaterra.

Jana Morgan, the unofficial leader of The Fabulous Five, was
a little bit romantic. Her boyfriend was Randy Kirwan, who was one of the
nicest, handsomest, and most popular boys in seventh grade. Jana even admitted
once that she used to keep a poster-size picture of Randy on her bedroom wall
so that she could gaze at it while she fell asleep at night.

Beth Barry was too busy acting theatrical to be romantic.
She and Keith Masterson went out sometimes, but mostly she talked about Drama
Club and about the plight of the American Indians.

Melanie used to think that Christie Winchell, the fifth
member of the clique, was romantic, but that was when she and Jon Smith had
first started seeing a lot of each other. Now it seemed that all they did was
play tennis. How romantic could that be?

Her friends' attitudes toward boys and romance were more
than Melanie could understand, but they were still her best friends, and she
rushed into Bumpers after school, anxious to find them and tell them her news.
In the doorway she hesitated for a moment. Things hadn't been quite the same
between them lately. Katie was preoccupied with Teen Court, and Jana spent half
her time with Funny Hawthorne, her seventh-grade coeditor on the yearbook. But
wait until I tell them about the cow's eye, she thought. They'll absolutely
die.

Bumpers was noisy, as usual. The after-school crowd from
Wacko, as most kids called Wakeman Junior High, filled the booths, tables, and
bumper cars to overflowing, and kids gathered in the aisles, beside the order
counter, and around the huge old Wurlitzer jukebox. The brightly painted bumper
cars were relics from an ancient amusement park ride and had given the
fast-food restaurant its name.

"Hi, Mel," someone called as she pushed her way
through the crowd.

"Hi, Alexis," she called back to Alexis Duvall,
who was sitting at a crowded table and was almost hidden by the tidal wave of kids
surging past.

"Listen, Melanie," Alexis shouted. "Are you
going to the meeting about the seventh-grade dance in the morning?"

Melanie nodded. There was going to be a dance just for
seventh-graders in a month, and the first meeting for kids interested in
helping organize it and serving on committees was being held before school the
next morning. As excited as Melanie was about the dance, she was more
interested in talking to her friends right now.

"Can't talk now," she said apologetically. "Have
you seen any of The Fabulous Five?"

"Over there," said Alexis, raising one arm like a
periscope and pointing toward the far corner of the room.

Melanie nodded and lip-synched "thank you" along
with the lyrics of a song blasting from the jukebox. Alexis was breaking up
with laughter as Melanie headed toward her friends.

"Hi, gang. Guess what?" she yelled above the noise
as she slid into the booth beside Jana.

"Hi, Melanie," said Jana. "Gosh, would you
let me out? I need to talk to Funny about some yearbook stuff."

"Don't you want to hear my big news?" asked
Melanie.

"I'd love to, Mel, but can't it wait? I really have to talk
to Funny. It's important."

Without answering, Melanie slid out of the booth.

"Thanks," said Jana. "See you later."

Melanie frowned at the back of Jana's head and then sat down
again, scooting toward Christie.

"You won't believe what old Dracula told us today,"
Melanie said to Christie, who was staring at a spot on the table. "We're
going to have to dissect the eyeball of a cow. Isn't that gross?" She
waited for Christie's reaction.

Christie didn't look up. It's awfully noisy, Melanie
thought. Maybe she simply hadn't heard. Then Melanie noticed a faraway look in
her eyes.

"Christie," said Melanie, bending closer to her
friend. "Earth to Christie. Do you read me?"

"Oh, hi, Melanie." Christie's eyes came into focus
and she looked surprised to see Melanie sitting there. "Maybe you can give
me some advice."

Melanie shrugged. "Sure. If I can."

"It's about Jon," Christie began. "I can't
decide if I should help him out on his tennis serve or pretend I don't know
what he's doing wrong and keep on beating him. I know winning isn't everything,
but it's sure fun. What do you think?"

"Isn't that sort of cheating?" snapped Melanie.
Christie hadn't heard a single word she had said about Mr. Dracovitch and the
biology project. She had been too busy thinking about Jon and his tennis serve.

"Mmmmm." Christie nodded and drifted back into her
dreamy state.

Melanie was fuming. She hated being ignored, especially by
her best friends. Well, maybe Katie and Beth would listen, she thought. But
when she glanced across the table to where they had been sitting only moments
before, they were gone. They had vanished into thin air. Two of her best
friends in the whole world had left without so much as a word.

Melanie slumped against the back of the booth. Nobody seemed
to care about
her
anymore. Not one of her friends wanted to hear what
she had to say. The same thing had already happened twice this week and a
couple of times last week. Those other times she had thought that maybe what
she had to talk about was just too boring.
But dissecting the eyeball of a
cow?
How could anybody call that boring?

Melanie scooted out of the booth and headed for the door.
She thought about stopping to talk to Alexis about the dance but changed her
mind. Even though Alexis seemed interested in talking to her—unlike
some
people
she could name—she wanted to get out of there. She had to think about the awful
question that had been nagging at her lately. Was it possible that after all
The Fabulous Five had meant to each other, they were starting to break up?

After dinner Melanie turned to Chapter 13 in her biology
book, but she couldn't concentrate on the assignment. Her thoughts kept turning
to stories she had heard about how different things were in junior high and how
sometimes friendships changed or, even worse, ended altogether.

In elementary school everyone had known everybody else, and
friendships had been special. But suddenly in junior high, things weren't the
same anymore. Seventh-graders came together from several schools around town,
and sometimes you wouldn't have a single class with your best friends, or for
that matter, with hardly anyone you knew. It could be pretty lonely at first, until
you made some new friends. Maybe that was what was happening to the other
members of The Fabulous Five. They were making new friends and leaving her
behind.

Take Jana, for instance, she thought. Until lately Jana had
always been the problem solver, the one who could keep the group together. But
now she was spending most of her time working on the yearbook,
The Wigwam,
with her new friend Funny Hawthorne. She hardly had any time for The Fabulous
Five anymore.

The same went for Christie. She used to prefer her Fabulous
Five friends over the tennis court, where her father was trying to turn her
into a professional player. Now she was spending every waking moment playing
tennis with Jon Smith.

Katie couldn't talk about anything except the cases that
came before Teen Court and how she was wiping out problem behavior at Wakeman
Junior High practically single-handedly. What she wouldn't talk about was Tony
Calcaterra, the repeat offender who had a crush on her.

Even Beth had gone off on a tangent lately. Ever since she
had met Trevor Morgan, the lead singer with the rock group Brain Damage, and
found out how badly American Indians had been treated, she was trying to help
educate the public about it. Beth hadn't given the American Indians a second
thought back in Mark Twain Elementary. She had mostly only cared about her
friends.

The Fabulous Five had been a real club then with weekly
meetings on Saturday afternoons in Jana's bedroom. They had collected dues and
had T-shirts printed that said THE FABULOUS FIVE across the front, and they had
worn them to the meetings. Everybody in school had known how special their
friendship was. But now, they went to football games on Saturday afternoons,
and there didn't seem to be time for meetings. They had outgrown their old T-shirts
and had not gotten around to getting new ones. And Melanie couldn't help wondering
if their friendship was special anymore.

She yawned and noticed that while she had been thinking
about her friends she was also doodling in the margins of the page in her
biology book showing a diagram of a cow's eye. She winced. She should be
reading Chapter 13. Dracula would expect everyone in the class to know what was
going on tomorrow. He might even pop a quiz.

"So what?" she said out loud, slapping the book
shut. "Saving The Fabulous Five is more important than any old cow's eye,
quiz or no quiz. This is a crisis."

Melanie bounded down the stairs and headed for the kitchen
phone. She knew she should get permission from her parents for what she was
about to do, but they had taken her six-year-old brother, Jeffy, out for ice
cream. It was a reward for not crying when the pediatrician had given him a
booster shot earlier in the day. First things first, she thought as she dialed
Jana's number and listened to it ring. She would talk to her mom and dad later.

She hardly gave Jana time to say hello. "Jana, this is
Melanie. I'm having a sleepover Saturday night. I thought we'd have a Fabulous
Five meeting at the stroke of midnight. Stuff like that. Can you come?"

"Wow, Melanie, that sounds great. The only trouble is .
. ." Jana's voice trailed off, and Melanie braced herself for what was
coming. "I promised Mom and Pink that I'd go bowling with them. They go
every Saturday night. Remember?"

"Oh, sure," mumbled Melanie.
Remember
—how
could she forget? Jana was always complaining about how boring it was that her
mother and new stepfather never did anything else on Saturday night. They went
bowling week after week after week. And now she was going along? It was
incredible.

"Anyway, Pink is going to teach me how to throw
something besides gutter balls," Jana added with a nervous laugh. "I
think it's going to be fun."

After they hung up, Melanie reminded herself that ever since
her mother's marriage to Pink, Jana had seemed preoccupied with adjusting to
the new situation at home. Maybe that was why she was going bowling with them,
Melanie reasoned,
not
because she had lost interest in The Fabulous
Five.

Next Melanie called Katie. "How about sleeping over at
my house Saturday night?" she asked, trying to sound cheerful.

"I'd love to, but Teen Court is having a pizza party Saturday
night," said Katie. "I thought I told everybody."

"You didn't tell me," Melanie grumbled. But then,
nobody tells me
anything
anymore, she thought of adding. Instead she
asked, "Is Tony Calcaterra going to be there?"

"Of course not," Katie insisted. "This party
is just for judges."

"Oh, right," said Melanie slyly. "He just
gets into trouble and has to come before the court so often that I've started
thinking of him as a member. Talk to you later. Bye."

Melanie hung up before Katie could blow her stack. Everybody
teased Katie about Tony. She had a crush on him, too. She just wouldn't admit
it.

She punched in Christie's phone number a little slower than
she had the other two. Christie was probably going out with Jon on Saturday
night. Still, she reasoned, it wouldn't hurt to ask.

"Oh, rats," said Christie upon hearing Melanie's
invitation. "Wouldn't you know it? That just happens to be the night when
Jon's parents invited us to the TV station to sit in on an interview they're
taping to play on the air Sunday afternoon."

Melanie sighed with irritation. Jon's parents were Chip
Smith and Marge Whitworth, both big-deal personalities on the local television
station.

"Boris Becker is coming through town," Christie
went on excitedly, "and it's the chance of a lifetime to meet him. You do
know who Boris Becker is, don't you?"

"Of course," huffed Melanie. Everybody knew who
Boris Becker was. He was the German tennis star who had taken Wimbledon and a
bunch of other big tournaments while he was still a teenager. Everyone had
heard of him.

There was only one person left to call: Beth. Melanie
grabbed a handful of brownies from the plate on the counter and stared at the
phone. Should she risk rejection again? she asked herself as she stuffed an
entire brownie into her mouth. Four times in one evening was a lot of rejection
to handle. Still, she had to do something to keep The Fabulous Five together.

Beth's father answered and went to call Beth to the phone. While
she waited, Melanie listened to the racket in the background. Music was
playing. People were talking. Agatha was barking. What a madhouse, she thought.
But then with five kids and an Old English sheepdog in the family, it wasn't
surprising.

"Hi, Mel. Sorry to keep you waiting."

Beth's chirpy voice lifted Melanie's spirits slightly, and
she said, "Would you like to sleep over at my house Saturday night? I don't
know what we'll do. Everybody else is busy, and it will probably be boring."

"Great. What time?"

Melanie frowned at the phone. Had she heard wrong? "What
did you say?" she asked incredulously.

"I said, great. What time?"

"How does six-thirty sound?" Her heart was
pounding. Beth was actually saying yes.

"It sounds terrific. I'll be there."

Melanie danced around the room after she hung up. Maybe it
wasn't too late for The Fabulous Five after all. She would make Saturday night
so much fun that Beth would talk the ears right off their other three friends.

"What should we eat?" she whispered as she got
paper and pencil and plopped onto the stool at the end of the kitchen counter. "Pizza?
No, that's too common. Hamburgers? Too much trouble to fix. Lobs-tah Newburg
and cavi-ah, dhaling?" she drawled, and began to giggle.

Just then the phone rang. Stifling her laughter, Melanie
picked up the receiver. "Hello."

"Hi, Mel. It's Beth again. About Saturday night . .
."

Melanie's heart dropped into her shoes. "What about it?"
she asked softly.

"Gosh. I feel awful," Beth began, "but I just
looked at Mom's calendar, and I'm supposed to stuff envelopes that night."

"Stuff envelopes?"
Melanie shrieked.

"Yeah, at the Indian mission. They're writing letters
to Congress about some land they say was stolen from some tribes over a hundred
years ago. I promised I'd help. You understand, don't you?"

"Of course," Melanie sniffed.

She hung up and stared at the kitchen floor for a long time
as she slowly finished the brownies. Jana was going bowling. Katie was having
pizza with the Teen Court. Christie was going to a television taping. And Beth
was stuffing envelopes! Everyone was busy. No one had time for her or for
friendship or for The Fabulous Five. It was awful. After all they had meant to
each other. Now it seemed as if they didn't have anything in common anymore.

Well, I'll show them, she thought, and headed for her room.
I'll change, too. After all, this is junior high! A plan was already beginning
to form in her mind.