Taffy Sinclair 002 - Taffy Sinclair Strikes Again by Betsy Haynes Read Free Book Online

finding out who my true friend really was.
     
    For the next couple of days I watched Randy Kirwan every chance I got for signs that he had a crush on me and wanted to tell me about it himself. Of course, I didn't sit in class and stare at him or anything obvious like that. Mostly I pretended to be casual. Sometimes I'd drop my pencil so that I'd have to turn toward him to pick it up and just happen to glance his way. I also spent quite a lot of time with Taffy Sinclair. We walked back and forth to school and sat together in the cafeteria. I could tell it was driving my FORMER friends wild. I didn't care. Randy Kirwan liked me, and any day now he would come up to me and tell me himself.
    "You probably didn't know it, but your friends have been saying things behind your back for a long time," said Taffy while we were eating lunch on Thursday.
    "They're not my friends," I said. "They're my FORMER friends. Anyway, what have they been say ing?"
    Taffy shrugged. "Oh, just snotty things. You know."
    I did know. They had probably been going around for a long time telling everybody I was boy crazy and immature. They must have told the whole school if they had even told Taffy Sinclair.
    "Come on. Let's go," I said. I didn't really want to hear any more about my FORMER friends. I blew up my sandwich bag and popped it and stuffed it and my napkin and my apple core into my lunch bag before I got up. I knew we would have to walk right past Christie Winchell to get out of the room. I stuck my nose up in the air, but when I got even with her table, I said in a big, loud voice, "Show-off!"
    "Boy crazy!" she yelled back.
    Then Taffy and I grinned at each other and sailed right on past.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    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