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

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 .

CHAPTER EIGHT
    "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