by Betsy Haynes
THE TRUTH ABOUT TAFFY SINCLAIR
Betsy Haynes
A BANTAM SKYLARK BOOK®
NEW YORK · TORONTO · LONDON · SYDNEY · AUCKLAND
RL 5, 009-012
THE TRUTH ABOUT TAFFY SINCLAIR
A Bantam Skylark Book / July 1988
Skylark Books is a registered trademark of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
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All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1988 by Betsy Haynes.
Cover art copyright © 1988 by Ralph Amatrudi.
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ISBN 0-553-15607-1
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
O 0 9 8 7 6
For Dori Starkey, a good friend and a super fan
CHAPTER ONE
"Come on, Taffy. Get moving! It's almost time to leave for school and you haven't done your exercises yet. How do you ever expect to become a fashion model if you don't keep your figure trim?"
"Coming, Mother." I groaned as I hurried down the stairs from my bedroom. Can't she ever let up? I thought. She was sitting at the kitchen table in her bathrobe with her blond hair still in rollers. It was hard to believe she still wore rollers. They went out with the hula hoop.
"Don't forget your ballet lesson after school," she went on, "and that reminds me." Her coffee cup stopped in midair, and her face brightened. "I just heard about a wonderful diction coach in New Haven. I'm going to call her today and see if she can take you as a student over the summer. Then when we line up some television commercials for you, you'll be able to do your own speaking parts instead of letting someone else do the voice-overs. In fact, I'll bet we'll be able to get you some jobs doing voice-overs for other girls. It's going to be thrilling for you to be in show business, honey." She paused and gazed off into the distance. "Just as it was for me when I was one of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes."
My mother was still talking as I raced past her into the family room and hurried through my exercises. Fashion model. Television commercials. Voice-overs. Radio City Rockettes. That was all she ever thought about.
Not me. I had plenty of other things to think about, especially since this was the last week of classes before the summer. I finished my exercises, grabbed my books, and headed for school. I was finally leaving grade school behind and going into junior high, I thought with satisfaction. No more Mark Twain Elementary. No more Jana Morgan and her snobby friends and their big deal club, The Fabulous Five.
The thought of Jana made me bristle. Ever since I could remember she and her friends, Beth Barry, Melanie Edwards, Christie Winchell, and Katie Shannon, had caused me one problem after another, but Jana was definitely the worst. In fifth grade she started a club against me called The Against Taffy Sinclair Club, but this year in sixth grade it was the absolute pits. She still tried to turn everybody against me, including Randy Kirwan, the boy I like. Not only that, The Fabulous Five were all jealous of me because of my looks. Can I help it if I have naturally blond hair and blue eyes? They are also jealous because I had a part in a daytime drama called Interns and Lovers that was on network television last fall and was seen by millions of people all across America, and now I was going to get modeling jobs, first here in Bridgeport, Connecticut, but later on probably even in New York City. I guess I could understand why they were all jealous of me. But still, Jana was my number one enemy, with each of her friends tying for second place.
But what did they know, anyway? They certainly didn't know as much about me as they thought they did. And they never would, either. I'd see to that.
"Ha!" I said out loud. "They think they're so smart when really they're just a bunch of immature babies." Thank goodness there would be lots of new kids at Wakeman Junior High this fall. I wouldn't have to be bothered with Jana or the others anymore. I sighed. This was Tuesday, and school would be out on Friday. Just four more days to go.
Alexis Duvall ran up to me the instant I stepped onto the school ground. "Hi, Taffy. Did you hear the news? Clarence Marshall doesn't think he's going to pass. Wouldn't that be gross? Being left behind in grade school while everyone else goes on to junior high?"
"It would serve him right for being such a jerk," I said, remembering how he had tried to plaster one of his slobbery kisses on me at Kim Baxter's pool party last summer.
"I know, but wouldn't it be gross?" she insisted. Then she looked toward the school building and added under her breath, "Shark alert. Shark alert. Here comes Curtis Trowbridge and I think he's heading for us."
"Oh, no," I groaned. Curtis Trowbridge was the nerdiest person alive and being seen talking to him was totally embarrassing. But here he came anyway, straight toward us. He was walking along with his glasses bouncing on his nose and a pencil stuck behind his left ear, and he was concentrating on the notepad he always carried when he did interviews for the Mark Twain Sentinel. Curtis was sixth-grade editor of the paper.
"Hi, girls," said Curtis in a crackling voice. "You're two of the people I want to see."
"Great," Alexis muttered, but Curtis didn't seem to hear.
"I'm having a graduation party at my house Friday night, and you're both invited."
Alexis and I exchanged wide-eyed looks of horror. A graduation party? At Curtis Trowbridge's house? I couldn't think of anything worse.
"I don't know if I can make it," I said, feeling suddenly grateful to my mother. "I may have to audition for a part in a television commercial."
"Gee, Taffy. That's too bad," said Curtis. He looked genuinely sorry. "Everybody else who I've talked to is coming. How about you, Alexis?"
Alexis shrugged. "Well . . ." she stammered. "If everybody else is coming . . ."
"Great!" cried Curtis. "I'll put you down as a 'yes'." He made some marks in his notepad, pushed up his glasses with a finger, and then turned around and went zipping off in the direction of Lisa Snow and Kim Baxter, who were standing by the swings.
"Do you really think everyone will be there?" I asked Alexis.
"They had better be," she said with a frown.
I tried to act casual as I sauntered up the sidewalk with Alexis, but secretly I was looking around for Randy Kirwan. He would be easy to spot since he was the handsomest boy in Mark Twain Elementary, with dark, wavy hair and big blue eyes. I had to find out if he was going to Curtis's party. There was no way to know how often I would see him over the summer, if I would even see him at all. So if he was going to the party, I had to go, too. It might be my last chance for a long time to take him away from Jana Morgan.
Before I could spot Randy anywhere on the playground, the first bell rang. "Rats!" I mumbled under my breath and headed for my locker. Maybe I would get the chance to talk to him at recess.
There was absolute pandemonium in the hall where the sixth-grade lockers stood. Kids were jerking their locker doors open and shrieking to each other. I tried to ignore the chaos as I headed for my ow
n locker. It's just end of the year hysteria, I thought with disgust. You wouldn't catch me acting so juvenile.
Yesterday Miss Wiggins, our sixth-grade teacher, had collected all the locks and instructed us to bring paper bags to school today. We were supposed to clean out our lockers and take home everything we wouldn't need for the last few days of class. I sighed as I pulled my locker door open. I had forgotten my bag, and I had a ton of things to take home. Things I didn't especially want anyone else to see. I certainly didn't want to stack them on my desk and take the chance of somebody's poking through them when I wasn't looking. Maybe I would call Mother and ask her to drop off a grocery bag for me.
Slowly I focused on the inside of my locker. Something was wrong. It was a mess. A total mess! I never left my things like that. I always kept my locker neat. I bent down, grabbing books and papers from out of the jumble. "These aren't mine," I whispered incredulously.
There were drawings of tanks and airplanes. A math book with Matt Zeboski's name in it. Marcie Bee's spelling paper with the one and only A she had ever gotten in spelling on it. It was the paper she kept taped inside her locker door.
I looked around helplessly at all the other kids scrambling through the things in their lockers and pitching them onto the floor. Suddenly I understood what was going on. It wasn't end of the year hysteria, after all. Nobody had their own things! Somebody must have sneaked in after the locks were turned in to Miss Wiggins and switched everything around. And in the center of the hall Keith Masterson, Richie Corrierro, and Joel Murphy were doubled over with fits of laughter.
"OH, NO!" I shrieked as I remembered what I had left in my locker the day before. "Who has it?" I cried, but nobody could hear me over the noise. I stomped up the hall, jerking my head first to the right and then to the left. I had to find it. I had to get it back if it was the last thing I ever did.
Suddenly I saw something straight ahead of me that made my heart stop, and then the rest of me stopped, too. Jana Morgan and her friends were standing in a tight little cluster looking at something that Jana was holding in her hand. They were giggling and talking excitedly. I couldn't see what it was that Jana had because the others were standing too close to her for me to get a good view. But I knew. I knew without looking. They had found the last thing in the world I wanted them to see—my secret, personal diary.
CHAPTER TWO
Miss Wiggins came steaming up the hall like a battleship with her red corkscrew curls sticking out in all directions like warning flags.
"What is going on here?" she demanded as she came to a halt. "Kim Baxter has just informed me that someone has invaded the lockers and switched all the contents around."
Keith, Joel, and Richie magically faded from the center of the hallway. Seconds later their faces, looking properly solemn and concerned, reappeared between the heads of other sixth-graders.
"That's right, Miss Wiggins," Joel said with amazing innocence. "Things are a real mess."
"You can say that again," shouted Katie Shannon. "Nobody has any business getting into our lockers and messing with our private property."
"Somebody took my new pink sweater," complained Lisa Snow. "I just got it for my birthday last week."
"My Billy Joel poster is gone, too," added Kim Baxter. "I'll die if anything happens to it."
All through the hall kids were grumbling about things that were missing from their lockers. I thought about going straight to Miss Wiggins and telling her about my diary and about Jana and her friends having it. It would serve them right to get in trouble for not giving it back immediately! Even though my name wasn't on it, I could identify it easily. The cover was softly padded with fabric that was the same shade of blue as my eyes, and there was a strap made out of the blue fabric that reached around from the back cover and slipped into the lock on the front.
Still, I thought, there's a million-to-one chance that what they were looking at wasn't my diary. In that case, someone else might have it and not realize what they had. It was locked, of course, and I had the key in my purse. And it didn't have my name on the outside. But at the same time, it was pretty obvious that it was a diary, and a lot of kids would give nearly anything to get their hands on it if they knew it was mine. Besides that, there were things written in it that no one on the face of this earth should ever see, I thought with a shiver. I didn't dare call attention to the fact that my diary was missing. Whoever had it would be certain to break it open and read it.
"I want to know this instant who is responsible," said Miss Wiggins.
Nearly twenty pairs of eyes zeroed in on Keith and Joel and Richie.
"We didn't do it," insisted Keith, throwing up his arms in a giant shrug.
"Who are you trying to kid, Masterson?" said Katie Shannon. She took a menacing step toward the boys. "You guys were really breaking up when the rest of us opened our lockers and saw what had happened."
"So?" said Richie, thrusting his face forward so that his nose almost touched Katie's. "Since when is it a crime to laugh? We got here first, that's all."
"Yeah," said Joel. "You should have seen how all of you looked. It was a riot."
Miss Wiggins frowned thoughtfully at the boys. "All right, boys and girls. That's enough," she said. "We'll settle this later. Right now, I want you to go through the contents of your lockers and return everything you can to its proper owner. Bring whatever you have left over to the classroom."
The instant Miss Wiggins was gone, pandemonium broke out again as kids began digging through the messes in their lockers and pitching things through the air to each other. I stared into my locker for a moment, ducking once as a lavender sneaker whizzed past my ear, but I didn't touch anything. I had something else to do first. Something that was much more important than returning Matt Zeboski's math book or Marcie Bee's spelling paper.
I whirled around and marched straight to Jana Morgan's locker. "I think you have something of mine, and I want it back right now!" I demanded.
Jana looked at me, first with surprise and then with disgust. "I don't have anything of yours. If I did, I'd give it to you."
Jana's friends gathered around us. "What do you think we have?" asked Christie. "Something important?"
"I know you have it," I insisted. "I saw you all bunched up and giggling over something one of you had found. You can't fool me."
"Did it have your name on it?" asked Melanie with a sly smile.
I glared at her without answering.
"Because if it did," Melanie went on, "you'll get it back. Wiggins said we had to give everything back that we could identify."
"Then give it back to me now," I challenged. There was still the nagging thought that they might not have it, but I couldn't back down.
"What we were giggling over was a dirty magazine," said Christie in an exasperated voice. "We thought it belonged to one of the boys. Gosh, Taffy! Was it yours?"
With that, they all started laughing like crazy. Just as my face started turning red at the insinuation that the dirty magazine belonged to me, I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. "Taffy, does this belong to you?" It was Randy's voice. I fought down the blush and turned toward him, opening my eyes wide and giving him my best smile. I couldn't believe my good luck.
Randy was holding out a social studies book and smiling back at me. He had such a gorgeous smile that my knees got weak. Jana must be just about to die, I thought. What does he see in her anyway?
"Let me look at it," I said. Then I moved away from the girls so that Randy would have to turn his back on them and follow me.
My heart was pounding as I took the book out of his hand and pretended to look at it. I wanted him to like me so much! Here was my chance to talk to him and maybe make a good impression. I smiled at him again and tossed my head so that my long blond hair would fall over one shoulder. I had seen a beautiful girl in a movie do that once, and the guy who was watching fell madly in love with her in that very scene.
My name was right inside the front cover of the
social studies book, so I couldn't stall any longer. "Thanks," I said as sweetly as I could. "I REALLY appreciate it."
"Sure," he said. Then he turned back to his own locker and started rummaging through it again.
I tossed a triumphant look toward Jana and her friends, who were pretending not to notice that I had been talking to Randy, and went back to my locker. They could pretend all they wanted, I thought with satisfaction, but Randy had been talking to me instead of Jana, and they knew it. Then suddenly it dawned on me. I had the perfect chance to ask him about Curtis's party, and I blew it. Of course I knew whose fault it was, I thought angrily. Jana's and her snobby friends'. How could I possibly think straight when they had my diary?
The final bell had already rung by the time we finished giving back possessions, and the last of our class trooped through the hall carrying the odds and ends we still couldn't identify. Someone's high-topped gym shoe. An open bag of potato chips. Things like that. A couple of teachers peered out of their rooms to see what all the commotion was about, and Mr. Mullins shushed us, making more noise himself than we were making.
Miss Wiggins was waiting for us inside the classroom door, directing us to put our leftovers, as she called them, on the table in the reading corner at the back of the room. I dumped a pair of wrinkled boy's gym shorts and an overdue library book onto the table, hoping to see my diary, but it wasn't there. At least not so far. Other kids were still straggling into the room, including Jana and Melanie. They had to put my diary on that table. They just had to.
"All right, boys and girls," Miss Wiggins called out when everyone had finally settled into their desks. "Now you may go back to the table and claim what's yours. We'll go by rows," she cautioned, as Mark Peters bolted from his seat. Pointing her finger as if she were controlling a puppet, she directed him back into a sitting position. "Now," she said in a calmer voice. "Row one. You may go."
I kept on craning my neck to try to see if my diary was lying on the table. I couldn't. But by the time Miss Wiggins called the fourth row, which is mine Jana Morgan's, there was hardly anything left. I shoved aside a brown banana, a spiral notebook with all the sheets torn out, and at least four more library books, hoping to uncover the book I was looking for.
