Stacey's Secret Friend

  “Tess,” I began, “I don’t know if you want to spend time with Clarence. I don’t think he’s your type.” I glanced back down the hall. Clarence had stopped to talk to some of his jerk buddies.

  Tess’s expression shifted to concern. “Stacey, do you like King yourself? Am I getting in your way?”

  “Ew!” I cried. I couldn’t help it. The very thought made my skin crawl.

  “I think you do,” she said. “That explains a lot.”

  “What?” I cried. “What are you talking about, Tess?”

  “Well, you know, I have this feeling that sometimes you’re uneasy around me. Are you mad because King seems to like me?”

  “Definitely not!” I exclaimed. “I have no interest in him. None. Nada. Zilch. Zero. And, I don’t think you should either.”

  “Are you sure? He certainly has an effect on you,” she said.

  I wanted to scream. This conversation wasn’t going the way I had planned. “Believe me, I am not interested in him!”

  “All right. If you say so. But you do seem uneasy.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Tess studied me for a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”

  I was glad she’d dropped the subject. But I wasn’t about to relax.

  I glanced down the hall at Clarence and his friends. I could tell they were talking about Tess. They kept peeking up at her, all of them wearing that awful smirky look.

  Clarence left them and headed for us. I shut my locker. “I’ll see you later,” I said.

  The interested expression had come back into Tess’s eyes. “All right,” she murmured, heading down the hall toward Clarence.

  “Remember, we have to finish the jaguar today,” I called to her.

  She nodded absently.

  Clarence stopped to talk to her. He wore a very confident, smug smile. He could tell that Tess liked the attention he was giving her. And all along he was mocking her.

  I couldn’t stand to watch it. I turned the hall corner and hurried toward class.

  * * *

  That afternoon, I helped Barbara carry our jaguar from the art room into the cafeteria. He was finally dry and ready to be painted. “It’s a shame we probably won’t be able to use him next year,” I said, setting him down on the lunchroom table.

  Barbara nodded but didn’t seem too bothered by it. “It was fun making him, though,” she said. “I was talking to Mr. Taylor today, and he approved our idea to let the kids vote on a new mascot at halftime during the game tomorrow.”

  “How would we do it?” I asked. “We can’t pass out ballots at the game. Not on such short notice anyway.”

  “No, that’s true. It would probably have to be at the next game then, on Wednesday. That’s better anyway, because it’s a home game.”

  Barbara and I opened the jars of paint and spread out newspaper to protect the tabletop. While we worked, we tossed around ideas for ways we could set up the vote.

  “I know!” Barbara cried. “We can make big posters showing the different choices, and we’ll number them. At halftime we can hold them up, and all the kids would have to do would be to write the number of their choice on a piece of paper. It would be so simple.”

  “And it would be fun to do during halftime,” I agreed. Then I frowned. “Do we have time to make all the posters by next Wednesday?”

  “Sure. We have Tess to help us now.”

  “Do you think we should include the pig choice?” I asked.

  Barbara chewed her lower lip as she considered it. “I’m not sure that all the kids who entered the pig were thinking of Tess,” she said. “They might just have meant a pig, plain and simple.”

  “I suppose,” I agreed. Although it was hard to imagine any rival school taking us seriously with a pig for a mascot.

  “We might call more attention to the problem if we leave out the pig,” Barbara added.

  “True,” I agreed.

  Tess walked in just then. Her eyes were bright. “I’ve got a date!” she sang out. “Next Saturday, King and I are going out to dinner together.”

  “That’s great,” Barbara said. “Where are you going?”

  “To that new place that’s opening in the mall,” she replied. “It’s called Hog Heaven.”

  On Saturday morning, Claudia, Mary Anne, and I walked to SMS. (Abby and Kristy were getting a ride from Charlie.) We were going to catch the bus that would take us to the football game at the Sheridan Middle School. Jessi and Mallory were sharing a sitting job, so they couldn’t go.

  “Tess actually thought you liked Clarence King?” Claudia laughed. “Oh, wow!”

  “She honestly seemed to believe that I had some problem with her because of it.”

  “I see what she was getting at. I can’t figure out whether you like her or you don’t,” Mary Anne commented.

  “Of course I like her. I’m helping her, aren’t I?” I replied.

  Mary Anne and Claudia exchanged glances. Maybe I had been a little sharp. But I wasn’t in the mood to worry about Tess.

  Almost the moment we walked through the back gate, I spotted a tall figure, dressed in vivid pink, moving among the crowd of kids waiting for the bus. It could only be Tess.

  “Hi!” She greeted me with a big smile as my friends and I approached. I couldn’t believe it. This outfit was the brightest pink yet, and the worst. Bright pink corduroy pants with a boxy, nubby, bright pink sweater. The pink plastic clip was back in her hair and she wasn’t wearing any makeup.

  My expression must have given away my thoughts. “I’m back to pink again,” Tess said, stating the obvious with a smile.

  “I see,” I replied.

  “I just didn’t feel like myself yesterday,” she explained.

  I nodded. Tess was her own worst enemy. The kids would never stop with the pig jokes. Swine-heart the Destroyer would live forever at this rate.

  “Barbara and I already brought out the jaguar to put on the bus,” Tess told me. “He looks wonderful.” She turned to Claudia. “Those green marble eyes are the greatest touch. Stacey says they were your idea.”

  “Thanks,” Claudia replied. “I heard you were a great help in repairing him.”

  “I was a great help in ruining him in the first place,” Tess said with a laugh.

  Charlie’s car pulled up alongside us. Abby and Kristy hopped out. “Hi, guys,” said Kristy as they joined us.

  Two school buses pulled into the parking lot. Kids began forming wide, messy lines as they assembled at each door.

  “Tess!” a familiar voice called. I spotted Barbara standing near the farthest bus, the second one to pull in. She was awkwardly holding the jaguar while kids nearby jostled her without meaning to.

  “I guess she needs help,” said Tess. She wriggled her way through the milling kids toward Barbara.

  I started to follow her, but a crowd of kids came between us as they surged toward an arriving bus. I jumped up, trying to locate Tess on the other side of them. She’d reached Barbara and was helping her with the jaguar. They were doing fine without me.

  “Come on,” Abby called to me. My friends were getting on a bus. I joined them.

  The bus ride was a blast. We cheered and sang pep songs. Kids shouted jokes about the Sheridan team. I was glad not to have to worry about Tess or about anyone making pig jokes. I could just relax and have fun.

  After we got to the game and found seats in the bleachers, I saw Barbara pass by. Erica Blumberg and Jeff Cummings were helping Tess with the jaguar. Excellent! I wouldn’t have to do a thing.

  For the first half of the game, I screamed and cheered along with everyone else in the stands. My friends and I chanted, “Logan! Logan! Logan!” when he ran onto the field. Clarence is on the team too. He scored the first touchdown.

  It was a close game. One minute SMS was winning, and the next minute Sheridan took the lead. It was back and forth for the entire first half.

  At halftime, the cheerleaders ran onto the field and p
erformed their routines. Then Jeff, Erica, and Barbara carried the jaguar out, while Cokie and Grace led the kids in the stands in the SMS fight song.

  I’d hoped Tess would be part of the group holding the jaguar. It would have shown all of SMS that she was a regular kid and not some oddball. When she wasn’t there, though, I began searching the bleachers for her.

  After several minutes, I spotted her sitting alone on one of the bottom bleachers. The kids next to her were standing, cheering. But Tess was thumbing through a magazine.

  Thumbing through a magazine!

  Couldn’t she at least pretend to cheer for the team? After all, Clarence King, her big date, was a player. She could try to look like part of the group, couldn’t she?

  No, not Tess. She had to be the most stubborn person on earth. (The expression pigheaded came to mind but I pushed it out guiltily.) She was either stubborn or completely clueless. Whichever, she was determined to do things her own way.

  I sighed. Maybe this was my fault. If I’d sat with her at least I could have taken the magazine away and made her stand up and cheer. I had my work cut out for me.

  The football game proved one thing to me. Without my help, Tess would never fit in. She’d be eaten alive by the cruel kids who kept making Swine-heart jokes and oinking in her direction.

  “Why don’t you come to my house today and we can work on the castle,” I suggested Monday morning.

  Tess looked at me warily.

  Why was she angry at me? Was it because I hadn’t sat with her? I suppose since I invited her to join the Pep Squad, I should have. Oh, well. I’d make it up to her at the next game.

  “Don’t you have one of your meetings?” she asked me.

  “Not until five-thirty. We could still work until five or so,” I replied.

  “All right. I’ve done some work on it on my own. I’ll bring it.”

  “Great!” I said.

  I hadn’t thought about the castle project for a single second. I hate it when I wind up with a project partner who doesn’t do any work. I couldn’t believe I was being that kind of partner myself. I didn’t mean to be. I just figured we had time.

  For the rest of the day, I tried to figure out what I could do to make it look as if I’d done some work on the project. Nothing brilliant occurred to me.

  “Give me just one idea,” I pleaded with Claudia on the way home from school. “You’re creative.”

  Claudia sighed. “You could glue pebbles to some cardboard to make it look like the outside of a castle,” she suggested.

  “Perfect,” I said. So I walked along, taking a few small rocks from every gravel driveway we passed. I picked up other little pebbles along the way until I had a pocketful.

  The moment I came in the door, I grabbed a carrot from the fridge. Then I set to work. I cut up a cardboard box, spread the cardboard on the kitchen table, and began gluing the pebbles to it.

  What a mess! The pebbles wouldn’t stick no matter what I did. Glue was all over the place. By the time the front doorbell rang, I was covered with glue.

  Tess walked inside carrying a large, black canvas bag. I led her into the kitchen and she stared at my mess. “I have an easier way to do that,” she said.

  She pulled pieces of white Styrofoam board from her canvas bag. Some kind of pattern was etched into the Styrofoam. The last board she pulled out had the same pattern but had been artfully sponged with different shades of gray paint so that the patterns took on the look of stone. “These can be our walls,” she said. “The Styrofoam is easy to cut into whatever shapes we need.”

  I have to admit, I was very impressed.

  “That is excellent,” I said. “Where did you get such a great idea?”

  “I took a set design class at my old school. We built a huge castle with this stuff for a play. It looked totally real.”

  “A set design class. Wow! What a great school,” I said.

  Tess nodded. “Yeah.” She took tubes of paint, brushes, and natural sponges from her bag. “I thought we might finish painting these boards together. I’ll show you how.”

  Working on the boards was fun, once I got the hang of it, although Tess’s boards came out a thousand times better than mine. “My walls can go in the back,” I offered, laughing.

  “Maybe so,” Tess agreed with a smile.

  It was five-fifteen before I even looked at the clock. “Oh, my gosh! I have to run!” I cried.

  We left the boards on the table to dry. Tess packed up the rest of her things. As she did, she asked me questions about the BSC.

  “It’s great,” I told her, “but we don’t need any new members. Abby just joined and we’re full up.”

  “I didn’t want to be a member,” Tess said, looking insulted.

  “Oh, sorry. I was just telling you since you were asking about the club. I thought maybe you were interested in joining. But there are a lot of other clubs you could join at school. The drama club always needs people to do backstage stuff and the chess club is looking for new kids. Do you play chess? Probably not, right? Me neither. But let’s think what else you’d like …” I kept talking but I no longer knew what I was saying. It was clear to me, and probably to Tess, that I was just rambling on to cover my embarrassment.

  “No problem,” Tess said once her bag was packed. “You better hurry. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I walked her to the front door and felt miserable as I watched her leave. I sighed. Somehow, I didn’t seem to be helping Tess much.

  I pulled on my jacket. I felt happy to be going to a BSC meeting. At least there I usually did a good job.

  * * *

  On Tuesday, Tess’s outfit was beyond belief. She was wearing a bright pink blouse with big puffed sleeves over a short black skirt. The skirt was okay. But that blouse! “I was feeling medieval,” she explained. “I suppose the castle inspired me.”

  Inspired her to what? Insanity?

  In homeroom, someone passed me one of the Swine-heart the Destroyer comics. I couldn’t resist paging through it. The main character was a supervillain pig who was very obviously based on Tess. She wore Tess’s big black glasses and that goofy pink barrette in her hair.

  Despite feeling bad for Tess, I had to smile at some of the comics. They were pretty funny. Swine-heart the Destroyer would turn into this rampaging boar whenever she got angry and annihilate everything around her.

  As each kid added comic squares of his or her own, I noticed a drift away from the super-insulting stuff and a shift toward being more creative. Swine-heart the Destroyer became less evil and more comical. In one strip, she even accidentally helped a superhero named Gray Man (who was undoubtedly begun by Alan Gray) save the world.

  There were blank pages toward the back of the book. The first blank said, “Add your comic here and pass it on.”

  I stuck the book in my pack. At the end of homeroom I dawdled until almost everyone was gone. Then I went to the front of the class and tossed the Swine-heart book in the trash basket. That good deed made me feel much better for the rest of the day.

  After school, I went to the art room to help Barbara finish the posters for the new mascot. A couple of them were especially well-done. “Who did these animal sketches?” I asked.

  “Tess,” Barbara told me. “We worked on them last night. She’s talented, isn’t she?”

  “She sure is,” I agreed.

  “Tomorrow at halftime, I’ll read the names of the animals on the posters, and you hold up the posters,” she suggested.

  “All right.”

  “I asked Tess to read the names,” Barbara went on, “but she didn’t want to — just like she didn’t want to help carry the jaguar at the last game. I have a feeling maybe the Pep Squad isn’t for her.”

  “I have the same feeling.”

  “You should ask Claudia about getting Tess into Art Club,” Barbara said.

  “You’re right.” I didn’t really want to get Claudia involved with Tess, though. It would have been like passing my prob
lem over to her, and that didn’t seem fair. If I thought some more, I was sure I could think of something for Tess to join.

  At the Wednesday football game, I was determined to be extra nice to Tess. I complimented her poster sketches, which Barbara had handed to me, tied together with a string, before the game began.

  I even sat with Tess, down near the field at the end of a row, and told her who all the players were.

  “Is King a good player?” she asked.

  “I guess he is,” I admitted. “That hard head has to be good for something.”

  Clarence was the only part of football that interested Tess. The rest of it was obviously boring to her. I pretended not to notice, though.

  By halftime, the score was tied. Before the cheerleaders came out, Barbara and I were scheduled to present our possible new mascots to the SMS kids.

  “Time to go,” I said to Tess. I picked up the posters and slid them under my arm. I walked out onto the field. Barbara was already there, facing the bleachers. She talked into a hand-held microphone, explaining to the kids that they’d have all week to submit the new mascot they’d chosen to any member of the Pep Squad.

  “If you want to keep the jaguar, you can submit a ballot saying so,” she concluded.

  “I nominate Mr. Peter’s hairpiece!” some boy yelled from the back of the bleachers. Everyone laughed. I hoped Mr. Peter, who is a math teacher, wasn’t there.

  “Very funny,” Barbara said dryly. “Now, here are the real choices.” She began reading the list.

  “Eagle,” she read. I raised Tess’s beautiful color sketch of an eagle over my head. My friends yelled, “Go, Stacey!” I smiled.

  “Bear,” Barbara said next.

  I held up a picture someone else had drawn of a bear.

  Each time Barbara read a choice and I held up a poster, some kids clapped and other kids booed. The booers and the clappers shouted funny insults at one another. Maybe it was the excitement of the tied score.