Stacey vs. Claudia Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Acknowledgment

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  “Stacey, Ethan’s on the phone!” Mom called from downstairs.

  I shut my history book right away. “Thanks!” I shouted as I slid off my bed. “I’m coming.”

  “American westward expansion” (my weekend reading for a report I’m doing for history class) was putting me to sleep. I would have welcomed any phone call. But one from Ethan was extra welcome.

  I hurried down the stairs. “I’ve got it!” I shouted as I snapped up the cordless phone in the living room.

  “Okay,” Mom called from the kitchen.

  “Hi,” I said into the phone. “I’m so glad you called. How’s your self-portrait coming?”

  “I don’t know,” Ethan replied. “I never thought staring at my own face could get so boring. I guess I never looked at it this much before.”

  “Well, you certainly don’t have a boring face.” Ethan has a gorgeous face. And I’m not just saying that because he’s my boyfriend.

  He has long dark hair and intense blue eyes. And even though he’s an art student, he’s also athletic and really fit.

  “Well, thanks,” he said. I could tell he was blushing. “Staring at myself is making me nuts. Maybe we should have gone Rollerblading in Central Park after all.”

  I pictured the two of us in New York City, careening down the winding paths on our skates. We’d even talked about rowing on the lake. I could almost see the sun setting around us as we sat side by side on the water.

  That had been our plan for the weekend before school came along and wrecked it!

  Now that it was fall, we were back in the world of homework, reports, and studying. Actually, I like school, especially math, which I happen to be good at. But it was not making things between Ethan and me easy.

  He attends a high school of the arts in New York City (he’s fifteen). I’m here in Connecticut, in eighth grade at Stoneybrook Middle School.

  I was born in the city, but my parents moved to Stoneybrook when I was in seventh grade. After they got divorced, I decided to live here with Mom, but Dad is in New York again.

  I met Ethan while I was baby-sitting for friends of ours in the city. (It was during a school vacation, and I was staying with Dad.) Our friends are artists and Ethan was doing some work for them, helping them set up a gallery exhibition.

  Since then, we’ve been having a long-distance relationship between New York and Stoneybrook. Most of the time I travel to the city by train. That way I see Ethan and Dad on the same weekend.

  “Stacey, are you there?” Ethan’s voice came over the phone.

  “I’m here. I guess I was just daydreaming about how cool it would have been if we’d gone Rollerblading.”

  “But you had to read up on American westward expansion.”

  “Don’t remind me. And you have to finish the self-portrait by Monday.”

  Ethan grunted. “The most boring picture I’ve ever painted.”

  “I bet it’s great,” I said. “If you don’t want it, I’ll take it.”

  “Sorry, my mother has already claimed it. A face only a mother could love.”

  “You know that’s not true,” I said with a laugh. It’s a face a whole bunch of girls could love. “Anyway, the weather is still nice. I’ll come to the city next weekend and we can Rollerblade on Sunday.”

  He didn’t say anything. It was my turn to wonder if he was still there. “Ethan?” I asked.

  “That’s the problem….” He spoke slowly, as if he felt weird about what he was going to say.

  “What problem?” I settled in on the couch.

  “I signed up for a life-drawing course at the Artist’s Studio and the only class I could get into is on Sunday afternoons.”

  “But, Ethan, that’s the weekend!” I cried.

  “I know. I went in to sign up for a Wednesday class, but it was full.”

  “Don’t you take enough art in school?” I demanded.

  I didn’t want to be angry, but I couldn’t help it.

  He knows the weekends are the only times we can see each other. Why would he take an extra art class then?

  “I’ve already paid,” he was telling me. “Can’t you spend time with your dad on Sunday?”

  “Not next Sunday. I told Dad I’d see him on Saturday so I’d be free to skate with you on Sunday.”

  “Can’t you change your schedule a little?” he asked.

  “Can’t you?” I shot back angrily. It seemed to me that I was always the one who was juggling my plans to fit Ethan’s schedule.

  And to fit my dad’s busy schedule, for that matter.

  I was getting a little sick of it.

  “I’ll just cancel the whole weekend,” I snapped.

  “Please don’t be so angry,” Ethan said. “I didn’t think it would be such a big deal to you.”

  “Well, it is a big deal. I mean, I’m mad because I don’t get to see you enough. This summer we didn’t see that much of each other. If I didn’t want to be with you so much I wouldn’t care.”

  “Listen, how about this? You cancel the weekend in New York and I’ll go to Stoneybrook on Saturday. That way you won’t have to travel.”

  I thought for a moment. Truthfully, I was only going to have dinner with Dad on Saturday evening because he had an afternoon business meeting. He’s a lawyer for a big corporation and works a lot.

  I was planning to arrive late in the afternoon, and I’d gotten the feeling that having dinner with me was stressing Dad a little since it meant he’d have to leave his meeting by a certain time. He probably wouldn’t mind if I canceled. He might even be relieved.

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  Suddenly, I felt better. I appreciated that Ethan was making the effort to come see me.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow to say what train I’ll be taking.”

  “Call after six because I have a BSC meeting until then,” I told him. (BSC stands for Baby-sitters Club. I’ll explain what it is later.)

  “Can’t,” he said. “I’m at the gallery from five until ten tomorrow.” Ethan works in an art gallery after school.

  “Call Tuesday night, then, but not before nine-thirty because I have a baby-sitting job until then. And don’t call after ten, because you know Mom doesn’t like me to use the phone when it’s late.”

  He laughed. “All right. I’ll call at exactly nine-thirty.”

  “Nine-forty,” I said. “Just in case I’m a little delayed getting home.”

  “Nine-forty on the dot,” he agreed. “Well … I’d better go back to staring at my face.”

  “I wish I was staring at it.”

  “I wish I was staring at yours too,” he said. “ ’Night.”

  “ ’Bye. Talk to you Tuesday.”

  “Nine-forty sharp. ’Bye.”

  With the phone still in my hand, I sank back into the couch. It was true that I felt better, now that Ethan was coming here on Saturday. Still … it seemed as though something wasn’t right between us.

  I couldn’t say exactly what it was. He’d been as sweet as ever. But if he were really wild about seeing me, wouldn’t he have thought of that before signing up for something on a Sunday?

  Maybe I was being too hard on him. I wasn’t sure.
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br />   I began punching in the number of my best friend, Claudia Kishi, on the phone. Whenever I need to sort something out, I run it past her.

  My finger stopped at the sixth number.

  How would I explain this to her? It was just this vague feeling — not something I could put into words yet.

  I clicked off the phone and laid it beside me. I’d see Claudia in school the next day. Maybe by then I’d have figured out how to express exactly what I thought was going on between Ethan and me.

  I was pretty happy when Monday morning finally came. Going to school meant I’d be distracted from worrying about Ethan. I hadn’t been able to think about much else since our phone conversation.

  Just before homeroom, I was taking books from my locker when I noticed this really cute boy hurrying down the hall. He stood out in the crowded hallway for two reasons.

  Reason one was his extreme cuteness. He was tall with sort of shaggy brown hair and huge brown eyes. From the energy in his walk I guessed he might be athletic. But he also had this adorable, lost puppy look.

  Which brings me to the second reason he stood out.

  I didn’t know him.

  I can name nearly every kid in the eighth grade, even if I don’t know them well. And I recognize every sixth- and seventh-grader by face.

  At least, I’d thought I did. Now I wasn’t certain.

  The boy walked past my locker and I watched him turn the hallway corner. My friend Mary Anne Spier approached my locker from the other direction. “I saw you staring at that guy,” she teased me.

  “Isn’t he cute?” I replied, turning to her.

  She brushed her brown bangs away from her eyes. “I guess. I really didn’t look at him.”

  “Oh, sure,” I scoffed, laughing. “You noticed me noticing him, but you didn’t bother to look at him because you’re so devoted to Logan.”

  Logan is Mary Anne’s steady boyfriend.

  “Okay. All right. I saw him. And yes, he’s cute,” she admitted.

  “Extremely cute,” I added, shutting my locker.

  Mary Anne blushed, which made me smile. She’s so sensitive and easily embarrassed.

  We began walking together down the hall. “Doesn’t it make you feel weird?” Mary Anne asked. “You notice a cute guy but then you think you shouldn’t.”

  “You mean, because you’re already going out with someone? I suppose that if you really like the person you’re going out with, you wouldn’t notice other guys,” I said slowly, thinking out loud.

  “Really?” Mary Anne sounded worried.

  “No, that might not be true. If a guy is cute, he’s cute.” I was doubting my own theory. “There’s no sense saying he’s not cute or not noticing. I guess it doesn’t mean you care less about Logan or I care less about Ethan.”

  Mary Anne seemed to cheer up. “That’s right. It seems that lately I’ve been noticing cute guys more than ever before. But it doesn’t mean anything about Logan and me.”

  “Right. Logan and Ethan probably notice other girls.”

  That thought stopped us completely. We looked at each other unhappily.

  “Do they?” Mary Anne asked.

  I couldn’t answer. The question was too unpleasant to think about.

  “No way!” we both said at the same time and continued to class.

  By lunchtime I was very hungry, which meant I had to get some food as quickly as possible. I have diabetes. That’s a condition that prevents my body from regulating my blood sugar levels properly. I have to eat carefully and give myself insulin injections every day. I can’t eat sweets and I have to take care not to get too hungry. I’m sure it sounds like a big pain, but I’m so used to it that I don’t mind much.

  I was hurrying toward the hot-lunch line when Claudia fell into step with me. “I’m starved,” I told her, explaining why I wasn’t slowing down.

  “Didn’t you bring a snack?” she asked.

  I usually bring crackers and celery sticks or carrots with me so I don’t get this hungry. “I think I left them on the kitchen counter,” I said.

  “You don’t usually forget. Is anything wrong?”

  She knows me so well.

  I was going to tell her about Ethan when I was suddenly distracted.

  I saw that we were about to land at the end of the lunch line right behind the guy I’d seen earlier.

  “Is that kid new?” I asked, lowering my voice.

  She tossed back her long, silky black hair. “Definitely,” she pronounced. “I’m sure he’s not a seventh- or eighth-grader, and he looks too old to be in sixth.”

  Claudia knows the seventh-graders better than I do because she was held back once. She’s an artistic genius, super-talented in everything from sculpture to printmaking.

  But when it comes to schoolwork … not good.

  To be honest, she just doesn’t care enough to expend much energy on schoolwork. That’s why her teachers thought it would be a good idea to put her back for a while — to let her catch up in the subjects she’d slept through the first time around. She did well and returned to the eighth grade.

  Besides that, Claudia has always lived here in Stoneybrook. Unlike me, she went to grammar school with most of the kids. So if she said this cute guy was new, he probably was.

  We positioned ourselves behind him. He turned and shot us a shy (adorable) smile.

  “Hi,” I said. I was about to ask him if he was new, but it occurred to me that if — by some bizarre chance — he wasn’t, it might be insulting.

  “Hi,” he answered. “Um … do you know how much the hot lunch costs?”

  Dead giveaway. He was new.

  “A dollar sixty-five,” I informed him. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” He smiled uneasily. “I guess it shows, huh?”

  “Oh, it’s just that we know everyone,” Claudia jumped in. “So we knew we didn’t know you. That’s how we could tell. It’s not that it actually shows or anything.”

  “My name’s Jeremy. Rudolph.”

  I wrinkled my brow without meaning to. Which was it? Jeremy or Rudolph? Claudia wore an equally puzzled expression.

  He understood our confusion and laughed. “I mean, that’s my full name, Jeremy Rudolph.”

  For some reason an odd thought flashed into my mind. I wondered what kind of impression Claudia was making on him. After all, not every girl at SMS (short for Stoneybrook Middle School) was wearing bright yellow tights with black stripes under a short tie-dyed jumper and long-sleeved neon-pink T-shirt. Or ankle-high vinyl boots, for that matter.

  Not that it made a difference. I was just curious about what he thought. Actually, I was curious about him altogether. He fascinated me. It wasn’t only his looks. I felt some strange, unexplainable connection to him.

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  “Olympia.”

  Again, we must have seemed puzzled.

  “It’s in Washington State,” he explained. “At least that’s where we just moved from, but my family has lived all over.”

  I was more intrigued than ever. I wanted to ask him why they’d moved so much, but as we’d talked, the line had inched forward. Now we were at the front and it was time to get our food.

  After we’d made our selections and paid, I noticed Jeremy wandering around the lunchroom with a lost expression on his face. Watching him brought a flash of memory.

  I remembered being the new girl in school. Like Jeremy, I hadn’t known where to sit in the lunchroom either.

  I also recalled the terrible experience of eating alone. You feel as if everyone is watching you and thinking you’re pathetic. It looks like you don’t have a single friend.

  And in the beginning — you don’t.

  Then Claudia befriended me. She even invited me to sit with her friends at lunch. I felt so grateful and relieved.

  It seemed like the thing to do now was to invite Jeremy to sit with my friends and me. (Besides, I didn’t want to let him go.) I opened my mo
uth to speak.

  “Why don’t you sit with us,” Claudia said.

  “Yeah,” I added quickly. “Our friends and I sit together over there.” I pointed to a table where Mary Anne, Kristy Thomas, and Abby Stevenson had already settled in with their lunches.

  “If you don’t mind sitting with a bunch of girls,” Claudia added.

  “Why should I mind?” he replied. “Thanks.”

  Lots of guys would have minded — felt dumb or self-conscious. This proved my first impressions were right. Jeremy was different from other guys. Maybe all guys from Olympia were cooler than the ones in Stoneybrook. I didn’t know. But I was dying to find out.

  We headed for the table. Our friends looked up curiously when they saw us approaching with Jeremy. “Meet Jeremy Rudolph,” I said, introducing him. “He’s from Olympia.”

  “Does he know Hercules?” asked Abby, tossing back her mane of dark curls.

  “What?” I asked. She’s always joking, but I didn’t get this one.

  “Olympia, Mount Olympus, home of the gods,” she explained. “Didn’t you see Hercules?”

  “Embarrass the guy, why don’t you?” Kristy said.

  “That’s okay.” Jeremy was smiling. “I know I’m not a Greek god.”

  (I wasn’t as sure about that as he was.)

  Kristy leaned across the table and, extending her hand to Jeremy, said, “I’m Kristy. Don’t mind my friends. They’re acting a little weird today. Mary Anne and I are the only ones who aren’t out of our minds.”

  “Hey, what about me?” I objected.

  “You haven’t done anything odd … yet,” she conceded.

  “Oh, thanks a lot,” I replied.

  Jeremy seemed pretty at ease after awhile. He laughed at everyone’s jokes and listened intently when one of us told a story.

  I wished I knew what he was thinking. What were his impressions of us? Of me?

  Jeremy seemed to charge everyone up, to make us talk more and be funnier than usual. But he didn’t say much himself. I couldn’t tell if he was naturally very quiet or simply unable to find a moment to speak.

  It was strange, but I already felt as though I’d known Jeremy for a long time — as if he were an old friend instead of a new one. The only other person I’d ever felt comfortable with so quickly was Claudia. The moment I met her, I knew we’d be friends. I had that same reaction to Jeremy.