Stacey's Secret Friend Read online

  The boys glared up at Jackie, who stood, looking stranded and scared, on the roof. Their combative body language told Abby they were ready to fight.

  She leaned so close to the windowpane that her nose nearly touched it. If necessary, she was ready to fly out there and protect Jackie. But some instinct told her to wait and watch. She watched as Jackie spoke to the boys from the roof, then crept to the edge and let his legs dangle over. An angry exchange of words was going on between Jackie and the boys.

  As the confrontation continued, Jackie climbed down to the ground. He spread his legs wide and didn’t look scared. He seemed to be making his points firmly. It appeared to Abby that he was holding his own. He didn’t need any help.

  “Come on, let’s play a game,” she suggested to Archie as she walked away from the window. “How about Hungry, Hungry Hippos?”

  “Yay,” Archie cheered, running to find the game. “Will Jackie be all right?” he asked as he returned with the box in his hands.

  “Yeah,” Abby said, but Archie’s question had made her uneasy. She pictured having to explain a black eye to Mrs. Rodowsky. Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure she’d been smart to leave him. “I’ll just check,” she told Archie as she headed for the back door.

  When she stepped into the yard, the boys were still facing one another, looking angry, but not as angry. “Is everything all right out here?” Abby asked.

  The three boys gazed at her warily. Their faces were flushed with anger. They looked at Jackie and then back at Abby, waiting to see what would happen next.

  “Yeah, everything’s okay,” Jackie told her. “We had a misunderstanding, but I’m explaining to them what really happened.”

  Abby nodded. “Okay. It looks to me as if you guys are working this out.” She turned and went back inside.

  Archie was waiting for her inside the door. “Are they going to hit Jackie?” he asked. “I got boxing gloves for my birthday. Want me to go find them? I could help.”

  Abby smiled and ruffled his red hair. “No thanks, Archie. Jackie’s trying to use words instead of fists. That’s always the better way.”

  Abby and Archie returned to the back window, standing off to the side so they couldn’t be seen. Abby smiled to herself at the sight of Jackie shaking hands with the three boys. “Way to go,” she murmured. She looked down at Archie. “You should be proud of your brother. He talked his way through whatever mess he was in. He used his head.”

  Archie nodded. “Can we go back to Hungry, Hungry Hippos now?”

  “Sure.” Abby and Archie played the game for about fifteen minutes, then Abby heard the back door open. “Is everything okay?” she called to Jackie.

  “Yeah!”

  Abby decided to check anyway. “Be right back,” she told Archie. She found Jackie in the kitchen taking a bag of chocolate chip cookies from the cabinet. He was beaming. “These are for the guys and me,” Jackie explained, holding up the cookies. “We’ve been playing soccer and we’re hungry.”

  “What happened out there?” she asked.

  “Those guys thought I stole a jacket from one of them, a baseball jacket,” he explained, ripping open the cookie bag. “I told them I have one just like it, but they didn’t believe it was really mine. So they said they were going to get me.”

  “Get you?” Abby repeated. “As in, beat you up?”

  Jackie nodded.

  It was suddenly clear to Abby. “So you asked Nicky Pike to be your bodyguard?”

  “But today I didn’t even need him,” Jackie said, throwing his arms wide (and sending some cookies onto the floor). “I convinced them it was really my jacket. I told them I got it when my dad took me to a Yankees game, and I described the game and the stadium and everything. I knew so much about it that they finally believed me.”

  “Good going,” Abby congratulated him.

  “Wait until I tell Nicky,” Jackie said. “I hope he doesn’t mind not being my bodyguard anymore. I think he liked that job.”

  “Don’t worry about Nicky. He’ll get over it. If he wants to continue being a bodyguard I’m sure he’ll find other kids to protect.”

  “I hope so, because I don’t need him anymore,” Jackie said proudly. “I guess I really didn’t need him all along.”

  “I guess not,” Abby agreed. Jackie seemed so sure of himself now, she couldn’t imagine him ever needing a bodyguard again.

  On Wednesday at lunchtime, Emily hurried over to me the moment I came through the door. “I have to talk to you,” she said, pulling me over into a corner.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This morning I was in the newspaper office and I overheard Jim Poirier talking to Alan Gray. I was sitting behind one of the computers, and they didn’t see me.”

  “What were they doing there?” I asked.

  “Jim started working on the paper this year. Mostly he writes sports stories, but all the sports assignments were given to other people this month, so I assigned him to write a piece on Hog Heaven, that new restaurant.”

  She went on to explain that Jim, Alan, and Clarence were planning to play another major prank on Tess. Clarence would take her to the restaurant, where Alan Gray would be lurking with his camera. Clarence would steer Tess near some of the pig decorations in the restaurant, and, secretly, Alan would snap photos. Then, Alan would give the photos to Jim, who would submit them along with his story on Hog Heaven. The pictures would be printed with a lot of snide pig captions, all jokes at Tess’s expense.

  “But you read all the copy before it’s printed,” I said to Emily. “You could take it out.”

  “They thought of that,” Emily replied. “They plan to intercept the copy early in the morning, before I send it to the printer, and stick in their stuff. I doubt they’d be able to pull it off, but isn’t it a rotten plan?”

  “Completely rotten,” I agreed. “Not only will Tess be mortified again but she really thinks Clarence likes her. She’ll be hurt too.”

  “Someone has to tell her,” Emily said. “I figured since you’re her friend, you should be the one.”

  “We’re not really friends,” I protested.

  “I’ve seen you two together.”

  “I know but … we’re not friends.” And it was too bad. Tess probably would have made a cool friend.

  Emily frowned. “Well, you know her and I don’t. Tell her. Please.”

  “Okay. I’ll figure something out. Thanks for letting me know.”

  As usual, I ran my problem by my friends. At our BSC meeting that afternoon, we discussed the situation. “Any ideas?” I asked, looking specifically at Kristy, the Idea Machine.

  “I do have something in mind,” she said thoughtfully.

  Everyone turned expectantly to Kristy.

  “We’ll have to talk to Tess about this, of course. But, if she agrees, here’s what we could do …”

  Kristy laid out her plan. We all loved it.

  Looking around the lunchroom the next day, I spotted Tess sitting with Barbara and several of Barbara’s friends. I felt so excited by Kristy’s plan that I ran to her, pushing her angry words from the other day to the back of my mind. She had a right to be angry with me, but this might begin to make it up to her.

  At the table, I said hi to everyone and then asked to speak to Tess privately. She looked at me warily but pushed up onto her crutches and walked away with me.

  As tactfully as I could manage, I told her what Emily had told me. I waited for her reaction before continuing. “I’m not really surprised,” Tess said bitterly. “When King didn’t call to see how I was feeling after the fall, I suspected he wasn’t sincere.”

  I bit down on the urge to say I told you so.

  “I’ll cancel the date,” Tess said. “Thanks for telling me.”

  “You could cancel,” I agreed. “But Kristy came up with a great payback plan that you might like.”

  When I told Tess about Kristy’s idea, she grinned. “Let’s do it!” she cried. “Definitely!”
/>   * * *

  On Saturday, around supper time, Claudia, Abby, Kristy, Mary Anne, and I were camped out on a bench at the mall, not far from the newly opened Hog Heaven. A big pink wooden pig stood at the front entrance.

  On her lap, Claudia balanced a plate of French fries that she’d bought at the food court. She used her teeth to tear open her tenth packet of ketchup and squeezed the red goo in swirls onto the already ketchup-soaked fries. “This should do,” she said, finally satisfied that she had enough ketchup.

  “There’s Alan,” Mary Anne said suddenly. We looked sharply to the Hog Heaven entrance in time to see Alan Gray enter.

  “Is everybody ready?” asked Kristy.

  “Ready,” we replied.

  “Here come Tess and Clarence,” Kristy hissed. “Okay, let’s go.”

  I peeked into the garbage bag I held and made sure everything was ready. It was.

  We strolled toward the front of the restaurant. (We were all so excited it was hard not to race there.) “Tess!” I called, waving. “Hi!”

  A shifty, cornered expression instantly came over Clarence’s face. But what could he do? He was cornered. He slapped on an uneasy smile and stopped. “Hi,” he mumbled.

  “Hi, everybody,” Tess said with a little too much cheer. “What are you all doing here?”

  “Oh, we’re just hanging out,” Claudia replied, stepping closer to Tess and Clarence.

  “Yeah, just hanging,” Abby echoed. She stayed close to Claudia.

  “Hey, Claud,” I said. “Let me have a fry.”

  Claudia extended her plate to me and I picked a fry from it. “Want a fry?” Claudia offered Clarence and Tess.

  Clarence declined. “No, we’re going in to eat.”

  “Go ahead, have one,” Claudia urged him, shoving the plate at him. “Oops!”

  Claudia pretended to stumble — and smeared the plate of ketchup and fries on Clarence. With one swipe, she slimed his cheek, his chin, and the entire front of his shirt, which was exposed beneath his open jacket.

  “Oh,” I cried. “What a mess! Let me wipe you off!” In a flash, I produced a rag soaked in blue paint from my plastic bag. Before Clarence knew what was happening, I was wiping blue paint all over him.

  He cried out and pulled away from me, stumbling toward Tess. She skillfully leaned back on one crutch and, with her free hand, crowned him with a wreath of whipped cream from the can she’d hidden in her pocket.

  “Tess!” Clarence exclaimed.

  “Oh, what a shame, King,” Tess said sweetly. “I suppose we can’t go on our date now.”

  Clarence stood seething, wiping at his face, which only made the mess worse.

  “Sorry, Clarence,” she continued. “You’ll have to find some other porky Babe to date.”

  “You girls are going to be sor —” Clarence bellowed.

  “No, we won’t,” Abby said, stepping forward and holding up her camera. “I have a whole roll of pictures of you looking, well, like a pig.”

  “So unless you agree to leave Tess and the rest of us alone, you’ll see these pictures featured in the next issue of the school paper,” Kristy said with a smile.

  “I write for the school paper too,” Claudia reminded him.

  “And Emily Bernstein likes us,” Mary Anne added.

  “So what?” Clarence grumbled, but he knew we had him.

  Just then, Alan Gray poked his head out the door. The stunned expression on his face made us crack up.

  “That goes for you too, Alan,” I said. “Leave Tess alone or I’ll tell Mr. Taylor you were responsible for what happened at the game.”

  “You can’t prove it,” he said. (Which convinced me that he was the ringleader.)

  “Yes, I can,” I said convincingly.

  “Okay, it’s a deal,” Clarence mumbled. “Now give me the film.”

  Abby laughed. “How dumb do I look? We’re keeping these pictures as our guarantee. Don’t mess with us, and no one will ever see them. But if you do, I’ll have them blown up and I, personally, will hang them all over school after they appear in the paper.”

  “I think we need some ice cream now to celebrate,” Claudia suggested.

  The boys fumed, red-faced, but there was nothing they could do.

  “Come on, Tess,” I said. “You must be starving.”

  “You’re right, I am,” Tess agreed, and she joined us. We walked away from Alan and Clarence, laughing and talking happily.

  When we arrived at Friendly’s, we crowded together into one booth. I felt so happy, I didn’t even mind having to order a salad while everyone else pigged out (if you’ll pardon the expression) on ice cream.

  Tess, too, appeared to be truly happy. My friends seemed to enjoy talking with Tess, especially Claudia, who eagerly questioned her about taking art classes in Paris.

  “Who wants to shop?” I asked as we paid the bill.

  “I can’t,” Tess said. “I told Barbara and some kids I’d meet them at the movies.”

  “You and Barbara are becoming good friends,” I noted.

  “Yeah, it seems that way,” Tess agreed. It made sense. Barbara had lost her best friend when Amelia died. And Tess had lost all her friends when she moved. They both needed new friends. They needed each other.

  I realized too, that from the start, Barbara had accepted Tess as she is. She hadn’t tried to make her over. She hadn’t tried to be her bodyguard or her adviser. She just took the time to listen to and learn about Tess.

  Which was something I hadn’t done.

  Outside Friendly’s, Tess thanked us again and headed for the elevator that would take her to the movie theaters on the fourth level. “She’s an interesting person,” Claudia commented as we watched her leave.

  “She is,” I agreed, “if you take the time to notice.”

  Claudia gave me a meaningful look. I think she understood what I meant, and how I was feeling about my experience with Tess.

  She understood without my saying it because she knows me so well. Which — after all — is what being friends is all about.

  * * *

  Dear Reader,

  In Stacey’s Secret Friend, Tess Swinhart is the new kid at school and has trouble fitting in. At one time or another, you have probably felt that you don’t fit in, whether it’s in school, in your neighborhood, or even in your family. It’s a common feeling. However, when Stacey realizes what Tess is going through, she goes overboard trying to change Tess to make her fit in, which ultimately is a disaster.

  When I was in seventh grade, I felt much more like Tess than like Stacey. I wanted very much to be a part of the group of “cool” kids in my grade. But as I got older, I realized that they weren’t the right friends for me. We had little in common. I soon became close friends with kids who were more like me. If I had tried to change myself — to force myself to be like the other kids — it probably would have been a disaster, just like Stacey’s efforts with Tess were. The “real you” (whoever that might be!) is always more interesting and likable than an “artificial you.”

  Happy Reading,

  * * *

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Suzanne Weyn

  for her help in

  preparing this manuscript.

  About the Author

  ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.

  There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.

  Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and
her cats.

  Copyright © 1997 by Ann M. Martin

  Cover art by Hodges Soileau

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First edition, September 1997

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-79337-7