His entire face lit up. “Okay, see you.” He turned and hurried down the hall.
It wasn’t fair to keep him hanging like this. I had to talk to Claudia after lunch.
But at lunch, as I walked toward our table, carrying my tray, I saw that Claudia wasn’t there.
Neither was Jeremy.
I had a moment of true panic. Had Jeremy decided to talk to Claudia himself?
My heard pounding, I scanned the lunchroom, searching for them.
Then I spotted Jeremy sitting with some guys.
What a relief!
“What’s wrong?” Mary Anne asked from behind me.
“Oh, nothing. I was looking for Claudia.”
“She went to the art room to finish a sculpture model. I think she’s working on a clay model of Jeremy’s head.”
“Of Jeremy’s head?” I gasped.
Mary Anne giggled. “Yeah. He’s all she thinks about lately.” I followed Mary Anne to our lunch table, feeling sick. Claud was making a sculpture of Jeremy!
After lunch, I worked up my nerve to go to the art room. Claudia wasn’t there. But the clay model of Jeremy’s head was.
As I stood looking at it, she came in.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“It’s great,” I replied honestly.
“It does look like him, doesn’t it?” she said, tweaking a clay curl. “It’s like his face is burned into my brain.”
I had to talk to her. I plunged my hand into my sweater pocket. Empty.
The index cards were in my locker.
To be honest, I was relieved. How could I talk to her with this clay face of Jeremy staring at us?
“It’s really good,” I said. I felt so hypocritical, standing there admiring her artwork — and all the while preparing to smash her dreams. I needed to get out of there.
“I have to use the girls’ room,” I lied. “ ’Bye.” I dashed out as fast as I could.
I really did go into the girls’ room, just so I could stand in a stall and be alone. Why did Claudia have to like Jeremy so much? They’d had only one date — and it hadn’t even been a date!
When I finally came out of the stall, Rachel was in front of the mirror, fixing her hair. “Hi,” she said. “You okay? You look a little freaked.”
Either she was very observant, or I really looked bad.
I checked to make sure no one else was in the bathroom. “I tried to talk to Claudia, but she was sculpting a bust of Jeremy. I couldn’t,” I told her.
“Oh, wow! That would be hard.”
“But Jeremy is waiting for my answer. I can’t leave him hanging forever.”
“You definitely have to tell her. When will you see her again?”
“We have a BSC meeting this afternoon. I could go early and talk to her.”
Rachel nodded. “That’s what you should do.”
“I will,” I said, filled with new determination.
The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. As she left the bathroom Rachel wished me good luck.
I’d need it.
* * *
That afternoon, I had a special Math Club meeting. A big tournament was coming up and we were planning to enter.
The meeting ended at four-thirty. To my surprise, Claudia came to the classroom just as we were leaving.
“What are you doing here so late?” I asked her.
“I wanted to finish the sculpture. Anything we need baked in the next kiln firing has to be done by tomorrow morning.”
“What are you going to do with it?” I asked as we walked down the hall together.
“Keep it for now. Once I know Jeremy better, maybe I’ll give it to him.” A frown creased her forehead. “Did Jeremy seem odd to you today?”
“I didn’t see much of him,” I said. “Why?”
“I saw him in the hall a couple of times and he didn’t even stop. He waved, but he just kept going.”
“I guess he was in a hurry.” I felt like a real rat. I couldn’t just come out and say why he was avoiding her, even though I knew perfectly well.
Claudia sighed. “I guess.”
She followed me to my locker, where I got my books. I made sure to remember the index cards.
“What are those for?” she asked as I slipped them into my coat pocket.
That might have been the perfect moment to tell her.
“For a vocabulary test,” I lied. Once again, I’d chickened out.
We walked home together. All the while I was trying to work up the nerve to talk about Jeremy.
“You’re quiet today,” Claudia observed when we were almost at her house.
I laughed self-consciously. “Am I?”
“Yeah. Anything the matter?” she asked.
This was it. There would be no better moment than right now.
“Actually … yes. There is,” I began.
“What?”
“It’s about Jeremy.”
She gazed at me wide-eyed.
“You see … uh … It’s kind of hard to say this.”
A worried expression swept across her face.
I began walking faster. I’m not sure why. Part of me probably wanted to run away.
“What is it, Stacey? Is something wrong with him?”
“You could say that,” I replied. “Listen, Claud, we have a problem. Maybe it’s a big problem, maybe it’s not. It all depends on how you feel about it. I hope it won’t be a big problem.”
“Just tell me!”
“Okay.” I stopped on the sidewalk in front of her house. “Jeremy likes me and wants to go out with me.”
There. I’d said it.
Claudia gazed at me blankly, as if she were still waiting for me to tell her my news. As if she hadn’t heard what I’d said.
“He likes you as a friend,” I went on. “But he asked me on a date. I’d like to go, so I was hoping you wouldn’t mind.”
I looked at her for a reaction.
Still none.
I remembered the index cards in my coat pocket. If I used those, maybe she’d understand better what I was saying.
With a shaking hand, I reached in. But I was so nervous, I dropped them and they spilled to the ground.
“Oops,” I said, laughing nervously as I stooped to pick them up.
“How can you laugh?” Claudia cried.
I jerked up to look at her. “Claudia, I …”
It was scary. I’d never seen her look so mad.
“Are you serious about this?” she asked angrily.
“Sort of … yeah. Definitely.” I couldn’t back down now.
She turned away from me, then whirled back. “Did he actually ask you out?”
I nodded.
“How can you do this to me, Stacey?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I insisted. “I can’t help it if he doesn’t like you in that way.”
“You’re lying. I don’t believe you.”
“He told me.”
“He was lying to you, then,” Claudia insisted. “We had a great time on our date. It doesn’t make sense.”
“He didn’t think of it as a date,” I told her. “He really likes you, but as a friend. So that’s why it doesn’t matter whether I go out with him or someone else does.”
This may not have been the best way to say this, but it’s what came out.
“I do mind if you go out with Jeremy,” Claudia informed me. “I totally mind. I can’t believe you would betray me like this.”
“Betray you!” I exclaimed. “Isn’t that a bit dramatic? I didn’t betray you. I —”
“What’s happening?” It was Kristy, arriving in front of Claudia’s house for the BSC meeting. She looked puzzled as she glanced from me to Claudia.
“Nothing,” Claudia snapped. She turned sharply and stomped into the house ahead of us.
Kristy studied me. “Nothing?”
“We were just having a little argument,” I said. There was no sense in dragging everyone else into the mess.
/>
Kristy didn’t seem convinced, but maybe she figured it was none of her business. “All right. If you say so.”
“Hi,” Mary Anne said, joining us. “What’s going on?”
“Claudia and Stacey are fighting,” Kristy told her.
“Not exactly fighting,” I said.
“If you say so,” Kristy repeated.
We went into the house and up to Claudia’s room. She sat on her bed, stuffing a Ring-Ding into her mouth.
“Are you okay?” Mary Anne asked her.
Claudia swallowed and got off her bed. “I’m fine,” she said tensely. She brushed crumbs from the bed so violently that the pillow bounced to the floor.
“Okay, well, since the four of us are here, we might as well start a little early,” Kristy suggested, settling into Claudia’s director’s chair.
Claudia reached under her bed and pulled out a big bag of potato chips. “Here,” she said flatly, yanking open the bag.
Claudia usually gets me something healthy to eat. But today she just plopped back onto the bed, arms folded.
I was hungry. And I couldn’t fool around about that. But how could I ask Claudia for a healthy snack now?
“What about Stacey?” Mary Anne asked helpfully.
“Oh, fine!” Claudia snapped. She got up and left the room, banging shut the door behind her.
“I hate to tell you this, Stacey,” Kristy said, “but she’s more than a little mad. What happened?”
I sighed. There was no sense trying to hide this. Kristy and Mary Anne were bound to find out. “It’s about Jeremy,” I replied, sitting on Claudia’s bed. “It turns out that he likes —”
Claudia returned, holding a paper plate of carrots, some dip splashed messily on top of them. “Here,” she said, thrusting the plate at me.
The carrots flew onto my lap, dip smearing my clothes. I jumped up. “You did that on purpose!” I accused her.
“I did not. Look what you did to my bed! It’s got dip all over it.”
“It’s not my fault you threw food at me!”
“Oh, no, nothing’s your fault. I forgot that. You’re never to blame. You can do whatever you like and it doesn’t matter.”
“It’s just dip,” Kristy said. “It’ll wash out.”
Claudia glared at me as she left the room. She returned with a wet towel and began wiping her bed.
I picked up a carrot stick that hadn’t hit the floor and bit into it.
“Okay,” Kristy said. “Here’s some club business I’d like to discuss. Since there’re only four of us now I think we have to coordinate our weekend activities. We can’t all be unavailable on the weekends at the same time or our clients will stop calling entirely.”
“But what can we do?” Mary Anne asked. “Logan’s already annoyed that I’m not always available on the weekends. Since we’re down to four members it’s really been hard.”
“Maybe we should assign free-time slots,” Kristy suggested. “We could rotate them from week to week and —”
“Stacey can’t do that,” Claudia cut in. “She’ll be needing all her free time since she’s stealing everyone’s boyfriends.”
“That is a lie!” I cried, outraged.
“What is going on?” Kristy demanded.
“She’s trying to take Jeremy from me!” Claudia cried.
“I’m not! You don’t have him anyway!”
“This is bad,” Mary Anne muttered, looking as if she wished she were somewhere else.
“Can we talk about this later?” Kristy asked. “Right now I’d like to talk about a rotating weekend schedule.”
“Who cares about that when everything in my life is falling apart?” Claudia said.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “Your life isn’t falling apart.”
“It isn’t? The boy I’m crazy about couldn’t care less about me, and my best friend turns out to be a two-timing back-stabber!”
“Are you both really that crazy about Jeremy?” Mary Anne asked.
“Yes!” we answered together.
We looked at each other fiercely.
“Stacey, I don’t want you anywhere near Jeremy,” said Claudia.
“Guess what, Claudia,” I came back at her. “After the things you’ve said — I don’t really care what you want anymore.”
I don’t think I’ve ever felt as rotten as I did after that BSC meeting. Mention any crummy feeling — anger, guilt, embarrassment, loneliness — and I felt it. All rolled into one horrible knot in my stomach.
That night I couldn’t sleep, and I began to cry. Life seemed so hard and unfair. Why should I have to choose between Jeremy and Claudia? Why hadn’t Claudia cared about my feelings as much as I cared about hers?
In the morning, my stomach began hurting almost instantly. What would happen today? I was bound to run into Claudia. What would we say to each other?
Would there be more angry words? I hoped not. I couldn’t take another fight like the one we’d just had.
At the BSC meeting, we’d sat for almost twenty minutes, neither of us speaking. It was torture. I was so grateful every time the phone rang. Setting up sitting jobs was a great distraction.
At school I hurried to my locker, looking straight ahead. I didn’t want to take the chance of turning left or right and seeing Claudia. As I neared my locker, I smiled.
Jeremy was waiting there for me.
“Hi,” I said. “I spoke to Claudia. I told her what you told me.”
“And?” he asked eagerly.
“She wasn’t very happy.”
“So?”
“So … I told her I was going to see you. That is … if you still want to.”
“All right! Definitely I want to.”
“Don’t tell anyone, though,” I added. “Not right away. I wouldn’t want Claudia to hear anything about us from other people. It might make it worse.”
“That makes sense. How about just hanging out together today after school? Not a date at all.”
“That sounds good,” I said. “Now that you’ve seen the mall, would you like to explore downtown Stoneybrook?”
“Sure. Right after school?”
“Okay. Meet me here after last period.”
For the rest of the morning I felt as if I were on a seesaw. I thought about Claudia and felt awful. My thoughts shifted to Jeremy and I was overjoyed. Hanging out with him today was going to be awesome.
Then I’d pass Claudia in the hall. And I’d see the hurt, angry expression on her face. Down crashed the seesaw, dropping me on the ground.
By lunch, I really needed a friend to talk to. And I didn’t feel right putting Kristy or Mary Anne in the middle. I could talk to Abby, but it wasn’t fair to involve her either.
I found myself heading for Rachel’s locker. “Ask me how I am,” I said as she took out her books.
“How are you?”
“Terrible. And great.” I told her everything that had happened since the day before.
“Congratulations,” she said. “You did something hard, but it was the right thing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” I needed to hear someone tell me that with complete confidence. Rachel’s words were so welcome.
“Want to eat lunch at our table?” I asked her.
She smiled sadly. “No thanks. I don’t think your friends would be too happy about it.”
“Don’t worry about them. Fifth grade was a long time ago. They need to get to know you all over again.”
“They might be ready, but I’m not,” Rachel said, shutting her locker. “Getting used to living in Stoneybrook again is kind of hard for me. I don’t need to deal with people who don’t like me. Just coping with people I don’t know is hard enough.”
“If you’re sure …” I said reluctantly.
“I’m sure. For now, anyway.” She headed down the hall. “Good luck with … you-know-who … at lunch.”
I sure did-know-who. I was incredibly relieved when she didn’t sho
w up. “In the art room again,” Mary Anne reported.
“Probably smashing her Jeremy head with a hammer,” Kristy added.
I groaned and slid down in my seat.
“She’ll get over it,” Mary Anne said.
“In a hundred or so years,” Abby chimed in. Obviously, they’d filled her in on events.
I shot her a Look.
“No, really,” Abby said. “She’ll be fine by graduation.”
“Oh, thanks a lot,” I replied.
* * *
That afternoon, as promised, Jeremy showed up at my locker right after school.
And so did Claudia.
They headed toward me from opposite directions. For a moment, I seriously considered stepping inside my locker and shutting the door.
I couldn’t, though. They’d both already spotted me.
Jeremy arrived first. Following my horrified gaze, he looked down the hall and saw Claudia. “Hi, Claudia,” he called cheerfully as if everything were fine.
Claudia froze. Her eyes darted from Jeremy to me. Then she turned and walked away in the direction from which she’d come.
“Nice try,” I told Jeremy.
He grimaced. “I feel terrible about hurting her feelings,” he said, and I believed him. That’s the kind of guy he is. Sensitive and caring.
“Me too,” I said. “But I’m mad at her. She didn’t have to make this so hard.”
“She’ll calm down,” he said. “Ready?”
Throwing off my worries about Claudia, I smiled at him. “Ready.”
We walked downtown. It was one of those beautiful, warm September days that make you remember it’s still — technically — summer.
I felt light and happy for the first time in days. “Want to see Bellair’s?” I suggested. “It’s the biggest department store in town. My mom works there.”
“Sure.”
We wandered around Bellair’s, just looking at things. We watched the TVs in the electronics department. A music video was on. We danced to it right there in the aisle.
In the kitchenware department Jeremy told me about taking a home-and-careers course in his old middle school. “I made a bread with baking soda instead of flour. It was so gross.” He laughed. “Mom watched me do it too. She knows less about cooking than I do.”
“What does she make for dinner?” I asked.
“Reservations, mostly.”
The afternoon went so fast that before I knew it, it was time for dinner. “Want to get something to eat?” he asked.