Fabulous Five 015 - Melanie's Identity Crisis (5 page)

Melanie dropped her books on her desk and sat down. Now what
was she going to do? Her mother had sent her to her room. Melanie bristled.
That way, I won't be able to see what's really going on around here.

She had just changed into her nightgown when she heard her
mother's footsteps coming up the stairs and then a soft knock on her door.
Dashing to her bed, she ducked under the covers just as her mother said, "Honey,
may I come in?"

"Okay," answered Melanie in a weak voice.

Mrs. Edwards came into the room and sat down on the edge of
Melanie's bed. "Is there anything I can get for you before Jeffy and I run
to the grocery store? Is your stomach still upset? Would you like some
Alka-Seltzer?"

Melanie stared at her mother in astonishment. Here I am
sick, she thought, and she's running off to the grocery store.

When Melanie didn't answer, her mother reached out and
touched her forehead again. "Still no fever," she said hopefully. "I
think you've just let yourself get too tired. A day's rest will do you good.
Now you just snuggle down into the covers and try to sleep while Jeffy and I
are gone."

She glared at the door after her mother left. Any other
mother would have stayed home with a sick child, she grumped to herself. But
not my mother. She can't stand to be in the same house with me. So what if I'm
sick? I could
die
and she probably wouldn't care.

Things were crazy. Only yesterday she had been super happy,
thinking she had everything and feeling sorry for Funny Hawthorne. But Funny
had one thing that she didn't have, and it meant more than anything else. Funny's
parents wanted her.

When she heard her mother's car pull out of the driveway,
she got up and hurried to the basement. There was someone there she could talk
to, she thought, someone who would listen.

When she flipped on the light, Rainbow blinked up at her
from the box where she was snuggled with her eight puppies. Seeing Melanie, she
raised her head and gave Melanie a smile.

She knelt beside the box stroking first Rainbow and then
each of the fat, squirming puppies, remembering how she and her friends had
rescued Rainbow and fourteen other dogs and cats from being put to sleep at the
animal shelter on Christmas Eve. Rainbow had been Melanie's favorite because of
her gentle eyes and her multicolored coat, which was why she had been given her
name.

"Nobody wanted you either, did they, Rainbow?" she
whispered.

Rainbow laid her head in Melanie's hand and whimpered
softly.

"But
I
did. And I always will."

Melanie hurried back to her room and lay in bed wrapped in
gloom the rest of the morning, pretending to be asleep when her mother knocked
softly on the door and called that she was home from shopping. She even kept
quiet at lunchtime, hoping her growling stomach wouldn't make so much noise
that it would give her away. But each time her mother came to the door and then
tiptoed away again, Melanie felt tears welling up. Why didn't she just come on
in? Melanie wondered. Why doesn't she check on me or insist I eat lunch? Maybe
she just doesn't want to be around me.

But by afternoon Melanie was feeling restless, and she
slipped out of bed and got Cordia's photograph album off her desk. "I
wonder what Cordia did when she was feeling ill?" Melanie whispered,
glancing around the room and giggling softly. Then she put the album on her
bedside table, plumped her pillows, and climbed back into bed, reclining elegantly,
the way she imagined Cordia would, and opening the album in her lap.

She turned again to the picture of her great-great-grandmother,
sitting in the swing with John standing behind her. "John certainly
is
handsome," she murmured. She looked closer. There seemed to be something
almost familiar about him. Did his blond hair make him look a little like Scott
Daly, or was it wishful thinking? The idea gave her an eerie feeling, and she
got up and looked into her mirror.
She
looked like Cordia, and now
Scott
looked like one of Cordia's beaus.
My best beau
, Cordia had written
under the picture. And wasn't Scott her best beau, too?

Melanie piled her shoulder-length hair onto her head,
turning to first one side and then the other as she tried to imagine being Cordia
Mae Lee almost one hundred years ago. Sucking in her breath, she whispered, "I
do
look like her. Oh, I wish I could have been her. She was so lucky.
Everybody loved her, especially all those gorgeous boys. I wonder what it would
be like to have boys writing me letters,
begging
me to like them or
threatening to throw themselves off church steeples if I didn't go riding with
them?" She frowned, thinking of Scott and Shane and Garrett and how all
three of them were ignoring her. Oh, if only I could be more like Cordia, she
thought.

She plopped onto the bed again and turned to another page in
the album only to find Great-great-grandmother Cordia building a snowman with
another young man. Her cheeks were glowing as she held her long skirt up out of
the snow with one hand and patted the snowman's chest with the other. Her "beau"
was standing back, looking at Cordia and the snowman as if he were deciding
which one he liked best.

He's a cool one, thought Melanie. Cool and full of
self-confidence, like Shane. The thought startled her so much that she gasped
out loud. Underneath the picture Cordia had written:
Charles
,
my
mysterious beau.
Shane wasn't exactly mysterious, but at least he was
different.

Melanie lay back against her pillows and stared at the
ceiling, marveling at how much she and Cordia were alike. Even their boyfriends
had a lot in common. "And just think," she whispered, "if it
hadn't been for Mrs. Clark's genealogy project, I would never have known."

Later in the day Jeffy yelled that supper was ready. Melanie
got up and brushed her hair. She was just too hungry to stay in her room any
longer. Besides, thinking about her genealogy project again had reminded her of
her parents, and that had brought back her black mood. She had to find out if
anyone even
cared
that she was sick.

When she joined the others at the table, Jeffy was telling
his parents, in great detail, about a movie he had seen on television that
afternoon after school. She stood beside her chair, waiting to see if anyone
would notice her.

"And then Godzilla went crashing through the jungle
looking for his baby, Godzooki, who was hiding in a cave," Jeffy was
saying. Mrs. Edwards was smiling in the right places as he told the story, and
Melanie's father looked up from his plate periodically to show he was
listening.

Melanie couldn't stop the little feeling of resentment that
was creeping into her stomach. She cleared her throat.

"Hello, sweetheart," her mother said. "I'm
glad you're feeling well enough to eat some supper. I wasn't thinking when I
fixed spaghetti. I hope it isn't too spicy for your stomach."

"Sorry to hear that you're not feeling well," said
her father, but before she could answer, Jeffy was talking about his movie
again.

Melanie sighed and picked at her spaghetti, waiting for her
turn at conversation again. "I told you that I went to Gran Pennington's
yesterday," she said when Jeffy finally paused to take a breath. She
looked directly at each of her parents when she spoke, but except for a quick
glance from her mother, neither of them showed any outward signs of interest in
what she had said.

Melanie lifted her voice and tried to sound more perky. "But
I forgot to mention that she showed me
all
her old picture albums. Boy,
did we have some weird-looking ancestors."

Jeffy spun a big wad of spaghetti on his fork and tried to
jam it, stringers and all, into his mouth.

"Jeffrey!" her mother scolded him. "Don't eat
like a little pig!"

"There were several pictures of Great-great-grandma
Cordia Mae Lee," Melanie continued, trying to find a way to attract their
attention to what she was saying. "She was really pretty, and Gran thinks
I look like her."

Mr. Edwards ignored Melanie and pointed a finger
commandingly at Jeffy. "Listen to your mother and eat correctly."

Melanie sank down in her chair and stabbed at her spaghetti
and pulled up a large forkful.

"Melanie!" her mother said in a shocked voice. "What
are you doing?"

"Can't we have any peace at the dinner table?"
her father asked angrily. He shoved his chair back, got up, and left the room,
leaving the others to stare after him.

Melanie's chin quivered, and the weight of the fork and
spaghetti felt like a thousand tons. She had only been trying to make
conversation, and they wouldn't pay any attention to her. She hadn't done
anything wrong. A huge lump grew in her throat so she couldn't swallow.

"May I be excused?" she asked in a tiny voice.

Her mother's face looked as if she had suddenly gotten very
tired as she gave her consent with a limp wave of her hand.

Back in her room, Melanie flopped across her bed. She had
been right. Nobody in her family really cared about her. Jeffy got all the
attention by talking about dumb movies he had seen on TV and acting like a cute
little boy. The thought hurt her. Jeffy
was
a cute little boy, and she
loved him, and she shouldn't take it out on him just because her parents hadn't
wanted her.

She sighed. It was awful knowing that her parents hadn't
wanted her and that she really was a nobody right here in her own home. I
wonder what it's like in Funny's family? she thought. They probably listen to
everything she has to say. It's no wonder her family gave her the nickname
Funny. She's probably the happiest person on earth. And I'll bet that they give
her everything she wants and ask her opinion when they're making important
decisions.

The more Melanie thought about the Hawthorne family, the
more curious she became, until a very interesting idea began forming in her
mind.

At the fence on the school ground the next morning, Jana,
Katie, Christie, and Beth crowded around Melanie, all asking questions at once.

"What happened to you yesterday?" asked Christie.

"Yeah," said Katie. "I saw you before class
yesterday morning, and then you disappeared."

"I called your house after school, but your mom said you
couldn't come to the phone because you were sick," said Jana.

Melanie debated whether or not to tell them the truth, but
after all, she decided, they were her best friends.

"I was faking being sick," she announced. "I found
out something awful about myself while I was working on the genealogy project,
and I decided to go back home and spy on my mom to see if it was true."

Beth gasped. "What did you find out?"

Melanie took a deep breath. It was hard to admit the truth,
even to her best friends. "My parents didn't want me to be born," she
stated flatly. "My mom had planned a big career as a concert pianist, and
I wrecked it."

"Oh, come on, Mel," Katie said seriously. "You
know your parents wanted you."

"No, they didn't. I read a letter Mom wrote to my grandmother,
and in it she said"—Melanie paused dramatically—"I was an
accident
."
She went on to tell them more about the letter and how she had found it in the
trunk at her grandmother's house.

Christie frowned. "So, what did playing sick yesterday
prove?"

"Everything I had started suspecting," insisted
Melanie. "The only time my mom ever pays any attention to me is when she's
yelling at me. Can you believe that she didn't even stay around the house to
take care of me when I came home sick? She and Jeffy left practically as soon
as I got there."

"Gosh, Melanie," said Jana. "I don't think
that means she doesn't love you. You said yourself that you were faking being
sick. Maybe she could tell. You know how mothers are."

"She couldn't tell," grumped Melanie. "Besides,
by that time I really was feeling sick. And that's not all. Both my parents
really ate it up when Jeffy told the plot of an entire
long
television
movie at the dinner table last night, but did they pay attention to me when I
had something to say? Of course not. My mom just yelled again about my table
manners."

"Hey, my mom yells at me all the time, too,"
teased Beth. "And to think that until now I believed she really loved me."

"I think you're wrong, too," said Katie. "Look
at how she doesn't want to work outside the home so that she can be there for
you and Jeffy. And don't forget about those scrumptious brownies that she's
always
forcing
us to eat when we're at your house."

"She bakes those for Jeffy," Melanie said angrily.

"Jeffy's not a member of The Fabulous Five," Jana
reminded her with a grin.

Melanie shrugged. Her friends just didn't understand. So
what if her mother baked brownies? Big deal! That didn't prove she'd really
wanted Melanie. Glancing away, Melanie promised herself that she would spend
most of the weekend spying and getting evidence that even The Fabulous Five
wouldn't be able to argue with.

Nobody said anything for a few minutes, and Melanie knew
that it was her fault. Her bad mood had affected her friends, too, but she
couldn't help it. They just didn't realize how awful it was to be unwanted.
Probably Scott didn't want her for a girlfriend anymore, either, she thought.
Maybe he was tired of her or he had found someone else. Shane was too busy
worrying about Igor to care about her now. Imagine! she scoffed silently, an
iguana's love life being more important than his own. And Garrett. Well, she
mused, after all, he is in eighth grade. How interested could he get in a
seventh-grader like me?

Melanie was still moping around when she got to her locker a
little while later. She was trying for the third time to open her stubborn
combination lock when Funny came racing up to her.

"Hi," Funny said, grinning broadly. "Where
were you yesterday? I looked all over for you at lunchtime, but everyone said
you were absent."

Melanie breathed a sigh and tried to return Funny's smile,
but she couldn't.

"Oh, I wasn't feeling very well so I went home,"
she lied.

"Well, I'm glad you're back today," said Funny. "Especially
since today is our Family Living field trip to do gravestone rubbings at the
cemetery. I've got to run. See you later."

Melanie watched Funny speed down the hall, thinking about
the field trip. She had forgotten all about it, but maybe it would be the
perfect time to talk to Funny about her idea.

Family Living students from both Mrs. Clark's and Mrs.
Blankenship's classes pushed and jammed onto two school buses for the trip to
the cemetery that afternoon. Melanie could see Funny ahead of her in the crowd,
but by the time she jostled her way onto the bus, Jana and Funny were sitting
together. Melanie squeezed into the seat behind them next to Kim Baxter.
Neither Funny nor Jana had even so much as said hello to her. Some friends, she
thought. Just because I'm in a bad mood doesn't mean that I'm poison.

Jana was by the window and Funny on the aisle, and across
the aisle from Funny was Shane. He hadn't said anything to Melanie either. When
the bus started moving, she closed her eyes, trying to fight down the misery
that was overtaking her. Suddenly she heard Shane shout above the noisy crowd.

"Hey, Funny," he called. "You and Jana wouldn't
happen to know any female iguanas, would you?"

Melanie perked up and listened in spite of herself.

"Sure. There's Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Blankenship and Miss
Dickinson and . . . let's see. Who else?" teased Funny. Beside her Jana
was laughing like crazy.

When Melanie realized that she was chuckling, too, she
looked quickly away. She didn't want anyone to make her laugh. She had a
perfect right to feel miserable.

She tried not to listen, but she heard Shane say, "Naw.
They're not Igor's type. You don't know what a problem it is to find him a
girlfriend. He's so particular."

"Yeah, I know the feeling," said Jana, and Melanie
could tell from the tone of her voice that she was only pretending to be
sympathetic.

"Yesterday my dad got this great idea to take him to
the zoo," Shane went on. "It sounded like a pretty good idea to me.
There must be dozens of iguanas out there, and surely even someone as choosy as
Igor could find a girlfriend in that crowd."

Funny leaned into the aisle. "So, what happened?"
she pressed.

"Absolutely nothing. The reptile keeper agreed to let
him into the pen, and Igor walked around for a while and then wanted to go
home. He said all the babes were stuck up and spoiled because of easy living at
the zoo. Can you believe that? So now we're back to square one."

All around, kids were laughing at Shane's story, and Melanie
sank back in her seat. Listening to him talk about Igor's love problems would
ordinarily have made her feel better, but not this time. Not when she was
feeling terminally depressed.

"Okay, everybody," said Mrs. Clark when the buses
unloaded just inside the gates of the cemetery a few minutes later and the
students from her classes gathered around her. "I have all the supplies
right here to begin making our rubbings, but first, I want everyone to pick a
gravestone. If it belongs to someone from your own family, you may use the gold
crayons to show that your rubbing is special."

"But isn't it bad luck to step on a grave?" asked
Marcie Bee.

Richie Corrierro crept forward in a monster pose, his eyes
wide and his hands raised like claws as if he were about to grab someone. "Of
course it is, my dear," he said in a sinister voice. "The ghosts of
the people buried there will rise up and GET YOU!"

Marcie shrieked as he jumped toward her, and small screams
rippled through the crowd. Melanie shuddered. She didn't believe in ghosts, but
still . . . they were nothing to joke about.

"That's enough, Richie," Mrs. Clark said, glaring
at him. "That's just an old superstition," she went on, smiling
kindly at Marcie. "As long as we are all
well mannered and behave
ourselves
"—she paused, looking at Richie again—"we have nothing
to worry about. Now run along, boys and girls, and find your stones so that we
can get started making our rubbings."

Melanie was standing a little way apart from the others, and
she shaded her eyes with a hand and glanced out over the field of tombstones in
the direction Gran Pennington had said she would find Cordia Mae Lee's grave.
All of the stones were old, and some went back as far as the Revolutionary War,
but many were even older, dating to the first settlers. They were mostly small
stones with scrolly writing and curved tops. Some had pictures of angels carved
on them or of sailing ships or open books that were probably meant to represent
the Bible.

After she got her bearings, Melanie went straight toward her
great-great-grandmother's grave as boys and girls scattered through the rows
like an army of bugs. She could see Jana three rows over, marching in the same
direction, but she didn't even look Melanie's way. Behind her, she could hear
Mrs. Clark scolding Clarence Marshall for broad-jumping over the gravestones,
but most kids, she noticed, were being careful to walk around the graves.

Finally she knelt in front of the tiny white stone bearing
her great-great-grandmother's name.

Cordia Mae Lee
Gardner
Born October 4, 1896
Died March 7, 1955

Gardner would have been her married name, Melanie thought,
wondering if he had been one of the young men who had written Cordia letters,
or better still, if he had been in one of the pictures in her
great-great-grandmother's album. Perhaps he was John, the one Cordia had called
her best beau, or Charles, her mysterious beau.

Reaching forward, she rubbed a finger over the words on the
stone, feeling a sense of relief. At least here was someone who would
understand her. If only Cordia were here to talk to her now.