Fabulous Five 017 - Celebrity Auction Read online

  "You'd think that they'd be afraid to show their faces around here," said Christie.

  "Ha!" scoffed Katie. "They probably came to school today just to see if anyone had the nerve to say anything to them. They're always ready for a fight. Almost every week at least one of them shows up in Teen Court."

  "Let's go in through the gym," suggested Melanie. "I don't want to walk past them."

  "They aren't going to say anything to us," insisted Katie. "Come on. Don't let them intimidate you."

  "I agree with Melanie," said Jana. "I know they won't say anything to us, but I still don't want to get close to them. They give me the creeps."

  "They more than give me the creeps," exploded Beth. "They make me furious! It's because of them that the school is wrecked and everybody thinks all teenagers are hoodlums. I'd like to tell them what I think of them."

  "Whoa!" said Katie, grabbing Beth by the arm and steering her toward the gym. "On second thought, maybe we'd better find another entrance. All we need is for Beth to get decked for telling off Steve Melchior in her usual dramatic manner."

  "Right," said Christie, taking Beth's other arm. "They don't give Academy Awards for black eyes." Beth forgot about Steve and his friends again as soon as she stepped inside the school building and gazed around. Although it looked 100 percent better than it had the morning before, it was still a shock. Glass and papers had been swept from the halls, but graffiti still decorated the walls. The trophies were standing up again in the trophy case by the office, and the broken glass had been removed, but new glass hadn't been put in yet. Everywhere they looked there were reminders of the disaster that had struck Wakeman Junior High.

  "They must have been in here for hours," marveled Christie, shaking her head. "Otherwise, how could they have done so much damage?"

  Everyone shrugged and headed off in different directions to their homerooms. Beth was deep in thought as she marched toward room 109. There had to be a way to turn this whole situation around. Surely she and her friends could think of something to do if they put all five of their heads together. But so far at least, they weren't very interested, so it was up to her.

  She opened her notebook to a clean page and doodled around the edges while Miss Dickinson took attendance and read the announcements. Finally Beth put a number one on the first line and racked her brain for ways to raise money.

  1. Bake sale

  Immediately she scratched out the words. Everybody and his brother had bake sales, and nobody ever made much money. There had to be something else. She tried again.

  2. Car wash

  She scratched out that one, too. For one thing, it was the wrong time of the year to wash cars unless you were an Eskimo. And for another, car washes were as common as bake sales. She had to think of something else.

  "Instead of a car wash, maybe we could have a dog wash," she said when The Fabulous Five had gathered in the cafeteria at lunchtime.

  "A dog wash!" shrieked Melanie. "Where did you get a dumb idea like that?"

  "It's not dumb," Beth said indignantly. "Practically every kid in Wacko has a dog. If we charged five dollars a dog, we'd make a fortune."

  "Don't you realize that my family has Rainbow and eight puppies?" Melanie argued. "If we got all of them washed, it would cost"—she paused—"almost fifty dollars! No way! And I certainly can't see someone with a toy poodle or a Chihuahua shelling out five dollars."

  "So," said Beth, her temper flaring, "do you have a better idea?"

  No one did. Glumly Beth took a bite out of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich and stared at the wall where bright red spaghetti-sauce stains stood out against the white background. She kept asking herself over and over again what they could do to raise five thousand dollars.

  Suddenly there was a commotion a few tables over. Steve, Tucker, John, and Jay were gathered beside a table of ninth-grade girls, and Steve had a pained expression on his face that was obviously fake.

  "Awwww," he said, leaning toward one of the girls, who immediately spun around so that her back was to him. "Did your sweet little school get all messed up? And here we thought that everyone would love the new decorations."

  "Yeah," said John, nodding in agreement. "I guess that goes to prove that you just can't please people, no matter how hard you try."

  With that, all four broke up laughing and moved toward the door, disappearing into the hall.

  "Where are the lunchroom teachers?" demanded Beth. "Those guys practically admitted that they wrecked the school, and there isn't a single teacher within hearing range. That really burns me up."

  "Take it easy," said Christie. "Do you actually think they would have said that if a teacher had been near enough to hear? They may be mean, but they're not stupid."

  "Well, I'll tell you one thing," Beth said defiantly. "I don't think the rest of the kids at Wacko should take the rap for them. They aren't worth it."

  "I agree," said Katie. "You were right when you said that we should find a way to raise the money to pay for the damage ourselves. I'll help you come up with an idea."

  "Me, too," said Jana and Christie and Melanie in unison.

  "Great!" shouted Beth, triumphantly raising a fist into the air. "With The Fabulous Five working on it, it should be a cinch!"

  CHAPTER 7

  "This special meeting of The Fabulous Five will now come to order," Jana said in an official-sounding voice. The girls had skipped going to Bumpers after school and were gathered in Jana's bedroom.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Beth squirmed nervously and picked at a piece of lint in the carpet as she thought about the big job they had ahead of them. She had tried all afternoon to think of something Wacko students could do to raise the money, but she hadn't come up with a single good idea.

  "Beth, since this whole thing was your idea, I think you should take the floor," said Jana.

  Beth smiled weakly and ran her fingers through her short, dark hair. "We've already eliminated a bake sale, a car wash, and a dog wash," she began. "Does anybody have any other suggestions?"

  "Maybe we could just ask kids for donations the way we did when we saved all those dogs and cats from being put to sleep at the animal shelter," offered Melanie.

  Katie shook her head. "Forget it. Don't you remember how long it took us to raise that money? And we only needed three hundred and fifty dollars. We're talking about five thousand this time."

  Beth sighed and stretched out on her side, propping up her head with her hand. "What we need is something to sell," she said.

  "Hey, I know," said Christie, sitting up to attention on the bed so fast that it bounced. "We could have a garage sale! My mom had one last summer and made a lot of money."

  "A garage sale?" Katie said. She was making a face and shaking her head again. "You've got to be kidding. How could we raise five thousand dollars at a garage sale?"

  "That might not be a bad idea," Beth said slowly. "If every student in Wacko contributed stuff to sell, we could make a lot of money."

  "I love garage sales," cried Melanie. "I'm sure a lot of kids would be interested in helping with one."

  "Right," said Jana. "That's a terrific idea."

  "Hey, guys," Katie interjected solemnly. "You're forgetting something. Who has a garage that big?"

  "Eeeek!" said Beth. "That could be a minor problem."

  "Minor?" gasped Katie. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but not having a place to hold the sale is more than minor."

  "We'll find a place," Beth assured her. "Leave that part to me. First, we've got to get everybody at school excited enough to get involved."

  "We'll just have to talk it up," said Melanie. "We can start on the school ground before class the morning and then talk to kids all day long in our classes and the cafeteria. We can ask all of them to talk to other kids, and by dismissal time tomorrow we should have everybody in Wacko ready to donate."

  "Then we'll have to set a date," said Christie, scribbling in her notebook.

  "And somebody wi
ll have to take the donations," said Katie. "And we'll need a committee to price everything and another committee to set everything up the day of the sale."

  "And don't forget that we'll need volunteers to work at the sale," added Jana. "Wow!" she added. "This is going to be a lot of work."

  "But it will definitely be worth it," Beth reminded them. "In fact, I think we should invite Marge Whitworth to bring a camera crew from the television station to the sale and do a story on how responsible and hardworking Wakeman kids really are."

  "Way to go!" said Katie, thrusting her fist into the air. "If a garage sale will get Marge Whitworth to do a story like that, I'm all for it."

  "Why wait until the morning?" asked Melanie. "Let's start calling kids as soon as we get home. I'll call Scott and Shane and Garrett."

  Everyone agreed that Melanie's idea was a good one, and Beth rushed home, making a list in her mind of whom she would call. First, she would call Keith. She would never admit that to her friends, though, or else they would accuse her of being as boy crazy as Melanie. It was just that she hadn't had much chance to talk to Keith since yesterday afternoon when he apologized for putting green slime in her hair. Maybe if she asked him to help with the garage sale, he would realize that she really did like him, in spite of how immature he acted sometimes.

  The kitchen was empty when she reached home, and she put her books down on the table and picked up the phone.

  ". . . and when she told me that, I knew Jessica had been lying . . ."

  Beth crossed her eyes in exasperation. "Brittany," she pleaded. "I really need to use the phone. It's important."

  "Bug off, little sister. This is a very private conversation."

  "But, Britt," Beth insisted. "I'm not joking. I really do have to make some important calls."

  "I'm full of sympathy," Brittany said with a bored sigh. "And you can certainly make them just as soon as I'm off the phone. Got it?"

  Beth narrowed her eyes, then held the receiver three inches above the cradle. It dropped with a loud clatter. "I've got it," she mumbled to herself as she heard her sister shriek in the upstairs hall. "And now you've got it, right in the ear."

  Beth grabbed a slice of cold pizza out of the refrigerator and headed for her room to wait for her turn at the phone, thinking about how awful it was being the middle one of five kids in the Barry household. Nobody ever paid any attention to what she needed, much less what she wanted. Brittany was sixteen and Brian was seventeen, and they were always claiming privileges because they were older. Todd, eleven, and Alicia, five, were the babies of the family and kept their parents wrapped around their little fingers. She sighed as she heard the familiar padding of paws up the stairs behind her. Only Agatha, the family's Old English sheepdog, seemed to really care about her.

  "And all you really care about is getting some of my pizza. Right?" she said good-naturedly, ruffling Agatha's shaggy hair with her free hand. "Okay. Come on. I'll share it with you."

  By the time she finally got the telephone and dialed Keith's number, it was almost suppertime. Mrs. Masterson answered, and Beth could hear her yelling for Keith, who took forever to get to the phone.

  "Hi," he said, and Beth could hear him panting as though he had been running.

  "Hi, Keith. It's Beth," she said as cheerfully as she could.

  "Yeah?" he said with a trace of impatience in his voice.

  She took a deep breath and tried to get a conversation started. "So, what were you doing?"

  "Shooting baskets with a couple of guys," he said. "What do you want?"

  "Oh, well . . . um," she fumbled. This didn't sound like the best time in the world to bring up a garage sale, but she was stuck. She didn't have anything else to talk about. "My friends and I thought that if all the students at Wakeman got together and had a garage sale, we could raise the money to pay for the damages the vandals did. What do you think of the idea?"

  "What!" Keith shrieked. "A garage sale! Whose dumb idea was that? Besides, we don't have to pay for the damages. We didn't do anything."

  Beth gulped hard. She could feel her face turning red and was thankful that Keith couldn't see her. "It was The Fabulous Five's dumb idea. And for your information, we do, too, need to pay for the damages ourselves. It's the only way that we'll be able to prove to adults that all kids aren't like Steve Melchior and his friends—that's why!" Then she slammed down the phone.

  CHAPTER 8

  "Not one single person that I talked to liked the idea of a garage sale," complained Melanie at the fence before school the next morning.

  "Who did you talk to?" asked Beth. She was still fuming about her conversation with Keith the night before.

  "Scott, Shane, and Garrett," said Melanie. "They all said that garage sales were either stupid or just for girls. They also thought the idea of raising the money to pay for the damages to the school was pretty bad, too. They think that we shouldn't have to do a thing like that."

  "That's exactly what Keith said," Beth grumbled. "I couldn't believe it."

  "I didn't have much better luck with my calls either," admitted Christie. "I called Alexis Duvall and Kim Baxter and they both thought paying for the damages was some kind of joke. They liked the idea of a garage sale, though," she added. "But they wanted to keep the profits from the things they sold."

  "The same with Funny Hawthorne and Dekeisha Adams," said Jana. "Oh, yes, and Mona Vaughn."

  "I can't believe this," Beth stormed. "What's the matter with everybody? Do they like being called irresponsible and materialistic?"

  "I agree with you," said Katie. "I got the same reaction from Shawnie Pendergast, and Tony nearly laughed my ear off when I called him. But what are we going to do? Obviously having a garage sale isn't the answer."

  "Well, one thing's certain. We can't give up," said Beth. "We just can't take the rap for Steve Melchoir and his crowd. I guess it's back to the drawing board. Everybody think, and we'll talk about it again at lunch."

  Standing before her open locker a few minutes later, Beth saw Keith coming toward her, and she felt herself getting angry at him all over again. Giving her locker door a slam, she wheeled around to face him.

  "Hey, why did you hang up on me last night? All I did was express my opinion," Keith protested. "I don't see why you had to get so mad about it."

  Beth rolled her eyes to the ceiling in exasperation and slowly counted to three. "Keith, don't you understand? We have to do something to get ourselves off the hook. The television, the newspaper, even our own teachers are blasting us and saying we're all alike. I don't know about you, but I resent that, and I want to do something about it."

  "Not all of our teachers are saying things like that," said Keith. "Mr. Dracovitch made a big speech in biology class yesterday about what a great job we did cleaning up the mess. He said that the kids who stayed around to help were an example of what's good about teenagers and that more people should recognize that. And if any teacher should be mad, he should. Half his science equipment got broken."

  "One teacher. Big deal," Beth mumbled. She wanted to add, why did it have to be Mr. Dracovitch, of all people? But she didn't. The science teacher was called Dracula behind his back because he wore a shiny, black toupee and did strange things such as having his classes dissect cows' eyeballs and burning garbage in his lab to try to find a way to make plastics biodegradable. She knew he did those things to draw attention to his science classes and get kids interested, but some kids still thought he was just plain weird.

  Keith shrugged. "Can we change the subject?"

  Now it was Beth's turn to shrug. "Sure. What do you want to talk about?"

  "I was wondering if I could come over to your house tonight after supper. I've got a new Brain Damage tape, and is it terrific."

  Beth's heart fluttered. "Great. I love Brain Damage. I'll get my homework done right after I get home, and I'm sure my parents won't mind."

  Just then the first bell rang and Keith said goodbye and headed toward his homeroom. Bet
h smiled to herself as she hurried to her own homeroom. Brain Damage was her absolutely favorite rock group. They had been ever since they played a concert in town a few months earlier. That was when Laura McCall and she were involved in a bragging war. Laura was the leader of a clique, The Fantastic Foursome, which was The Fabulous Five's biggest rival. Sometimes it made her blush to remember the tricks she had tried to get in to see Trevor Morgan, Brain Damage's lead singer, in his hotel room. But it had been fun, and Trevor had been super, and she knew he thought of her as more than just another fan.

  Besides, she thought as she slid into her desk in homeroom, she was glad Keith wanted to come over. They got along so well when they were alone. He always seemed to need to show off when his macho friends were around, but he could be awfully sweet when just the two of them were together. Maybe she would be able to convince him to get involved with the garage sale, or whatever project they finally came up with.

  She would plan carefully, she decided, maybe even bribe Alicia and Todd to leave them alone in the family room. She wouldn't have to worry about Brittany or Brian. They would probably both be out, or if they were at home, Brittany would be on the phone, and Brian would be making the walls of his room pulsate with rock music on his stereo. It would be perfect.

  CHAPTER 9

  "We have to give people something for their money," Beth said to the rest of The Fabulous Five, who were eating lunch together in the cafeteria. "That's why I thought a garage sale might work."

  "And what else do a bunch of junior high school students have that's worth five thousand dollars?" Christie asked dejectedly.

  "We could have a booth at the next basketball game and sell kisses at a dollar apiece," offered Melanie. "I'd even be willing to work in the booth," she added with a giggle.