Fabulous Five 001 - Seventh-Grade Rumors Read Online Free

to put their names on the covers, not to lose them, and to pay particular
attention to the school dress code on page 4.
    "These are the rules you'll all live by for the next
three years," he said with a faint smile.
    Jana skimmed the list of dress code rules. 1. Boys' and
girls' hair should be kept clean, neat, and well-groomed—blah, blah, blah, not
cause a health or safety hazard, blah, blah, blah. 2. Girls are expected to
wear clothing in keeping with their gender—blah, blah, blah. 3. Boys are
expected to wear clothing in keeping with their gender. Jana paused and giggled
to herself at the vision of Randy showing up for school dressed like a girl. 4.
Students are not to wear T-shirts with logos, pictures, phrases, letters, or
words on them that are obscene or disruptive. . . .
    "Now that you've absorbed the rules, turn to page
twenty-eight," Mr. Neal said, interrupting Jana's reading. He was smiling,
and Jana started smiling, too, when she saw that on page 28 was what she had
been waiting for, the list of student activities.
    She felt a shiver of excitement as she ran her finger down
the names of the clubs and activities, many of them available for the very
first time in junior high. Cheerleading. Yearbook. School newspaper. Drama
club. Band. Football. Basketball. Soccer. The list was practically endless. And
beside each activity was the date next week of the sign-up meeting or tryouts.
    All over the room kids were talking eagerly to each other,
and Christie leaned across the aisle and said, "Gosh, Jana. There are so many. I don't know what to sign up for. What about you?"
    "I don't know either," Jana confessed. "I
want to do almost everything. Yearbook. School newspaper. Maybe even
cheerleading."
    "I'm thinking about going out for girls' basketball,"
said Christie. "And maybe yearbook."
    "Will you try out for cheerleader if I do?" Jana
asked. "I'm dying to do it, but I don't want to do it alone."
    Before Christie could answer, Jana jerked her head around.
She had the crazy feeling that someone was looking at her. She was right. Laura
McCall and her two friends were whispering together and looking straight at
Jana and Christie. "Get a load of those three," Jana said, nudging
Christie and nodding in their direction. "What do you think they're
talking about?"
    "Us, of course," said Christie. "They're
probably reading our lips to try to find out which activities we're going out
for so that they can go out for them, too. I have the feeling that they're
going to be our biggest competition."
    "Me, too," Jana growled. "The Fantastic
Foursome!" she added, spitting out the words. "We've got to show them
that they can't run over The Fabulous Five!"

CHAPTER 4
    Beth and Katie were already sitting at a table in the
crowded cafeteria when Jana sank down beside them. This lunchroom was almost
twice the size of the one at Mark Twain, and she had felt a moment of panic
until she spotted her friends.
    "Whew! I made it," she said with a sigh.
    "So how did it go?" asked Katie. "It looks as
if you survived your first morning in junior high."
    "Barely," said Jana, shaking her head. "This
place is wild." She went on to tell Beth and Katie about the lineup of
ninth-grade boys in the hallway before class who were rating seventh-grade
girls on a scale of one to ten. "It was disgusting. But that was just the
beginning. Christie and I got to our homeroom okay, and there were even some
kids in there that we knew. Randy Kirwan. Curtis Trowbridge. Even Taffy
Sinclair," Jana said. "But Laura McCall and two of her friends were
in there, too. THEN, when the bell rang for first period, I couldn't find my
schedule card. I thought I'd die! I knew I had English next, but where? I was
still flipping through my notebook as I ran out into the hall and almost
barreled into a group of ninth-grade girls. You should have seen the looks I
got."
    "That's awful. What did you do?" asked Katie.
    "I just happened to reach into my skirt pocket, and my
schedule card was