Fabulous Five 017 - Celebrity Auction Read Online Free

much to her relief, Ms. Whitworth had finished her report on Wacko and had
gone on to another story.
    Her mother was shaking her head. "For goodness' sake,"
she said to Beth, "tell me what happened."
    Beth related the story. "Everybody is pretty sure who
did it," she added. "There is a group of boys who are nothing but
troublemakers. It's just the sort of thing they would do."
    "Humph," grumbled Mrs. Barry. "It just goes
to prove what your father said this morning. Now, when we were growing up, we
tried to handle things peacefully, with demonstrations, sit-ins, things like
that. But kids today . . ." She shook her head again as her words trailed
off.
    Beth glared at her. She knew something about the sixties and
seventies, and not all kids who grew up then solved their problems peacefully,
she thought. And besides, what was so peaceful about sitting down in front of
traffic?

CHAPTER 5
    The first person Beth spotted when she got to school the
next morning was Melanie.
    "Hi, Mel," she called out. "How do you feel?"
    Melanie looked embarrassed. "Fine. I'm sorry I got sick
yesterday. I just have a weak stomach, especially when something scares me."
    "It's okay," Beth assured her. "Honest."
    As they headed for The Fabulous Five's meeting spot by the
fence, Beth filled her in on what had taken place the day before.
    "Yuk!" said Melanie when she heard about Beth's
homeroom's cleaning up the cafeteria. "How could you stand to do a thing
like that?"
    Beth laughed. "It was pretty gross."
    When they reached the rest of The Fabulous Five at the
fence, a crowd of seventh-graders was beginning to gather. Richie Corrierro,
Tony Calcaterra, and Randy Kirwan were in one small group talking to Jana and
Katie, and Dekeisha Adams and Alexis Duvall were in conversation with Christie.
They moved together when Beth and Melanie walked up, and everyone seemed to
want to talk at once.
    "I think it's awful that everybody is blaming us for what happened," Dekeisha complained.
    "Yeah! Did you read what it said in the paper last
night?" Richie exploded. "Talk about bad-mouthing kids!"
    "What did it say?" asked Beth. She had been too
upset over the television coverage to even look at the newspaper.
    "Just that today's kids have . . ." Richie
frowned. "What was that word they used?"
    "'Deteriorating,'" said Christie. "'Deteriorating
moral standards,' to be exact. Can you believe that? They act as if we're all a
bunch of criminals."
    "Here. Read it for yourself," said Alexis,
whipping a folded newspaper page from her notebook and thrusting it toward
Beth. "I just have to keep reading it to believe it myself. Talk about
overreacting," she grumbled.
    Beth grabbed the paper, Unfolding it, she did a double take
at the editorial's headline, which blared, "VANDALISM SYMPTOM OF GROWING
MORAL DECAY."
    She narrowed her eyes angrily and read on.
    Once again, with this weekend's vandalism at Wakeman
Junior High , the public is appalled at the deteriorating moral standards
of today's youth . It is a sad commentary on the state of our society
when our young people, who have been pampered more than any generation in
history, can find no better way to express themselves than by destroying public
property.
    What has happened to old-fashioned decency in this day of
drugs, street gangs, and vandalism? What has happened to responsibility?
    Gulping hard, Beth read the editorial a second time and then
a third. "'Drugs, street gangs, and vandalism'?" she whispered
incredulously. "That's me they're talking about. Me and my
friends. Is that what they really think of us?"
    "It's just plain not fair," interjected Katie. "They're
forgetting about all of us well-behaved, law-abiding, innocent students who are
just as upset over what happened as the adults are. Why is everyone so
prejudiced against kids?"
    "What makes me angry," said Dekeisha, "is that
Mr. Bell and most of the teachers have to know that only a few kids did it, and
yet they act as if all of us were involved."
    "Well,