Ann Martin - Stacey's Broken Heart

"Thanks," Abby said.

Mallory still didn't think it was fair to have to pay for something she hadn't agreed to buy, but she felt she ought to offer the money since Mary Anne had. She fished six singles from her pocket, as did Jessi and Claudia. "Next time ask me before you buy art supplies. I have

a ton of stuff I could have brought over," Claudia grumbled.

"Sure. Okay,” Abby agreed. "I'll try to remember I'm a president and not a dictator."

Claudia laughed. "Good idea."

With that done, Abby set to work laying out sheets of posterboard, markers, glitter pens, crayons, and paint. "Okay, guys," she said to the group. "The festival is next Saturday. We'll start at noon. There will be games, food, and fun. We'll hold it at…” She looked around. "Where?"

"You mean you don't know?" Mallory asked.

"I figured I'd come up with someplace," Abby answered.

"I thought it was going to be at your house," Jessi said.

"We could have it there. But it's sort of out of the way. How about the schoolyard?"

"I could call the school board president and ask for permission," Mary Anne offered. "It's short notice, though. And what would we write on the posters?"

"I know," Abby said. "You go inside and try to call the school board president and we'll leave that part blank until we hear from you."

"Okay," Mary Anne agreed. "I think Sharon has the president's number somewhere."

(Sharon is Dawn's mother, Mary Anne's stepmother.)

Mary Anne left and the kids spread out, each with a piece of posterboard. "Make sure you say that this is a BSC festival," Abby told the kids. "That way people know it's going to be good."

"How do you spell it?" asked Archie.

''Spell what?" Claudia asked him.

"I don't know," Archie answered with a shrug. "I can't spell anything."

"Spell Mexican," Margo requested.

Claudia sighed and frowned, thinking hard. "I'd better do that," Mallory jumped in. She could just imagine the creative spelling Claudia would come up with.

For the next hour, the kids worked on their posters. Norman, who is overweight (though he's dieting), filled the board with pictures of tacos, chili, burritos, and tortillas. "That's nice artwork,. Norman, but there's no room left for writing," Jessi pointed out gently.

"Oops," said Norman, absently brushing blue paint through his wispy blond hair. "Could I have another board?" There was one extra board, so Jessi gave it to him.

His sister, Sara, drew a great burro with a colorful Mexican scrape on its back. She wrote BSC Mexican Fe — in huge letters, and then

decided she had run out of room. Claudia helped her fit the rest in. When they were done it said:.

"Nice spelling," Mallory said, looking down at Claudia and Sara as they worked.

Claudia looked up and chewed on her lip anxiously. "Not even close?"

"Close but . . ." Mallory got on her knees and tried to fix the spelling mistakes with a marker as neatly as she could.

"Hey, cut it out!" Becca shouted at Jackie, who was shooting globs of glitter onto her arm from a glitter pen.

Abby took the pen from him. "Try not to waste the glitter," she told him. "We don't have a lot of it."

"Yuck! It's all over me!" Becca complained, wiping a smear of gold glitter down her arm.

"Smear it on your poster," Abby suggested.

In fifteen minutes, Mary Anne returned to the barn. "No luck,” she reported. "The school can't let us use the schoolyard because of insurance. I asked Sharon, though, and she said we could have it here."

"Cool!" Abby exclaimed. "Everybody write that the festival will be here."

"Where is here?" Charlotte asked.

"One seventy-seven Burnt Hill Road," Mary Anne told her.

Mallory checked her watch and saw that they'd already been there about an hour. "We have to be home in an hour to go visit my uncle,” she said.

"I'm supposed to get these guys back by then, too," Abby said, frowning as she looked at the posters. "Okay, everybody. We have to pick up speed here. The first person done gets to keep the markers and the crayons. Ready, set, go!"

The kids started writing and drawing furiously. Crayons actually flew into the air as they were finished with them. "You can slow down a little," Mallory advised, nervous about what this frenzy of activity might produce.

"Done!" Shea Rodowski announced in about ten minutes.

"Let's see," Claudia said skeptically. Shea held up a swirl of scribble-scrabble with letters mixed up in it. "I can't read it," she said.

One by one Shea picked out all the letters to the words. They were all there, only impossible for anyone else to understand. "I win," he announced.

"No fair," Vanessa protested. "His is a mess!"

"Oh, yeah? Let's see yours," Shea challenged her.

Vanessa's was also hastily thrown together. In the center of a colorful blur of glitter, a poem was written in tiny script. "I'll read it," she declared. "Come to the Mexican fest. The food will be the best. Games galore and much, much more. So put it to the test."

"Nice," said Abby, "but you don't say where or when."

"Oh, they'll figure that out," Vanessa insisted.

"How?" Mallory asked, rolling her eyes.

"People talk," Vanessa said. "Or they can go look at another sign."

"I finished first, so I win," Shea said, collecting the pens and crayons.

Sara gathered her markers and crayons defensively. "You can't have them yet! I'm not done making a border."

"Wait until everyone's finished," Abby told Shea. "You all have ten more minutes, then we have to go and hang them up."

When the ten minutes were up, Mallory couldn't believe how messy the signs were. The writing was either sloppy, nearly illegible, or too small to read. The words were full of

misspellings. Some of the artwork was cute, but a lot of it had been done too quickly, dashed off in order to win the crayons and markers.

Abby gathered up the signs. Mallory wanted to say that they were too awful to put up, but she didn't want to offend the kids. Jessi, Claudia, and Mary Anne also looked concerned; they probably felt the same as Mallory.

Mal thought about Kristy and could easily imagine her speaking up. "No way," she would say. "It would be totally embarrassing to put those up!" She might say it in private when the kids wouldn't hear, but she'd certainly say it.

Mallory felt that in Kristy's absence someone should say something. She couldn't get up the nerve to do it, though. Perhaps she was being too critical. The posters might not really be as bad as she thought.

The group split up, with each baby-sitter taking a bunch of kids around to put up signs. They hung them on trees and electric poles. At the end of the hour, they returned to the barn. "Well, that's done," Abby said, brushing her hands together.

Just then Mr. and Mrs. Pike pulled up in the family's minivan to pick up the girls. Mallory didn't think about the signs again until after supper when Abby called. "We have to

collect all the signs," she said. "Anna and my mother think they look terrible."

"No kidding," Mallory said wryly.

"What? You thought so, too? Why didn't you say something?"

"You're the president!" Mal exploded.