"Babysitters Club 02 Claudia And The Phantom Phone Calls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Babysitters Club)

"Oh."
I picked up a bright yellow maple leaf and twirled the stem between my thumb and forefinger. "I'll tell you guys a secret," I said. "Well, Stacey knows about this, but no one else does."
"How come you already told Stacey?" asked Kristy accusingly.
"I just did, that's all. Okay?"
I saw Kristy and Mary Anne glance at each other and knew what they were thinking Ч that Stacey and I left them out of things. Well, maybe we did sometimes.
"Do you want to know the secret or not?"
"Yes," said Kristy grudgingly.
"Okay. Well, here it is ..." I said slowly, trying to drag out the suspense. "I'm in love!"
"Ohh!" said Mary Anne softly.
"You are?" cried Kristy at the same time.
"Who with?" asked Mary Anne.
I sighed deeply. "Trevor Sandbourne." I closed my eyes and leaned against the maple tree.
"Trevor Sandbourne?" repeated Kristy.
Mary Anne squinted at me through her reading glasses and pushed one braid behind her shoulder. "Who's he?"
"Only the most gorgeous boy in school."
"I don't think I've heard of him. Is he in our grade?"
"Yup. He's a poet," I said. I tried to describe him.
"Oh!" exclaimed Kristy, right in the middle of my description. "I know who you mean. He's really quiet. He's in my math class. He sits in the row behind me Ч right next to Alan Gray."
"Oh, you poor thing," I said. "Alan Gray. Ick."
"Yeah," added Mary Anne, sounding pretty disgusted. I mean, pretty disgusted for Mary Anne, which for most people isn't very disgusted at all. See, Mary Anne lives alone with her father who is really, really strict and ov-erprotective. Because of him, Mary Anne is shy and "held-in," if you know what I mean. Mr. Spier thinks that because Mary Anne's mother is dead, he has to go overboard with this careful upbringing, making Mary Anne super-polite and kind of old-fashioned.
"Who's Alan Gray?" asked Stacey, reminding us that she was a newcomer to Stoney-brook.
"Alan Gray," said Kristy witheringly, "is the most disgusting boy in this whole solar system. He's been awful since kindergarten. Probably
since birth. And I can tell you it's no picnic having Alan sit right in back of me. Yesterday he told Mr. Peters that I was late for class because I had to go to the doctor for a flea bath."
"That's awful!" exclaimed Stacey.
"I know. He really hates me. He doesn't bother anyone else half as much as he bothers me."
"Well, you are the only girl who ever fought him back, you know," I pointed out.
"Yeah," said Kristy with a grin.
A slow smile spread across Mary Anne's face as she remembered what we were talking about. Even Mary Anne had thought it was funny.
"What?" demanded Stacey, looking frustrated.
"Fifth grade," I began. "That year Kristy, Mary Anne, Alan, and I were all in the same class. Kristy really got Alan. He'd been tormenting us Ч all the girls, really Ч for the entire year, and by June we had had it. So one day, Kristy comes to school and all morning she brags about this fantastic lunch her mother has packed: a chocolate cupcake, Fritos, fruit salad, a ham and cheese sandwich, two Her-shey's Kisses Ч really great stuff. Kristy says it's a reward for something or other. And she
says the lunch is so great she's got to protect it by keeping it'in her desk instead of in the coat room. So, of course, Alan steals the bag out of her desk during the morning. Then at noontime in the cafeteria, he makes this big production out of opening it. He's sitting at the boys' table and they're all crowded around, and us girls are looking on from the next table. Alan is the center of attention, which is just what he wants."
"And just what I wanted," added Kristy.
"Right. So Alan carefully takes all the packages and containers out of the bag and spreads them in front of him. Then he begins to open them. In one he finds dead spiders, in another he finds a mud pie."
"David Michael had made it for me," said Kristy. (David Michael is Kristy's little brother. He was four then.)
"She'd even wrapped up a sandwich with fake flies stuck on it."
Stacey began to giggle.
"It was great," said Mary Anne. "Everyone was laughing. And Kristy had packed a real lunch for herself which she'd kept in the coat room. All afternoon, the kids kept telling her how terrific her trick had been."
"The only bad thing," said Kristy, "is that ever since, Alan has thought he has to bother
me constantly in order to keep up his reputation. He's like the plague."
"Thank goodness Trevor isn't like that," I said.
"If he was, you wouldn't have fallen in love with him," Stacey pointed out. She brushed her curly blonde hair out of her eyes.
"That's true. Poets are sensitive and thoughtful."
We fell silent.
Mary Anne flipped idly through The Stoney-brook News. "Taylor's is going to have a sale," she announced.
"Mmm." (I had closed my eyes and was trying to conjure up a picture of Trevor in my mind.)
"There was a fire at the mall this week."
"Mmm."
"Everyone's supposed to get flu shots by November."
"Mmm."
"Aughhh!"