Free Fabulous Five 015 - Melanie's Identity Crisis by Betsy Haynes

you enough."
    Melanie nodded self-consciously and set her sleeping bag
down on the floor. She could hardly stand to watch Funny and her mother hugging
each other and smiling. It was happening just the way she had thought it would.

CHAPTER 12
    "Come on up to my room," suggested Funny. She
grabbed Melanie's sleeping bag and hoisted it onto her shoulder as she led the
way up the stairs. Her bedroom was as cheerful as her disposition, with
wallpaper made of happy faces of every color in the rainbow against a white
background.
    "Did you know I have a clown collection?" asked
Funny, leading Melanie to a large glass-fronted cabinet containing clown dolls
of every size and shape. "I've even thought about going to clown college
myself one of these days," she admitted.
    Melanie admired the clowns, and for the next hour or so the
two girls got settled and chatted about school and about boys.
    "I get so embarrassed around boys that sometimes I'm
even tongue-tied," said Funny. "I wish I could talk to them as easily
as you can."
    "What are you talking about?" Melanie asked,
feeling a blush wash over her.
    "It just seems to come so natural to you," Funny
offered, and shrugged. "I couldn't help noticing you talking to Scott at
the cemetery today, and then at Bumpers, Shane was hanging on every word you
said."
    "Oh, that," she said, feeling a tingling sense of
pleasure. "Maybe I inherited it from one of my long-lost relatives,"
she joked.
    "Maybe," Funny said, sounding doubtful. "Or
maybe you just like to flirt ." At that, both girls broke up
laughing.
     
    A little while later, they went down to the kitchen for a
snack. Mrs. Hawthorne hummed softly as she tore lettuce leaves for a salad. She
wore the same smile that had been on her face when Melanie arrived, and Melanie
couldn't help thinking that Mrs. Hawthorne smiled as much as Funny did. Or was
it the other way around? she wondered. Could Funny have gotten her smile from
being around her adopted mother all the time? Mrs. Clark had said that everyone
inherited traits from genes, but maybe Funny learned to be so smiley from being
around Mrs. Hawthorne.
    "This is usually Funny's job," Mrs. Hawthorne was
saying. "But because she has company, I've given her the night off."
    "Thanks, Mom," said Funny, giving her mother a
look of genuine affection. Then laughing, she said, "I'll make two salads tomorrow night."
    Melanie squirmed uncomfortably, trying to imagine her own
mother taking over some of her chores just because she had company, but she
couldn't. Of course, her company usually consisted of The Fabulous Five, whom
her mother had known for years. But still, she thought, even if I brought home
someone new, it probably wouldn't make any difference. I'm not a chosen child,
like Funny. I'm an accident.
    Later, when they went down to dinner, Funny ran squealing to
her father, who had come home from work while they were upstairs, and he
planted a kiss squarely on her forehead. "Hi, princess," he said,
beaming down at her. "How was your day?"
    Melanie thought about her own father the night before. Even
though she had been home from school sick all day, he hadn't greeted her this
way. All he had done was gripe about her table manners.
    "Great," said Funny. "Today was our Family
Living class's field trip to the cemetery to make gravestone rubbings."
She went on telling her parents about the trip, and Melanie watched closely as
they listened to every word she said, just the way her own parents had listened
to Jeffy's story about the Godzilla movie the night before. But did my parents listen
to me when I tried to tell them something? she thought with a heavy heart. Of
course not.
    The rest of the evening went the same. Whenever she and
Funny were around Funny's parents, they treated her as if she were some kind of
royalty, and Melanie felt herself growing quieter and quieter.
    "Is something wrong?" Funny asked later when they
were snuggled in their sleeping bags and the lights were turned