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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—all the girls, really—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 Hershey’s Kisses—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.
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Ann M. Martin (The Baby-Sitters Club Collection: Books 1-4)