Sleepover Friends

#8 Lauren’s Treasure by Susan Saunders, 1988.

The Sleepover Friends have volunteered to take part in an archaeological dig on the site of an old mansion, which is also on land where a Native American tribe once lived.  Other students from their school and a school in a nearby town will also be taking part.  Stephanie isn’t sure that she’s going to like being part of the dig because she doesn’t really like getting her hands dirty and she thinks it would be gross if they uncovered the bones of dead people during the dig.  The others are more excited about the dig, but at first, it doesn’t turn out as well as expected for Lauren.

First, Lauren’s hair is weird on the day of the dig because the other girls tried to give her a perm at a sleepover and it didn’t go well.  Then, she attracts some unexpected attention from Walter, a new neighbor of Stephanie’s.  Walter is in the fourth grade, but only because he skipped a couple of grades to get there.  He’s only eight years old, but he’s something of a child genius.  He’s not really a bad kid, but when he starts following Lauren around and acts like he’s got a crush on her, Lauren is embarrassed because he’s so much younger than she is.

Then Lauren makes an exciting discovery on the dig: a carved rabbit charm.  The archaeologist in charge of the dig is excited because its presence, along with some yellow paint, means that they’ve found a Native American burial spot.  She takes the younger children off the dig and has her grad students continue searching for the grave itself.  Lauren is pleased at being the one to make an exciting find, but the charm mysteriously disappears at the dig.

The archaeologist thinks that, most likely, the charm fell out of the tray Lauren was using to collect things on the dig when everyone started pushing to get a look at the spot where it was found.  She says that she and the grad students will keep an eye out for it as they continue the dig.  For Lauren, it just seems like another piece of bad luck in her bad luck streak.

Walter continues paying too much attention to Lauren at school, and later, writes an anonymous note, asking her to meet him at a local pizza place.  At first, Lauren thinks that the note was writing by Jenny Carlin, a rival at school, because of a series of pranks they were playing on each other earlier.  When Jenny denies being responsible for the note, Lauren goes to the pizza place and sees Walter.  Unfortunately, Jenny and her friend Angela show up there, too, curious to see who was meeting Lauren, and they tease her and Walter.  Lauren is embarrassed at having a kid so much younger than she is (genius or not) chasing after her, and she hates the teasing that she gets at school about it, but she’s not quite sure what to do about it, other than ignoring Walter as best she can.  However, Walter is actually the key to solving the mystery of what happened to the rabbit charm.

You might guess at this point that Walter was the one who took the charm in the first place.  I thought it was pretty obvious myself.  Walter wasn’t trying to cause trouble.  He explains to Lauren that he was trying to get her attention, and his first plan was to pretend that he found the missing charm after a search so that he could look like a hero to her.  He just never got the chance to give it back because he got interrupted, and then Lauren started avoiding him because of the teasing.  It all works out for the best because Lauren gives the charm back to the archaeologist, who doesn’t press her too closely about where she found it, and Walter gets a crush on a different girl who is a little closer to his age. 

Getting a crush on someone who either doesn’t feel the same way or just isn’t available is a normal part of life (if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t appear so often in tv shows, movies, and books – people find this type of situation relatable), and so is being the subject of a crush from someone you don’t love or find unsuitable (again, that’s why this situation comes up often in fiction – it happens often enough in real life that people understand the feeling).  When it comes to getting boyfriends or girlfriends, one of the people involved has to be the first to stick their neck out and say that they’re interested, and there’s no guarantee that the feelings will be returned.  It’s not easy, but this is a part of how relationships start.  When the feelings aren’t returned, which is bound to happen from time to time, there’s always some awkwardness.  The first person is usually disappointed, and there might be a struggle for the other person as they try to find a way to turn the other person down without hurting their feelings.  The situation in this book is especially awkward because precocious young Walter is so young, and it’s likely a first crush for him.  Lauren has also never had to deal with a situation like this before and isn’t quite sure how do handle it. 

In a way, having Walter simply lose interest in Lauren feels a little like a cop-out for the situation so neither of them really has to confront the situation directly, but there are a couple of things that Walter has come to realize by the end of the story that may be useful.  One good point is that there are limits on the things people should be allowed to do to get someone’s attention and start a relationship with him.  When Walter was just trying to strike up a conversation with Lauren or be helpful to her at the dig, it wasn’t bad.  It didn’t get Lauren’s approval for him, but it wasn’t because his behavior was bad (more about this later because it’s important).  The bad part came when he stole the charm to get her attention.  When Walter’s mother later finds out about his theft of the charm, she grounds him and makes him give the charm back and confess to Lauren what he did.  Learning that life has limits and that some behaviors don’t get you the kind of attention you’re really looking for is a good life lesson.  Some people do come on too strongly when they’re seeking attention, and I’m not just talking about kids who aren’t experienced enough to know how to behave; even adults don’t always know the best way to approach romantic relationships or understand others’ limits and boundaries regarding them.  I’m no relationship expert, but I think that the solution is partly developing a kind of situational awareness and an ability to empathize with other people and read their reactions.

Before the story is over, Walter learns more about reading other people’s reactions and understanding how his actions fit into the larger situation from someone else’s viewpoint.  At first, Walter doesn’t seem to sense Lauren’s discomfort, and her friends criticize him for not taking a hint.  Lauren felt a little awkward about his helpfulness at the dig not because it was a bad thing (he was really trying to be nice and there was nothing objectionable about what he said or did until he took the charm – I want you to understand that she wasn’t rejecting him for being a nice guy or anything like that) but because she had reservations about getting too involved with someone so much younger than herself, and she felt like his attention put her in an awkward position.  Walter is a genius, but he is still physically and socially about three years behind the other kids in the story, and at first, he can’t see why that would create awkwardness in a romantic relationship, especially for kids who are only just starting to get old enough to be interested in romance.  The difficulty for Lauren and the reason why she was so irritable with the situation was that she found it difficult to tell a younger kid who was being so nice to her that she didn’t welcome his attentions when he wasn’t doing anything really wrong and didn’t want to hurt his feelings.  As I said, an awkward situation.  Sometimes, even a person who is trying to be nice can unintentionally create awkwardness if they don’t understand the other person’s circumstances, and that’s something that adults do as well as children.  This is basically what’s at the heart of a situation where “nice guys” get rejected or “friend-zoned.” It’s not about the “nice guy” doing anything wrong so much as a case of the wrong relationship at the wrong time with someone who isn’t quite as compatible with them as they thought.  

In a romantic relationship, both of the people involved have to agree to it equally, one isn’t enough.  When Jenny and her friend start teasing Lauren and Walter after the incident at the pizza place, Walter comes to see why a relationship with him would make things awkward for Lauren because of their age difference and the reactions of the other kids.  If they were in their 20s or 30s, an age difference of two or three years wouldn’t mean anything, but for where they are in their lives now, as kids in elementary school, it means a lot.  At the end of the story, Walter’s new love interest is a little closer to his age, making less of a problem, and he has developed enough social awareness to use his age difference to get a little revenge on Jenny for her teasing by publicly asking her about meeting him at the pizza place later, as if she were interested in dating him.  Walter could have been hurt and insulted about being rejected and teased because of his age (and it would have been understandable), but he has realized that, under the circumstances, it would be better to move on and find someone who is more suitable for him and who might be more open to a relationship with him.  In the end, he feels good enough about the situation to use his age for the joke on Jenny, and his other classmates approve of his humor and the well-deserved jab at Jenny’s teasing.

The one thing that I really wish they had added to the story would be for Lauren to learn how to gracefully turn down an offer of a relationship when she isn’t interested because I think that would be an important life lesson for her and for young readers. Socially awkward situations occur in life, but there are ways of handling them to minimize the embarrassment for everyone involved. In the story, Lauren’s main tactic is trying to ignore Walter and hope that he’ll take it as a hint until he finds someone else, and in real life, that’s not good enough. I’m not sure what she would have said if Jenny and her friend hadn’t interrupted her and Walter at the pizza place, but I would hope that it would have been something like, “I appreciate the help you gave me at the dig, Walter, and you seem pretty nice, but I just don’t think that we have enough in common. I think that there is too much of an age difference between us, and I’m not interested in that kind of relationship.” The rejection still might sting, but some simple honesty would at least be more respectful than ignoring him and hoping that he’ll take that as a hint.

I read this book years ago when I was a kid, although there was only one part that really stayed with me, and for a long time, I thought that I was remembering the incident from one of the Baby-Sitters’ Club books.  The scene that stuck in my memory was from the sleepover at the beginning of the book.  The girls were angry at Jenny for some mean comments that she made, so they requested a song on the radio called “You’re a Jerk” by the Lurkers and dedicated it to her.  When they made the request, they told the radio station that they were “well-meaning friends” instead of giving their names, and the radio DJ made a joke about it when he played the song.  It was this incident that started off the series of pranks that Jenny and the girls play on each other throughout the book.  I think part of the reason this scene stuck with me was the “well-meaning friends” phrase and part of it was because I had always wondered if the song they requested was a real song.  I don’t think it is because I can’t find it on the Internet. The Lurkers are a real band, but I can’t find anything about that song. If that song actually exists and someone can find a video of it, let me know, and I’ll link to it!

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.