One of the complaints about Friends Forever is that people don’t like the fight between Claudia or Stacey, especially since they were fighting over a boy who seems pretty boring and non-descript. One of the great friendships of children’s literature, and they let some guy whose distinguishing characteristic is a leather shoelace worn around his wrist come between them?
While rereading Claudia and the Friendship Feud recently, a question popped into my mind. Who did I side with: Claudia or Stacey? It’s a hard question. Claudia feels that Stacey stole her boyfriend, except that he never was her boyfriend. Stacey feels that since Jeremy admitted that he had no feelings for Claudia, but that he did have feelings for Stacey, that she should be free to go for him.
On the one hand, it goes against “girl code” that a friend would go after a guy she knew you liked. On the other, it would be selfish of Claudia to stand in the way of Stacey’s happiness when there was, according to Jeremy, no chance that he would develop feelings to Claudia (although this proved not to be true later).
The best answer I can come up with to this question is that there is no black-and-white, true answer. Stacey was wrong to go after a guy Claudia liked, BUT it is also not really fair, in my opinion, to expect Stacey to not go after someone she liked–and who liked her back–just because Claudia said she liked him first. Is there no other boy at Stoneybrook Middle School? And I don’t like how Claudia sees it as “Stacey stole my boyfriend” when HE WAS NEVER HER BOYFRIEND.
Opinions? Who do you side with?


