“I’m taking Karen, Andrew, David Michael, Emily, and some of their friends trick-or-treating tomorrow,” I said. “They’re going to dress up as characters from The Wizard of Oz.” I hoped I’d be able to keep my mind on the task. At the moment, all I could think of was Bart’s kiss.
“That’s cute,” said Shannon. “Going as characters from The Wizard of Oz. They must be really excited.”
“Half scared, too, I think. Remember how scary we used to think Halloween was?” I asked everyone.
“Definitely,” said Mal. “I thought ghosts and vampires and things really did come out on Halloween night. The year I was six, I wouldn’t even go trick-or-treating because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to tell the real spooks from the kids in costume.”
“We were all pretty scared just last Halloween,” pointed out Mary Anne. “Thanks to Cokie and Grace and their friends.”
“That’s for sure,” said Jessi.
“I’m kind of sorry I missed all that,” said Stacey.
“No, you’re not,” Claud told her. “It was really scary.”
“I’m glad Cokie gave herself away at the game last weekend,” I said. “Can you imagine how we’d feel right now if I were still getting those notes?”
And at that very moment, a scream ripped through the air. I froze. Then I thawed out and looked at my friends. They were all looking at each other. None of us had screamed.
“Yikes!” I said. I tiptoed into the hallway — just in time to hear another scream. It came from Karen’s room.
The door to Mom and Watson’s bedroom opened then, and Watson rushed out. “Don’t worry,” he told me. “I think Karen’s having a nightmare.”
With a sigh, I returned to my friends. “Just Karen,” I said. “Bad dream. Watson’s taking care of her.”
We began to get ready to go to sleep. We put away our nail polish and barrettes, shoved our junk into a corner of the room, and my friends rolled out their sleeping bags. I was going to sleep in my bed. Even so, seven sleeping bags made the floor of the room pretty crowded.
Scritch, scratch. Scritch, scratch.
Mary Anne jumped a mile. “What was that?”
“Just branches scraping my windows,” I said carelessly. I wasn’t going to let Halloween spook me. “A storm must be blowing in.”
I waited until everyone was settled in their sleeping bags. Then I pulled back the covers on my bed and found … a kidnapping note on my pillow. It was all I could do not to shriek, but I didn’t want Watson to come dashing into my room. Instead I just gasped.
“What? What’s wrong?” asked Dawn.
“This is,” I whispered. I held up the note. It was made of letters cut from magazines and newspapers and said, “I am coming for you tonight. I will be there at 3:00 A.M. There’s no way to escape me.”
Everyone crawled out of their sleeping bags and was reading the note wide-eyed, looking ready to scream.
Everyone except Shannon. She began to laugh.
“Shannon! Did you do this?” I demanded.
Shannon couldn’t control herself. “Yes,” she said, giggling. “I didn’t know what to do with myself all evening while I waited for you guys to come back from the dance. So I made that letter. It took hours.”
“I’ll treasure it always,” I said sarcastically.
“You aren’t mad, are you, Kristy?” asked Shannon.
“Nah. In fact, you just gave me an idea.”
“What, I’m afraid to ask,” said Mary Anne.
“Come on. I’ll show you.”
If any of us had been sleepy before, we weren’t now. Shannon’s note had given us a second wind. So everyone jumped up and followed me out of my room, down the hall, down the stairs, and into the den, where our computer is set up. I slipped a disk into the drive and typed out:
Everyone was howling, and Shannon asked, “What are you going to do with that note, Kristy?”
“Stick it in Cokie’s locker on Monday morning.”
“Don’t you think she’s going to know who wrote it?”
“Yes,” I replied, “and I don’t care. I know I said I didn’t want to continue the war with Cokie, but I can’t help it. This is too good an idea to pass up. Come on, you guys. Let’s go to bed.”
And so, note in hand, I led my friends back to my room, where we promptly fell asleep and didn’t wake up until eleven o’clock the next morning.
* * *
Dear Reader,
In Kristy’s Mystery Admirer, Cokie Mason rears her ugly head again. Cokie (who would never admit that her real name is Marguerite) has long been the sworn enemy of Kristy and her friends. Even though Cokie is a “bad girl,” she’s a fun character to write. Cokie can do things that the members of the Baby-sitters Club would never do. In the Baby-sitters Club movie, she was given a particularly big role. It was a lot of fun to cast her — to find an actress to play Cokie’s part. I very much enjoyed seeing Cokie come to life on the screen. In case you’re wondering, I named Cokie after somebody I went to high school with. However, unlike Cokie Mason, the real Cokie was a very nice person. Who knows — maybe someday Cokie will have a book of her own!
Happy reading,
* * *
About the Author
ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.
There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.
Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.
Copyright © 1990 by Ann M. Martin.
Cover art by Hodges Soileau
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First edition, June 1996
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-63332-1
Ann M. Martin, Kristy's Mystery Admirer
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