Dawn's Wicked Stepsister

  By tonight — when it was time for Mary Anne’s overnight with Kristy — I couldn’t wait for her to leave. I needed the house to myself that night, and I would have it soon. I would be the only one home that evening, since Mom and Richard were going to a dinner party. I had some things to set up, and I needed everyone out of the house so I could enter and leave the secret passage without being seen, and so that I could test a few things.

  I scheduled Operation: Scare Mary Anne for Monday night. On Monday night Mom and Richard would be at a PTO meeting at school. It was supposed to last from eight until nine-thirty, which meant that Mary Anne and I would be alone from about seven-thirty until ten. However, as far as Mary Anne knew, I would not be at home. I would be at the Pikes’, where I’d suddenly been called to help Mallory with her sick and injured family. I just hoped Mary Anne wouldn’t try to call me there, because of course, I wouldn’t be there. I would be in the secret passage, if all went as planned.

  * * *

  Anyway, I was pretty glad when Charlie Thomas pulled up to our house in that broken-down car of his. I ran outside even before Mary Anne did.

  “Hi, Kristy! Hi, Jessi!” I said. “Hi, Sam.”

  “Hi, Dawn,” they replied, and Kristy added, “Is Mary Anne ready?”

  “Almost. She’ll be here in just a sec.”

  A few moments later, Mary Anne dashed outside.

  She climbed into the car.

  She didn’t say a word to me.

  So when everyone else called out, “ ’Bye, Dawn!” I pointedly replied, “ ’Bye, Mary Anne,” and secretly thought, “You wicked stepsister, you.”

  These were Jeff’s ideas for Operation: Scare Mary Anne —

  1. Pretend to be a ghost in the passage. (That was easy, since I’d done it before. I’d pretend to be the ghost of Jared Mullray.)

  2. After you’ve pretended to be a ghost and made a lot of noise, ring the doorbell and run away.

  3. While Mary Anne is checking the door (and getting scared), run through the passage to your room and leave something weird on her desk.

  4. Repeat steps 2 and 3.

  5. Finish by slowly opening the door to the passage in your bedroom. Mary Anne will probably be scared away from your room forever.

  It was a good plan. I have to give Jeff credit for that. From three thousand miles away, he had come up with a surefire scare tactic.

  As soon as I had the house to myself on Saturday, I began collecting things to hide in the secret passage. I wanted to sound like a really good ghost. I didn’t specifically have to sound like Jared Mullray, though. Mary Anne would jump to that conclusion all by herself.

  Who’s Jared Mullray? I guess I should tell you that if our passage really is haunted, it’s haunted by the ghost of a man who is said to have disappeared in it ages ago. That man was Jared Mullray, and the townspeople thought he was crazy. I’ll agree that some odd things have happened in our passage. I’ll even agree that there might be a ghost. But if there is, I don’t think he’s mean and I’m not afraid of him. Otherwise I wouldn’t go in the passage alone at night — or at any time.

  On Saturday evening I collected a saw, a handful of acorns, a tape recorder, my haunted house sound-effects tape, and two other things. I made sure there were batteries in the recorder and that it worked properly. Then, carrying our big flashlight, I brought the things into the passage and left them there. Since no one else was at home, I could enter the passage through my bedroom, instead of going all the way out to the barn and in the other entrance.

  I tested the rest of my equipment. It sounded good.

  Okay, Monday night. Hurry up and come.

  * * *

  Sunday was one of the longest days I’ve ever lived through. It was endless. Monday was only a little better because of school and our BSC meeting. It wasn’t until dinnertime that I got to put the first part of my plan into action.

  We were eating in the den in front of the TV.

  “Excuse me,” I said, getting up with my empty plate as if I were going to have a second helping. (I had wolfed my dinner down.)

  In the kitchen, I quickly put some more food on my plate.

  Then I picked up our phone and dialed the operator.

  “Hi,” I said quietly. “Maybe you can help me. I think something’s wrong with our phone. Can you call me back?” I gave the operator our number.

  When the phone rang, I snatched it up. “Thanks,” I told the operator. “I guess it’s working okay after all.”

  I waited a few more moments before hanging up and returning to the den.

  “Who was on the phone?” Richard asked immediately.

  “That was Mallory,” I said. “Her parents are kind of worn out this evening so I told her I’d come over. She doesn’t need a sitter, she just needs help. My homework is almost done.”

  Nobody questioned this.

  So I left my house at the same time Mom and Richard left for the meeting at school. I headed for the Pikes’, then doubled back. I stood in the dark yard outside my bedroom window until I saw the light in my room go on. I waited five more minutes until I was pretty sure Mary Anne was at her desk and working.

  Then I crept into our barn.

  I found the flashlight that I had hidden under some hay. I turned it on, opened a trapdoor in the floor of the barn, and climbed down a ladder to the end of the tunnel. The tunnel travels underground to our house, then up a flight of stairs and through another sort of tunnel that runs between walls in our house and winds up, of course, at the hidden door to my room.

  I crept along silently until I had climbed the stairs. There at the head of the stairs were the things I had collected on Saturday night. I decided to start off simply, with the acorns.

  I threw one down the passage. It rattled along and stopped near the doorway.

  I threw another one.

  Rattle, rattle, rattle.

  I put my ear to the wall and listened for Mary Anne, but I couldn’t hear a thing. I wished desperately for a peephole so I could spy on her. For all I knew, she wasn’t even in the room. Maybe the phone had rung or something.

  I decided to take a chance.

  I tiptoed all the way to the doorway and threw the rest of the acorns at the wall of the passage.

  I heard Mary Anne gasp. I was sure of it.

  Perfect. Time for the saw.

  If you hold one of those floppy, old-fashioned saws by the handle and wobble the saw back and forth, it makes the weirdest sounds. With a little imagination, anyone could think they were hearing a space creature … or a ghost.

  I knew Mary Anne would hear Jared Mullray.

  Then I put on the sound-effects tape. I had set it to play “The Howling Winds.” When the winds died down, I turned the tape off. I knew Mary Anne was good and scared.

  Okay. Time to ring the doorbell.

  As quietly as I could, I left the passage, ran across the yard to our front door, rang the bell, then dashed back to the barn and through the passage again. At great risk, I opened the door into my room. I was holding a secret something that I had found on Saturday. It was a very realistic-looking silk rose. I laid it on top of Mary Anne’s homework, then made a run for the passage.

  Not a moment too soon. I could hear Mary Anne’s footsteps on the stairs. I stayed in the passage with an ear to the door, but I didn’t have to be nearby in order to hear Mary Anne’s scream.

  “Aughhh!”

  She nearly scared me, and I knew why she was screaming.

  I took my time leaving the passage. I wanted at least ten to fifteen minutes to go by before I rang the bell again. I even hung out in the barn for a few minutes. At last it was time to dash across the yard, ring the bell, and then run back through the passage. When I reached the door to my room I opened it cautiously, scrambled through, and laid a dried-out chicken bone on Mary Anne’s notebook. It looked sort of like a human finger bone.

  This time I didn’t have to fly back into the passage. I could hear Mary Anne on the phone
downstairs. She was asking for Logan. So I tiptoed into the passage, making sure the door didn’t quite latch behind me.

  It seemed like ages before Mary Anne dared to return to our room. When she did, I plastered myself against the wall in the passage. Before I could even start to crack the door open —

  “Aughhh!”

  Mary Anne saw the bone and let out a shriek. Then she must have seen the door to the passage, which I slowly pushed inward. I couldn’t have opened it more than two inches when Mary Anne shrieked again and pounded down the stairs.

  I decided that Operation: Scare Mary Anne was over.

  I crept into our room, retrieved the rose and the bone, left them in the passage, then ran through it to the barn and across our yard, and let myself in the front door.

  “Mary Anne?” I called.

  “Aughhh!” she shrieked again.

  “Aughhh!” I shrieked. “You scared me!” (She really had. She had jumped out of the living room just as I’d entered the house.)

  Mary Anne was clutching Tigger and breathing heavily. “You won’t believe what happened!” she exclaimed, and then proceeded to tell me everything. “That passage is haunted,” she wound up, “just like I thought…. Hey, what are you doing home so early?”

  “The passage is not haunted,” I told her. “And I’m home because the Pikes were all tired and wanted to go to bed, so they didn’t need me anymore.”

  “Oh,” said Mary Anne. “But listen, that passage is haunted. I have never been so terrified. I even tried to call Logan. He wasn’t home, though. Dawn, I can’t spend another night in your room. I don’t know how you can sleep in there, knowing the spirit of Jared Mullray is lurking around. I don’t know how I slept in there. But I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m going to move into the guest room. Claudia said she would help me redecorate it if I ever wanted to.”

  “But, Mary Anne —” I began.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Do you know what Jared did? First he tried to be really nice to me by leaving me a rose. Then he left me a bone. An old, dried-up finger bone. Isn’t that sinister?”

  “He left them?” I repeated. “Where?”

  “Come on upstairs.” Mary Anne led me to my room. “See? They’re right —” Mary Anne stopped. “Where are they?” She looked toward the door to the secret passage, but it was securely closed. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never even notice it. “Well, they were here,” said Mary Anne.

  “Sure they were,” I said soothingly.

  “No, really. They were. Anyway, this is just more proof. Jared took them back. Dawn, I swear, I can’t be in this room. At least not at night. Will you help me move my stuff into the guest room?”

  “Of course,” I replied.

  Mary Anne and I began lugging her furniture into the other room. It wasn’t easy, but we worked quickly anyway. And every now and then, as we were hefting up a chair or dragging her desk through the hall, we would look at each other and smile.

  We smiled because we were both relieved — and not just that the “haunting” was over. We were relieved that we were each going to get our own space without having to admit that we couldn’t share a room. I was sorry I’d scared Mary Anne so badly, but I knew I’d done the right thing. And when Mom and Richard came home they would convince Mary Anne that there was no ghost, and that her imagination was just working overtime. Eventually, she would believe them and forget the whole incident.

  When most of Mary Anne’s stuff had been moved out of my room, I said, “Mary Anne, I’ve got something for you.”

  It was my “now-we’re-really-sisters” present, which I had bought and had been saving until Mary Anne and I felt more like sisters. It was a little pin in the shape of a cat. I knew Mary Anne had seen one once and liked it.

  Of course, Mary Anne cried when she opened it. But that was okay. I wouldn’t expect anything else from my sister.

  “Claudia, for heaven’s sake. What are you doing?” I exclaimed.

  It was 5:20 on a Friday afternoon. Mary Anne and I had just arrived at BSC headquarters for a meeting. Claudia was the only other person there. She was standing on her head, leaning against the wall. Her face was beet-red.

  “I’m trying to get smarter,” she said.

  At least I was pretty sure that was what she’d said. It was hard to understand her with her long hair puddled around her head.

  “You’re trying to get smarter?” repeated Mary Anne incredulously.

  “Mm-hmm. I heard that if you stand on your head, all your blood rushes to your brain and feeds the cells there. I figure I need all the brain food I can get. I have an English test on Monday.”

  “Don’t you think studying would help?” I asked.

  Mary Anne nudged me. We were having trouble keeping straight faces.

  From behind us a third voice spoke up. It was Kristy, who had just arrived. “I wonder … ” she said tantalizingly.

  I just knew she was waiting for someone to ask her what she was wondering about. So I obliged her. “What do you wonder?” I asked.

  “Well, I’ve spent nearly all day sitting down,” she replied, “so you can imagine where my blood has settled. I must have the smartest —”

  “Kristy!” shrieked Mary Anne, and we began to laugh.

  Claudia laughed so hard she fell over. When she stood up, she swayed back and forth a little.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’m fine. Just light-headed. Is this how it feels to be a genius?”

  “NO!” shouted Janine from her room.

  Claudia rolled her eyes. Then she began rooting around her room — under her bed, under chairs, in boxes, in her desk drawer. At last she came up with a bag of Tootsie Rolls and a box of pretzel sticks.

  We settled into our usual places. Kristy put on her visor and stuck the pencil over her ear. We ate and talked. At 5:25 Jessi and Mal arrived, and at 5:29, Stacey ran in.

  “Oh, goody,” said Kristy. “We’re all here.”

  “But we still have one minute before the meeting starts,” said Mary Anne, “and I would like to say that —”

  “Five-thirty!” cried Kristy as Claud’s digital clock changed. “Come to order, please, everyone!”

  “Darn,” said Mary Anne.

  “Don’t worry,” Kristy told her. “As soon as the official business is over, you can tell us whatever it is — as long as we’re between phone calls.”

  “Okay,” said Mary Anne.

  Mary Anne and I were sitting next to each other on Claud’s bed. It had been four days since I had scared her with the ghost of Jared Mullray. Mary Anne had been sleeping in the guest room ever since. Also, we had been getting along better ever since. It wasn’t like the time Mary Anne had slept in the guest room and not spoken to me. When she had moved out then she’d been angry. This time she’d moved out because of the secret passage. Also, all of her belongings were in the guest room, so it didn’t feel like the guest room anymore. It felt like her own room. Furthermore, everyone — Mom, Richard, Mary Anne, and I — had been making an effort to work things out better.

  One night, much to my surprise, Richard had said stiffly at dinner, “Ahem, ahem…. I have a suggestion.”

  “What is it?” asked Mom. She looked puzzled.

  “I’ve been thinking about … about how the four of us have been getting along lately.”

  Immediately, Mary Anne and I stared at our hands. While she and I didn’t squabble over the room anymore, we’d had a few other squabbles — with each other, with Mom, with Richard. And Mom and Richard were having their share of squabbles. Most of the arguing was over cleaning, cooking, and how neat or messy the house was.

  “I propose,” Richard went on, “that we make a list of the chores that need to get done around here, decide who’s going to do what when, enter those things on a chart — and stick to the chart.”

  Mary Anne and I looked at Mom to see her reaction. Keeping a chore chart was completely against her nature, so I was prett
y surprised when she said, “Okay, I agree. But I have something to say about meals in this house.”

  “Fair enough,” said Richard.

  “I propose,” Mom began, “that each weekend, Dawn and I will cook the kinds of foods we like — enough for a week — and you and Mary Anne will cook the kinds of foods you like — enough for a week. Then at dinner each night there won’t be any more forcing you to eat tofu or us to eat meat. Ordinarily, I don’t like the idea of two different menus for one meal, but I don’t see any way around this. Our eating habits are radically different and no one wants to change.”

  Richard looked at Mary Anne.

  I looked at Mom.

  “Okay,” said Richard, Mary Anne, and I at once.

  “Good,” said Mom in a businesslike way, but I could see she was pleased.

  “I — I have one more suggestion,” I spoke up timidly. I couldn’t believe what I was about to say.

  “Yes?” said Mom encouragingly.

  “I think we should all be more honest with each other. We should stop trying to please each other so much. We’re going along with things we don’t like or believe in, or with things that annoy us — just to please each other. And it isn’t working.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Richard gently.

  “I mean, well, Mom hates bacon, Richard, but you always serve it to her at breakfast and she always says she likes what you serve. And Mary Anne, you can’t stand the way my mom cleans, but instead of telling that to her, you just clean up after her. And I knew, and so did Mary Anne, that we shouldn’t be sharing a room. But we kept forcing ourselves to try to make it work.” (I almost let the cat out of the bag about the ghost just then, but luckily, I kept my mouth shut. Mary Anne would be mortified if she knew what I’d done, and I didn’t want to hurt her.)

  Anyway, after my outburst we were quiet for a moment or two. Then Richard said slowly, “You know, I think that’s a good idea.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t just saying that to please me?” I teased.

  Richard laughed. Then Mom and Mary Anne laughed, too, and finally I joined in. Thank goodness, I thought. What if Richard hadn’t taken that as a joke?