Stacey and the Haunted Masquerade

  “Okay, I guess,” Jordan replied, just as the other two triplets came running in after him.

  “Byron! Adam!” said Abby. “What’s up?”

  “We just spotted a ghost!” exclaimed Byron, who was armed with a plastic ray gun.

  “A huge one!” Adam added, brandishing his own weapon, which looked suspiciously like an old vacuum-cleaner hose.

  “Any ectoplasmic residue?” Abby asked, without missing a beat.

  “Tons!” said Adam. “We were slimed in a big way.” He grinned, as if being slimed were something to be happy about. Then he and the other two ran off, shouting something about telekinetic activity.

  No sooner had they left than Vanessa showed up, with Margo and Claire in tow. “Hi, Vanessa,” Abby said. “Written any new poems lately?”

  “Lots,” said Vanessa, who’s nine and wants to be a poet (she’s already written volumes and volumes of verse). “Want to hear the one I’m working on today?” she asked. “It’s called ‘The Haunting of Pike House.’ It’s going to be an epic, but so far it’s only three pages long. It starts off like this: ‘Ghosts and goblins, witches and spooks, the Pike house has all kinds of kooks —’ ”

  “Make her stop!” cried Margo, covering her ears. “I already heard it five times, and I’m sick of it!”

  “You’re not going to throw up, are you, Margo?” asked Abby. Margo, who is seven, has a weak stomach.

  “Not if she quits reading that dumb poem,” Margo said.

  “I like it,” Claire piped up.

  “That’s because you love witches and ghosts,” said Abby, who had heard about the way Claire loves to dress up in her witch’s costume. Claire is five, the youngest of the Pike kids.

  “Yeah! Ghosts!” Claire cried. “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts,” she sang, mimicking the deep voice of the guy who sings the Ghostbusters theme song.

  Mal glanced at Abby and rolled her eyes. “They’re all obsessed,” she said with a sigh. “I can’t seem to escape that movie.”

  “Well, why fight it?” asked Abby. “Maybe today’s the perfect day to do some real ghostbusting.”

  “Yay!” shouted Vanessa.

  “Can we?” begged Margo.

  “Ghostbusters!” yelled Claire, so loudly that her four brothers ran in to see what was up.

  “What’s going on?” asked Nicky.

  “I have a strong feeling that this house needs to be ghostbusted from top to bottom,” said Abby.

  “Yay!” yelled Byron.

  “Let’s do it!” shouted Adam.

  “Who you gonna call?” Jordan chanted.

  “GHOSTBUSTERS!” yelled all the kids at once.

  “Okay, okay, let’s calm down just a little,” said Abby, grinning. “First, let’s divide up into teams. Mal, if you’ll take the younger kids, I’ll take Vanessa and the triplets.”

  “I want to be with Adam and Jordan and Byron!” yelled Nicky immediately.

  “And I want to be with my sisters!” said Vanessa. “Who wants to do ghostbusting with you stinky old boys?”

  “Okay, so you two can switch teams,” said Abby, unruffled. “Now, I think Mal’s team can search the basement and the first floor, and my team can check out the attic and the upstairs. Does that sound good?”

  “Perfect,” said Mal, who was enjoying the way Abby had taken charge. She told us later that Abby seemed to have found the perfect balance between being a baby-sitter and a pal. She was ready to have a great time playing with the kids, but she was also careful to organize activities and to keep the situation from becoming too wild.

  “Let’s head out,” said Byron, shouldering his ray gun.

  “Hold on, buddy,” said Abby. “Not so fast. First, we’d better do an equipment check. Does each team have their ghost detector all charged up?”

  The kids looked at each other, bewildered.

  “And what about your collection units?” she asked.

  The kids looked even more confused. Abby grinned. “Don’t have any?” she asked. “No problem. Who got new shoes for school this fall?”

  Byron, Nicky, Margo, and Claire raised their hands.

  “Still have the boxes?” Abby asked.

  They nodded.

  “Run and find them,” she said. “We’ll have our equipment ready in a second.”

  Sure enough, it didn’t take long to transform the shoeboxes with markers and stickers, and attach straps made of string, using plenty of tape. As soon as they were finished, Abby helped two kids on each team put the boxes on, backpack style. “Cool!” she said. “Now we’re all set. Let’s see which team can catch more ghosts. Ready? Go!” She dashed up the stairs, leading her team.

  Mal told us later that the rest of the afternoon flew by. The Pike house practically shook with crashes and bangs and shouts, but no permanent damage was done, and the kids had a terrific time.

  Mal led her team through the downstairs and into the basement, helping them corner and capture various “ghosts” as they came across them.

  “Here’s a laundry ghost!” called Claire, opening the dryer door. “Catch him, quick!”

  Vanessa scooped the “ghost” into her collection unit.

  “There’s some ectoplasm dripping down this wall!” yelled Margo.

  “Take a sample,” Mal told her. “We’ll analyze it later, in the lab.”

  Meanwhile, upstairs, things were a little wilder. Mal heard the shrieks and screams, but she didn’t learn the details until later, when Nicky and the triplets filled her in.

  First, Abby led the boys on a search of the upstairs bedrooms. They entered each room like a police SWAT team, pushing the door open with their weapons at the ready.

  “Remember, never cross the streams!” Abby shouted as they fired at a “ghost” in their parents’ room. “That could really mess things up.”

  The team collected closet ghosts, bathroom ghosts, under-the-bed ghosts, and sock-drawer ghosts until Abby declared the upstairs “free of ghostly presences.” Then they headed for the attic stairs.

  Abby stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Give me the ghost detector,” she told Byron.

  He unslung the shoebox from his shoulder and handed it over.

  Abby “took a reading” and pretended to inspect the dials. “Just as I suspected,” she said. “The readings are extremely high. Better let me go up first, on my own. I’ll call you as soon as I’m sure it’s safe.” She held up the flashlight she’d been carrying. “Don’t worry about me,” she said bravely. “I have my weapon charged.” She fished a surgical mask out of her pocket (she wears one whenever she might run into dust) and put it on, which made her look even more official. Then she headed up the stairs.

  The boys waited for a few seconds. No sound came from above. They waited a few seconds more, expecting Abby to call them any minute. They heard a loud thump, and then there was nothing but silence.

  “Abby?” Adam finally called in a quavery voice.

  “Are you okay?” Jordan added.

  “We’d better go up after her,” said Byron uncertainly.

  “Do you think something — you know — caught her?” Nicky asked.

  “I’m going to check,” said Adam, trying to sound firm. “You guys coming?”

  “Of course,” Jordan replied.

  “Sure,” said Byron, adjusting his weapon.

  “Yup,” said Nicky.

  “Okay, let’s go!” Adam cried. He led the charge up the stairs, with the others close behind him.

  As the four of them entered the dark attic, Abby sprang out from behind a post, holding the flashlight beneath her chin to give herself a ghoulish appearance. (She’d taken off her mask just for a second.) “Bwah-hah-hah-hah!” she shrieked.

  “Aaaaaaaaah!” yelled the boys.

  Jordan was the first to catch himself. “It’s a ghost!” he hollered. “Watch out! I’m a ghostbuster!” He lifted his weapon and “fired,” and the other boys joined in.

  Abby turned off the flashlight and slump
ed to the floor with the moan of a dying ghost, and then she sneezed, and they all cracked up. Ghostbusting had never been so much fun.

  “Mischief Knights?”

  “What are the Mischief Knights?”

  “Who are the Mischief Knights, and what are they going to do next?”

  Those were the questions everybody was asking on Monday. That day will definitely go down in SMS history: the day the Mischief Knights first struck. I know I’ll never forget it, and I have a feeling that SMS students will be talking about that day, and about the Mischief Knights, for years to come.

  For me, it started when I was at my locker before homeroom on Monday. It was taking me a long time to wake up that morning. You know how that is? On some days you jump out of bed and plunge right into your routine, but on others you just feel as if you’re in a fog for half the day. Well, that morning the fog was as thick and heavy as pea soup. I wasn’t thrilled about being at school. All I wanted to do was run back home, jump into bed, and snuggle under the covers.

  Instead, I was rummaging around in my locker, trying to find the books I would need for that morning’s classes. And then, through the fog, I began to realize that something wasn’t right. The books I needed weren’t there.

  “What’s going on?” I heard someone ask. Which was exactly what I had been about to say.

  I closed my locker door partway and looked around to see who had spoken. It was Sabrina Bouvier, whose locker is about five lockers over from mine. Sabrina is nice enough, but she looks as if she’s thirteen going on thirty. (She trowels on the makeup and dresses like an actress on a soap opera.) At that moment, she peered at me. Her perfectly tweezed brows were mushed together as she frowned. “This isn’t my stuff,” she said, holding up two textbooks, and a green spiral notebook.

  I recognized the notebook immediately. It was my social studies notebook, the one I had been doodling on in homeroom the week before. “That’s mine!” I cried, blushing a little when I saw all the hearts I’d drawn. “What’s it doing in your locker?”

  Sabrina looked bewildered. “I have no idea,” she said.

  I reached into my locker and pulled out a pile of books. “Are these by any chance yours?” I asked her. Somehow, I just knew they were.

  She took two steps toward me. “This is so weird,” she said. “How did my stuff find its way into your locker?”

  Just then, a folded scrap of white paper fell out of one of her books and drifted to the floor. “What’s that?” I asked. I picked it up and unfolded it. This is what I saw:

  I showed it to Sabrina. “What’s this all about?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “How should I know?” Just then, the first bell rang. “Quick, give me my stuff,” she said. I handed it over, and she gave me my books. Then she took off, heading toward the girls’ bathroom, probably so she could check her “face” before homeroom.

  That was my introduction to the Mischief Knights. But I wasn’t the only one meeting them that day. Their handiwork showed up all over SMS, and by lunchtime there wasn’t anybody in the school who hadn’t heard of them.

  “Rick Chow told me they left a message on the blackboard in the music room,” Claudia said as she bit into a Ring-Ding she’d pulled out of her backpack.

  “What did it say?” asked Mary Anne. She was picking at the grayish slice of Salisbury steak that sat in the middle of her plate.

  “It said ‘Don’t buy the Salisbury steak,’ ” Kristy joked, poking at the meat on her own plate. “Man, this stuff is disgusting. It reminds me of something Boo-Boo dragged in from the garden.” (Boo-Boo is Kristy’s stepfather’s geriatric cat.)

  “Kristy!” Mary Anne said.

  “Sorry,” Kristy apologized with a grin. She dug into her mashed potatoes. “So what did the message really say?” she asked Claudia.

  “Something about how the Mischief Knights couldn’t be stopped.”

  “That’s what they wrote on the board in my math class!” said Abby. “Only Mr. Zizmore erased it as soon as he came in, so I didn’t really have a good look at it.” Abby’s eyes were glowing. “Isn’t it cool? I love it when something like this gets a school stirred up. In my old school, people used to start rumors, but this is much more fun.”

  “Fun?” asked Kristy. “Not if you have Mrs. Simon for English. Or at least, not if you had good grades in her class. Which I did.”

  “Sure you did,” I teased her. “If you say so, Kristy.” By then, everybody knew that Mrs. Simon’s grade book had disappeared that morning, and that a blank one had been put in its place. A tiny scrap of paper with the initials “MK” had been left near the book.

  “Mrs. Simon was pretty steamed,” Kristy said. “She spent the period lecturing us on why pranks are ‘counterproductive.’ Meanwhile, the guys in the back row were trying to figure out how to join the Mischief Knights.”

  “So who do you think they are?” asked Mary Anne.

  “I would bet Watson’s salary that Alan Gray is involved,” Kristy said.

  “Don’t be so sure,” replied Claudia. “I saw him in the hall before, talking to Pete Black. From what I overheard, neither of them knew a thing about the Mischief Knights before today.”

  “Who, then?” I asked. “Who else would come up with all those pranks?”

  “It could be anyone,” said Kristy.

  “It could be me!” said Abby, waggling her eyebrows.

  “Or me,” said Mary Anne.

  “Oh, right,” Kristy said as we cracked up.

  * * *

  Whoever they were, the Mischief Knights continued their stunts over the next few days. More messages appeared on blackboards. Weird things, such as a rubber chicken or a toilet plunger, appeared in people’s lockers. Hundreds of marbles spilled out of a cabinet in the art room when somebody opened it to look for the watercolor paints. Mr. Kingbridge was going nuts. But most of the kids thought the pranks were cool.

  The Mischief Knights would have been the most popular kids at SMS, except for one thing: nobody knew who they were. But everybody was talking about them. They even came up at the first meeting of the decorations committee that Wednesday afternoon.

  “Maybe we should use the Mischief Knights for a theme,” Rick Chow said, practically before we’d found seats.

  “I’m not sure that would go over too well with the administration,” said a tall, thin man with curly black hair, who was leaning against the blackboard. He smiled at Rick. “I’m sure the students would love it, though.”

  At that point, he must have noticed that we were looking at him questioningly. “I’m Michael Rothman,” he said. “Mr. Rothman, to you. I just started teaching sixth-grade science here at SMS. I’ve seen a few of you in the halls, but why don’t we all introduce ourselves?”

  Cokie, naturally, had to be first. “I’m Cokie Mason,” she said. “What happened to Mrs. Hall? She was supposed to be our advisor.”

  I thought Cokie sounded rude, but Mr. Rothman didn’t seem to mind. “I ousted her,” he said simply. Then he grinned. “Not really. I just asked her if I could be your advisor because I wanted the chance to be involved in helping you plan the dance. Since I’m new here, I figured it would be a good way to become familiar with the school.”

  Mr. Rothman seemed nice. And he made a good advisor: after we’d introduced ourselves, he sat back and let us talk about what we wanted to do. We came up with a great theme for the dance: The Addams Family Reunion. It was Todd Long’s idea, and everybody loved it. Well, everybody except Cokie. She wanted some dumb theme involving jack-o’-lanterns, but we ignored her.

  In fact, Cokie was ignored a lot during that meeting. And outvoted. Even Grace disagreed with every single idea Cokie brought up, and Grace is supposed to be Cokie’s best friend. I could tell that it especially drove Cokie crazy to see Grace agreeing with me, a BSC member. (Cokie still hasn’t gotten over the fact that Grace teamed up with the BSC to solve a mystery recently, while Cokie was sick with bronchitis.)

  I brought up my idea
about a red-and-purple color scheme. “Because orange and black is so tired,” I explained.

  “Orange and black is traditional,” Cokie said.

  “So what?” Rick asked. “Stacey’s right. Why do things the same way all the time?”

  “I love the idea of red and purple,” said Grace. “It’ll look kind of spooky and gothic and bloody.”

  “Whoever heard of purple for Halloween?” Cokie muttered.

  “Are we reaching a consensus here about colors?” asked Mr. Rothman. He sounded just a tiny bit nervous. Maybe he thought we were about to start squabbling. But there was no need for argument. Since everybody but Cokie loved my color scheme, the majority ruled.

  The majority also ruled when we started to talk about decorations. We decided to poke around in antique stores and flea markets, looking for Addams Family–type items. (Cokie suggested cutouts of witches, but guess how many of us agreed? Right. Zero.) And we all (except Cokie) agreed that Claudia would be the perfect person to design our advertising posters.

  By the end of the meeting, I was pretty excited about the dance, and so were the other committee members. Obviously I wasn’t the only one who had decided not to let Cokie ruin what could be a great time.

  On Thursday morning, we arrived for classes to find that the Mischief Knights had TP’ed (toilet papered) the entire school. On Thursday afternoon, they soaped the windows of every car left in the teachers’ parking lot. Friday morning they sneaked into the main office and made a fake announcement over the loudspeaker about a surprise assembly with “special guest star Michael Jordan.” (We spent half of Friday’s BSC meeting trying to figure out how they’d pulled that one off.) And on the following Monday morning they set all the classroom clocks ahead by fifteen minutes.

  On Monday afternoon, I arrived early for a decorations committee meeting and found Mr. Rothman kneeling by the door, busy with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Fantastik. There was a familiar smell in the air. I sniffed, trying to place it. “Peanut butter?” I guessed.

  He grinned and nodded. “On the doorknob. And on my shirt and my pants after I touched the doorknob.”