“L. C. and Mister?” Mary Anne said, in a puzzled voice.
“No!” I cried. Just then, I felt as if one of those cartoon light bulbs was flashing on over my head. “Liz Connor and Mike Rothman.”
Liz Connor and Mike Rothman. Mike Rothman and Liz Connor. Could it be true? Maybe I was going nuts. After all, I was taking some pretty wild guesses. I had no idea, really, whether or not Elizabeth Connor was known as “Liz.” In fact, I knew next to nothing about Elizabeth Connor. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that she was the key, and that solving this twenty-eight-year-old mystery would help us figure out what was happening at SMS now. And it sure was a mystery. For example, what about those other initials? Did MR really stand for Mike Rothman? And was that Mike Rothman the same Mike Rothman I knew?
These were the questions chasing each other through my mind on Wednesday afternoon as I stood in the middle of the gym, holding one end of a roll of red crepe paper while Todd walked away from me, unfurling it to its full length. The dance was only two days away, so Todd and I and the rest of the decorations committee were finally starting our real job: decorating the gym.
So far, it was hard to tell whether our theme was going to work. The gym, in broad daylight, is hardly the most romantic spot in the world. The floors are squeaky, there’s dust everywhere, and a certain … odor hangs in the air, reminding you of the thousands of basketball games that must have been played there over the years.
It was hard to imagine the transformation that would have to take place by Friday night. Still, I had high hopes. I’d seen the gym transformed before, for other dances, and it’s always amazed me how magical the place can look. Magical and, yes, even romantic.
I let myself daydream a little about Friday night. Robert and I hadn’t had much time for dating recently, so I was really looking forward to spending the evening with him. We’d decided to go as Morticia and Gomez Addams, because of the theme of the dance. I knew I would look bewitching in a long black wig and a form-fitting black dress, and I was sure Robert would look handsomer than ever, dressed as the dashing Gomez.
I tried to picture us together, having a terrific time at a terrific dance. We would drink punch and laugh with our friends. We’d dance wildly to the fast songs, and then hold each other close for the slow ones. It would be wonderful — wouldn’t it?
I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t ignore the fact that something was wrong. I had a bad feeling about this dance. It was almost as if someone had put a curse on it. And I couldn’t shake the idea that unless I solved the mystery in time, the dance was going to be a disaster. Even the decorating committee was under the curse. Not only had our stuff been vandalized, but now Grace and Cokie weren’t speaking to each other. Grace had found out that Cokie didn’t believe in Ted and they’d had a huge fight. As a result, our meetings were a little more tense.
“Stacey! Heads up!” I looked up just in time to see Grace, who was standing on a stepladder, toss me a roll of purple crepe paper. I caught it with my free hand and held onto my end while she fastened the other end to a rafter. Meanwhile, Todd was securing the other end of the red roll to the wall over the main entrance. Rick and Cokie were setting up tables under one of the scoreboards, for punch and cookies. Mr. Rothman walked around, supervising and offering suggestions.
I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, trying not to be caught staring. Was he the Mike Rothman from the yearbook? If so, why hadn’t he told us he’d attended SMS way back when? Was he trying to hide something?
“Mr. Rothman, Mr. Rothman!” Todd called. “Can you help me over here?”
“Sure, Todd. What can I do?” I watched as Mr. Rothman walked to where Todd was standing.
“Take this end of the roll,” Todd directed, handing Mr. Rothman a new roll of red paper, “and attach it up there.” He pointed to a spot on the other side of the gym. Grace had left the ladder set up beneath it. “I’ll hold this end.”
“Um, okay,” said Mr. Rothman. He started to walk toward the ladder, and then he stopped. “Tell you what, Todd,” he said. “How about if you attach it?”
“Sure, no problem,” said Todd. “You stand right here, then.” Todd walked away from Mr. Rothman, unrolling the paper as he went. I looked back at Mr. Rothman just in time to see him wipe his brow. But it wasn’t hot in the gym, not at all. In fact, it was downright chilly. Why was Mr. Rothman sweating?
I kept an eye on Mr. Rothman as he watched Todd climb the ladder, and suddenly, everything clicked into place. I saw the look on Mr. Rothman’s face, and I knew why he hadn’t wanted to climb that ladder. It was because he was afraid — make that terrified — of heights.
Just like the Mike Rothman whose file I’d seen in the basement.
That’s when I knew for sure that this Mike Rothman was the very same Mike Rothman who had been in the yearbook. And then and there, I decided it was time to find out more about what Mike Rothman knew.
I walked over to him. My mind was racing, but I couldn’t figure out a clever way to bring up the subject. “Hi, Mr. Rothman.”
“Hello, Stacey,” he answered, smiling at me. “What’s on your mind?”
“Liz Connor,” I said, without thinking. “Liz Connor is on my mind.”
Mr. Rothman turned pale. For a second, I thought he was going to pass out. He let go of the crepe paper he was holding. “Liz Connor?” he said. “How do you know about Liz?”
That’s when I knew I had guessed right. He didn’t try to deny anything, or make up lies about who he was. I was on my way to learning the truth. I took a deep breath, and explained what I knew so far. It didn’t take long, since I didn’t know much. I told him how I’d figured out his past, and then how I’d learned that a girl had been involved in that tragic dance long ago, and how my friends and I had figured out who the girl must be. (I sort of fudged the part about our explorations in the basement.) Then I told him about finding his initials in the heart at Charlotte’s house, and I saw him close his eyes as if he were in pain.
“That’s it,” I concluded. “That’s all I know. Now I need you to fill in the blanks.”
He sighed. “I suppose it’s time,” he said. “This story has been haunting me for twenty-eight years. Let’s go sit down, and I’ll tell you all about it.” He led me to a spot in the bleachers, away from everyone else. We sat together, and then he was quiet for a long time. I was about to ask him some questions, but finally he began to speak.
“I was on the football team,” he said, in a faraway voice.
I pictured him in a helmet and uniform. That had been him in the yearbook.
“I was one of the most popular kids in school,” Mr. Rothman continued. “I was good-looking, I was fun to be with, and I was an excellent athlete.” He looked at me. “I don’t mean to sound stuck up, but it’s true. That’s just the way it was.” He smiled a bittersweet smile. “The girls were crazy about me, but I didn’t take advantage of that, the way some guys on the team did. My mother brought me up to be a gentleman, and that’s what I was. I dated, sure, but there was nobody special. And I treated all the girls with respect.”
“What about Liz?” I asked. When was he going to answer my question?
“Liz,” he said with a sigh. “Liz Connor was a shy girl. Quiet. Not giggly like the other girls. She wasn’t popular. In fact, when she was noticed at all, it was only because somebody was making fun of her.”
“But you noticed her,” I prompted him.
“I was nice to her,” he said. “I was nice to everybody. But since nobody else was nice to Liz, I guess it meant a lot to her. She developed a big crush on me — at least, according to the other kids. She didn’t know they knew. She thought her crush was a secret. But it wasn’t. It was a big joke to everybody.”
“Oops,” I said.
“It gets worse. See, when my friends on the football team heard that there was going to be a costume dance on the night before Halloween that year, they came up with a plan. They thought it would be hilarious if I asked
Liz to the dance. They cornered me, and dared me to do it.” He paused. “And then, just to up the ante, they bet me ten dollars that I wouldn’t last the whole evening with her.”
“But you refused, right?” I asked.
He shook his head sadly. “I wish I had. But being popular was so important to me. I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway. I figured I’d ask her out, and tell her later about the bet. Maybe I’d even split the money with her. I didn’t realize how serious she was about me. I thought she’d think the whole thing was silly, just like I did.”
“And?” I asked.
“I asked her to the dance, at school, in front of a bunch of my friends. She didn’t have a clue that I wasn’t being sincere. She was thrilled to be invited.”
“Poor Liz,” I said. I could just imagine how she felt. How could she know that was a joke?
“By the time the dance rolled around, I was feeling so guilty I could hardly stand it,” Mr. Rothman continued. “I went to Liz’s house to pick her up, and she came downstairs in this ridiculous, elaborate, babyish fairy princess costume. She looked pretty, but she looked about nine years old. I felt even worse when I saw her, because I knew the other kids were going to laugh at her costume. I realized then that there was no way I could tell her about the bet. I was just going to have to stick it out and hope for the best.”
I winced. “Didn’t she know her costume was silly?”
He shook his head. “I’m sure she didn’t. You should have seen her when we walked into the gym. Everybody was snickering and whispering, but she didn’t notice a thing. She just took my arm and smiled up at me, and I knew she was proud to be my date. I felt like the lowest of the low. I knew exactly what was going on, but Liz was oblivious. One girl, sort of a friend of hers, walked by and hissed into my ear ‘How dare you?’ It was awful.”
“Did you stick it out?” I asked. “Did you win the ten dollars?” I knew my tone was nasty, but I felt angry at that Mike Rothman of so long ago.
“I’m coming to that,” he answered. “Once the music started, things were a little better. After all, at least we could dance. And boy, did we dance! I didn’t want Liz to spend a second alone, since somebody might spill the beans. I couldn’t bring her over to be with my friends. And I sure didn’t want to stand around and talk. So we danced and danced, to every single song.” He smiled. “Liz was having a great time, and you know what? I could have been, too. If only I’d been honest with her, and with myself. But instead, I was caught in the biggest lie of my life.”
“So how did it turn out?” I asked.
“The band announced that it was almost time for the ‘last dance.’ Liz ran off to the powder room, and I talked to my friends. When she came back, I joined her right away, but she’d seen me with them, and she’d seen how uncomfortable I’d looked. She asked me what was wrong, but I didn’t answer. Then the band started playing ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’ ”
I gasped, remembering the letters in dripping red paint.
Mr. Rothman barely noticed. He was deeply involved in his story. “When I didn’t take Liz into my arms for the dance, she asked me again what was wrong. I shook my head. Then I said, ‘I can’t do this.’ I looked around and saw that nobody else was dancing either. They were all watching us. Liz saw it, too. ‘I just can’t do it,’ I said again, and I broke away from her. As I walked away, I took a ten-dollar bill from my pocket and threw it onto the floor, just to show my friends how little the money meant to me.”
“But Liz —” I began.
“The money landed at her feet,” he said. “She was totally humiliated, standing there alone in the middle of the dance floor. A few kids started to laugh. Liz looked around at the crowd one more time, and from what I heard later, this time she looked angry. Then she walked out the door and slammed it behind her. A couple of minutes later, the power went off in the gym.”
“And then?”
“Then the fire alarm went off — because somebody pulled it — and that’s when everybody stampeded. Three hundred kids tried to leave the gym, all at the same time. It must have been a madhouse.”
“And Mr. Brown died,” I said.
Mr. Rothman nodded. “Of a heart attack,” he said. “There’s never been another Mischief Night masquerade.”
“What about Liz?” I asked.
“She never came back to school,” he answered. “Her family moved away, and nobody’s heard of her since.”
Both of us were quiet for a few seconds. Then Mr. Rothman gave me a tired smile. “This is why I wanted to work on your dance,” he said. “Just to make sure everything goes smoothly this time.”
“But it hasn’t,” I said.
“No,” he admitted. “But we can’t let a few pranksters ruin things for us, can we?”
* * *
Did Mr. Rothman really believe that “pranksters” were responsible for trying to ruin our dance? He might have — until he and I walked into the gym together early the next morning, to do a final check on the decorations. What we saw chilled me to the bone.
There, hanging by a noose from one of the basketball hoops, was a dummy. A dummy dressed in a pink, frothy, fairy princess costume.
Mr. Rothman turned white. Then he said three of the scariest words I’ve ever heard: “Liz is back.”
“Ooh, look,” said Mary Anne. “It’s all lit up. I can’t wait to go in.”
My friends and I stood in the parking lot, looking up at the school. It was Mischief Night, and we were about to enter the dance. Yellow light spilled out of the school’s big windows, and I could hear faint music as the band warmed up. I couldn’t wait, either. But I was more than a little afraid. I still had a strong feeling that something was going to go wrong — very wrong — at the dance. Our detective work had turned up all the pieces of the puzzle, but somehow I couldn’t fit them together. I shivered, and thought again about the dummy Mr. Rothman and I had seen.
He and I had talked it over. Could Liz Connor really be back in Stoneybrook? And if so, what was she after? Did she have revenge on her mind? We checked the local phone directories to see if her name was listed, but it wasn’t. We considered speaking to Mr. Kingbridge, or even to the police, but then we realized how ridiculous our story sounded. It was like something out of a bad horror movie. Finally, we couldn’t think of anything else to do. The decorations were ready. Everybody’s costumes were planned. Every ticket was sold. The dance was on.
I had told my friends everything I’d learned, and they were primed to keep an eye open for Liz Connor, for Mr. Wetzler, for the Mischief Knights, for anything that might happen at the dance, including an appearance by the ghost of Mr. Brown. But none of the other BSC members was as worried as I was about the outcome of the dance. How could they be? None of them had seen that awful dummy hanging in the gym, and none of them had heard the fear in Mr. Rothman’s voice.
As I dressed that night, and then again as I stood in the parking lot with the other members of the BSC, I tried to forget my fears and concentrate on how much fun the dance might turn out to be. Maybe the Mischief Knights were responsible for all the pranks, and maybe the dance would go smoothly.
Maybe.
Or maybe not.
Either way, there was nothing else I could do. I took a deep breath and looked around at my friends. They all wore masks to hide their identities, but of course I knew who they were. Their costumes were terrific.
Mary Anne wore a childish dress (one of the ones left over from when her father was so strict) with a pinafore over it. She wore a pigtail wig and she carried a picnic basket. She made a perfect Dorothy. The best part was that Logan had decided to dress as the Scarecrow, and together the two of them looked as if they’d just stepped out of Oz.
Originally Mal had planned to dress as a cowgirl and Jessi was going to be a ballerina. But they had decided to switch costumes, just for fun. Jessi wore a fringed leather skirt and jacket, cowboy boots, and a ten-gallon hat. She looked awesome. And Mal, wearing an old Sw
an Lake costume of Jessi’s, looked great, too.
Abby had gone ahead with her plan to dress as Lucy Ricardo. Her mom had helped her color her hair bright red with temporary dye. She wore an old-fashioned dress like the ones Lucy wore on her show, and her mouth was outlined in red lipstick that was almost as bright as her hair.
Kristy looked dashing as Amelia Earhart. She wore a leather jacket (her brother’s), high boots, a long white silk scarf, and an old-fashioned helmet and goggles (Watson had found them for her). And Claudia looked, well, delicious as a giant Twinkie. She’d made the costume herself, using cardboard and poster paints.
How could the evening not be fun if I was spending it with such a great group? I smiled over at Robert, who made a devastating Gomez Addams in his dark suit. “Shall we go in, my dear?” he asked, stroking his glued-on mustache.
“Oui, oui,” I said with a smile.
“Tish! That French!” he cried. He grabbed my arm and started to kiss his way up it. I giggled. Suddenly, I was in the mood to have fun. “Let’s go,” I said to my friends. We headed into the school, handed over our tickets, and entered the gym.
“Awesome!” breathed Mal, taking it all in.
“You guys did a fantastic job!” Kristy exclaimed. “I’ve never seen this place look so cool.”
“Those portraits are perfect, Claud,” said Logan. “They add just the right creepy touch.”
The gym did look pretty amazing. The red lights created a mood and helped hide such things as the basketball hoops. Every detail our committee had added came together to give the illusion of a creaky old mansion filled with spiderwebs, weird furniture, and surprises around every corner. As Morticia Addams, I felt right at home.
The band was already playing, and plenty of people were on the dance floor. I just stood there for a while, letting my eyes become used to the darkness as I scoped out the costumes people were wearing.