Ann Martin - Stacey And The Haunted Masquerade

The police believed the blackout was a prank, and that the fire alarm might have been pulled as a prank as well. They questioned many of the students at the dance, and found out that several members of the SMS football team might have been involved. But the police had no proof, and it was likely that the investigation would go no further. The chief of police was quoted as saying he was positive that certain students — they weren't identified by name — knew exactly what had happened, and that he wished they would come forward.

"Wow," breathed Mary Anne.

"Wow is right," Logan said. "This is wild. I never expected to find anything quite this — quite this serious."

"Let’s see if there are any follow-up articles," I suggested, and Logan started scanning again.

But we didn't find a thing. It seemed as if the police hadn't been given any information, and the matter had been dropped.

"Now that we know this much, what next?" asked Logan. "We stall have a long way to go if we want to find out who's trying to ruin our dance."

"Yearbooks!" I said, snapping my fingers. "Let’s go to the school library at lunchtime tomorrow and look through yearbooks from back then. We might find something interesting."

"Keep turning the pages," Kristy said impatiently, as she looked over my shoulder. She'd been excited to hear what we'd found out so far, and so had the other BSC members. We had gathered in the library at lunchtime (all except Jessi and Mal, that is, since the sixth-graders eat lunch at a different time), and we'd found the old yearbook from the year of the dance.

I was holding it, and everyone else had gathered around. I was turning the pages especially slowly, making sure not to miss anything, but I turned a little faster when Kristy said that. Suddenly, I stopped and let out a gasp.

"What?" asked Mary Anne. She moved closer, so that she could see better. "Oh!" she said, echoing my gasp.

We were looking at a full-page picture of an older man in a suit. At the bottom, within a

black border, were the words, "In Memory of Mr. Brown."

"That’s him," said Mary Anne. Everyone clustered around to look at the picture.

"I bet he was strict," said Claudia. "Doesn't he look it?"

He did. His mouth was a straight line, and his eyes, behind black-framed eyeglasses, looked serious.

"What if he's the one tearing up posters and painting on the walls?" Abby said.

"He's dead!" cried Kristy.

"I know," Abby said, with a tiny smile. "But maybe he's not totally dead, if you know what I mean. Maybe he's haunting the school, because his murder was never solved." She raised her eyebrows.

"Stop!" cried Mary Anne. "You're creeping me out. Stacey, turn the page. I can't stand the way he's looking at me."

I turned the page, and we started looking at the eighth-grade pictures. Immediately, we forgot about Abby’s ghoulish idea. The pictures were hilarious. "All the boys look so geeky!" cried Kristy. "Look at those haircuts."

"And the girls have such big hair," Claudia said. "How about those cat-eye glasses, too?"

We paged through the pictures, laughing at how strange the kids looked. The funny thing was that they didn't really look like kids at all.

They looked like miniature grown-ups. The boys had short hair and wore suits and ties, and the girls looked as if they were about thirty. I kept turning pages.

"Whoa," I said suddenly, looking at one of the pictures more closely. "Check it out!" I pointed to a picture in the upper left hand corner of the page, of a relatively cute but still geeky-looking guy with black, curly hair.

"What about him?" asked Kristy.

"Look at the name," I said. Underneath the picture, the caption read "Michael Rothman." "How weird. That’s the name of the teacher who's advising the decorations committee." I bent to give the picture a closer look. "Wouldn't it be wild if this was really him, twenty-eight years ago? I didn't know he went to SMS. But it could be him. He's still just as skinny, and he has that black, curly hair." I stared at the picture. I couldn't believe my eyes.

Mary Anne was looking, too, but Abby and Kristy had already shifted their attention to another picture in the lower righthand corner of the page. "What do you think?" asked Kristy. Abby shrugged.

"Who's that?" I asked. Kristy pointed to the name, and I read it out loud. "Jerome Wetzler. Who's that?" Then I remembered, and my eyebrows flew up. "Mr. Wetzler? The guy

who's writing all those letters to the editor? Hmmmm."

"Hmmm is right," said Mary Anne. "I second that hmm!"

This was becoming very, very interesting. And it became even more so when we discovered, in the back of the yearbook, pictures of all the athletic teams. Underneath the picture of the football team, we found the name M. Rothman. If this M. Rothman was the M. Rothman I knew, it could be very significant that he was on the football team, since members of the team were suspected of being involved in the prank on the night of the dance.

I leaned forward to examine the picture more closely, and just then the loudspeaker over the library's door crackled to life. "Attention, students," someone said. It sounded sort of like Mr. Kingbridge, but it was hard to tell because of the static. "At the sound of the next bell, students in all grades are to proceed to the auditorium for a special assembly."

Chapter 10.

When the announcement was over, Claudia giggled. "Mischief Knights again," she guessed.

But she was wrong. As soon as the bell rang, the librarian shooed us out and told us to head straight for the auditorium. "Mr. Kingbridge wants everybody there," she said.

"What’s the assembly about?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine."

I wondered if the assembly had anything to do with the dance. "Maybe he's canceling it," I said as my friends and we walked to the auditorium. I didn't have to even explain what I meant by "it." The dance was on everybody's mind.

But, as it turned out, the assembly wasn't about the dance at .all. It was a special presentation by a community theatre group, about how to say no when your friends try to

talk you into doing things you don't want to do. We've already heard a lot about that, and I actually had to do it (say no), once when Sheik and her friends were trying to talk me into drinking at this concert we went to. So I thought I'd be bored. But the skits they performed turned out to be pretty funny, and soon everyone in the auditorium was laughing.

Since this was a special assembly, we could sit wherever we wanted. The BSC members had claimed a row in the back of the left side of the auditorium, and no teachers were nearby. Ordinarily, we might have talked and giggled, but the theatre group grabbed our attention. I was sitting between Claudia and Jessi, near the aisle, so I had a good view of the audience and of the stage.

I especially liked one actress. She had a kind of glow, as if she really loved what she was doing. She was pretty,, with big, expressive eyes and a head full of red-gold curls. Plus, she was funny. She was great at the slapstick stuff, such as falls and double takes. I watched her closely, daydreaming a little about what it would be like to act professionally.

When the lights went out, I first thought it was part of the performance.

Then people started to scream, and I realized that all the lights were out in the auditorium. Instantly, I remembered what we'd found out the night before, and I felt fear rise inside me. This was like some kind of sick joke, a flashback to that night twenty-eight years earlier when the lights went out in the gym — and a person died.

I felt somebody grab my hand. It was Claudia. We peered at each other through the darkness, and I could tell that she was thinking the same thing I was. I reached out for Jessi's hand, too, and we all held tight.