Ann Martin: Kristy's Mystery Admirer

"They must be from Sam," added Claudia.

"That's what I said in the first place and no one listened to me!" I cried. "Now that the

nptes are weird, you think they're from my brother after all. But even Sam wouldn't go this far. I know him and his jokes too well. He'd stop after about two notes and find some way to let me know he was behind them. Sam likes to take credit for his work and he can't wait very long for it."

"Well, who are the notes from then?" Mal wondered. (Everyone was settling back into their places.) "They can't be from Bart."

"I'm not so sure," I replied. "Maybe he's, like, really sick or something. I read this book once about a fourteen-year-old boy everyone thought was so normal and nice, and it turned out he was ... a cold-blooded killer."

"Kristy!" exclaimed Stacey. (She sounded like my mother.)

"Well, that's what the book was about."

"Was it a true story?" asked Stacey.

"No," I answered. "But it could have been."

Stacey looked as if she were about to say, "See?"

"Before you say anything," I rushed on, "remember the notes. They're real. Someone is sending them."

The room was quiet. No one knew what to say. I felt that I had to remind my friends about one small point.

"I invited Bart to the Halloween Hop, don't forget," I said.

"Aughh!" shrieked Mary Anne again. "You're going with a psycho!"

"Oh, my lord," whispered Claudia.

"Now just a second," said Mallory calmly, "you don't know that the notes are from Bart."

"I don't know that they aren't from Bart, either," I pointed out, "and I don't want to take any chances."

"What are you saying?" asked Dawn.

"I'm thinking of un-inviting Bart to the Hop."

"Oh, Kristy!" exclaimed Stacey.

But the phone rang before she could go on. (I'd almost forgotten that we were having a club meeting.)

We took the calls that came in for the next few minutes, lining up jobs with the Ro-dowsky boys, the Kuhns, the Perkinses, and Jenny Prezzioso.

Then Stacey immediately said, "Kristy, you can't un-invite Bart to the dance, especially when you don't even know if the notes are from him. I think you should confront him. Ask him straight out if he's your mystery admirer, and if he is, why he would write such awful things." She shivered. "I can't help

thinking about that Til remember you when you are dead' poem. That gave me the creeps."

"Think how I feel!" I said. "And anyway, I don't know about confronting him. Would you confront a psycho?"

"You don't know for sure if he is the psycho. I mean, a psycho," said Jessi. "I believe in giving a person the benefit of — "

"Wait a second!" I cried. "Oh, no! Oh, no! I just thought of something. You made me think of it, Jessi. You said, 'A psycho.' "

"So?" said Jessi, and the rest of my friends looked puzzled.

"What," I began, "if the notes aren't from Bart or Sam or anyone else we can think of? What if they are from just 'a psycho'?"

"Well — " Stacey started to say.

But I kept right on going. "Don't forget. I'm rich. I mean, I'm Watson Brewer's stepdaughter, and Watson is a millionaire. What if some weirdo out there is playing a cat-and-mouse game and then, when he's ready, he's going to pounce on me?"

My friends looked more puzzled than ever.

"Kidnap me," I explained. "He's going to scare me to death, then kidnap me and ask Watson for the ransom money. Watson could

afford to pay the ransom, and he'd do it. I'm sure he would."

"You know/' said Mal, "we just read this short story in English class. It was by an author named O. Henry, and it was called The Ransom of Red Chief.' In it, these guys kidnap this little boy, only it turns out that the boy is such an awful child his parents don't want him back, so they refuse to pay the ransom and the kidnappers are stuck with the boy."

Jessi, Dawn, and Mary Anne snickered. Claud and Stacey managed not to snicker, but even they couldn't keep from smiling.

"Come on, you guys. This is serious," I said. "I have been getting notes, Watson is rich, and things like this do happen — and not just on TV, either. They happen in real life. Where do you think the TV writers get their ideas from?"

That shut everyone up and stopped the smiling.

But then Stacey, our skeptic, said, "Oh, Kristy, this really z's ridiculous. No one's going to kidnap you."

"Convince me," I said.

My fellow BSC members looked everywhere but at me.

"The notes said he was coming to get me," I reminded my friends.

"One note said that," Mary Anne pointed out. "One note."

"I'm not convinced/' was my only reply.

Later that night, I sat in my room and tried to do my homework. Needless to say, I could not concentrate. I couldn't think of my room as just a room. It had become a room in a mansion. And Watson wasn't just my stepfather, he was a millionaire.

I abandoned my homework. I got up from my desk, took all the notes out of their hiding place between the pages of The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, and spread the notes on my bed in the order in which I'd received them. I read them. I looked at them. I examined the paper, the typing, the stickers, the envelopes.

They were definitely the work of a lunatic. But he was not going to get me.

I jumped up. I ran from window to window in my room and made sure they were shut and locked. I checked the lock on my door. It worked, too. Mom and Watson tell my brothers and sisters and me not to lock our doors at night because it's a fire hazard, but I would have to risk that. I figured there was a better chance of getting kidnapped than of Watson's house (excuse me, his mansion) burning down. Why did Mom have to marry a rich guy?

Then I thought of something horrible. A lunatic could get into my room through one of the windows even if it was locked. He'd simply wrap some cloth around his hand, punch through a pane of glass, reach in and unlock the window from the inside, and open it. Of course, I'm on the second floor, but the kidnapper could climb a ladder. He could be quiet. And in the dead of night, who would notice him?

I was trying to figure out how to board up my windows when something else occurred to me: The kidnapper could get me any time. He could get me walking to my house from the bus stop or on my way into school or to a baby-sitting job. I decided that I should try to be with people as much as possible. It would be harder to kidnap me if I weren't alone.

Should I tell Mom and Watson about the danger I was in? I wondered. No. They might think I was crazy.

I turned on my radio. I needed to listen to reports of missing lunatics. As far as I knew, there were no insane asylums around Stoney-brook, but who knows what a psycho is capable of?

I tuned in just in time for the news. I heard about the President's press conference, a plane

crash, a kid who was raising money to help fight drug abuse by running all the way from Connecticut to New York City, and I heard the sports and weather reports.

But the newscaster didn't say a word about a missing lunatic.

Okay, so he wasn't escaped. He was a new lunatic, one who hadn't been caught yet.

I didn't finish my homework that night.

Chapter 9.

Two days later I told Shannon my lunatic theory. She thought I was a lunatic for having come up with it. In fact, she had a new theory.

"I think," said Shannon, who had either read or heard about every single note I'd received, "that Bart is the note writer."

"But you said he couldn't be. You said you go to school with him and you'know him and — "

"I know what I said, but listen. I think Bart's afraid your Krushers are going to beat his Bashers in the World Series, so he's trying to psyche you out. He's trying to make you crazy so you won't be a good coach and the Krushers will play badly and lose."