"Martin, Ann M - BSC029 - Mallory And The Mystery Diary" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Ann M)

As I walked back to my house I thought, There has got to be a better way.
Chapter 7.
That night, Vanessa finished her homework early and went to the rec room to play with Margo and Claire.
I sat on my bed with a pencil and a pad of paper and tried to think of ways to make reading more interesting for Buddy. Why do I like reading? Because it's fun, I thought. Because it means something. Buddy's flash cards and workbook pages were not fun and they didn't mean much. The stories in his reader weren't much fun, either. But what could I do to change that? I didn't have any ideas, so I put the pad and pencil down. I picked up Sophie's diary instead. Suddenly, even though I hadn't finished my homework, and even though I didn't have any ideas for Buddy, I decided that tonight was the perfect night to read about Sophie's life in 1894.
I started at the very beginning. It was win-
ter, of course, and Sophie seemed to have been invited to a lot of parties. Her family had known a lot of the other families in town. Maybe Sophie had been rich after all, despite the smallish size of her house. Or maybe in 1894, that was a big house. At the parties, Sophie and her friends played "parlour games," but Sophie didn't explain what they were. I would have to find out sometime.
Around the beginning of February, Sophie started mentioning a boy named Paul Hancock. Her diary entries got pretty mushy:
Blechh. I will never pine for a boy. On February llth, Sophie wrote:
Sophie finally decided to send Paul a valentine card and, as it turned out, Paul was secretly pining for Sophie, so everything worked out okay.
I called Jessi to tell her what was happening
in Sophie's life. Then I went back to the diary. For a few weeks, all Sophie wrote about was school and Paul. Then Sophie's March 3rd diary entry said that her mother had just learned that she was going to have a baby:
Whew! I had to call Jessi and read her that passage. Then I skimmed through spring and summer in the diary because I couldn't wait to find out what happened in October.
It was very sad.
Sophie's mother gave birth to a tiny baby boy, Edgar, but two days later she died. I couldn't believe it. I had to call Jessi again. And I knew I should finish my homework, but maybe if I woke up extra early the next morning, I could do it then.
I shouldn't have called Jessi so quickly, I soon realized, because Sophie's story just got more and more interesting . . . and mysterious. In fact, I had to call Jessi five more times Ч until Mrs. Ramsey said no more phone calls. Luckily, I'd told Jessi almost all of the story by then. This is what happened:
Three days after Sophie's mother was buried, a portrait of her disappeared from Sophie's grandfather's house. Mr. Hickman lived in a mansion across town. He was incredibly wealthy, and Sophie's family would come into a lot of money when he died. As it was, he gave them quite a bit of money while he was alive. Anyway, Grandfather Hickman accused Sophie's father, Jared, of stealing the portrait Ч and everyone in town believed him and shunned Sophie and her father and baby brother. Apparently Jared had sort of a shady past. In the first place, he came from a poor family, and Mr. Hickman called him a gold-digger. He said Jared only married his daugh-
ter for her money. But there was more to Jared than that. Before he got married, he had been arrested for stealing Ч twice. And he had a reputation for being violent. To be honest, he didn't sound like a very nice person. But Sophie wrote that he was her father, he had always been kind to her, and she loved him.
At any rate, when the painting disappeared, Grandfather Hickman wrote Sophie, Edgar, and Jared out of his will. And of course he stopped giving them money. At least he didn't make them move out of their house, which he also owned, but they didn't have much to live on and, because Hickman was a well-respected member of the community and Jared wasn't, hardly anyone would give Jared work. He took to selling firewood and doing little things like that.
You could tell that Sophie was furious. Her mother's portrait, she wrote, was not in their house, and anyway, she knew her father hadn't stolen it. She wanted his name cleared. It was unfair that he'd been accused just because of his bad reputation.
The last entry in Sophie's diary, on December 31st, read:
As Claudia would say, "Oh, my lord. Oh, my lord!" And I had to wait until the next day to tell Jessi about this last diary entry? Impossible. I couldn't wait. I absolutely could not wait. . . . Could I? How do you keep from telling your best friend news like this?
Then Ч Just a second! I thought. Stacey's the one I should be telling. She was the one whose house Sophie and Jared would return to haunt.
Oh, my LORD!! Had Stacey and her mom bought a haunted house?
I looked at my watch. Almost ten o'clock. I couldn't call Stacey then. For one thing, it was too late at night to call a person and scare her with possible ghost stories. For another thing, it was bedtime. I could hear Vanessa and the triplets coming upstairs. At our house, the bedtime for anyone nine and older has re-
cently been made ten o'clock. Now a Pike kid looks forward feverishly to his or her ninth birthday.
I waited patiently for a turn in the bathroom, washed my face, and brushed my teeth. When I returned to our room, Vanessa was already in bed. I quickly changed into my nightgown and hopped into my own bed.
"What were you doing up here all evening?" Vanessa wanted to know. "Homework?"
I shook my head.
"Thank goodness. I wouldn't go to middle school if I thought I was going to get so much homework."
I smiled. Then I decided to tell Vanessa the story of Sophie and Jared. Sometimes I tell her secrets, sometimes I don't. If I don't, it's usually because she's in one of her poetry-writing phases and wouldn't be paying attention anyway. Or else it's because I want to enjoy keeping the secret to myself.
But that night Vanessa wasn't lost in her thoughts Ч although she did look pretty sleepy Ч and no way could I keep the secret to myself.
"You will never guess what I was doing," I said to Vanessa.
"What?" (She never guesses.)
"Reading Sophie's diary. And you will never guess what I found out."
"What?"
"Guess, Vanessa, guess!" I cried. "You always just say 'What?' "
"You always tell me I'll never guess Ч so I never do."
I sighed. Then I told Vanessa not to take things so literally. And then I told her about Jared and Sophie and the missing painting. We were both in bed and the lights were out (after all, we were supposed to be asleep), and I have to admit I felt pretty spooked.
Vanessa must have felt that way, too. "Do you think the spirits of Jared and Sophie are roaming around Stacey's house right now?" she whispered.
"I don't know." I sat up in bed and looked out the window. It faced the backyard, but I couldn't see anything.
"When you think of it," I said, settling back into bed after a few moments, "an awful lot of people have moved in and out of that house. We've lived in ours for over twelve years Ч since before I was born. But I can think of at least six families or couples who
have owned Stacey's house before she and her mom bought it. There must be a reason for that."
"Yeah ..." said Vanessa softly.
"Plus, Stacey told me that her mother didn't have much money to spend on a house. That's how they wound up with Sophie's house. It's big and old . . . and it was cheap. Why would such a nice big old house be so cheap?"
"Don't know."
"Gosh, I wonder what really did happen to that portrait. But you know, if Jared did steal it, I can almost understand why. He might have wanted a reminder of his wife. But Sophie is sure her father didn't steal it. Besides, why steal something like that? You'd have to keep it hidden."
"Maybe just to have it close by," murmured Vanessa.
"Maybe. ... I wonder if Sophie ever cleared her father's name. I mean, if he really was innocent. If she did, then we don't have to worry about ghosts over at Stacey's. But if she didn't, well, I certainly wouldn't want to live in a haunted house. And maybe all those people who lived there before Stacey moved in felt the same way. But they didn't tell the real estate agent why they were moving out be-
cause they were too embarrassed. I bet they made up other excuses Ч like an old house needs too many repairs. Or something like that. You know? . . . Vanessa? Vanessa?"
Silence. Vanessa was sound asleep.