"Martin, Ann M - Baby-sitters Club Mystery 022 - Stacey and the Haunted Masquerade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Ann M)

When I walked in, I saw Ms. Bryan standing near the towel dispenser, hugging herself. All she was wearing was a camisole and leggings, and she looked cold Ч and upset.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Oh, I'm fine," she said. 'ItТs just that somebody spilled onion dip all over my cloak, and then followed me here. When I took it off to dean it, they grabbed it and ran off. Now I'm stuck in here. I can't go back out there dressed like this."
I stared at her. "Somebody stole your cloak?" I said slowly.
Just then, I heard the music start up in the gym. The last dance was beginning. Something clicked in my mind. All the pieces of the puzzle flew into place. "Oh, no!" I cried.
I dashed into the gym and stopped short when I saw Mr. Rothman dancing with a woman in a long, black cloak! I ran toward them, without even thinking about what I was going to do or say, but before I could reach them the bandleader announced that it was time for "the unmasking."
"Would everybody please reveal your identity when I count to three," he said. The drummer began a drumroll, and the lights went out. The idea was that when the lights came back on, everybody would be revealed for who they really were. I knew it was planned. This was not a blackout. But all the same, it was frightening Ч especially when somebody screamed.
The lights flickered on as suddenly as they'd gone off, and I looked over at the spot where I'd seen Mr. Rothman. He was still there, only now he was as white as a sheet. Standing in front of him was a woman wearing a tattered and torn pink fairy princess costume. A black cloak lay at her feet.
Michael Rothman stared at Liz Connor, and she stared back at him with a wild gleam in her eyes. She smiled slowly. Even from where I was standing, it was obvious that Liz Connor was very, very crazy.
Chapter 15.
"So then what happened?" Shannon leaned forward eagerly.
It was Monday afternoon, and, while we were supposedly having a BSC meeting in Claud's room, we were actually rehashing the events of the weekend. And, naturally, the first thing we did was to fill Shannon in on everything that had happened at the dance, since she was the only BSC member who hadn't been there. She had come to our meeting just to hear about it I don't know how she made sense of any of it, since we were all talking at once, but at any rate we had told the story up until the point when the lights came back on and Liz Connor was standing in front of Mr. Rothman, dressed in her tattered fairy princess costume.
"It was awesome," said Claudia. "Everybody just stopped what they were doing and stared at them." She shook her head and
popped three red Peanut M&Ms into her mouth.
"It was so creepy," said Jessi, with a shudder.
"Majorly creepy," agreed Kristy. "That woman was out of her gourd. It was, like, whatТs she going to do next?"
"Even the people who didn't know anything about the story were freaked out," said Mal. "Especially when she started laughing."
"She started laughing?" asked Shannon. "You mean, like someone-told-a-joke laughing?"
"No," Abby said. "Like crazed-hyena-in-the-middle-of-the-night laughing."
"She was hysterical," explained Kristy. "Completely and totally hysterical."
"So what did that teacher Ч Mr. Rothman Ч do?" asked Shannon.
"He just said, 'Let's go, Liz,' and he led her out of the gym," I replied.
"I thought he was very sweet with her," said Mary Anne.
"Well, he blames himself," I explained. "But it's not really all his fault. From what I heard afterward, it sounds as if she were unbalanced to start with, and she'd been slowly becoming more and more disturbed over the years. She was completely obsessed with what had happened to her at that dance twenty-eight years
ago. In fact, she's spent a lot of time in mental hospitals since then. That's where she went when she moved away from Stoneybrook."
"Wow," Shannon breathed. "What a story." She helped herself to a handful of M&Ms. "So was she the one who tried to ruin your dance?"
"Oh, didn't we tell you?" Abby asked. "She confessed to everything as Mr. Rothman was leading her out of the gym. She just kept babbling about all the things she'd done. Apparently she had flipped out when she discovered that SMS was planning another Mischief Night masquerade. She did her best to make sure the dance wouldn't happen, especially after she found out that Mr. Rothman had returned to SMS to teach."
"She was responsible for the lights going out in the auditorium that day," Kristy began, ticking things off on her fingers, "and for breaking those light bulbs, and cutting up the streamers Ч "
"And letТs not forget that she ruined my posters," Claudia added, "and painted things on the gym walls."
"I know I'll never forget that dummy she hung from the basketball hoop," I said, shivering. "Talk about creepy!"
"So where is she now?" asked Shannon.
"Back in a hospital," Kristy said. "At least,
thatТs what today's paper said. I hope someone there can help her."
"I just hope she never turns up at SMS again," said Mary Anne.
"So does Mr. Rothman," I added. "I saw him today in the hall, and he still looked ghost-white."
"Well, that might have been because of what the Mischief Knights did," said Kristy, leaning back in the director's chair. She grinned.
"Mischief Knights?" I asked. "I didn't know they were still causing trouble. What happened?" I couldn't believe I hadn't heard about it.
"They were pulling pranks all day," said Claudia. "It was as if they wanted everybody to know they were still active. They left their signature every time, too."
"Right," said Mary Anne. "Like, they piled candy corn in one of the trophy bowls in the display case, and left a note signed MK."
"And they put a Frankenstein mask in some girl's locker," added Claudia. "You should have heard her scream when she opened it!"
"What did they do to Mr. Rothman?" I asked.
"It was silly, really," said Kristy. "They just stuck one of those pink 'While You Were Ouf messages on his desk, with a note saying that Liz Connor had called."
"Hmmm. Not so funny, if you'd been through what he'd been through," I said.
"I guess," Kristy agreed. "But basically harmless. I think it's kind of fun having the Mischief Knights around. If Cary Retlin is involved, I hope his family doesn't move anytime soon. SMS can use a little lightening up, and I think the Mischief Knights are just the guys to do it."
"As long as the BSC doesn't end up on their bad side," I mused. "I have a feeling that might be dangerous."
"By the way, speaking of candy corn," said Claudia, "wasn't Halloween a gas?"
It had been fun. We had organized a group of sitters and kids, since several parents had called to ask us to take their kids trick-or-treating. Mary Anne, Claudia, Jessi, Mal, and I had taken a big group of kids around our neighborhood. (Kristy and Shannon took their younger brothers and sisters trick-or-treating in their neighborhood, with Abby's help.) Our group included all the Pike kids, plus Becca Ramsey, Charlotte, the Arnold twins, Matt and Haley Braddock, and a few other regular BSC clients.
We sitters wore our costumes from the night before. (Claudia's giant Twinkie costume was the kids' favorite, naturally.) But the hilarious thing was that each and every kid in our group
was dressed as Ч guess what Ч a Ghost-buster! We had a small army of Ghostbusters, and all of them were outfitted with ray guns and collection units and detectors and ghost-busting tools of every description. Those kids ghostbusted every house within a ten-block radius. They came away with their collection units empty, but their treat bags full to bursting with Halloween candy.
"I hope thatТs it for Ghostbusters," said Jessi. "If I hear that song one more time, I might throw up!"