The Make-Believe Mystery (5 page)

“Why are we doing this again?” Bess asked Nancy.

“We're catching the notebook thief,” Nancy replied. “Shh!”

They stood in total silence for the next few minutes. Nancy fidgeted uncomfortably. It was hard to stay still. She could feel Bess and George fidgeting, too.

After a while they heard footsteps coming down the hall. Actually, it was more like the sound of rubber soles squeaking on the linoleum floor. Nancy motioned for the girls to step back, and held her breath.

The squeaking stopped. Nancy listened very carefully. She heard the sound of paper rustling, and then a small ripping sound. It was like the sound of tape being ripped from a tape dispenser.

Nancy gave Bess and George a signal. All at once, the three girls popped out of their hiding place.

“Phoebe!” Bess cried out.

Phoebe was standing at one of the cubbies. She had a note in her hand, written in drippy red ink. She was just about to tape it to the cubby.

Seeing Nancy and her friends, Phoebe gasped and dropped the note to the floor. Nancy picked it up.

It said:

FOUR MOONS

FIVE RUSTY RATS

SIX GIRLS WITH BALLOONS

“I don't get it,” George said, looking confused. “Does this mean you stole our purple notebook? Pretended to steal it, I mean?”

Phoebe hung her head. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Why, Phoebe?” Nancy asked her.

“I'm really sorry,” Phoebe said in a quiet voice. “See, when I got the notebook on Monday, and it was my turn to write my part, I kind of, um . . . I just couldn't seem to write it. No matter how hard I tried, the words just wouldn't come out.”

“I think that's called writer's blocks,” Bess offered.

“Writer's
block,”
George corrected.

“Yeah, that,” Phoebe said, nodding. “Anyway, I didn't want to let you guys down. And I didn't want to lose my bet to that creep Brenda. So I decided I'd pretend that the notebook got stolen.”

“Why were you doing this stuff with the notes?” Nancy asked her.

Phoebe shrugged. “I don't know. Just to make things more confusing. I figured, if you guys had enough suspects and clues
and weird stuff happening, you'd never suspect me.”

She added, “Plus, Mrs. Reynolds would probably get so mad about the notes that she'd cancel the whole short-story contest or something. That way I definitely wouldn't lose my bet to Brenda, because the bet would be off.”

George turned to Nancy. “How did you know? That it was Phoebe, I mean.”

“Emily told us that she never talked to Phoebe at her cubby yesterday,” Nancy explained to George and Bess.

“Oh, yeah,” Phoebe said, shaking her head. “I made up that story about Emily to make her and her teammates look guilty. I guess that was a dumb lie to tell.” She looked at the girls, her eyes shiny with tears. “I'm really sorry about everything. I should have just told you guys the truth, from the beginning.”

“Yeah, you should have,” Bess told her, pouting angrily.

“You really let us down,” Nancy added.

George nodded in agreement.

“I'm really, really sorry,” Phoebe said again.

She looked so upset that Nancy felt sorry for her. “You really
should
have told us the truth from the beginning,” Nancy said. “We could have helped you with your ending.” She glanced at George and Bess and added, “I guess we still could.”

George shrugged. “Yeah, okay.”

Bess shrugged, too. “We
are
a team.” She stopped pouting and smiled a little at Phoebe.

• • •

On Friday, the day the stories were due, Nancy got up in front of the class to read her team's story. Her team was going first, and she had butterflies in her stomach. She looked at all the faces of her classmates, took a deep breath, and began reading:

“Once upon a time, there was a school called Carl Sandburg Elementary School. It was a really nice school, and everyone liked it there.

“That is, until the ghost started haunting it.

“At first no one believed there
was
a ghost. After all, ghosts don't really
exist, right? But then everyone
had
to believe it because of the weird stuff that started happening.

“One morning one of the kids found this note taped to his cubby:

“A TIN BRASS GOOSE

TWO BLUE RATS

THREE WHISPERING CATS

“It was written in creepy-looking red ink that looked like blood. Or maybe it
was
blood. The teachers and the principal figured one of the kids had written it. The principal said during the morning announcements that the person who wrote it should come forward right away. But no one did.

“And then someone found the
second
note.

“The person who found the second note was a really cute girl named Tess. Tess had awesome taste in clothes. In fact, she was wearing a really cute pink T-shirt that day, and these cool jeans with daisy patches.

“Anyway, Tess found the note taped to her cubby. It was written in creepy-looking red ink, just like the first one. It said:

“FOUR MOONS

FIVE RUSTY RATS

SIX GIRLS WITH BALLOONS

“Tess was really freaked out by the note. She screamed at the top of her lungs. A bunch of kids came running up to her and asked her what was going on. (Some of them asked her where she got her T-shirt. She told them at Girl Power, at the mall.)

“What did the notes mean? No one could figure them out. And then one day this girl named Gerry was walking down the hall after soccer practice. She was going over some key moves in her mind because there was a big game coming up.

“Anyway, she was turning the corner and thinking about headers when she saw
it.

“She saw
the ghost!

“Right away Gerry stopped thinking about soccer. She tried her hardest not to scream.

“The ghost was an old man with white hair and glasses. He was wearing a suit with a vest and a bow tie. Gerry knew he was a ghost and not a real person because his skin was kind of silvery white, like a ghost's.

“Gerry stopped and stared at him. He stopped and stared at her. Gerry wondered if she should do a header on him, to scare him away.

“Then the ghost opened his ghostly mouth. In a low, ghostly voice he said: ‘The fog comes on little cat feet.' It sounded like some sort of poem.

“Then the ghost disappeared.

“Gerry was really freaked out. But she decided that maybe if she and Tess teamed up, they could solve the mystery of the ghost.

“Gerry and Tess came up with a plan. One day, after school, they waited in the place where Gerry had seen the ghost. They hid in a doorway and waited, and waited.

“After a while, the ghost appeared! Tess started to scream, but Gerry kicked her, so Tess shut up.

“The ghost looked right and left. He had another one of those bloody-looking notes. He was about to tape it to one of the kids' cubbies. “'One, two, three,' Gerry whispered. ‘Go!'

“She and Tess jumped out from their hiding place and yelled: ‘Boo!'

“The ghost screamed. ‘Oh, my, you surprised me,' he said.

“His voice was so familiar. It was the voice of Mr. Byron, one of the teachers at Carl Sandburg Elementary School.

“In the end, it turned out that Mr. Byron was pretending to be the ghost of Carl Sandburg.

“Carl Sandburg was a real-life writer who used to live in Chicago. Carl Sandburg Elementary School was named after him.

“The notes had stuff in them from Carl Sandburg's poems and short stories.

“Anyway, Mr. Byron used to be an
actor before he became a teacher. He sometimes liked to dress up in costumes and act stuff out to help the kids learn. He thought that pretending to be the ghost at Carl Sandburg and giving the kids a mystery to solve would help them learn about the person the school was named for.

“And Gerry and Tess solved the mystery!”

“The end,” Nancy said. She glanced up from the purple notebook and took another deep breath.

The class burst into applause. Even Brenda was clapping a little. Mrs. Reynolds had a big smile on her face. So did Phoebe, Bess, and George.

“That was an excellent story,” Mrs. Reynolds said. “Good work, girls.” She added, “Let's see—the next team up will be Jason Hutchings's team. Jason?”

Jason rose from his desk and shuffled up to the front of the class. Nancy sat down at her desk and listened as Jason began reading a story about a mad science teacher at Carl Sandburg
Elementary School. The teacher, Mr. Bizzarobrain, was trying to make cats and rats morph into giant mutants that would take over the school.

Bess leaned across the aisle toward Nancy. “Cats and rats!” she whispered. “That's why George heard Jason and Mike talking about cats and rats.”

“I guess so,” Nancy replied, grinning.

Nancy settled back in her chair. As Mike read, her thoughts drifted to the mystery of the stolen purple notebook. All the loose ends were getting tied up.

She'd talked to Emily that morning about why she'd had two purple notebooks on Wednesday, and why she had acted so nervous about talking to Nancy. It turned out that not only had Emily had her team's purple notebook then, but one of her own that happened to look just like it.

Emily was nervous about talking to Nancy because Brenda had told her, Alison, and Jenny that Nancy's team would be trying to worm their story idea out of them. Brenda had said that they were not to talk to Nancy, Bess, George,
or Phoebe about the short-story contest under any circumstances.

Nancy snapped to attention when Brenda got up to read
her
team's story. It was called “The Monster That Ate the State.” It didn't have a whole lot to do with Carl Sandburg Elementary School except that the monster that ate the state they lived in happened to eat the school, too.

After Brenda, Andrew Leoni read a story about everyone's homework getting stolen. Then Julia Santos read a story about a bunch of art projects getting trashed. Then Mari Cheng read a story about someone's science experiment blowing up and turning all the kids and teachers purple. Finally, Katie Zaleski read a story about the principal getting kidnapped by aliens.

At the end of all the readings, everyone voted on the best story. After taking a tally of hands, Mrs. Reynolds announced: “And the winner is . . . Nancy Drew's team! Your story will be published in the next school newsletter.”

“Yes!” Bess shouted. She and Nancy exchanged high fives. George and Phoebe, across the room, were smiling happily.

Nancy turned to look at Brenda. She wasn't smiling at all.

• • •

Later at lunch, while Phoebe, Bess, and George were eating and talking about their big win, Nancy got out her blue detective notebook. She wrote:

I'm really glad we won first prize. Phoebe told Mrs. Reynolds about what she did, and she even told Brenda that she didn't have to sharpen pencils for her. So everything turned out okay.

Mrs. Reynolds said that writing stories is easier and more fun when you work as a team. It's really true.

Plus, it goes for solving mysteries, too!

Case closed.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Aladdin
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Division
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www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright © 2000 by Simon & Schuster Inc.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
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ISBN: 978-0-671-04267-7
eISBN-13: 978-1-4424-7203-7 (eBook)

First Minstrel Books printing June 2000