“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
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2000 by Simon & Schuster Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
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of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
ISBN: 978-0-671-04267-7
eISBN-13: 978-1-4424-7203-7 (eBook)
First Minstrel Books printing June 2000
NANCY DREW, THE NANCY DREW NOTEBOOKS, and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.
PHX/
Carolyn Keene, The Make-Believe Mystery
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