"BSC038 - Kristy's Mystery Admirer - Martin, Ann M" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Ann M)

"How come you're so willing to believe Bart is your mystery admirer all of a sudden?" asked Shannon.
"I'm not. I mean, I don't know. But if he is, then I've invited a psycho to the Halloween Hop."
Chapter 7.
Mallory and Jessi did have a fun afternoon. It started right after lunch, as Jessi was arriving at Mal's house, and Mr. and Mrs. Pike were leaving.
Claire was running around with a clown mask on her face, calling everyone a silly-billy-goo-goo, when Margo said, "Maybe I'll be a clown for Halloween this year."
"Oh, that is so ordinary," retorted Vanessa, who is nine and plans to be a poet one day.
"Well, what are you going to be?" asked Margo. (Margo is seven.)
"A poet," replied Vanessa in a superior voice.
"What does a poet look like?" wondered Nicky. (He's eight.) But he didn't wonder for long. "I better think of a costume," he added.
"We all better," said Byron, one of the ten-year-old triplets.
"I'm going to be a giraffe," said Claire.
"In your dreams," replied Jordan (another triplet). "How would you be a giraffe? How would you see? You would have to stretch your neck out about ten feet to get your head under a giraffe mask."
Mal and Jessi laughed. They were sitting with the kids in the Pikes' rec room. The day was dreary and no one felt like going outside.
"I will wear the giraffe neck on my head/' said Claire haughtily. "I'll make little eyeholes in the neck so I can see out."
"You have to admit that's clever," said Adam, the third triplet.
The Pike kids looked impressed.
"I'm going to be a hobo this year," spoke up Nicky.
"Lame," said Jordan. "I'm going to be a mummy."
"I suppose no one's ever been a mummy before," said Mal, eyeing her brother.
Jordan made a face. Then he brightened. "I know. I'll be a headless mummy. Now that's original!"
"I wonder what I can do to look like a poet," mused Vanessa.
"Dress up like a pen?" suggested Margo.
"No, I want to look like a poet. I mean, a poetess." She paused. "Mallory? Do poetesses wear berets on their heads and look raggedy?"
"Nope. Those are starving artists," replied Mal.
The triplets began to rifle through the Pikes' box of dress-up clothes and props. They pulled out hats and masks and a doctor's bag. Then Adam found a spool of thread. A simple spool of thread.
"What's that doing in there?" asked Jessi.
"I don't know," Adam answered, "but I just got a great idea."
"What?" asked the others.
"You guys, we should make a haunted house in our basement. We'll set it up on Hallo ween — that's a Saturday — and during the day, kids can come through it. We'll have ghosts and moving things and lots of scary stuff. We can use the thread for cobwebs. We'll charge ten cents or maybe twenty-five cents apiece. Everyone will get their money's worth!"
"That," replied Jordan, "really is a great idea."
"Can we all help?" asked Nicky. (Sometimes the triplets do things on their own. And they often leave Nicky out, even though he's the only other boy in the Pike household.)
But — "Sure, you can all help," said Adam surprisingly. "We'll need lots of people. We'll need someone to answer the door and take kids down to the basement. We'll need someone else to lead each kid through the haunted house. And we'll need dressed-up people, like ghosts and headless mummies to walk around. Real people are scarier than fake ones."
"You know what else?" said Vanessa. (She
was about to make a very un-Vanessa-like suggestion.) "There should be a part of the haunted house where we blindfold people. Then we make them put their hands in peeled grapes and cold spaghetti and stuff. We'll tell them the grapes are eyeballs and the spaghetti is brains. They will be so grossed out!"
"Vanessa, you're a genius!" exclaimed Jordan.
"Not really," she replied modestly. "I saw it on TV."
"Well, anyway, we'll definitely do that," said Jordan.
"And we'll play a haunted-house sound effects tape," added Adam. "The kids will hear moaning and groaning and screaming and doors slamming and the wind howling and thunder and everything!" Adam was all worked up.
Claire looked a little scared, but she covered up her feelings. She didn't want to be left out of the family project.
The Pike kids fell into silence. Their thoughts must have drifted from Halloween, because the next thing that was said was, "Do you think we can really beat the Bashers?" (That was Nicky.)
"In the World Series?" asked Margo.
Nicky nodded. "What do you think, Mal-lory?"
"I don't know. You beat them before, but I think you'll have to try very hard not to be nervous during the big game."
"And the cheerleaders will try very hard to ... to, um ... to lead the Krushers to victory," said Vanessa dramatically. "Hey! I've got an idea. Since the World Series game will be played right before Halloween, Charlotte and Haley and I should wear costumes. I mean, Halloween costumes."
"That would be cool," said Nicky. Then he looked out the window. "It isn't raining, Mal-lory. Can Claire and Margo and I practice catching and hitting in the backyard?"
"Sure," replied Mallory.
The kids split up then. The three younger ones went outside. The triplets began planning the spook house. And Vanessa got on the phone with her fellow cheerleaders to discuss costumes. She called Haley first.
"Hi, Haley. It's Vanessa. Listen, I've got this idea." She explained her plan to Haley, who must have liked it. Then she said, "What? A group of three? Oh, I see what you mean. All right. I'll think about it. You call Charlotte, then call me back, okay?"
Vanessa hung up. She returned to the rec room, where Mallory was giving the triplets a hand with their haunted house. (Jessi had gone outdoors to help Claire, Margo, and Nicky.)
"Haley says that cheerleaders should dress alike," Vanessa reported to Mal. '-So we have to be the Three Somethings, only we don't know what."