Surprise Party Read online

  “What?”

  “Yeah. I just got a call. Someone whispering. I think it was a guy. But I couldn’t tell. It could have been a girl.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “Not to help out with the party. He said I wouldn’t make it to the party if it did take place. I’d be in the hospital.”

  “Someone’s playing a stupid joke—right?”

  “I don’t know, Meg. Whoever it was sounded pretty serious.”

  “Oh, come on, Tony. You think he meant it?” Meg was now suddenly disappointed that Tony was taking this seriously. She wanted him to tell her that it was just a joke, that she should just forget about it. Why did he sound more frightened than she did?

  “Who do you think it was, Meg?”

  “I don’t know. Some kid from school. Someone who’s bummed out because he doesn’t have a date tonight.”

  “Maybe.” Tony didn’t sound convinced. “But we don’t know anyone who would do anything that dumb. What if—what if—”

  “What, Tony?” Meg asked impatiently.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we should take it seriously. You know, call the police or something.”

  “What? Get real!” Meg cried angrily. “I wouldn’t—”

  “I’m just worried about you. That’s all,” he broke in. “I don’t want some creep doing something horrible to you because of a stupid party.”

  “It isn’t a stupid party,” Meg insisted. “It’s a party for Ellen. My best friend. And I’m not going to let one gross phone call that’s probably just some moron’s idea of a funny joke stop me from doing what I want to do.”

  After a long silence Tony agreed. “Yeah. You’re right. I guess I just got a little shook.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell,” Meg said, forcing her voice down, trying to calm herself and speak softly.

  “So… should I come over and… uh… comfort you a little?” Tony asked. It sounded more like pleading than asking.

  Meg laughed. “No. I shouldn’t even be talking to you. I should be writing my psych paper.”

  “Was that a yes?”

  “No. It was definitely a no.”

  “But you mean yes, right?”

  Meg laughed. It was nice to hear Tony teasing her again, kidding around. “I mean no. Really.”

  “You mean you need a little comforting, right?”

  “No. Give me a break. I need a little writing time. I—”

  “You know you won’t be able to concentrate on your paper.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “You said yes! I heard you!”

  Meg laughed. “I said no.”

  “But you meant yes?”

  “Well… maybe.”

  “Maybe? I’ll take a maybe,” Tony said happily. “I’ll be right over.”

  “Okay,” Meg said, just as happily.

  CHAPTER 3

  MONDAY AFTERNOON

  Meg propped her Government text in front of her on the table and looked around the study hall. What was all that noise in the back of the room? She quickly saw that it was just Cory Brooks and his friend David Metcalf from the gymnastics team clowning around on a tabletop.

  The study hall was a wide, windowless rectangular room kept blindingly bright by long rows of fluorescent lights suspended high over wooden tables that stretched nearly the width of the room. A small desk stood at the front for the study hall monitor. The desk was empty now, Meg saw. Mrs. Frankel was always late, which gave Cory and David time to do their act on the tabletop.

  “Hi,” Shannon said, giving Meg a weary wave and taking her usual seat in the row behind her.

  “Hi,” Meg echoed, searching her bookbag for the invitations she had bought.

  “Foster doesn’t realize school’s almost out,” Shannon complained. “He started a whole new unit this morning.”

  “Bad break,” Meg muttered. She didn’t really know what Shannon was talking about. She just knew that Shannon hated Mr. Foster, hated school, and hated work of any kind. Shannon never failed to come into study hall without one complaint or another.

  “What do you think of these?” Meg asked, holding up the package of invitations. They were Day-Glo green and pink with the words COME TO A SURPRISE PARTY in silvery ink.

  “What are they?” Shannon asked, deftly applying dark red lipstick to her pouty lips.

  “Invitations. To Ellen’s party. Is that a new color?”

  “Yeah. I saw it in a magazine. What do you think?”

  “Very… uh… dramatic.”

  “Meg, are you sure this party is a good idea?” She dropped the lipstick tube into her bag and rummaged around for a tissue.

  “I don’t know. I think so. I just think it would be nice to show Ellen we still care. The three of us were best friends for a long time, after all. And Ellen went with Evan for so long, she was practically part of your family.”

  Meg immediately regretted saying that. Shannon gave her a bitter look. She blotted her lips with the tissue and didn’t say anything. Finally, after Meg had turned back to the front, Shannon said, “How can you send out invitations when you don’t know where the party will be?”

  “I had a great idea about that,” Meg said. “You know, my dad’s company did the reconstruction on the old Halsey Manor House. He said we could have it for free if we promised to do a perfect cleanup job.”

  “That old house in the Fear Street woods?” Shannon cried, surprised. “Yuck. It’s creepy back there. Why would you want to—”

  “The house has been completely restored. It’s like new inside. It’s a great place for parties now. And think how nice it’ll be not to have any adults around to bug us.”

  Shannon agreed that the no-adults part was good. But she started to protest about having the party on Fear Street, when Mrs. Frankel showed up and started shouting for everyone to get quiet and start studying.

  Meg turned to the front of the room and opened the package of invitations. She started to fill in the first one. All of this talk about Ellen was bringing back a flood of memories. She had a lot of good memories of Ellen. She could remember dozens of exciting and happy times they had spent together since they had met in elementary school.

  But now when she thought about Ellen, her mind was drawn to the tragedy of the year before. Ellen and Evan had seemed so much in love. And then, in an instant, Evan was dead. And everything was changed.

  Sure, Evan could be crazy sometimes. Sure, he was headstrong and impulsive, always getting himself into one kind of trouble or another. But he could be so lovable, too, so full of fun… so full of life.

  For a long time it was impossible for any of them to accept the fact that he was dead.

  It still was impossible.

  Meg looked around the large room. Just about everyone who was involved in the tragic accident, just about everyone who had been involved with Evan, was in this study hall.

  Her eyes roamed from face to face. There was Shannon, Evan’s sister. She seemed to lose some of her life when Evan lost his. She had always been so enthusiastic about everything, so spirited, so ready to have fan. Evan’s death had caused her to withdraw. She didn’t seem to need her friends as much. It was as if she were pulling into herself, hardening herself, forcing herself not to need anyone else so that she couldn’t be hurt by another loss in the same way.

  Tony sat near the back, writing intently in a notebook. He and Evan had been buddies. Tony had admired Evan, looked up to him, Meg realized, for his wildness, for the fact that Evan didn’t care what people thought of him, for his need to do what he felt like when he felt like it. Tony wished he could be that way. But he was too hung up to be that free and easy, too worried about being poor in a school where most kids were better off, too concerned about being accepted by other kids.

  Tony had tried to act tough when he learned that Evan was dead. But at the funeral he broke down and sobbed. Ever since he’d been so moody.

  On the other side of the room sat her cousin Brian. With his w
avy blond hair, blue eyes, and dimpled grin, Brian looked like an innocent kid. But Meg knew that Brian wasn’t as happy-go-lucky as he looked. He was a strange guy who kept mostly to himself.

  Right now he wasn’t studying. He was reading a copy of Dragon magazine. He spent most of his time playing that game Wizards & Dungeons, hanging out with his friend Dwayne, talking about Fourth-Level Warriors and dragons and stuff Meg wasn’t the least bit interested in.

  Brian and Evan hadn’t been friends. But Brian had been in the Fear Street woods that awful day. Brian heard the shot and came running. Brian told everyone that he found Evan lying dead on the ground, Ellen sitting beside him, crying, unable to talk, unable to say a word, unable to explain.

  What had Brian been doing alone in the Fear Street woods? No one knew. But Brian had changed, too, because of Evan’s death. Afterward, he seemed to become even more involved in the strange fantasy games he played. His grades, which had been excellent, began to slip. His parents, Meg’s aunt and uncle, were very worried. But they felt helpless. They didn’t know what to do about Brian.

  One death, Meg thought. One boy dies in the woods, and so many lives are affected.

  She didn’t know whom to feel more sorry for. Maybe Ellen. Poor Ellen. Ellen probably felt the most guilty. If only she had been able to stop Evan from going into the Fear Street woods.

  The story went that he was going to spend the night there on a dare. Who had dared him? He wouldn’t tell Ellen. “I just need some excitement,” he told her. He grabbed his father’s hunting rifle—just in case—and hurried off to Fear Street. Ellen begged him to leave the rifle home. But he refused.

  She went home, but she was too worried to stay there. She went to Fear Street and tried to find him in the woods. She heard a shot, the fatal shot, the shot that changed all of their lives. She heard it and followed the sound of it till she found Evan, lying face down, his left shoe tangled in an upraised tree root.

  He was already dead. His foot must have tangled in the root. He must have tripped and fallen, and the gun went off. And that was it.

  A few minutes later Brian arrived and found them. Nearly in shock himself, Brian managed to help Ellen out of the woods, away from Fear Street.

  A tragic accident. Ellen had never been able to talk about it with anyone. A few months later her family moved away. No one had heard from her—until now.

  Maybe we can all be good friends again, Meg thought, with her usual optimism.

  “Meg! Meg Dalton! Meg!” A voice broke into her thoughts.

  She looked up. Mrs. Frankel was calling her. “Meg, you must be reading a very exciting chapter. I’ve been calling you for five minutes.”

  Meg could feel her face growing hot. She knew she was blushing. “Sorry.”

  “There’s a message for you at the office. Come up and get a pass.”

  Meg left the invitations on the table and, still blushing, went up to get the pass. Who had left her a message? Was it from home? Was someone sick or something?

  She grabbed the pass off the desk and started to jog down the hall. “Hi, Meg. What’s happening? Did you hear about Gary breaking up with Krista?” It was Lisa sitting in the hall monitor’s chair.

  “Sorry, Lisa. I’ll call you later,” Meg said. “I’m kinda in a hurry.” Lisa looked surprised that she didn’t want to stop for some hot gossip, but Meg kept hurrying on to the office.

  When she got inside, out of breath, a nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach, there was no one at the front desk. “Anyone here?” she called. No reply. Finally Miss Markins, the office secretary, appeared from the inner office. She looked surprised to see Meg.

  “They told me there was a message here for me,” Meg said.

  Miss Markins pursed her lips and shook her head. She looked through a stack of pink message slips on her desk. “No. None for you, Meg.”

  “Are you sure?” Meg insisted. “They just told me in study hall.”

  Miss Markins looked annoyed that Meg hadn’t taken her word, but she grudgingly looked through the messages one more time. “Sorry. Must be a mix-up.”

  “A mix-up. Yeah. I guess so. Thanks,” Meg said. She turned and walked slowly out of the office. In a way she was relieved. A message in the office was seldom good news. But why had someone called her to the office if there was no message there for her?

  She stopped and chatted with Lisa for several minutes. There was no point in hurrying back to study hall. She wasn’t going to get any studying done. That was obvious. And she could work on the invitations after school.

  “What are you doing after school?” she asked Lisa. “Want to come over and help me write invitations?”

  “I can’t,” Lisa said, flipping a pencil up toward the ceiling and catching it. “I have a Spectator meeting. We’re planning our last issue. I know everyone’s waiting breathlessly for it, right?” Lisa was assistant editor of the school paper.

  “But I’d love to help out with the party,” Lisa added quickly. “Ellen and I weren’t really close or anything, but I always liked her.”

  They talked for a few more minutes. Then Meg headed back to study hall. Lisa’s so funny, Meg thought. She has such a sharp sense of humor. Meg liked Lisa’s sophisticated looks too. I wish I could be more like her, she thought, instead of such a babyface.

  She tossed the hall pass back onto Mrs. Frankel’s desk. Mrs. Frankel didn’t even look up. Her head was buried in the test papers she was grading. Meg took her seat. She looked around the room for a moment, glanced at her watch, and then looked down at the table.

  Oh!

  The party invitations.

  Someone had cut them all into tiny pieces.

  Who would do such a horrible thing?

  Meg spun around and faced Shannon. Shannon didn’t look up from her book.

  “Hey—”

  Shannon finally noticed Meg. She closed the book, keeping her place with her finger.

  “Did you see anyone come over to my desk?”

  “No,” Shannon whispered, her eyes on Mrs. Frankel at the front of the room. “I wasn’t here. I went to the library to get this book. I just got back a second ago.”

  Meg stared hard at Shannon. She felt guilty for suspecting her friend. Shannon wasn’t happy about having the party for Ellen, but she would never do something like this—would she?

  She started to show Shannon the cut-up invitations, then she thought about the whispered phone call she had gotten on Saturday night.

  Was the creep who made that call right in the same study hall with her now? Was it Shannon?

  No. Of course not. How stupid.

  But then, who was it?

  She gathered up the pieces of the invitations and began to sweep them into her bag. Then she searched in her bag for a pen. There was ten minutes left to study hall. She could start making a list of all the things she needed to buy for the party.

  Someone yawned loudly near the back door, and everyone laughed. Meg found a pen and opened her notebook to a clean sheet of paper. Things to Buy, she wrote up at the top.

  “Meg, please come up here,” Mrs. Frankel called.

  Now what?

  She closed the notebook and hurried up to Mrs. Frankel’s desk. “You seem to have another message at the office,” Mrs. Frankel said, looking perturbed.

  “Are you sure?” Meg asked.

  “I’m not sure about anything around here,” Mrs. Frankel said dryly. “But you’d better go check.”

  Meg hurried back down the hall, passing Lisa with a shrug, as if to say, I don’t know what I’m doing back here again, either.

  Maybe Miss Markins found the first message, Meg thought. And yes, when she got to the office, Miss Markins had a long, white envelope for her. “I guess someone left this for you,” Miss Markins said. “I just found it on the counter. I didn’t see who left it.”

  Meg thanked her and took the envelope out into the hall to open. It was sealed tightly and took her a while to tear open. She put out a piece of li
ned, white notebook paper and unfolded it.

  The words on the paper were written in sloppy block letters with a red crayon. She read them three times.

  MEG, I’M WATCHING YOU. DON’T HAVE THE PARTY. I DON’T WANT TO HURT YOU—BUT I WILL.

  CHAPTER 4

  LATER, MONDAY AFTERNOON

  “Hey, Shannon—wait up! I want to talk to you!”

  Shannon turned around in the crowded hallway, swinging her bulging backpack over her shoulder. “Can’t. I’m late. I have a dentist appointment.”

  Meg pushed through a laughing group of kids and hurried to catch up to her. The bell had rung before Meg could get back to the study hall. She looked for Tony. She wanted to show him the threatening note. But she didn’t see him in the room or in the hall.

  “Shannon—wait up!”

  “I can’t. Really. Call me tonight, okay?” Shannon turned and disappeared around the corner.

  “Hey—you see Shannon?” It was Dwayne Colligan. He towered over Meg. All she could see was his blue T-shirt stretched tightly across his muscular chest.

  He’s so big, he doesn’t look like a teenager, Meg thought. Maybe he was held back five or six times. All of the hours he should have been studying and doing homework, he must have been working out.

  “You just missed her,” she said coldly. She didn’t like Dwayne, and she didn’t like the idea of Dwayne and Shannon. He wasn’t good enough for her. He wasn’t good enough for her dog. She was glad that Shannon agreed. Meg didn’t even like Dwayne hanging out with her cousin Brian, but there was nothing she could do about that.

  “If you see her, tell her I’ve got something for her!” Dwayne shouted over the noise of the corridor.

  “What?” Meg asked.

  He gave her an exaggerated wink and a big, dirty smile in reply, and trotted off, laughing as if he’d just made the best joke in the world.

  Ugh, Meg thought. He’s so gross. Shannon is going to have to tell him to get lost, once and for all.

  She walked back to the study hall to collect her things, then headed up to her locker on the second floor. “Hey, Tony—hi!” He was standing at his locker, leaning against the wall with one hand, reading a piece of paper in his other hand.