The Ghost in the Third Row by Bruce Coville Read Free Book Online Page A

running, and it was several minutes before she managed to wind down.
    â€œNow, do you have anything to say for yourselves?” she asked at last, glaring at us as if the first person who actually did say anything would immediately be torn to pieces.
    â€œYes,” said Chris. “We do.”
    I kicked her. Hadn’t she learned there were times when it’s safer to keep your mouth shut, even if you’re in the right?
    â€œWell?” said Gwendolyn, drawing out the word very slowly. It was the most dangerous sounding “well” I had ever heard.
    I had to admire Chris. Other than a tiny tremble in her voice, which you might not have noticed if you weren’t used to the way she talked, she didn’t show any sign of backing down. She was braver than I would have been in her shoes!
    â€œWe weren’t fooling around,” said Chris. “The ghost was sitting right behind us.”
    Gwendolyn looked at Chris shrewdly. Without saying a word, she turned her attention to Melissa. “Did you see the ghost?” she asked.
    I bit the corners of my mouth to keep from smiling. If Melissa lied and said she had, which seemed to me perfectly likely, there was no telling what Gwendolyn might do to her.
    But if she told the truth, she would be admitting to Chris and me that she didn’t love the theater enough for the Woman in White to appear to her. I could almost hear the wheels turning in her head while she tried to figure out what to say. It reminded me of something my mother used to tell me when I was little: “One nice thing about the truth is it’s usually less work.”
    â€œWell?” asked Gwendolyn when Melissa didn’t answer for a long time.
    Melissa finally decided to tell the truth. “No, Mrs. Meyer, I didn’t see the ghost.” If you want my opinion, she didn’t tell the truth for any moral reason. It was just that she had decided Chris was bluffing.
    Gwendolyn stared at Melissa for a moment but didn’t say anything else. Then she turned her attention to me. Narrowing her eyes, she asked, “And what about you, Nine?”
    Well, what was I going to do? I knew Chris would never leave me hanging. So even though my stomach was turning flip-flops, I nodded my head, took a deep breath, and said, “I saw her.”
    Gwendolyn got this incredibly strange look on her face.
    â€œDescribe her to me,” she said to Chris.
    I was puzzled. If Gwendolyn didn’t believe in the ghost, what difference did it make what we thought she looked like? It wasn’t like that morning when I was testing Chris by checking her description against the script.
    Or at least, it didn’t seem that way. But as Chris described the ghost, the expression on Gwendolyn’s face began to soften. “That’s right,” she said, nodding her head in satisfaction. “That’s right.”
    I looked at her in astonishment.
    â€œThat’s just the way it was when I saw her,” she said.
    All three of us started to talk at once. Gwendolyn cut us off by simply talking louder than the three of us put together.
    â€œOh, don’t look so surprised,” she snapped. “Of course I’ve seen the ghost. It was quite awhile ago, naturally. You do know the story, don’t you? That she only appears to young women who love the theater. In fact, I’m surprised you haven’t seen her, Melissa.”
    I bit my cheeks so I wouldn’t laugh. My opinion of Gwendolyn was flipping back and forth so fast I couldn’t keep track of it. I was angry that she had lied to the rest of the cast when she told them the theater wasn’t haunted. But I could have hugged her for the little zinger she had just given Melissa.
    â€œAnyway,” said Gwendolyn, “it’s been more than a little while since I qualified as a young woman. But I saw her in my day. Oh, yes, indeed. I did see her.”
    She seemed to drift off for a moment.
    Edgar