Nancy clicked the purple part on top and started to write with purple ink. Then she changed her mind. She clicked the green part. Green ink!
She drew a picture of three large green pizzas.
“How many slices are there in a large pizza?” Nancy asked Bess.
“Eight,” Bess said.
“What are you two doing?” George called from across the room.
“Shhh!” Jessie said to George.
George got up and came over to sit with Nancy and Bess.
“What are you doing?” she asked again. But she whispered this time.
“Trying to figure something out,” Nancy whispered back. She divided each pizza in her notebook into eight slices.
“How many people live at Laura McCorry’s house?” Nancy asked. “Does she have any brothers or sisters?”
“She has a big brother who’s in high school,” Bess said. “Why?”
“I’m trying to figure out how many slices of pizza Laura’s family can eat,” Nancy said. “How many do you think her brother would eat?”
“That depends on what kind of pizza it is,” George joked.
Nancy laughed, but Bess shook her head.
“No, it doesn’t,” Bess said. “I’ve seen her brother. He’s huge. He’d eat any kind. I think he’d eat about six slices.”
“Okay,” Nancy said. She put a B for brother in six of the slices of pizza in her drawing. “How many do you think Laura’s parents would eat?”
“About three each,” George said. “So that makes six more.”
Nancy wrote a P for parents in six of the slices.
“I think Laura would eat one or two slices,” Bess said.
So Nancy put an Lspan> for Laura in two of the slices. Then she counted up all the slices that were eaten. Fourteen! But that meant ten pieces were still left.
Nancy looked at what she had written in her notebook. Then she reached into the notebook pocket. She took out the notes Rebecca had been sent. She read those again.
“You’ll be sorry. Your party is doomed!”
“We have a SECRET.”
“We’re having a party—and YOU can’t come!”
Only the note that had arrived that day was written in blue ink. But the printing was exactly the same as the others.
Nancy squeezed her eyes shut for a minute and asked herself three questions:
1. Who stole the party invitations—and why?
2. Who wrote the notes—and why?
3. Who stole the rose from the top of Rebecca’s birthday cake—and why?
Then Nancy opened her eyes. “You know what I think?” she asked.
But Bess and George weren’t paying attention to her.
George was watching the movie.
Bess was staring at something behind Nancy. Before Nancy could turn around, Bess opened her mouth as wide as she could and screamed.
Nancy turned around. Framed in the window was a horrible, scary monster with claws!
8
The Secret Comes Out
Nancy froze. She stared at the scary face for a minute. It howled and tried to claw the window.
Bess screamed again.
Jessie screamed.
Katie screamed.
Then Rebecca screamed loudest of all. She put her hands to her cheeks and threw her head back. She screamed just like the girl in the haunted house movie.
Only George and Nancy stayed calm.
Nancy went to the front door. Slowly she opened it. George was right behind her.
“Nancy! George! Don’t go out there!” the girls cried.
But they didn’t listen. Nancy picked up a flashlight that was on a table by the front door. Shining it into the darkness, she walked down the front steps with George and stopped.
Something in the bushes moved.
“Who’s there?” Nancy called.
Something in the bushes growled. But it didn’t sound like an animal to Nancy. It sounded more like someone she knew.
“No one!” said a boy’s voice.
“Come out of there!” George ordered.
They waited. Finally the bushes moved again. Someone came out. Another someone followed. It was Jason Hutchings and Mike Minelli.
Jason and Mike were wearing scary makeup. They growled at Nancy and started to run past her.
Just then Mrs. Ramirez came into the yard. She was holding another flashlight.
“What’s going on here?” Mrs. Ramirez asked. She shone her light on Jason and Mike. Rebecca and the other girls crowded behind Mrs. Ramirez.
“I told you they were trying to ruin my party!” Rebecca said. “They stole my party invitations. And wrote those horrible notes. And they took the rose from the cake, too!”
“We didn’t do any of that stuff!” Mike Minelli said.
“All we did was squirt you with our water guns,” Jason said.
“Huh?” Rebecca said.
“We squirted you when you were outside in the backyard,” Mike said. “Jason and David and I sneaked over here and hid behind the bushes. Then we fired our water guns into the air, over the top of the hedge.”
“Ohhh!” Bess said. “We thought it was rain.”
Jason and Mike laughed.
“That wasn’t very nice, boys,” Mrs. Ramirez scolded.
The boys tried to stop laughing. But they weren’t doing a very good job.
“See?” Rebecca said. “They were trying to ruin my party!”
“No, we weren’t,” Jason said. “We just wanted to have some fun. I had to try out my birthday presents. I got a water machine gun and this monster makeup kit.”
“But that’s all we did,” Mike said. “I promise.”
“Liar,” Katie said. “Somebody ate the rose from the cake. It must have been one of you.”
“Never mind, girls,” Mrs. Ramirez said. “Let’s go back inside. And, Jason, you and your friend go back home right now.”
Rebecca made a face at Jason. Then, with her nose in the air, she marched into the house. Nancy and the other girls went in, too.
“I don’t think he’s lying,” Nancy said.
“You don’t?” George asked. “Why not?”
“Because of the pizza.” When Nancy said this, everyone stopped.
“The pizza?” Rebecca asked.
“Yes.” Nancy grinned. “I’ll show you. I think I’ve figured out the mystery. It’s all in my notebook.”
Nancy sat down in the middle of the sleeping bags. The other girls gathered around. Even Mrs. Ramirez stood in the doorway.
“Look at these pizzas,” Nancy said, and she showed them her drawings.
“I can’t prove it,” Nancy said. “But I think Laura McCorry is having a party right now. That’s the secret. There are three parties on this block tonight! That’s why Laura had so much pizza delivered. She needed extra for her friends.”
Rebecca looked from her mother to Nancy. “You think Laura stole my party invitations?”
Nancy nodded. “It would be easy. You said she comes over a lot.”
“And you think she sent me those notes?”
Nancy nodded again. “Maybe she has a green pen. But one note was in blue ink. So maybe she has one like this,” Nancy said. She held up Courtney’s special pen with six colors of ink. “Then she could write in any color.”
“That is Laura’s pen!” Courtney said. “I borrowed it from her today at school and forgot to give it back.”
“Hmmm,” Nancy said. “That must be why the last note was in blue ink. Laura didn’t have her pen.”
“But what about the rose on the cake?” Bess asked.
“I haven’t figured out that part of the mystery yet,” Nancy said.
All the girls were very quiet.
“I guess Laura was hurt because I didn’t invite her to the party,” Rebecca finally said.
“Well, who could blame her?” said Rebecca’s mother. “I know I told you that you could only invite eight people. But you played with her all summer. A
nd she does live right across the street.”
“What can we do now?” Rebecca asked her mother.
“I’ll call Laura’s mother,” Mrs. Ramirez said. “We’ll help you work it out.”
A few minutes later the girls heard a knock at the front door. Rebecca ran to open it. Laura, her mother, and two of Laura’s friends were standing there. One of them was Lindsay Mitchell. The other was Jennifer Young, another girl from Rebecca’s class.
In her hand Laura had a stack of envelopes—the missing party invitations!
“I’m sorry I took these.” Laura handed the invitations to Rebecca. “I came over on Tuesday night to borrow your tape player. But you were upstairs. I saw the party invitations on the counter, and there wasn’t one for me. I got mad. Anyway, I’m really sorry.”
Rebecca looked sad. “Did you write me those notes?” she asked.
Laura nodded.
“Did you steal the biggest rose from the middle of my birthday cake, too?” Rebecca asked.
“No,” Lindsay Mitchell said. “I did that. We came over to spy on your party. I saw the cake, and I wanted that rose. I was still mad that I didn’t get a cupcake at school. But now I feel bad that I took the rose.”
“Well,” Rebecca said slowly, “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
Rebecca went over to her mother and whispered to her. Mrs. Ramirez nodded, smiled, and gave Laura’s mother a wink.
“Laura, will you and Lindsay and Jennifer come to my party now?” Rebecca asked. “My mom said it would be okay. We’re watching a scary movie. You could bring your sleeping bags and sleep here.”
“Really?” Laura said. She looked at Lindsay and Jennifer. They nodded. “We’ll bring the extra pizza, too. We’ve got tons of it. We ordered too much, even for my brother!”
Everyone laughed. “It’s a good thing,” Nancy said. “The pizza was my best clue.”
“Clue?” Courtney said. “You sound like a detective.”
Nancy thought about that. A detective. It sounded good. She would love to solve mysteries when she grew up.
In fact, Nancy thought, she was a detective already. She had a special notebook for writing down clues. And she had just solved her first case!
For the next few minutes the girls talked about how Nancy had saved the day. Rebecca passed out the invitations. Everyone loved the hair clips.
Then Mrs. Ramirez told them it was time to settle down. The girls changed into their pajamas and found cozy places to curl up. They started the movie all over again when Laura, Lindsay, and Jennifer returned.
Nancy snuggled into her sleeping bag. But she wasn’t ready to watch the movie yet. She pulled out her notebook. Inside the front cover she wrote:
Nancy Drew’s Notebook
Then she turned to the next clean page. It was the one right after the pizza drawings. She wrote:
Today I solved the Case of the Slumber Party Secret. The secret was that you can’t keep a party a secret—even if you try.
Rebecca’s party turned out okay. She got to give us the invitations she made. They really are neat. So are the rainbow ribbon hair clips. But the best part is that I became a detective.
Next time something mysterious happens, I’ll solve that problem, too.
Case closed.
Ready-for-Chapters
Enjoy the very best first chapter book fiction in Ready-for-Chapters books from Aladdin Paperbacks.
Jake Drake, Bully Buster
by Andrew Clements
Annabel the Actress
Starring in Gorilla My
Dreams
by Ellen Conford
The Bears on Hemlock
Mountain
by Alice Dalgliesh
The Courage of Sarah
Noble
by Alice Dalgliesh
The Girl with 500 Middle
Names
by Margaret Peterson Haddix
The Werewolf Club
#1 The Magic Pretzel
by Daniel Pinkwater
The Werewolf Club
#2 The Lunchroom of Doom
by Daniel Pinkwater
The Werewolf Club
#3 The Werewolf Club Meets
Dorkula
by Daniel Pinkwater
The Cobble Street Cousins
#1 In Aunt Lucy’s Kitchen
by Cynthia Rylant
The Cobble Street Cousins
#2 A Little Shopping
by Cynthia Rylant
The Cobble Street Cousins
#3 Special Gifts
by Cynthia Rylant
Third-Grade Detectives
#1 The Clue of the Left-Handed
Envelope
by George Edward Stanley
Third-Grade Detectives
#2 The Puzzle of the Pretty Pink
Handkerchief
by George Edward Stanley
Third-Grade Detectives
#3 The Mystery of the Hairy
Tomatoes
by George Edward Stanley
Ready-for-Chapters
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS
Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing • Kids.SimonandSchuster.com
The Slumber Party Secret Page 4