Read Online Super Freak by Vanessa Barger - Free Book Online

friends. The author listed names, but none of the names meant anything to me. Except one. She said she’d gone in and spoken with Annabeth Sanderston about the next meeting. But she didn’t elaborate.
    Leo’s mother couldn’t be Annabeth, could she? I mean, his parents were old. But how could I find out if she had met my mystery writer? I couldn’t exactly walk up and ask what she’d been up to about a century ago. There wasn’t even a name with all these pages to ask her about.
    I started to put everything in the drawer, but I stopped, looking back at the gargoyle face. Someone had already been in the house once before. I didn’t want them to find any of this. Carefully, I folded up the papers and put everything in the secret compartment. It barely fit. If I found anything else, I’d have to come up with a new hiding spot.
    Now that I knew what to look for, I would definitely find something else. In a house as heavily decorated as this, I’d bet there were lots more replicas of my gargoyle. I just had to find them.
     
     
    ***
     
     
    The next morning, my parents dropped me off at Ms. Widdershins’ house, stopping briefly to offer sincere apologies and assure her they would be back promptly at five. Unless I decided to cause problems, and then they said they’d be back as soon as they could get there.
    Leo and Diana arrived shortly after with similar parental concerns. Diana’s father, a tall, whip thin man with glasses and longish hair, gave us all a once over before getting back in his car and driving home. I didn’t think he was impressed by us.
    “I can’t believe you would be involved in such a thing. You all seemed like such nice students,” Ms. Widdershins said, dressed in a billowing summer dress with daisies all over it. Her eyes were misty, as if she couldn’t fathom what we’d done.
    It was an act, and I wasn’t buying it. But I kept my lips pressed together. Speaking would only make everything worse, and we didn’t need that.
    “Come along then. You’ll start by scrubbing down the siding and then you’ll paint the entire house again.”
    She led the way along the front of the house, opposite the window we had been looking in, and we turned the corner. There, scrawled over the siding in lavender paint, were several curse words and a crude picture of Ms. Widdershins dancing on a hill. As she stood there, her bottom lip quivering, I couldn’t keep my words to myself.
    “Ms. Widdershins, I want you to know, we did sneak up here yesterday, but we were just goofing around. We didn’t do this.”
    Her lip stiffened, and the look she sent me could have stripped paint. “Don’t try to get out of your punishment now, Caroline Bennings. I could have pressed charges. Be grateful I didn’t.”
    “Ms. Widdershins, we couldn’t have done this,” I insisted.
    She huffed and fisted her hands on her hips. “And why not?”
    I held my arm over my head and stood next to the house. My fingertips grazed the bottom of the top line of words. “We’re not tall enough. Not even Diana is tall enough to write these.”
    Doubt crept into her gaze. She compared my hand to the letters, her eyes searching the soft mulch at my feet. I suppose she was looking for ladder marks or something. I didn’t wait for her to make up her mind. “We’ll still clean it up because we shouldn’t have been on your property anyway, but we would never do this.”
    Diana nodded and added, “You’ve known Leo and me our entire lives. We’ve never done anything remotely like this.”
    Ms. Widdershins looked between us and finally nodded once. “You all have a point. And I must admit I couldn’t quite believe it when I got the phone call yesterday. I’ll speak to your parents, but it doesn’t excuse you from today. You have no business creeping around someone’s house and playing Peeping Tom!”
    Her words were punctuated with sharp hand gestures.
    “Ms. Widdershins, who called and told you we did this?” Leo