Fabulous Five 016 - The Hot-Line Emergency (4 page)

"What do you know about this kook?" Jana asked
Christie. The Fabulous Five had left Bumpers and were gathered in Katie's
living room. Beth had Libber, Katie's laid-back yellow cat, draped around her
neck like a scarf. The rest of the girls were sprawled around on the floor or
were sitting in chairs eating Corn Curls and drinking sodas.

"Not much. Both times he asked for help with algebra.
We worked through the problems okay, and then he wanted to talk some more."

"He hasn't talked to anyone else?" asked Katie, running
her fingers through her red hair.

"Mr. Snider says no."

Melanie frowned. "That must mean he's calling
you
on purpose. I wonder why he hasn't called Curtis, Whitney, or Melissa. They're
working at the hot-line center on the other nights, aren't they?"

"Yes, they are, and I'm not sure why he hasn't called
one of them. It gives me the shivers," said Christie.

"Obviously, he knows who you are," said Jana. "Everyone
in the seventh grade knows you."

"Clarence is the class president so everyone knows him,
too," responded Christie.

Melanie popped a Corn Curl in her mouth. "Yes, but you're
a girl, and besides, how many people want to deliberately carry on a
conversation with Curtis?"

"Whitney does," said Beth.

"Whitney's a brain," responded Melanie. "She
understands him."

"Well if you were a boy, and had your choice of talking
to Christie or Melissa McConnell, who would you choose?" asked Katie.

"Definitely Christie," said Beth, making a gagging
sound at the mention of Melissa's name. Melissa was a member of The Fantastic
Foursome, a rival clique at Wakeman whose leader was Laura McCall. Melissa was
extremely meticulous and always had a frown on her face.

Christie raised her voice to get their attention. "This
is not helping me, guys."

"Okay," said Jana, "he always asks for help
with algebra. Does he really have a problem with it, or is it just an excuse to
talk to you?"

"I think he could do the problems if he tried,"
Christie answered.

"There's just nothing else to go on," said Katie. "We
need more
clues
. . . anything."

"I keep coming back to the fact that he only talks to
Christie," said Jana. "Why would he only call her?"

"He's in love with her?" asked Melanie.

Melanie's remark startled Christie. "That doesn't make
sense. Why would he call me and do all those dumb things if he liked me?"

"That's easy," answered Katie. "He wants to
get your attention. Some boys do the dumbest things—like hitting—to let you
know they like you. They're
so
immature. I don't know what they would do
without us."

"I like 'em the way they are," said Melanie,
rubbing her hands together and leering. Katie swung at her playfully.

"We still don't know for sure that he set the fires on
Catherine Street and Pleasant Hill or put the soap in the fountain, and we're
only speculating that he broke the door at Bumpers," said Jana.

Beth unwound Libber from her neck and handed her to Katie. "He
said he did the first three, and breaking the window sounds like the kind of
thing he was talking about."

"But they're so far apart,"
said Christie. "Look."
She took a handful of Corn Curls and positioned them on the coffee table. "Catherine
Street is here. Pleasant Hill is here. City Hall is here, and Bumpers is here.
It's a long way between any of them. Like we were saying the other day, how
could a thirteen-year-old boy, even on a bicycle, get to all those places in
the evening without his parents' knowing?" The Fabulous Five stared in
silence at the four Corn Curls on the table. "He probably couldn't get to
all of the places he mentioned, but if he lived around York Street, maybe he
could have put the soap in the fountain and broken the window at Bumpers."

Christie leaned back and stretched out her long legs. "Katie's
right about one thing," she added. "We need clues. Let's make a list
of things about him that would be helpful to know,
if
I can get him to
tell me." She dug a pencil out of her purse and opened her notebook to a
blank page.

"What classes does he have?" volunteered Katie.

"Who does he hang out with?" said Jana.

"Anything physical," added Beth. "What's the
color of his hair? How tall is he?"

"Does he play sports?" interjected Melanie.

"Is he in band or any other school activities?"
asked Katie.

Christie wrote down the suggestions as fast as she could,
and with each one she felt better. At last she and her friends were doing
something positive. She was beginning to think that, if she was careful and
asked the questions in just the right way, she
could
find out who he
was.

But what her friends had said about the caller's trying to
get her attention was still troubling her. Who would want to get her attention
that desperately? No one, she thought, except for Jon Smith. But it couldn't be
Jon who was making the calls, Christie told herself stubbornly. He wasn't like
that, and besides, she would have recognized Jon's voice easily.

Mr. Snider was waiting for Christie when she arrived at the
homework hot-line center on Tuesday evening. "I'd like to see you,
Christie, along with Pam and Tim for a minute before we start." He called
the others to the table where he worked and told them about Christie's mystery
caller.

"If any of you get a call similar to what Christie has
been getting, I want you to signal me. I've had this phone installed," he
said, placing his hand on the instrument, "and I can pick up your
individual lines. I'll listen in, but I won't say anything. I don't want to
scare him off, at least not vet. I really don't think this is as bad as our
mystery caller would like us to believe, but we need to handle it carefully
until we're sure."

"I've got these questions that I thought I'd try to ask
when he calls again," said Christie, holding up the list she and her
friends had made. They all agreed the questions were a good idea.

"Since you're the only one who has heard from him,"
Mr. Snider said, handing the list back to her, "I don't see any need for
the others to have the list, but be careful. If you get too inquisitive, that
might scare him off, too."

Christie sharpened her pencils and put her questions next to
her ruled pad. Then she folded her hands to wait. Even though she had been
anticipating it, she jumped at the first ring of her telephone. "This is
Christie, how may I help you?"

"I need help with my algebra homework." Christie
took a deep breath. He hadn't wasted any time getting to her.

"Algebra?" asked Christie. "Just a minute while
I get my book," she said, turning in her chair to wave to Mr. Snider. The
teacher nodded and gently took his phone from its cradle.

"Okay, I've got it," she said, turning back to her
desk. "Who's your algebra teacher, anyway?"

"You didn't ask me who my teacher is when I called for
help before."

"I just wondered if you've asked her for help."
The line was quiet for an instant, and when he responded, his voice sounded a
bit more muffled. He must have moved whatever it was he was using to disguise
it. "That's pretty good. You know there's one man and one woman algebra
teacher for the seventh grade. If I said I asked
her
,
you'd know
I was in Ms. Gilchrist's class. If I said
him
, you'd know it was Mr.
Snider's. I've asked my teacher, but I need more help. That's why you're on the
hot-line team, isn't it? To help people."

Christie cringed. She had thought she was being so smart,
but he had caught her on her very first attempt to trap him. "Yes, it is.
Let's look at the first problem." She was disappointed, but she managed to
control her voice.

After she had finished helping him with the problems, he
said, "Did you and your friends notice what I did? Everyone was talking about
it."

Christie fought back her rising anger. She wanted to hang up
on him, but instead she looked back at Mr. Snider. He gave her a slight nod as
if he wanted her to continue.

"Are you talking about the broken door at Bumpers?"
she asked. "Did you do that?"

"I knew there was a good reason for your being on the
hot-line team," the caller said triumphantly. "Let's see if you're
smart enough to figure this one out. The next thing I'm going to do will
involve all kinds of color. You'll like it. It's going to be a whammo trick."

"Wait a minute!" Christie protested. "Why don't
you just stop all of this silly trick stuff? No one knows who you are right
now, but if you keep it up, someone will find out, and you'll be in trouble."

"Don't you like games?" he asked. "As smart
as you are, I thought you'd like a challenge. I do." Christie grabbed her
list of questions. "Look, could we meet after school and talk about this?
If you've got band practice or something, I could wait."

"HA! HA!" His laughter came so loudly over the
phone she had to pull the instrument away from her ear. "You'd like to
know more about me, wouldn't you? If I told you I was in band, that would still
be a lot of kids, and you wouldn't know which one. But I'm not, and I don't
want to meet you. Just remember what I'm going to do involves colors. If you're
really
smart, you should be able to figure out what it will be."

"Wait a min
. . ."
He hung up on her
again.

"Thanks for coming, Christie," Mr. Bell, the
principal of Wakeman Junior High, said as she settled into a chair in front of
his desk. "I hated to ask you to miss your study hall." Mr. Snider,
Mrs. Brenner—the guidance counselor—and a man Christie didn't know were also in
the room.

Mr. Bell nodded toward the stranger. "This is Assistant
Police Chief Markum, Christie. I asked him if he would stop by. He preferred to
come in street clothes so that the other students wouldn't get curious. Mr.
Snider has been keeping us informed about your mystery caller," the
principal continued. "As I understand it, we don't have enough information
to tell us who he is or whether he is even doing the things he says. Do you
have any idea what he meant when he said the next thing will involve color? Has
anything happened that you know of that might be what he meant?"

Christie had looked through the paper that morning to see if
there was anything, and there hadn't been. "No, sir, I don't."

"You still don't recognize his voice?" asked Mrs.
Brenner.

"No. I think I've heard it before, but I can't be sure.
He's doing something to change it."

"Christie has been handling him
very
well,"
said Mr. Snider. "I propose that we let her continue until she discovers
information that tells us who he is, or he gets tired of this foolishness and
quits calling."

"What if we took Christie off the homework team? Do you
suppose he'd stop calling?" asked Mr. Bell.

Mrs. Brenner raised her hand for attention. "I think it's
better that we keep her on the team. At least we have some contact with him,
and if he's disturbed, it might give him an outlet to keep him from doing
something worse."

Disturbed!
Christie hadn't thought of him that way.
The word made it sound as if he might be kind of crazy. Cold fingers played up
and down her backbone.

"Hmmm." Mr. Bell pondered the suggestions. Turning
to the policeman, he said, "What do you think, Chief Markum?"

The chief straightened in his chair. "I agree with both
of the teachers. It's too early for the police to step in. I think we should
let things continue as they are for a while and see where it's headed."

Mr. Bell looked at Christie. "Have you said anything to
your parents about this yet?"

She shook her head.

"Well, I think you ought to. I'll talk to your mother,
too. Not that I think there's any danger to you, but they should know what's going
on."

Danger!
For a second time a word flashed across
Christie's brain like a blinking neon sign. First, Mrs. Brenner said the caller
might be
disturbed
, and now Mr. Bell was saying the caller might be
dangerous.
What was she getting into?

As they were leaving the principal's office, Mr. Snider
stopped Christie. "I think it would be a good idea if you didn't say
anything else to your friends about this for now. If too many people know, it
might encourage him, and we don't want that."

"Mr. Snider, do you
really
think the caller's .
. . uh . . . disturbed?"

His eyes softened. "'Disturbed' can mean a lot of
things, Christie. It can mean as little as just being upset over something that's
going on in your life. We don't know that this boy has a serious problem at
all, do we? My bet is that he's just immature and playing games. Don't worry
about it, but don't forget to tell your parents."

Christie scuffed along the street to her house. She had
stopped in at Bumpers after school, as usual, but left early. Jon was there,
and it seemed as if everywhere she turned, he was standing next to her. Once,
she turned around and was startled to find him just in back of her listening to
the conversation she was having. He seemed to be around her constantly. His
acting weird was beginning to get on her nerves.

While she was at Bumpers, Jana had asked her if the
mysterious caller had called the night before, and she had faked a laugh and
answered that they were all mysterious. Jana had looked at her in a funny way,
but let it drop.

Christie hated to deceive her friends in The Fabulous Five,
but Mr. Snider had told her not to talk about the caller with them. She had
thought about what to tell them, and even saying she couldn't talk about it
would be saying too much. It would make the whole thing seem even more
mysterious and exciting, and they would
really
want to know more then.

Christie let out a big sigh as she turned in the front walk
to her house. Things were sure piling up on her. First the mystery caller and
now Jon was acting strange. Where would it end?

Her mother's and her father's normally cheerful faces turned
to frowns when Christie told them about the calls at the dinner table. "I'm
sure Mr. Bell knows what he's doing," her mother said. "I'll call him
in the morning."

"We want you to keep us up-to-date on what's going on,
though," her father added.

The next morning, Christie's father handed her the
newspaper. "I looked through it, but didn't find anything sensational that
had to do with color. Maybe the caller was just kidding this time."

Christie searched through the paper herself. There wasn't
anything.

Later, as she walked onto the school ground, she saw a crowd
of kids gathered in front of the school. They were all talking excitedly.
Puzzled, she went to see what the excitement was about. Seeing Jana, she tapped
her on the shoulder.

"What's going on?"

Jana turned. "Someone tried to set the gum tree on fire
last night. Mr. Bartosik is cleaning up the mess."

Christie pushed her way to the front of the crowd. The head custodian
was picking up pieces of burnt trash and putting them back into a partially
melted plastic barrel. The gum tree had been a tradition at Wakeman for
practically forever. Since Mr. Bell didn't allow gum-chewing during classes,
kids stuck their wads of yellow, blue, green, and red gum on the tree before
going into the school. But now the tree had been scorched by flame. Black soot
from smoke wrapped its way around the trunk, and the gum that had been reached
by the flames was burnt brown. Other globs of gum that were too high for the
flames to reach were melted and hung in long strings, giving the entire tree a
grotesque look.

Christie's stomach churned as if she had eaten something
spoiled. The caller had warned that something colorful would be involved next
time.
This was what he had meant.