Goosebumps - 11 - bản tiếng Anh

Phần 1

THE HAUNTED MASK

Goosebumps - 11

R.L. Stine

1

"What are you going to be for Halloween?" Sabrina Mason asked. She moved her fork around in the bright yellow macaroni on her lunch tray, but didn't take a bite.

Carly Beth Caldwell sighed and shook her head. The overhead light on the lunchroom ceiling made her straight brown hair gleam. "I don't know. A witch, maybe." Sabrina's mouth dropped open. "You? A witch?"

"Well, why not?" Carly Beth demanded, staring across the long table at her friend.

"I thought you were afraid of witches," Sabrina replied. She raised a forkful of macaroni to her mouth and started to chew. "This macaroni is made of rubber," she complained, chewing hard. "Remind me to start packing a lunch."

"I am not afraid of witches!" Carly Beth insisted, her dark eyes flashing angrily. "You just think I'm a big scaredy- cat, don't you?"

Sabrina giggled. "Yes." She flipped her black ponytail behind her shoulders with a quick toss of her head. "Hey, don't eat the macaroni. Really, Carly Beth. It's gross." She reached across the table to keep Carly Beth from raising her fork.

"But I'm starving!" Carly Beth complained.

The lunchroom grew crowded and noisy. At the next table, a group of fifth-grade boys were tossing a half-full milk carton back and forth. Carly Beth saw Chuck Greene ball up a bright red fruit rollup and shove the whole sticky thing in his mouth.

"Yuck!" She made a disgusted face at him. Then she turned back to Sabrina. "I am n ot a scaredy-cat, Sabrina. Just because everyone picks on me and—"

"Carly Beth, what about last week? Remember? At my house?" Sabrina ripped open a bag of tortilla chips and offered some across the table to her friend.

"You mean the ghost thing?" Carly Beth replied, frowning. "That was really stupid."

"But you believed it," Sabrina said with a mouthful of chips. "You really believed my attic was haunted. You should have seen the look on your face when the ceiling started to creak, and we heard the footsteps up there." "That was so mean," Carly Beth complained, rolling her eyes. "Then when you heard footsteps coming down the stairs, your face went all white and you screamed," Sabrina recalled. "It was only Chuck and Steve."

" Y o u k n o w I'm afraid of ghosts," Carly Beth said, blushing.

"And snakes and bugs and loud noises and dark rooms and—and witches!" Sabrina declared.

"I don't see why you have to make fun of me," Carly Beth pouted. She shoved her lunch tray away. "I don't see why everyone always thinks it's so much fun to try to scare me. Even you, my best friend."

"I'm sorry," Sabrina said sincerely. She reached across the table and squeezed Carly Beth's wrist reassuringly. "You're just so easy to scare. It's hard to resist. Here. Want some more chips?" She shoved the bag toward Carly Beth.

"Maybe I'll scare you some day," Carly Beth threatened. Her friend laughed. "No way!"

Carly Beth continued to pout. She was eleven. But she was tiny. And with her round face and short stub of a nose (which she hated and wished would grow longer), she looked much younger.