Scared to Death One day Tessa was standing on Chloe’s porch, looking scared. Two days later she was dead. Chloe can’t shake the thought that she didn’t ask Tessa what was wrong, even though she’d seemed frightened. All she knows for sure is that now Tessa is dead, and one of her friends is under suspicion for murder. Now Chloe’s got to find out else might have wanted Tessa out of the way — and what was it, that night, that had scared her to death!
“Buckle up — it's going to be a scary ride.”
— St. Catharines Standard
“Lots of suspicious behaviour... with a smart, likeable heroine.”
— Canadian Materials
Scholastic Canada Ltd.
ISBN 0-439-95634-X PBK
256 pages
Ages 12+
4 3/16" x 6 ¾"
I spotted Jake on the other side of the clearing. He was looking hard at Ross. Ross was looking hard right back, so I jumped into help-your-poor-friend mode and grabbed Ross’s arm and started to guide him out of the park.
“He did it,” Ross muttered under his breath. “I know it was him. Tessa was upset for the past couple of weeks and it was because of Jake. She was scared, Chloe.”
I thought about how she had looked that day on my porch. “What do you mean, scared?”
Ross shrugged. “I don’t know. Just scared. Like she was afraid something bad was going to happen.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Ross said. He sounded angry and frustrated. “I asked her. I asked her a million times, but she wouldn’t tell me. But it had something to do with Jake. I know it did.”
I walked Ross home and told him I’d see him on Monday. But I didn’t, not during the day anyway. He didn’t show up at school. Then that night when I was washing the dishes I had the fright of my life. All of a sudden a face appeared in the black of the window. I dropped the platter I was holding, the one my mother loved because it had belonged to her grandmother. Luckily, I dropped it into a sink full of soapy water, so no harm was done. I retrieved it, set it into the dish drainer, then raced to the back door and said, “Ross, what are you doing out here?”
Even in the darkness I could see that something was wrong.
“I didn’t want to run into your step-dad,” he said.
“Why? What’s up?”
“I was at the police station today,” he said. “He thinks I did it.”
He was kidding. He had to be kidding. “You’re kidding, right?” Ross shook his head slowly.
“They found my scarf right near where — ” His voice choked off. “Right near where she was found.”
Just then the moon came out from behind a cloud. It was a full moon. Perfect, I thought, because obviously the world had gone completely crazy.
From Scared to Death . Copyright © 2001 by Norah McClintock. All rights reserved.
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