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an old man with white hair and glasses. He was wearing a suit with a vest and a bow tie. Gerry knew he was a ghost and not a real person because his skin was kind of silvery white, like a ghost’s.
    â€œGerry stopped and stared at him. He stopped and stared at her. Gerry wondered if she should do a header on him, to scare him away.
    â€œThen the ghost opened his ghostly mouth. In a low, ghostly voice he said: ‘The fog comes on little cat feet.’ It sounded like some sort of poem.
    â€œThen the ghost disappeared.
    â€œGerry was really freaked out. But she decided that maybe if she and Tess teamed up, they could solve the mystery of the ghost.
    â€œGerry and Tess came up with a plan. One day, after school, they waited in the place where Gerry had seen the ghost. They hid in a doorway and waited, and waited.
    â€œAfter a while, the ghost appeared! Tess started to scream, but Gerry kicked her, so Tess shut up.
    â€œThe ghost looked right and left. He had another one of those bloody-looking notes. He was about to tape it to one of the kids’ cubbies. “’One, two, three,’ Gerry whispered. ‘Go!’
    â€œShe and Tess jumped out from their hiding place and yelled: ‘Boo!’
    â€œThe ghost screamed. ‘Oh, my, you surprised me,’ he said.
    â€œHis voice was so familiar. It was the voice of Mr. Byron, one of the teachers at Carl Sandburg Elementary School.
    â€œIn the end, it turned out that Mr. Byron was pretending to be the ghost of Carl Sandburg.
    â€œCarl Sandburg was a real-life writer who used to live in Chicago. Carl Sandburg Elementary School was named after him.
    â€œThe notes had stuff in them from Carl Sandburg’s poems and short stories.
    â€œAnyway, Mr. Byron used to be anactor before he became a teacher. He sometimes liked to dress up in costumes and act stuff out to help the kids learn. He thought that pretending to be the ghost at Carl Sandburg and giving the kids a mystery to solve would help them learn about the person the school was named for.
    â€œAnd Gerry and Tess solved the mystery!”
    â€œThe end,” Nancy said. She glanced up from the purple notebook and took another deep breath.
    The class burst into applause. Even Brenda was clapping a little. Mrs. Reynolds had a big smile on her face. So did Phoebe, Bess, and George.
    â€œThat was an excellent story,” Mrs. Reynolds said. “Good work, girls.” She added, “Let’s see—the next team up will be Jason Hutchings’s team. Jason?”
    Jason rose from his desk and shuffled up to the front of the class. Nancy sat down at her desk and listened as Jason began reading a story about a mad science teacher at Carl SandburgElementary School. The teacher, Mr. Bizzarobrain, was trying to make cats and rats morph into giant mutants that would take over the school.
    Bess leaned across the aisle toward Nancy. “Cats and rats!” she whispered. “That’s why George heard Jason and Mike talking about cats and rats.”
    â€œI guess so,” Nancy replied, grinning.
    Nancy settled back in her chair. As Mike read, her thoughts drifted to the mystery of the stolen purple notebook. All the loose ends were getting tied up.
    She’d talked to Emily that morning about why she’d had two purple notebooks on Wednesday, and why she had acted so nervous about talking to Nancy. It turned out that not only had Emily had her team’s purple notebook then, but one of her own that happened to look just like it.
    Emily was nervous about talking to Nancy because Brenda had told her, Alison, and Jenny that Nancy’s team would be trying to worm their story idea out of them. Brenda had said that they were not to talk to Nancy, Bess, George,or Phoebe about the short-story contest under any circumstances.
    Nancy snapped to attention when Brenda got up to read her team’s story. It was called “The Monster That Ate the State.” It