Cassie stood on the front porch. Her usually neat hair stood out in all directions. Her eyes were wild.
“Oh, Diane!” she cried. “You’re not going to believe this.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, shutting the door behind her.
She dug into her purse and pulled out a piece of paper.
“Look what I found in my bag,” she answered. Flipping the sheet of paper open, she read: “I know about your Night Games. You’re going to be the loser.” She raised her eyes to me. “I don’t recognize the handwriting.”
My heartbeat quickened. “Who is doing this to us?” I cried.
Lenny appeared at the front hall. “What’s the matter, Cass? Are you okay?”
Cassie shook her head. “No. None of us is okay.”
She shoved the note at him and stormed into the den. Cassie flopped onto the couch with an enormous sigh. I sat down next to her. But she didn’t say anything more.
Lenny handed the note back to Cassie.
“It’s Mr. Crowell,” he said.
“Mr. Crowell?” Cassie repeated. “You think he’s writing notes and phoning Diane in the middle of the night?”
“Who else could it be?” he answered.
Cassie glanced at me. “Diane, your boyfriend is cute. But he’s crazy.”
“Tell me about it,” I replied. I smiled at Lenny, but he didn’t smile back.
“It has to be Mr. Crowell,” Lenny insisted. He paced back and forth in front of us. “That man is really twisted. There’s no telling how far he’d go to torture us. That’s how he gets his kicks. By making our lives miserable.”
“He wouldn’t go that far,” Cassie argued. “You just think it’s Crowell because you hate him.”
“He’s the only one who could have spotted us,” Lenny insisted. “You saw how he glared at us in class, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Cassie answered. “But why would he slip a note into my purse? He could call the police and get us all into real trouble.”
I shook my head at Lenny. “I don’t think it was Mr. Crowell, either. He may not like us, but put a note into Cassie’s bag? Come on!”
“Yeah,” Cassie agreed. “Diane is right.”
“I think it was Bryan,” I announced.
“Bryan?” Lenny asked. He gazed at me curiously. “What does that creep have to do with this?”
I hesitated. I didn’t want Lenny to get into another fight with Bryan.
“Diane,” he urged impatiently, “what’s going on?”
I decided to tell him. “Nothing is going on,” I said firmly. “Bryan wants to go out again. He’s been following me. He’s acting really strange, too. I told him to go away and leave me alone.”
“Well, if he tries to talk to you again,” Lenny said, “tell me. I’ll take care of it.”
“No, Lenny—” I started.
“Don’t worry,” he assured me. “I won’t hit him. With Mr. Crowell on my case, I can’t afford to get into any more fights.”
I sat beside Lenny. He slipped his arm around my shoulders.
“Well, we’ve pretty much run out of suspects,” Lenny said matter-of-factly. “It has to be Bryan.”
“Maybe not,” Cassie said. “How about Spencer?”
Lenny and I both stared at her. “Why Spencer?” Lenny asked.
“Haven’t you noticed?” Cassie replied. “He’s so different now.”
Lenny snorted. “And you thought I was nuts for suspecting Mr. Crowell! This whole thing was Spencer’s idea. Why would he try to scare us?”
Cassie frowned. “I don’t know. But I’ve been thinking—Spencer’s sense of humor is so warped now. He really got a charge out of scaring that couple in the car. And he loved smashing up Mr. Crowell’s Christmas decorations.”
I remembered Spencer’s wild laughter as we ran down the street. “He liked stealing the CD player, too,” I added.
“So he likes excitement,” Lenny scoffed. “What’s so bad about that?”
“The wrong kind of excitement,” I pointed out.
“But Spencer loves to play the Night Games,” Lenny argued. “It doesn’t make any sense that he would try to stop them.”
“No one said it had to make sense,” I answered. “We haven’t seen Spencer in a year. He could have gone through all kinds of changes during that time.”
“He does seem really … different,” I agreed. “Did you ever notice that—”
Someone knocked on the door.
I stopped talking and stared at my friends. Cassie licked her lips nervously.
More pounding. I took a deep breath. “Why does everyone come to my house?” I muttered. I strode to the front door.
“Who is it?” I called out.
“It’s me,” Spencer called back. “Open up.”
I pulled open the door.
He stared at me frowning, biting his bottom lip. “I can’t believe it, Diane!” he said finally. His voice trembled. He dug in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a note. “Look at this.”
I glanced at it—the same handwriting as on Cassie’s note. “Cassie got one, too,” I told him. “She and Lenny are already here. Come in.”
He followed me to the den. He nodded to Lenny and Cassie.
“Spencer got a note, too,” I said. “It looks just like Cassie’s.”
“I found it stuck under the windshield wiper of my car,” Spencer reported.
“What does it say?” Lenny asked.
Spencer looked down at the note and read it aloud.
“Night Games can be dangerous,” he read quietly. “Sometimes people die.”