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Gwen.
    “The cheerleader is Gran. That football player is my grandfather,” said Gwen. “The other football player is Earl Biggs.”
    “Earl must be sad that Jocelyn married Luther instead of marrying him,” Benny said.
    Gwen shrugged. “That was a long time ago. I don’t think he’d still be sad. Besides, Gran and Earl are good friends. And Earl was friends with my grandfather, too.”
    “Who’s this girl?” Violet asked, pointing to a photograph of a girl with a ponytail, speaking into a microphone. “She’s in all the radio station pictures.”
    “That,” Gwen said, “is Daphne Owens.”
    “Really?” Violet looked at the pretty face more closely. “I wonder what happened to her …”
    Just then, Frances walked briskly into the breakroom. She nodded hello and handed each of them a script.
    “You kids are good readers,” she said. “I’ll let you go over your lines by yourselves. Then we’ll do the run-through.”
    Jessie, Henry, Benny, and Violet headed for the soundstage. As they passed the sound booth, Avery looked up and smiled. An opened box of chocolate doughnuts sat on the counter near his sports water bottle.
    Jessie remembered Avery had a box of doughnuts on the console the day before, too. “Avery sure likes doughnuts,” she said.
    Benny tapped on the glass. He pointed to the doughnuts. That chocolate one sure looked good.
    But Avery, who was talking into the mike, shook his head.
    “He doesn’t want to share,” Benny said, disappointed.
    “Maybe he didn’t know what you wanted,” said Jessie. “Anyway, you just had breakfast.”
    “I think it’s a little strange,” Violet remarked. “Usually Avery is so nice. He can’t eat all those doughnuts himself.”
    “He ate all the doughnuts yesterday,” Jessie said, opening the door to the soundstage. “Maybe those doughnuts are Avery’s breakfast and lunch.”
    Henry pulled up four folding chairs. “I wish we had time to memorize our lines,” he said, “in case the lights go out.”
    “I could! I only have to remember ‘woof’ and ‘arf,’” Benny said, making them all laugh.
    Then Gwen came in. “How’s the script?”
    “Today’s episode is really good,” Jessie said. “Our characters get caught outside in a storm. They see the ghost dog in a graveyard on a hill, and he leads them to shelter and then disappears.”
    “When they go into the graveyard again, they find a tombstone with the dog’s picture on it,” Violet added.
    Gwen looked over her own copy of the script. “Hmmm. I’ll need my thunderstorm tape. I can make the wind sound effects with a fan.”
    After Gwen had assembled her props, the cast did a run-through with Frances.
    “Fine,” she said crisply. “You’re ready to go on the air.”
    The kids began the live show at ten o’clock. Everything was going well until the windstorm scene. Right after Gwen turned on her fan, the lights flickered, then died. Only the red ON AIR light remained on.
    “Don’t stop!” Henry whispered to the others, clicking on his flashlight.
    Violet and Jessie turned on their flashlights, too. Without a pause, they read their parts as if nothing was wrong.
    At least this time there isn’t any horrible screaming, Jessie thought. She aimed her flashlight around the soundstage. She saw the fan on Gwen’s stool, still blowing mightily. But Gwen wasn’t at her station. Before she could beam her flashlight into the shadow-draped corners, the lights came back on.
    Avery, who was just entering his booth, gave them a thumbs-up signal through the soundproof glass. Frances paced in the hallway.

    Then Jessie noticed that Gwen was at her station, changing tapes in front of her microphone. Had she been in the room all along, hidden in the shadows?
    Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny exchanged eyebrow-raised glances, but they kept going through the last scene in the play. At last the show ended. Avery cued up the Earl’s Auto Sales commercial and came into the