Spookygirl - Paranormal Investigator Read Online Free PDF Page A

alone.
    After glancing at the secretary and making sure she was busy berating another unhappy student, I found a pencil in my bag, erased good ol’ Emerson, and wrote my name in his place—in ink.
Sorry, Emerson, old chap,
I thought.
But, you know…Freakin’ gym! This is an emergency.
    I loitered for a moment longer, until the secretary looked up and made a shooing motion—like I was a pesky mosquito buzzing in her ear. “Go to class,” she repeated. “You’ll be called down for an appointment as soon as possible.”
    Meh.
Gym
. I considered hiding in the library or the nearest bathroom until first period was over, but skipping class usually meant detention, and detention meant spending even more time at school. I could stomach gym for one day. After all, it was the first day of class, and nothing ever happened on the first day.
    Feeling like a clueless freshman, I checked the map in the school handbook and crossed the courtyard in the general direction of the gym. On the way, I looked over the rest of my schedule. At least there were no other disasters listed. I’d even gotten a fifth-period drawing class as my other elective.
    I crossed onto one of the walkways and stepped into another building, where I ended up at one end of a long hallway. One side of the hall was lined with trophy cases. The other sported the most god-awful mural I’d ever seen—a crooked, disproportionate, yellow-and-green Trojan warrior with a football impaled on his sword. Wow. Had the principal lost a bet with another school or something?
    A set of double doors, one green and one yellow, loomed ominously at the end of the hallway. Heading toward them was like making that final stroll to the execution chamber. Dead girl walking.
    Maybe it sounds overdramatic, but I don’t think it’s possible to express how much I hate gym.
    Hoping the guidance counselor was zipping down the line of discontented sophomores at somewhere near the speed of sound, I pushed open the gym doors and slipped inside.
    Immediately, a basketball came flying at my face. I screamed and ducked; the ball bounced off the top of myhead, which hurt, but not as much as if it had smacked me on the nose.
    “Hey!” A beer-gutted man in a green-and-yellow cap stalked over, a whistle on a lanyard bouncing against his wide chest. “You’re supposed to come in through the locker room entrance.”
    I rubbed my throbbing scalp.
    “Sorry, I didn’t know. I’m looking for…” I paused and glanced at my schedule. “Beginning Gym with Coach…Frucile. Is that you?”
    “No, I’m Coach Perelli,” the man snarled, as though I’d committed an unforgivable sin just by approaching him. “Coach Frucile’s back there.” He jammed a thumb over his shoulder toward a group gathered at the other end of the gym. When he turned back to the tall boys, his stomach jiggled under his Palmetto High Basketball T-shirt.
    I made my way around the perimeter of the gym, keeping an eye out in case any more rogue sports equipment decided to attack. The pain in my head was down to a minor pounding, but I wondered if I should tell this Frucile person what had happened. Maybe I’d get sent to the school nurse. Regardless of whether I was actually hurt, sitting in the nurse’s office sounded a lot better—and safer—than staying here.
    Before I could speak up, though, a muscular womanwith short red hair beat me to it. “Beginning Gym? You’re late! Name!” she barked.
    It took me a second to realize she’d meant that as a question. “Um, Violet Addison.”
    “Addison.” She held a clipboard with what I assumed was an attendance sheet, but she seemed to freeze for a moment when she heard my name. She looked up, focused on me, blinked. “You’re Addison.”
    “Um, yeah.”
    She paused for another second, then made a mark on the clipboard. Weird.
    I tried for sympathy. “I just got hit with a basketball, and—”
    “Basketball unit isn’t until November. Get in line.” Behind her,