The Ghost in the Third Row Read Free Page A

Lydia’s eyes that night. At one point she turned her face directly toward me. But I know she didn’t see me. It was as if she were looking into some bottomless pit.
    That’s when the frisson hit me. It was like thousands of little ants running across my skin.
    Poor Alan Bland was almost as bad off as Lydia. His big eyes were wide with fright, and his bony hands trembled as he tried to hold her up.
    Paula knelt by his side and put a hand on his shoulder. “Did you see it, too?” she asked.
    Alan shook his head no. His mouth opened and closed a few times, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his throat. But no sound came out.
    Melissa nudged me in the ribs. “What a nerd,” she whispered loudly.
    Paula shot us a sharp glance.
    I wanted to die of embarrassment—and I hadn’t even said anything! Right about then I would have handed Melissa over to the ghost without a second thought.
    Suddenly a booming voice cried out, “What in hell is going on here?” Looking up, I saw Gwendolyn Meyer pushing her way through the knot of people surrounding Lydia. Ken Abbott quickly moved out of her way.
    â€œLydia thought she saw something,” Edgar said quietly. “It frightened her.”
    Gwendolyn rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me,” she said sarcastically. “Let me guess. Our famous ghost has made another appearance, and our leading lady has become faint-hearted and collapsed.”
    â€œGwendolyn,” said Edgar, in a warning tone.
    But Gwendolyn was wound up and ready to roll. Her nostrils flared, making her look a little like a racehorse. “Actresses!” she snorted. “Someday I’d like to produce a series of plays without a single actress in them. I get so tired of whining, sniveling—”
    â€œGwendolyn!” snapped Edgar. “Back off!”
    Gwendolyn reared back, a ferocious look on her face. But she closed her mouth.
    â€œWhat’s bugging her ?” Chris whispered as Edgar and Alan helped Lydia to her feet.
    â€œOh, she’s always that way,” whispered Melissa knowingly.
    â€œAll right, why don’t we get back to work?” said Edgar. “We’ve got plenty to do!”
    Muttering among themselves, the cast and crew began to drift away. Chris, Melissa, and I lingered on because Paula was still talking to Alan.
    â€œYou girls had better go back to the room,” she said, suddenly noticing us. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
    Reluctantly, we turned to go. As we did, I noticed that the only other person still standing in the hall was Pop.
    He didn’t see me looking at him because he was staring at Lydia. I don’t know what he was thinking. But the look in his eyes sent another frisson skittering down my back.
    I turned and hurried after the others.
    â€œWell,” said Paula when she joined us back in our rehearsal room. “That was certainly exciting. I had no idea Alan and I would be stirring up such nonsense when we wrote this show.”
    â€œNonsense?” said Chris. She sounded really surprised. “Do you mean you don’t believe in the ghost?”
    Paula snorted. “How dumb do I look?” she asked. “Bite your tongues,” she said before any of us could answer.
    I smiled. She had said it to all of us. But she was looking directly at Melissa.
    Not that it did any good. Melissa opened her mouth anyway. To my surprise, she asked a halfway intelligent question. “If you don’t believe in the ghost, why did you ask Alan if he saw it?”
    Paula began to blush. “I—I just wanted to know if he had seen something that might have looked like a ghost,” she said. “I assumed there was something that Lydia took for a ghost. I thought he might know what it was.”
    I didn’t believe her for a minute. Neither did the others. “She was lying through her teeth” was the way Chris expressed it when we were