Showdown (Sweet Valley High Book 19) by Francine Pascal

Author:Francine Pascal [Pascal, Francine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-01-26T20:00:00+00:00

Eight

Finished! Elizabeth thought with satisfaction as she put the final touches on the latest issue of The Oracle. It was Thursday night, and the paper was pasted up and ready to go to the printers. Penny would be proud of her!

She leaned back in her chair and looked around the Oracle office. Empty, except for her. Even the staff members who had stayed late to help out had long since gone home.

Outside the office windows, the sky was a deep, purplish-blue. Elizabeth stretched her arms above her head. She felt tired but happy—enveloped by a real sense of accomplishment. She couldn't wait to see all her friends and the rest of the kids at school poring over the pages she had painstakingly supervised and put together.

She thumbed through her work one last time and then carefully put all of it in Penny's desk drawer and locked the drawer with a tiny key, on loan from Penny. The key hung around her neck on a slender white ribbon, along with her own key to the Oracle office.

She stood up and gathered her things together, realizing, for the first time all evening, how hungry she was. An ice-cream sundae at Casey's Place on the way home would just about do the trick. Elizabeth could picture her mother telling her that a sundae was no substitute for a real dinner, but she could almost taste the creamy, homemade ice cream, smothered in hot fudge sauce. Besides, after all her hard work, she deserved a treat.

Elizabeth took a final look around her to make sure everything was in its proper place, shut off the overhead lights, and let herself out of the room. As she was pulling the door closed, she bumped smack into someone directly in back of her. Muffling a cry, she whirled around to see who it was. In the dim light, cast by the illuminated emergency exit sign near the staircase, stood Penny Ayala's little sister, Tina, looking every bit as startled as Elizabeth herself.

"Tina! You scared me!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "What are you doing here? It must be almost nine o'clock."

"Quarter to," Tina corrected, her voice a little shaky.

"What's up? Penny didn't send you over here with any last-minute instructions, did she?" Just when I thought I had finished, Elizabeth thought.

"No, Penny didn't ask me to come," Tina said.

Elizabeth was relieved. "Well, did you want to speak to me?"

"Not exactly," Tina hedged. "In fact, I didn't expect to find anyone here at this hour."

"Oh?" Elizabeth's expression was puzzled. She felt as if she were playing a game of twenty questions with Tina to find out what she was doing here. Yet she had seemed so friendly and open the last time they had met.

Suddenly Elizabeth noticed Tina sneaking her right hand behind her back. But she didn't do it quite smoothly enough to escape Elizabeth's detection. In the second it took her to take her hand out of view, Elizabeth caught sight of what Tina was holding: several black-and-white photographs!

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