Masks #11

  Hello!

  When I was a kid in northern New York, Halloween meant making a costume that could fit over a heavy jacket, because there was always the chance we’d be trick-or-treating in the snow. I loved walking down the street, the wind rattling the last leaves on the trees, and ghosts and goblins hiding behind the bushes. It was a good kind of spooky.

  Halloween can be a dangerous time for pets, though. Before you go out, make sure they’re safe inside your home. Some people think Halloween is a time to play tricks on animals. That’s cruel. If you see someone doing that, tell your parents or another adult right away.

  Don’t forget about giving your pet a Halloween treat, either. Look up safe recipes or decorate their cages for the season. I don’t know about your animals, but mine love ghost stories.

  Boo!

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Collect All the Vet Volunteers Books

  Fight for Life

  Homeless

  Trickster

  Manatee Blues

  Say Good-bye

  Storm Rescue

  Teacher’s Pet

  Trapped

  Fear of Falling

  Time to Fly

  Masks

  End of the Race

  New Beginnings

  Acting Out

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Kim Michels, D.V.M.

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Pleasant Company Publications, 2002

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007, 2012

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  Copyright © Laurie Halse Anderson 2002, 2012

  Title page photo © 2011, Bob Krasner

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Anderson, Laurie Halse.

  Masks / Laurie Halse Anderson.

  p. cm.

  Summary: After assisting with her own cat’s emergency surgery,

  Sunita decides she can no longer work with animals and accepts an internship at a lab,

  unaware that the research conducted there includes animal testing.

  ISBN: 9781101575185

  [1. Animals—Treatment—Fiction. 2. Animal experimentation—Fiction.

  3. Cats—Fiction. 4. Veterinarians—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.A54385Mas 2009 [Fic]—dc22

  2009008763

  Printed in the United States of America

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  To Suzanne Weyn, with thanks

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter One

  You’ll make an awesome tiger, Sunita,” Maggie tells me as we spread our art materials across her kitchen table. It’s Thursday afternoon, a week before Halloween. We’ve decided we’d better start making costumes for the big Halloween party at the Ambler Town Center.

  “Your dark eyes will look so cool through the mask,” Maggie adds.

  She’s totally focusing on my costume now. Once Maggie sets her mind to a project, she locks in. Sometimes she reminds me of a bulldog—playful and fun, but once she sinks her teeth into something, it’s awfully hard to shake her loose!

  She studies me intently, working out my costume in her mind. “I’ve never seen a tiger with long black hair, though. Maybe we can make you an orange-striped hood to wear. Or a scarf out of tiger-striped fabric.” She smiles. “Being a tiger is just perfect for you.”

  I’m surprised and pleased that Maggie sees me that way, but I’m not sure that being a tiger fits my personality. I think of tigers as fierce and strong. I’m more on the shy, timid side.

  Being a tiger does fit with my number-one passion in life: cats. There are lots of other things I like—computers and computer games, ballet, reading (especially about animals), and collecting Ganesha statues. (Ganesha’s a sweet Hindu god with a boy’s body and an elephant’s head.) But there’s nothing I love more than cats—domestic cats, wild cats, large and small cats.

  Another reason being a tiger fits me is that one home of the tiger is India, and that’s where my ancestors came from. Both my mother and father are doctors who have lived in this country for many years, but we stay in touch with our Indian background.

  There’s a knock on the kitchen door, and Maggie opens it. David Hutchinson and Brenna Lake come in. Brenna has a shopping bag stuffed with even more art supplies. She begins adding them to the pile of materials we’ve already loaded onto the table.

  “Are you going to be a horse for Halloween?” I ask David. He’s wild about horses.

  He shakes his head. “A vampire. I vant to suck your blood!”

  “He can’t figure out how to make a horse mask,” Brenna adds.

  “I could too!” David objects. “I just think being a horse would be sort of geeky.”

  “Mucho geeky,” Maggie agrees.

  “What will you be?” I ask her.

  “A vet, of course,” Maggie replies.

  “You don’t need a mask for that,” Brenna says.

  “Yes, you do—a surgical mask. Gran has a ton of them in the supply cabinet,” Maggie says.

  “That’s too easy. No fair,” Brenna says. “I want to be something unusual—maybe a unicorn. Is that too babyish? I don’t know. I still have to think about it.”

  Dr. Mac comes in and runs her hand through her short white hair as she surveys all our stuff—colored paper, yarn, glue, markers, beads and buttons, paints, pipe cleaners, and stickers. “Wow!” she says. “What’s the big project?”

  Dr. Mac is Dr. J.J. MacKenzie, veterinarian extraordinaire. She lives in a big brick house with Maggie. Although Dr. Mac is Maggie’s grandmother, she’s so full of energy that she doesn’t seem like a regular grandmother to me.

  Dr. Mac and Maggie live with lots of animals. Besides their cat, Socrates, and their dog, Sherlock Holmes, they hav
e a house full of animal patients. That’s because Dr. Mac runs Dr. Mac’s Place Veterinary Clinic right here, attached to her own house. She treats any animals that come through the door—pets, strays, and even wild animals. People who bring in strays or wild animals pay her what they can or sometimes nothing at all.

  I volunteer at Dr. Mac’s Place, along with Maggie, David, and Brenna. I love working at the clinic. In fact, my dream is to be a vet someday.

  “We’re making masks for the Halloween party at Town Center,” Maggie tells Dr. Mac. “Do you need us, Gran?”

  Dr. Mac shakes her head. “So far it’s been a slow morning. If something comes up, I’ll holler,” she says as she leaves the kitchen.

  “Guess who I saw this morning?” Brenna asks as she redoes the elastic at the end of her long brown braid. She continues without waiting for an answer. “As I was coming here, I saw the woman who just moved into that big old converted barn down the road.”

  “Does she have any kids?” David asks.

  Brenna shrugs her slim shoulders. “I didn’t see any,” she answers. “My mom heard that she’s some kind of artist.”

  “That barn would be great for a studio,” I say. “It’s so big, and the last owners put in skylights.”

  “I saw the woman at the market,” Maggie says, brushing her red hair out of her eyes. “She was wearing all black, and she has wild gray hair that makes her look like a witch!”

  “Oh, my gosh!” Brenna cries. “Listen to this! When I saw her, she was pulling a big black kettle out of the back of her station wagon!”

  “Oh, man, she’s a witch for sure!” David says, his eyes lighting up.

  Brenna wraps her arms around herself and shivers. “Whoa—a witch! And just in time for Halloween! Cool!”

  “I can picture her with the black kettle,” David says. “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!” He mimics a cackling witch voice, pretending to stir an imaginary potion.

  As David does his witch act, a black-and-white tuxedo cat strolls in. It’s my cat, Mittens. I brought her with me this morning, because at my house repairmen are fixing our front steps, and all the hammering was scaring her. Mittens jumps up onto the table, and I scratch her between the ears. “Hi, honey,” I murmur.

  Before she was mine, Mittens was a stray. I first saw her one day when she came wandering around the clinic.

  “Let’s go check out the witch,” David says. “I’ve never seen a real one.”

  “Oh, come on!” I say, laughing. “You don’t really think she’s a witch!”

  “You never know,” David says in a low, creepy voice, his eyes darting mysteriously from side to side. “At Halloween, anything is possible.”

  “David, you’re so weird,” I tease.

  “I think there might really be such things as witches,” Brenna says. “They can do good stuff, too.”

  “Yeah,” Maggie agrees. “I mean, people have believed in them for so long. Could people be totally wrong?”

  “Sure they could be wrong!” I argue. “People used to think the earth was flat, and that the sun revolved around the earth, and all sorts of crazy things.”

  “I heard a story once,” David begins in a spooky tone. “During the Salem witch trials, a woman was hanged for being a witch. But as they put the noose around her neck, she put this horrible curse on the people. She swore she would dance on their graves.

  “Every year on the anniversary of her death, footprints appeared on the graves of anyone who had watched the witch get hanged. When people tried to wipe away the footprints, their hands were covered with blood.”

  “Ew!” Brenna cries with a shiver.

  “Creepy,” Maggie agrees.

  I smile and roll my eyes. Spooky stuff like witches, ghosts, and ancient curses are fun at Halloween, but they’re not for real. I’ll take scientific explanations every time.

  Mittens begins batting markers across the table. One of the markers rolls off and falls to the floor. As I bend to pick it up, Mittens starts chewing on a button. I pull it away from her. My cat has been known to eat strange things.

  She pounces on my hand with her claws sheathed. “OK! OK! I get the message,” I say to her. I pull a length of thick orange yarn out of its skein and cut it off. I dangle the yarn in front of Mittens. “Here you go, Mittens—catch this!”

  I reach high and jiggle the yarn. Mittens rises on her back legs and swings her paws at it.

  “Go on! Catch it!” I coax, pulling the yarn just out of her reach. “You can get it, Mittens.” I lower the yarn just a bit so she can have the satisfaction of capturing it.

  We laugh as Mittens pounces ferociously. She reminds me of a lioness, hunting out on the savanna. She snatches the whole piece of yarn out of my hand and then sits on it, protecting her prize.

  “Good job!” we praise her, clapping. “Way to go!”

  I stroke my cat’s silky fur. I’d wanted a cat for so long before my mother finally gave in. At first, she had a million excuses—cats shed, cats tear up the furniture, and so on. When she finally let me have Mittens, it was the happiest day of my life.

  I named my cat Mittens because she looks like she’s wearing two little white mittens on her front paws.

  I’ve never met a more affectionate cat. She’s always nuzzling me and giving me scratchy little love-kiss licks. I return those with a kiss on her furry forehead.

  David cuts a piece of white cardboard into the shape of a face. He cuts out the eyeholes, then a slit for the mouth. “Should I draw the fangs or make them with clay?” he wonders aloud.

  Suddenly there’s a loud bang from outside, as if something heavy has just fallen. Some animal makes a screechy, screaming sound. The howl becomes more high-pitched.

  “That is definitely a cat!” I say—a very upset, angry, threatening cat.

  We jump up and rush to the door. It sounds like a cat fight, but I can hear only one cat screaming. I get to the door first and pull it open, but before I can step out, Maggie grabs my shoulder, holding me back. “Look out!” she cries as a black blur streaks by my feet.

  Chapter Two

  What was that?” I gasp.

  Behind me, David shouts. “There it is! It’s a cat, a black cat!”

  I see it for just a second as it races off into some bushes.

  “Sunita, a black cat just passed right in front of you. You know what that means!” David says.

  “Bad luck,” Maggie finishes solemnly. She says it so seriously, I think she might actually believe it.

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” I laugh. “Like I really believe that.”

  We step out into the yard. Immediately, I see what fell over—a garbage can. And, just as immediately, I smell a very familiar odor. We all smell it.

  “Skunk!” we shout all together.

  Right on cue, a fat skunk waddles out of the overturned garbage can.

  “Oh, how cute!” Maggie says.

  It is cute. Smelly, but cute. Obviously it sprayed the area because something upset it—either the garbage can turning over or a confrontation with the cat.

  Poor cat. I hope its owner will know it needs a bath in tomato juice to help get rid of the smell.

  Brenna squeezes her nose shut. “P.U.!” she says in a pinched, nasal voice. “What was the skunk doing in the garbage can, anyway?”

  “Skunks sleep in the daytime,” Maggie says. “Maybe it fell in there during the night while it was looking for food.”

  “That’s possible,” Brenna agrees. “Maybe it got stuck in there and then fell asleep once the sun came up.”

  “And the cat woke it up,” I add. Then it occurs to me: If the cat was looking for food in the garbage can, then maybe it’s a stray. If it doesn’t have an owner, how will it get rid of the skunk smell?

  “That cat was really speeding,” David says. “I bet it never expected to find a skunk in there when it started nosing around.”

  The skunk waddles over to a clump of trees. “Let’s get out of here,” Brenna suggests, pinching h
er nose shut once again.

  “Have you guys ever seen that cat around here before?” I ask as we return to the kitchen.

  “I’ve never seen it before,” Maggie says.

  “Well, if it ever comes around again, we’ll be able to smell it coming,” David jokes.

  “I wonder—” Maggie begins, then pauses.

  “What?” I prod her. It drives me crazy when people don’t complete a thought.

  “Doesn’t it seem strange that a woman who looks like a witch moves in nearby, and suddenly a black cat shows up?” Maggie asks.

  “A witch and her mysterious black cat,” David says ominously.

  “You guys!” I say with a laugh. Seems like the Halloween bug has bitten them hard.

  “Believe what you like,” Maggie says. She picks up a pair of scissors and begins cutting into a piece of construction paper, as if she’s made up her mind on the subject.

  Is it really possible she does believe that a witch—complete with cauldron and black cat—has actually moved in down the road?

  “I want to meet her,” Maggie says. “I’ll be able to tell just by looking at her.”

  David laughs. “How? Do you think she’ll be wearing a black cloak and a pointed hat?”

  “I’ll know by looking at her eyes,” Maggie says confidently. “I can tell things about people from their eyes.”

  “You should get out your telescope, Maggie,” I say. “Then you can look out the window and watch her zoom past the moon tonight.”

  Maggie rolls her eyes at me. “Oh, very funny!”

  Mittens is still sitting contentedly on the table. “All the excitement’s over, sweet girl,” I say. I look at my watch. “Uh-oh, time for you and me to get home for dinner.” I scoop up Mittens. “See you on Saturday, guys.” Friday’s my afternoon to watch Harshil and Jasmine, my five-year-old twin brother and sister.

  “Watch out for witches!” David cackles as we head out the door.

  Oh, brother.

  I wake up late on Saturday morning. I reach over to pet Mittens, who always sleeps next to my pillow, but she’s not there.