A Spy Among the Girls by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

tissue and dabbed at her eyes. Caroline thought about the short, straight-haired girl named Lorie walking back down to the swinging bridge after she'd left the Malloys’. She imagined an abaguchie, or whatever the real animal was, lurking in the brush on the other side. Imagined its sharp teeth tugging at her leg as Lorie stepped off the bridge. Caroline felt sick to her stomach. She would never eat Kentucky Fried Chicken again.
    And then her mother's voice intruded. “I don't know what to say, girls. All I know is that when we lived in Ohio, you didn't seem to get in half as much trouble as you do here. Jake and Josh, you said, were in on this project too. Now, I'm not saying who is most at fault, but I think it's time you let the Hat-ford boys go about their business and you go about yours. I want you to be friendly to them at school, but they shouldn't be coming over here anymore, and I don't want you going over there. I just think things will be better all around that way.” She studied her daughters in disappointment and slowly shook her head. “The
first
order of business, however, is to find Lorie Weymouth. And we
will
find her, if our family has to walk the streets all night looking for her.”

Ten

New Rule
    T om Hatford put down the phone and reached for his coat. As he thrust his arms into the sleeves, he looked at his sons, who were playing a video game in the living room, and called, “You know anything about the Malloy girls trapping the abaguchie over at their place?”
    Jake went on moving the joystick, trying to push Josh's car off the screen. “Ha! They couldn't trap an ant if they sat on it. All they had in their garage was Caroline acting crazy and a picture of an abaguchie that Josh drew.”
    “What for?” his father asked.
    “It was just for an experiment Josh and Eddie and I are doing for our science project. To see who's gullible enough to fall for it,” Jake said.
    “Did you have anything to do with a secret message sent to a third-grader named Lorie Weymouth, about seeing the abaguchie at the Malloys’?”
    “Heck, no. Caroline stuffed those messages in everyone's coat pocket at school before we ever heard of the project,” Josh said.
    “Well, it turns out that Lorie's missing, and the sheriff wants me to find her brother. He's out collecting canned food for the Boy Scout food drive. Mrs. Weymouth came home and found her daughter missing, and she's pretty worried. We want to talk with the brother.”
    “Oh, Tom, you're going to miss dinner again. Can I send a sandwich along?” called Mrs. Hatford from the kitchen.
    “No, I'll eat when I get back,” Mr. Hatford said.
    He went outside, and Wally listened to the Jeep driving off.
    “What do you think happened to her?” Wally asked his brothers.
    “I don't even know Lorie Weymouth,” said Jake.
    “If she was there, her name should be on our data sheet,” said Josh.
    Peter was watching Jake's and Josh's cars collide on the screen. “Maybe the abaguchie got her,” he suggested.
    “Shut up, Peter,” said Jake.
    Josh, however, put down his joystick and went into the dining room to get his notebook. He went down the list of names he had recorded along with Jake and Eddie. There it was, near the end of the list:
Lorie Wey
mouth.
He showed it to his brother.
    Wally walked over to the living room window andstared out at the river in the dark. There was nothing but blackness at the bottom of the bank, except where the streetlight shone on the water, and that glistened gold and silver. Anybody who had come looking for the abaguchie that afternoon should have been home long before this. Unless, of course, she had slipped off the swinging bridge and disappeared under the water. Or a kidnapper had picked her up. Or the real abaguchie had got her, as Peter had said.
    Mrs. Hatford came into the living room, a fork in one hand, a potholder in the other.
    “Lorie's mother must be frantic,” she said. “What exactly were the Malloy girls