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Zusatztext "Signature spooky Hahn sends appropriate shivers up the reader's spine ... satisfyingly chilly." — Kirkus Reviews "Hahn offers another eerie, suspenseful ghost story filled with family secrets." — Booklist, ALA "Classic mystery elements ... add to the suspense and keep the well-plotted story moving along to a satisfying conclusion." — School Library Journal "A compact and approachable shiveriness ... an easygoing vacation read." — Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Informationen zum Autor Mary Downing Hahn ’s many acclaimed novels include such beloved ghost stories as Wait Till Helen Comes , Deep and Dark and Dangerous , and Took. A former librarian, she has received more than fifty child-voted state awards for her work. She lives in Columbia, Maryland, with a cat named Nixi. Klappentext Mary Downing Hahn is at her chilling best in this supernatural tale, where the long-buried secret of a young girl's death in a canoe accident relentlessly makes its way to the surface of an idyllic vacation. A family secret is at the root of Mary Downing Hahn's story of supernatural events in Maine. Thirteen-year-old Ali is eager to spend her vacation with Aunt Dulcie, helping to care for her little niece, Emma, in the lake house where Dulcie and Claire, Ali's mother, spent summers. Claire, who is phobic about water, is dead set against her going but is forced to agree. The vacation by the lake turns unpleasant when Ali and Emma meet a mean, spiteful kid named Sissy. Emma idolizes and imitates Sissy, becoming bratty and hostile and accepting Sissy's dangerous dares. Sissy keeps talking about Teresa, a girl who drowned under mysterious circumstances when Claire and Dulcie were kids. At first Ali thinks Sissy is just trying to scare her with a ghost story, but soon she discovers the real reason why Sissy is so angry: she is the ghost of Teresa and blames Claire and Dulcie for her death. Chapter 1 One rainy Saturday in March, I opened a box of books Mom had brought home from Grandmother’s house. Although Grandmother had been dead for five years, no one had unpacked any of the boxes. They’d been sitting in the attic collecting dust, their contents a mystery. Hoping to find something to read, I started pulling out books—Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Misty of Chincoteague, and at least a dozen Nancy Drew mysteries. At thirteen, I’d long since outgrown Carolyn Keene’s plots, but I opened one at random, The Bungalow Mystery, and began flipping the pages, laughing at the corny descriptions: “Nancy, blue eyed, and with reddish glints in her blonde hair,” “Helen Corning, dark-haired and petite.” The two girls were in a small motorboat on a lake, a storm was coming, and soon they were in big trouble. Just as I was actually getting interested in the plot, I turned a page and found a real-life mystery: a torn photograph. In faded shades of yellow and green, Mom’s older sister, Dulcie, grinned into the camera, her teeth big in her narrow face, her hair a tangled mop of tawny curls. Next to her, Mom looked off to the side, her long straight hair drawn back in a ponytail, eyes downcast, unsmiling, clearly unhappy. Dulcie was about eleven, I guessed, and Mom nine or ten. Behind the girls was water—a lake, I assumed. Pressed against Dulcie’s other side, I could make out an arm, a shoulder, and a few strands of long hair, just enough for me to know it was a girl. The rest of her had been torn away. I turned the photo over, hoping to find the girl’s name written on the back. There was Grandmother’s neat, schoolteacherly handwriting: “Gull Cottage, 1977. Dulcie, Claire, and T—.” Like her face, the rest of the girl’s name was missing. Alone in the attic, I stared at the arm and shoulder. T . . . Tanya, Tonia, Traci, Terri. So many T names to choose from. Which was hers? ...
