Masks
Authors: Laurie Halse Anderson
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
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Kim Michels, D.V.M.
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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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
Y
ou’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 have 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.”