Free The Red Ghost by Marion Dane Bauer

1
A Birthday Present
for Quinn
    T
he doll wore red velvet. Her dress was made of red velvet and her bonnet was, too. Both were trimmed in white lace, but the white lace only made the velvet seem more red.
    Jenna had found the doll on a table at Miss Tate’s garage sale. Dishes, stacks of old magazines, candles, even a couple of mousetraps lay around her. All of it was junk, really. Except for the doll.
    Jenna couldn’t take her eyes off the doll.
    “Look,” she said to her friend Dallas. “Isn’t she pretty?” She pointed but didn’t touch.
    “Wow! That thing looks really old!” Dallas grabbed the doll off the table. She held it out at arm’s length.
    That was just like Dallas. The doll did look old … and fragile. Jenna hadn’t dared pick it up. What if Miss Tate objected? But Dallas didn’t worry about those things. She just did them and then seemed surprised when she got into trouble.
    Jenna moved closer to inspect the doll. She had painted-on hair, round cheeks, dimples in the backs of her chubby hands. She had real eyelashes, too.
    “Are you still into dolls?” Dallas asked. Anyone would know at a glance that
Dallas
wasn’t “into dolls.” She wore her usual summer outfit—ragged cutoffs and a baseball cap turned backward on her head.
    Jenna made a face at Dallas’s question. Dallas knew better. Jenna had played with dolls when she was little, but she was going into the fourth grade now. “It’s Quinn’s birthday next week,” she said. “And you know how she loves dolls.”
    Quinn was Jenna’s little sister, and Jenna hadn’t found a birthday present for her yet. The truth was she hadn’t saved enough of her allowance to buy much of anything.
    “I wonder how much Miss Tate wants for it,” Dallas said.
    Jenna shrugged. “Too much probably. She looks valuable.”
    “It looks
old
,” Dallas corrected.
    “Well, old things can be valuable. When they get really old, they’re called antiques,” Jenna said.
    “I’m not an antique!”
    Jenna jumped.
    Miss Tate had come up behind them. “But you’re right,” she said. “That doll is old. It used to belong to my little sister, so it’s almost as old as I am. But that doesn’t make it an antique, either.”
    Jenna didn’t know what to say. As usual, though, Dallas did. “How much do you want for it?” she asked. “Jenna wants to buy it for Quinn.”
    Is that what I want
? Jenna wondered. And even if it was, what made Dallas think she could afford it?
    Miss Tate was tall and very skinny, kind of like a pole with a puff of white hair on top. She crossed her arms over her flat front and frowned at the doll.

    “For her birthday,” Jenna told her. “Next week she’ll be five.”
    “Five years old? That little tyke?” Miss Tate’s face rumpled into a smile. “Well, in that case, you can have it for Quinn. No charge.”
    “Really?” Jenna couldn’t believe her luck. She had found a birthday present for Quinn. And it wasn’t going to cost her a cent!
    Miss Tate gave an emphatic nod. “I should have gotten rid of that doll a long time ago,” she said. “I never did like it.”
    Jenna wondered how anyone could not like such a pretty doll. Still, she wasn’t going to argue. She said only, “Thank you, Miss Tate!” She took the doll from Dallas and gave it a squeeze. The head and arms andlegs were hard, but the body was soft and huggable.
    “Don’t thank
me
,” Miss Tate said. “It was my mama who insisted on keeping the thing.” And she turned abruptly and became very busy straightening a stack of
National Geographic
s.
    “Thank you so much,” Jenna repeated anyway.
    And Dallas added, “Quinn is going to love—”
    But Miss Tate interrupted. “Run along now, girls.” She picked up the stack of magazines and carried them to another table. She spoke without looking back. “And take that silly doll with you. It’s high time it was out of my attic.”
    Jenna and Dallas looked at each other and shrugged. Who knew why