Free Star Rider by Bonnie Bryant Page B

companions, and when she saw “Gavin,” she began to realize what was going on. “Oh!” she shrieked.
    Patty ran to get her friend. It was an escape opportunity The Saddle Club wasn’t going to miss. Everyone looked to Stevie for help.
    “This way!” Stevie hissed. She pulled her two friends and Skye into a perfume shop and dashed toward the rear of it. There was no time to ask questions. Everyone just followed Stevie.
    “Head for bubble bath!” Stevie instructed. They dashed down an aisle, ducked to the right, and turned left, avoiding a clutch of teenage girls trying to decide on a cologne. The racing foursome moved so fast, the teenagers barely noticed them—they hoped.
    Stevie took Skye’s hand and led him and her friends behind a large display for a variety of fruit-flavored bubble baths.
    “We’ll be safe here,” she assured them.
    Carole wasn’t so sure. She peered around the largecardboard fruit tree, trying to look a little bit like a peach. She suspected she wasn’t going to fool anybody. She withdrew into the shadows.
    “Swell,” she whispered. “Will we stay here until midnight, when the mall closes, or will we only have to wait until our parents send out the state police to search for us?”
    “Neither,” Stevie said. “We just have to change our cover.”
    Skye reached into his bag and pulled out the rainbow T-shirt. He slipped it on over Korman’s Exterminating. Then he went into another bag and retrieved one of the silly hats they’d bought for the birthday paty. He put it on. It was hardly a make-over, but it might do the trick. With the makeup he was wearing, he didn’t look much like Skye Ransom, and that was good, but he also didn’t look like the boy the girls had come into the perfume shop with, either.
    “Now, this way,” Stevie said. She pasted an innocent smile on her face and stood up. Her friends joined her. It wasn’t easy for Carole to look as if there were nothing unusual about hiding behind a seven-foot tall cardboard fruit tree, but she did her best. It turned out that nobody was looking.
    Instead of going back up to the front of the store, Steviewent to the other rear corner. There was a door there.
    “Where does it go?” Lisa asked.
    “Out,” Stevie answered simply. She opened it and they all went through it.
    They found themselves in a long, dim corridor with a lot of nondescript doors along it.
    “This must be some sort of back delivery entrance,” Skye observed. It made sense. It also meant that they should be able to get into any number of stores from it—if only they could figure out where the doors led to.
    They began opening them and peering through.
    “Lingerie,” Lisa announced.
    “No way,” Skye said. “Perfume was bad enough. Too many girls and women in those stores.”
    Carole opened the next door. “Movie rental—lots of men are in there. That’s better, isn’t it?”
    “Only if they’re not looking at boxes containing Skye’s movies,” Stevie said.
    “Oh, right.” Carole pulled the door closed.
    Stevie opened the next door. “Nuts,” she said.
    “What’s the matter?” Skye asked.
    “It’s a nut store,” she explained.
    “That sounds right for us,” Carole said.
    “Why? Because it’s full of men?” Lisa asked.
    “No, because I think we’re nuts.”
    The logic was compelling. The four of them slipped through the door and into the little nut shop.
    “I love cashews,” Skye said.
    “So does my dad,” Carole said.
    “Then let’s get some for the party,” Skye suggested. He asked for a pound. “See, shopping for a party isn’t all that hard, is it?” he asked while the man weighed the nuts.
    “It’s not hard at all as long as you’re willing to put on disguises and duck through back hallways in the mall,” Lisa joked.
    “It’s him!” came the all-too-familiar shriek of Patty’s voice.
    “So much for that bright idea,” Stevie said.
    They quickly paid for the cashews, and then the four of them