–
1 –
THE BEGINNING
Geela Gribbs was known
as more than a little weird.
She
looked ordinary enough to Caro Carolina, when she came to pick up the key
to Pirate's Den, the tiny cottage next door. She did all the usual things.
She smiled and admired the view of the ocean. Caro's mother said, like she
did with all the guests, "You must be tired after your long drive."
Geela admitted she was, took the key, turned to go. And then she snapped her
fingers, looked downward, and said, "Come on, Fluffers."
There
was no one with Geela Gribbs, no one Caro's mother saw, no one Caro saw. Caro
and her mother looked each other in the eye. Without either of them saying
a word, they decided then and there that the new guest was weird.
But
it didn't matter, Caro's mother told Caro once the new guest was out of hearing
range. Geela had paid in full for two weeks, and she looked harmless.
That
was mid-afternoon, Friday, June 15th, right after Caro's last day of school,
two days after Cassie and Liana had said they weren’t talking to her
anymore.
No shiver went up or down Caro’s
spine. She didn’t have a strange feeling in her stomach. She just plain
didn’t have an inkling that, in just one week, she would find herself,
in the middle of the night, past the edge of town, on a deserted stretch of
road, facing the ditch, needing to climb down into it, and yet afraid to,
afraid of what she would find there – but even more afraid of doing
wrong if she did not go. An urgent whining was coming from the ditch.
On
June 15th, that was far away.
coming soon: Hallowe'en
The
Fluffers Book
is about being thirteen, asking questions, friendship, the possibility of
an invisible world – and adventure and mystery. A strange woman comes
to stay in the cottage beside Caro’s home. With her is an invisible
dog – totally and utterly invisible to Caro as well as to just about
everybody else.
Then in the
middle of the night, a car hits a schoolmate and leaves him unconscious in
the ditch.
Caro wants to
help find who did it, who left Jake to die. But how? How can she rescue anyone?
She doesn't have a clue.
Over
and over, Caro's favorite question is, how? How can you tell who's
a real friend? How can anyone see an invisible dog? And then once more, how
can she help find whoever hit Jake? It’s much easier to want
to do something, she finds out fast, than to figure out how.
Can she find
a way to get the help she needs? Can she find anyone willing to do the sleuthing
with her?
She meets up
with Doug, who does see Fluffers, and the weird Geela – and she finds
that some things aren't as fun as they seem to be, like solving mysteries.
Where's the excitement and adventure when you have to hunt for clues that
probably aren't there? It's even harder than doing research for school. For
school you can go on the internet. Here she has to spend her day looking.
It's great to
imagine being a detective, but doing the detecting is – she hates to
admit – boring. It takes all her determination to keep going.
Even worse,
how can she know that she will get anything done at all? She feels like giving
up. What if she's just wasting her time, spending time with a dog she can't
see and maybe shouldn't trust? After all, Fluffers is dead – or anyway,
that's what Geela says.
It's all very
well hanging out with a ghost dog if you have magic powers. She doesn't –
except the teensiest bit at night when she's dreaming.
The worst thing:
it seems that no one at all is after her. In movies, evil people lurk around
every corner. Her parents are worried, but Caro finds mainly very ordinary
people in her sleuthing. Boring. Sometimes she would rather be doing nothing,
just loafing around – except that her two so-called best friends have
decided they aren't speaking to her.
And then Kats
arrives. Kats the ultra-Goth, wearing black and only black. Kats of course
has powers, or so she says.
Nothing is simple
when you're thirteen.