The Haunted Mask
R. L. Stine
 Carly Beth Caldwell is an 11-year-old girl who is a target for pranks and practical jokes, some of which are played by Chuck Greene and Steve Boswell, two of her friends at Walnut Avenue Middle School. Before Halloween, she is humiliated after the two boys trick her into eating a sandwich that contains a living worm. Disgusted, she flees home and discovers her mother has made a plaster of Paris model of Carly Beth's head. On Halloween day, after frowning at the duck costume her mother gave to her, she goes to a party store and discovers a room filled with hideous masks. The store owner unwillingly sells her one of the masks and Carly Beth goes home. Later that day, after she takes the mold of her head that her mother made, she puts on the mask and goes in search of Chuck and Steve, determined to avenge herself against them. She starts acting differently: she chokes her best friend, Sabrina Mason, throws apples at a house and steals a bag of candy from a boy. While at Sabrina's house, Carly Beth is shocked to find she is physically unable to remove the mask and that the mask has, in fact, become her face. She returns to the store and finds the owner waiting for her. The store owner tells her that the mask is a real face and it can only be removed by a "symbol of love", but if it attaches itself to her or another person again, it will be forever. Carly Beth screams in horror, and the other masks begin to pursue her. While running away from the masks, she realizes that the mold her mother made is a symbol of love. Carly Beth finds the mold and uses it to deter the masks and remove the mask from her face. She returns home to her mother, tossing the mask away. Noah, Carly Beth's kid brother, later bursts in and asks her, "How do I look in your mask?"