Deadly Little Lies (8 page)

In my room, I drop my book bag to the floor and sift through my stack of mail. I’ve been receiving tons of college stuff lately—mostly brochures, postcards, and information packets—thanks to an online survey I filled out.

I open a large padded envelope from the University of Hawaii, trying to picture myself studying on a sandy white beach, a coconut-filled drink in one hand and some exotic fruit in the other. The thought of it makes me smile, and when I think about it, this is probably the first time I’ve smiled all day.

I take a deep breath and continue through the pile. All of the other schools, regardless of how big their dorm rooms are or how pristine the facilities promise to be, pale in comparison to the hula girl idea now stuck in my head. The idea of me getting far, far away from here.

Finally I reach the last envelope and tear it open. But instead of the standard letter inviting me to tour the campus, there’s a newspaper clipping inside. At first I think it might be some new and innovative marketing tactic to snag my attention, but then I notice it’s a clipping from our town’s paper.

I turn it over in my hands, suddenly feeling a tunneling sensation inside my chest. It’s the article about Debbie Marcus’s accident last September. The heading reads “Hit-and-Run Leaves Girl in Coma” and details what happened that night, how a car traveling at least thirty miles per hour knocked Debbie to the ground. A witness—some guy who’d just come out of Finz, the restaurant on Columbus Street—said she fell and hit her head against the pavement. There’s a photo of the restaurant beside the article.

I grab the envelope, in search of a return address, but there isn’t one, nor is there a postmark. Only my name and address are printed on the front, meaning someone must have dropped this off for me, just like they left those photos in my bedroom. Just like what was happening four months ago when mysterious pictures were left inside my mailbox.

They hadn’t been mailed either.

I swallow hard and reach for the phone. At the same moment, the newspaper photo catches my eye again, and I look a little closer.

Above the door of the Finz restaurant sign is a wooden cutout of a swordfish. The swordfish is jumping upward, as though out of the water.

Exactly like my sculpture.

I drop the clipping. There’s an acidic taste inside my mouth. A second later the phone rings.

“Hello?” I answer.

It’s silent at first, but then I hear a high-pitched giggling sound, as if from far away.

“Hello?” I repeat, louder this time, tempted to hang up.

After a few moments, the giggling finally stops. “You’ll be next,” a voice whispers. It’s an angry hisslike tone that nearly makes me drop the receiver.

“Who is this?” I insist. I look toward my window. The curtains are parted, the blind is rolled to the top.

I spring from my bed to tug the blind down.

“You’ll end up like her,” the voice continues; it’s followed by a weird crackling sound.

“Who is this?” I repeat.

But the line is dead.

At school the next day, I tell Kimmie and Wes all about what happened. We’re sitting on the sidelines in gym, all of us having conveniently forgotten our sweatpants and sneakers, and fully prepared to accept our sentence of cleanup duty after school. Some matters just can’t wait until lunchtime.

“You seriously couldn’t tell if the voice was male or female?” Wes asks.

“Not that it matters,” Kimmie sighs. “I mean, with voice-altering software, tone-changing phone devices, and pitch-sensitive voice transformers with reverberation capabilities, I swear, it’s like a stalker’s paradise.”

“Okay, now you’re starting to scare me,” Wes says.

“No, scary is the way people can alter their voices on cue. Like your imitation of that creepy guy who lives at your house.”

“You mean my dad?” He laughs.

“Seriously, it gives me chills just thinking about it,” she says.

“But I’m most proud of my Marge Simpson impersonation,” he says, making his voice super raspy.

“Still, it’s all so vague,” she continues. “I mean, ‘You’ll be next’? ‘You’ll end up like her’? Couldn’t the caller be a bit more specific?”

“They’re obviously talking about Ben’s ex-girlfriend,” I say.

“And why is that obvious?” Wes asks. “They could be talking about Debbie.”

“Which, when you think about it, would be a whole lot better,” Kimmie says. “I mean, she only ended up in a coma.”

As if that’s supposed to make me feel better.

Wes gestures to Debbie standing at the sidelines, pretending to play basketball for the blue team, but really doing her best to avoid actually having to participate. “You just never know,” he says. “One day a sneeze away from death—”

“The next, just killing the game,” Kimmie says of Debbie’s less-than-stellar sporting skills.

“I figure the same person who called me is the one who left that newspaper article,” I say.

“The same one who left you the snapshots of the shrine and the Ben graffiti,” Wes adds.

“Someone’s definitely messing with you,” Kimmie says, the newspaper clipping pressed between her fingers.

“Yeah, but
why
?” I say, noticing the hole in Kimmie’s black lace socks. Mr. Muse ordered us to remove our “wood-dulling” shoes before we stepped out onto the recently painted gym floor. The smell of polyurethane is still thick in the air.

“Maybe the same reason Debbie’s friends made it look like she was being stalked,” Kimmie says. “People have nothing better to do in this lame-ass town.”

I nod, thinking how I said something similar to Adam at the studio yesterday. “Except if this is a joke, it’s so far from funny.”

“I agree.” Wes nods. “I mean, comas, dead-girl shrines, and death threats? It can all be such a downer.”

“So what are you going to do?” Kimmie asks me.

I shake my head since I honestly don’t know.

“I think you should tell your parents,” she says. “Or go to the police.”

“Even though Matt’s in Louisiana?”

“Wait, is that a rhetorical question?” she asks.

I nibble my lip, wishing I could just talk to Ben about everything, that he would touch my hand, and tell me whether or not I need to be worried. “Maybe you guys are right.” I gaze out at Debbie on the court. She stands at the free-throw line, dribbling the ball. The smacking sound of rubber against wood makes my head ache. She finally shoots, but misses.

“Poor girl.” Kimmie shakes her head.

“I think she still blames Ben,” I say. “You should have seen the way she looked at him in the hallway the other day.”

“Didn’t someone catch her up to the facts after the coma?” Kimmie asks. “That her dumb-ass friends wanted her to think she was doomed. That
they’re
the ones responsible for her so-called stalking.”

“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” I say. “Maybe some people will believe whatever they want, regardless of facts.”

“Well, all I know is that when all that drama went down last fall, she
did
go to the police,” Wes says. “And look at what happened to her.”

“I know,” I whisper.

“So maybe you
should
wait,” he continues. “I mean, what are you going to tell the police anyway? That first you were hearing voices in your basement? And now someone’s pranking your house? They’ll give you a straitjacket and then tell you to call them when something big happens.”

“Except if I were you,” Kimmie says, “I wouldn’t wait around for something as big as getting abducted again.”

“Agreed,” Wes says. “Better to do something
pre
-kidnapping. Maybe right around the time when the stalker in question leaves a dead rodent in your mailbox.”

“Not funny,” I tell them.

“Who’s laughing?” Kimmie’s eyes grow wide. The jet-black shadow shading her lids accentuates her pale blue eyes. “I’m really starting to worry about you.”

Wes snatches the newspaper clipping from Kimmie and drops it into my lap. “Why not give some of this stuff to Ben and have him touch it?”

“Good idea,” Kimmie says.

“But he’ll probably refuse,” I sigh. “Just like he refused to touch the note I got in the bathroom.”

“Because it was sticky?” Wes makes a face.

“Because the note held my energy,” I explain, resisting the urge to bean him on the head with one of the runaway basketballs.

“And he’d rather you be in danger than get himself involved?” Kimmie asks.

“Wow, that’s harsh,” Wes says.

“But it’s also obviously true,” I say. “Except he doesn’t believe I’m in danger. He thinks the note from the bathroom was a joke.”

“Have you talked to him about the whole touch-powers-being-transferred possibility?” Kimmie asks.

I nod. “And the answer was negative.”

Kimmie shakes her head, clearly disappointed. “So then, how do you explain the swordfish sculpture?”

“Have you been to Finz recently?” Wes asks. “Maybe you saw the swordfish logo and just forgot about it.”

I nod again, thinking how it was just a couple nights ago, when I went on that walk with Ben, that we ended up on Columbus Street. Is it possible that the image subconsciously stuck with me somehow?

“Well, seafood aside, you need to do something. And sooner rather than later.” Kimmie flares out the skirt of her baby-doll dress and smooths out her leggings, commenting to Wes that his tight black jeans look rather leggingish as well. “You know I’m all for vintage,” she tells him, “but that greaser 1950s look is all wrong for you.”

“Thanks, but I’ve had enough fashion advice from my dad for one day.”

“He’s not into the James Dean look for you either?”

“He’s not into my look
period
. He thinks my hair’s too long, my chest’s too small, and he’s started calling me Wuss instead of Wes, insisting that he needs to buy me a dress to go with my tights.”

“Your dad has man-boobs, cankles, and mama-hips,” Kimmie snaps. “Who’s he to talk about style?”

“Are you still seeing Wendy?” I ask, noticing how Wes’s hair does seem a bit longer than usual. Still, he’s got it fully encrusted with mousse, per usual, like maybe he’s trying to go for that greaser effect after all.

“Wendy dumped me.” He sulks. “Two weeks ago. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“How does someone you pay to pose as your girlfriend dump you?” Kimmie asks.

“I don’t want to talk about it,”
he repeats.

“Well, whatever; your dad’s a freak,” Kimmie says. “Shall we move on?”

But before we can move too far, Mr. Muse tells us to stop talking completely. “This isn’t the cafeteria, ladies,” he snaps. “Whiner, you should know better,” he says, turning to Wes.

Freshman year, Wes was branded with the name Whiner (short for Wesley, the Oscar Meyer Whiner). It all started when he showed up to the Halloween dance dressed as a six-foot-long wiener. A couple of the lacrosse players swiped his bun, and Wes “whined” to the chaperones, scoring the players a big fat detention, and Wes a very undesirable nickname.

“Socialize on your own time,” Mr. Muse continues. “Not mine.” He follows up by handing us each a health book:
What’s Going on Down There? For Girls and Those Who Love Them
. There’s a picture of a prepubescent girl on the front cover, wearing a pink-and-white polka-dot bikini. “I want to see the first three chapters outlined in your notebooks by the end of the block,” Muse barks.

“I seriously hate this school,” Wes says, once Muse is out of earshot. Instead of taking notes, Wes draws a whip in the hand of the girl on the front cover, and a dog collar around her neck.