Deadly Little Secret (15 page)

“Do you want me to come in with you?” Kimmie asks, once we pull up in front of my house.

“No, thanks,” I say, managing a smile. “I’ll call you, okay?”

She nods, and I go up the front steps and straight inside to the kitchen, part of me relieved to find a note from my mom saying that one of the teachers at the yoga studio called in sick and she’s covering for her, and another part scared to death to be alone.

In my room, I pull down my shades and make sure both windows are closed and locked, unable to shake Ben’s words.

It’s barely even five o’clock. I have at least another hour until my dad gets home. And so I camp out at my computer desk and google the term
psychometry
, half hoping it’s just some made-up word, that Ben doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

But it pops up right away.

Psychometry: the ability to “see” through touch: to learn about an object’s history or read into a person’s future by touching it or him.

I sit down on the corner of my bed and snuggle against my stuffed polar bear, trying to figure out what all of this means—what it’ll mean if I choose to believe him. I stare back at my reflection in the dresser mirror—hair pulled back, heart-shaped face, eyes set wide apart—wondering what Ben really sees when he touches me.

And what I would look like dead.

A moment later the phone rings, startling me. I stare at it, debating whether or not to pick it up—if whoever left me that gift knows I’m alone.

Four rings. Five.

I finally pick it up, but it’s a dial tone before I can even speak. I take a deep breath, trying to exhale away the knot in my chest, wishing I had taken Kimmie up on her offer to come in.

Instead of clicking the phone back off, I leave it on and head downstairs to the basement, where I’ve got a pottery studio set up in the corner, complete with table, sculpting tools, and potter’s wheel. I take the tie off a bag of clay, cut myself a nice, thick slice, and then thwack it down against my board. The clay is smooth and moist beneath my fingertips. I roll it out between my palms, resisting the urge to think too much or plan anything out, and instead I take notice of the texture of the clay and how it shapes in my hands.

“What does this sculpture want to be?” I ask, taking Spencer’s words to heart about letting the work guide me for a change.

I continue to punch, prod, and pull at my clay for at least another hour, but somehow all I have to show for it in the end is a long, stringy piece with handles at both ends, like a jump rope. Pretty much as pulseless as you can get.

I’m just about to roll it up into a ball and begin again when I hear something—a banging noise coming from upstairs.

“Dad?” I call.

But he doesn’t answer.

I resume my work, chalking the noise up to a door slamming outside or a truck driving by. But then I hear it again. Only it’s louder this time.

Slowly, I approach the stairwell, catching a glimpse of how dark it is outside through the windows of our basement. I glance at my watch. It’s already nearing eight o’clock.

So, where is my dad? And why isn’t Mom home yet?

The banging sound continues as I make my way upstairs and click on the kitchen light. But then the noise stops completely.

“Dad?” I call again, wondering if maybe he forgot his house key. I move into the living room to look out the front window, but the driveway’s still empty. No one’s home yet.

My pulse races as I approach the door. I look out the peephole, but there’s no one standing out there. I tell myself it must have been a door-to-door salesperson and that he or she must have moved on already.

A moment later, I hear a pelting noise coming from down the hall.

I take a deep breath, wishing we had an alarm system, then grab the phone to dial my dad’s cell—but it won’t click on, and I can’t get a dial tone. Meanwhile, my cell phone’s in my bedroom.

The pelting sound continues. It’s followed by a loud crashing sound, like glass shattering.

Like someone’s trying to break in.

My hands shaking, I snag an umbrella from the holder by the door and grip it in my hand, the tip pointed, ready for a fight. I start down the hallway, debating whether I should go to a neighbor’s house instead, but I’m too afraid to go outside.

A second later, I hear a noise at the front door. I move back in that direction, noticing how the doorknob is jiggling. The screen door opens, and the doorbell rings.

My heart hammers hard inside my chest. I peer through the peephole, almost collapsing in relief when I see who’s out there.

I unlock the door and whisk it open. Kimmie’s standing there, a plateful of brownies in her hands.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I blurt out, pulling her inside.

“No, the question is what are
you
doing? I called your cell phone—no answer. I called your home phone—the line is busy.”

“I left it off the hook,” I say, remembering.

“Exactly,” she huffs, thrusting the plate of brownies at me. “That’s what the operator said, too.”

“You called the operator?”

“Well, yeah. The whole thing smelled like fish, after all. I mean, I know you guys have call-waiting.”

“Fishy or not, you scared me to bits.” I look toward the hallway. The pelting sound has stopped.

“I broke your window, by the way,” she says, prying the umbrella from my grip. “When you wouldn’t answer the door, I thought that maybe you were taking one of your marathon baths, and so I decided to throw rocks at the bathroom window. But apparently, I got a little too aggressive, because the glass broke. Brownie?” She lifts off the plastic wrap and helps herself to one. “I hope you don’t mind if a couple got smooshy. They were crammed in the basket of my bike.”

“You rode here on your bike?”

“Hauled ass is more like it,” she says. “Do you know how many potholes this cheapskate town has?”

“Why didn’t your mom drop you off?”

“Mom’s too busy trying to appease my dad, by shopping for miniskirts and thigh-high boots.”

“Okay, so wait.” I shake my head, my mind whirling with questions. “Why didn’t you just ring the doorbell?”

“Um, yeah, hello! I rang it for, like, ten minutes straight.”

“I was in the basement.”

“Which is probably why you didn’t hear it, Nancy Drew.”

I smile, grateful for her persistence. “Well, at least you got to take out some of your aggression on the window . . . not to mention the door.”

“The door?” she says, her mouth full of brownie.

“Yeah, you practically beat the door down.”

“Um, no I didn’t.”

“You didn’t pound on the door?”

“I may have rapped a couple times, but not hard. I could hear the doorbell ringing from the outside, so I knew it was working.”

“Wait,” I say, feeling my heart speed up again. “You didn’t bang at the door? You didn’t knock real hard?”

Kimmie shakes her head, a worried expression on her face.

I grab the umbrella again and step into the doorway, checking outside to see if anything looks off. But aside from Kimmie’s bike, parked smack in the center of my mother’s jasmine bush, everything appears fine.

“What are you thinking?” she asks.

“Someone was pounding.”

“But I was outside, remember? I would have seen someone knocking.”

“Not if you were out back, throwing rocks at the bathroom.” I let out a giant breath and start to close the door. But that’s when I see it; a shiver runs down my back.

“What’s wrong?” Kimmie asks, following my glance.

I gesture toward the mailbox. The red flag is pointing up, indicating that something’s in there, even though I know for a fact I checked the box on the way in and it was empty, with the flag pointing down.

“Do you want me to check?” she asks.

I shake my head, not knowing what to do—scared to know what’s in there, but maybe even more scared to just leave it alone.

“What the hell did Ben say to you today?” she asks.

I continue to look outside, straining my eyes, wondering if I’m being watched at this very moment—if someone’s out there lurking behind a car or down the street.

Kimmie steps outside and opens the mailbox.

“What is it?” I ask.

She looks up at me, her lips parted in shock, like she doesn’t want to say.

“Tell me,” I demand.

She reluctantly takes it out and turns it over so I can see.

It’s another eight-by-ten photograph of me. Only, instead of a bubbly heart surrounding my image, someone’s scribbled over my face and then written the words
I’M CLOSER THAN YOU THINK
across my body in bright red marker.

I grab Kimmie, slam the door closed, and lock both locks. “Someone’s watching me,” I whisper.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says, wrapping her arms around me.

I wait for her to explain it all away—to tell me this is another joke, or blame the whole thing on Wes. But instead she remains silent.

32

Kimmie brings me a cup of my mom’s dandelion tea and then sits down beside me on the living room sofa. “It was the strongest thing I could find.”

“My mom likes to keep a chemical-free home, remember?”

“Right.” She fishes inside her satin-lined clutch for a pad of paper and a pen. “So, I really think we need to tell your parents.”

I nod, glancing down at the coffee table, where my mom’s old family album is still opened up to the picture of her and Aunt Alexia. They’re twelve and seven, respectively, and they’re posing in front of the Christmas tree, candy canes in their hands.

There’s a bright smile on Aunt Alexia’s face, and so I know my grandmother wasn’t the one taking the picture. Aunt Alexia looks way too happy, after all.

I close the album, remembering the last time Aunt Alexia was in a mental hospital and how my mom ended up in a hole of depression for over two weeks—two weeks of barely getting out of bed and having to be reminded to eat, sleep, and bathe.

“I don’t want to bother my parents with this just yet,” I say finally.

“And you don’t think an untimely death will be a bother?”

“Just give me a couple more days,” I insist. “I want to try and figure things out on my own.”

“Well, you’re
not
alone.” She slips on her cat-eye glasses and stares at me from above the rims. “So, let’s review. What do we know for sure?”

“I’m being followed.”

“Right,” she says, jotting it down.

“Someone’s watching me, and he’s getting closer.”

“Do you have any idea who this someone might be?”

“Well, I’m assuming it’s a guy.”

“Rule number one,” she says, crossing her legs at her faux-tattoo-adorned ankle, where a smiling Betty Boop winks up in my direction. “Never assume.”

“But it was a male voice who called me, remember?”

“Male, schmale. Just look at Wes. He can change his voice on cue—and not just guy voices, either. He’s an equal-opportunity impersonator.”

“You still think this is Wes?”

“All I’m saying is that we can’t rule anyone out. Also, haven’t you ever heard of voice-changers? They can make any female sound male and vice versa.”

“But he told me I was pretty.”

“You
are
pretty, so what’s your point?” I shrug and glance toward the picture window, tempted to pull down the blind. “We also shouldn’t rule out the whole conspiracy theory,” she continues. “You think this could be more than one person?”

“Rule number two: anything’s possible. Which brings me to my next question: what did Ben say to you today?”

“That he can see me dead.”

“That’s normal.”

“I can explain.”

“Okay, so rule number three,” she says, already annoyed. “Stop making excuses for Ben.”

“I’m not making excuses,” I say. “He’s psychometric.”

“I know. A total nut job, right?”

“Not psychotic,
psychometric
: he can sense things through touch.”

“Excuse me?”

I take a deep breath and explain the whole thing— everything he told me and all that I learned online. “So, let me get this straight,” she says, taking a sip of my tea. “The boy touches stuff and can sense the future?”