Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz

Author:Laurie Faria Stolarz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781442069671
Publisher: Baker & Taylor, CATS
Published: 2009-11-10T08:00:00+00:00

30

She just won’t listen. And so I’ve started a plan. I just hope she appreciates all my efforts—all my work to make her happy. Once and for all.

31

After my talk with Ben, Wes and Kimmie are all twenty-questions-times-a-hundred about what he had to say.

But I just don’t feel like talking about it.

Instead, I stare out the window as Wes drives us home, watching the swirl of colors, of houses mixed with buildings and trees, all blending together into one big blur.

“Come on,” Kimmie begs. “If you’re not going to give us the full story, then how about just the CliffsNotes version?”

I shake my head, still unnerved by my conversation with Ben, by the image of his girlfriend as she fell over the cliff that day, and the look of horror that must have covered her face when she saw him lunge for her.

“Paging Camelia Chameleon,” Wes says, cupping his mouth and speaking through his makeshift megaphone.

“Maybe she needs some water splashed on her face,” Kimmie suggests.

“All I’ve got is a day-old Big Gulp,” he says, jiggling a supersize soda cup. He peers at me in his rearview mirror, but I look back toward the street, suddenly very anxious to get home.

“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.

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