Cold Calls (2 page)

Eric checked his email again on the way to school.

Nothing.

His father was used to him zoning out during the ride, leaving him free to stare out at the road in front of the Bronco. At first, all he could think about was the caller, but there was nothing new to think about, so other things popped in, things like the reading he forgot to do for English, the run he should have gone on that morning, the ambush he had walked into last night playing
Gears of War,
and, eventually, predictably, unavoidably, he thought about April.

Two months ago next Saturday.

He was positive she would remember.

Not the kind of thing you celebrate, not out loud anyway, but still not the kind of thing you forget.

At least, that's what the movies said.

But then, the movies also said it was all fireworks and funky bass guitars, that it'd be wild and there'd be no guilt or embarrassment and definitely no regrets, especially for him. Well, it wasn't the first time that the best parts were all in the previews. He just wondered if there'd ever be a sequel.

“Anybody home?” his father said, tapping him on the shoulder. Eric blinked, and there he was, back in the Bronco, idling in the bus loop in front of the school.

His father laughed. “I was tempted to see how long you'd sit there like that, but people were starting to stare.”

“Sorry. I didn't sleep that good last night,” Eric said, then cut off questions by adding, “I had this stupid song stuck in my head is all.”

“That's what you get for listening to stupid music.”

Eric mumbled something about classic rock as he climbed out of the truck.

“Here, take this,” his father said, handing him five bucks. “Get yourself a tall black coffee. That'll wake you up.”

He beeped twice as he drove off.

Eric checked his phone. Nothing. He checked it between classes and one more time before practice, but somewhere in the middle of wind sprints it slipped to the back of his mind. That night, he had too much homework to catch up on to waste time waiting for an email that might never come, and he fell asleep fast, so deep under, he wouldn't have heard a hundred phones ring. On Friday, he started focusing on not thinking about April, and by the time the weekend was over, the whole mystery-caller photo thing was as forgotten as last year's Super Bowl loser.

But on Monday night when he answered his phone and heard the techno static and the airy whoosh, it all crashed back—the calls, the photo, the whispered words that made his stomach roll. He waited, listening, and then he couldn't wait any longer. “Who is this?”

The caller laughed, the voice autotuned dark, deep and not human. Eric strained to hear through the white noise. He thought for a moment, then said, “No big deal. I got an app that traces calls, so I've got your number now—”

Another laugh.

“Yeah, it won't be so funny when I—”

“Tell me the first three numbers and I'll leave you alone.”

The words came as a surprise, and for a second Eric was tempted to guess, but whoever it was had called his bluff, and he had nothing. He lowered his voice in case his mother was nearby, then rattled off a handful of f-bomb insults before hanging up.

It was stupid, yeah, and probably what the caller wanted him to do, but he needed to do something, and what else did he have?

Lying on his bed, Eric gritted his teeth till his jaw muscles burned, mentally beating the crap out of . . . who? It didn't matter—he'd do it, even if it was a senior. But what senior would waste time doing this? No, it was someone in his class. Or one of the freshmen. Phone pranks were more their speed. But it wouldn't be one freshman acting alone, since freshmen didn't do anything alone. No self-confidence and a pack mentality, especially when it came to kid stuff like this. And since it probably was a bunch of freshmen, the last thing he should have done is what he did, lose his temper. They were probably all huddled together, giggling on the other end, finding it
so
frickin' hilarious
that they made a junior swear. He tried to remember a time when stuff like that was funny. He couldn't, but the first months of ninth grade sounded about right.

It wouldn't be anyone who played sports. Even the ninth-graders knew that the coaches had zero tolerance for athletes living up to the stereotype. Low grades, disrespecting substitute teachers, that jock swagger—the coaches came down hard. Prank phone calls weren't up there with stuffing some kid in a locker, but it wouldn't be worth the risk of all those extra laps to find out.

He considered the theater gleeks. The calls had the over-the-top drama and cheesy audio effects, plus there was that unwritten, always there, jock-gleek animosity that gave this kind of prank a higher purpose. But it wasn't them. Tryouts were starting for the school musical, and they'd be wrapped tight in their own little dramas, too busy destroying each other to worry about some soccer player.

The voice was altered, so it could be anybody, even the cheerleaders. But it wouldn't be them, since, one, they were part of the athletic department and, two, they were more mature than that. In every way.

Ten minutes later, he was still thinking about the maturity of the cheerleaders when his phone buzzed, no number showing up in the caller ID.

There was only one way to play it now. He had to keep his cool, act like he was in on the joke, that he found it sorta funny in an old-school kind of way, like watching
Teletubbies
at a keg party. The prank would fizzle out, and the calls would stop. And then he'd find out who was behind them and get his revenge. He swiped on his phone.

“Hey, stranger. I was hoping you'd call back.”

There was a long, static-filled pause that made Eric smile. “What's the matter, lose your voice? I'm not surprised—you've been sounding a little hoarse. Try some tea with honey.”

“I have something you want.”

“A new car? A million dollars? I'd take either one.”

A deep breath, then the voice hissed. “It's something you'll want returned.”

Eric was ready with a comeback when it sank in, the smile melting off his face as he remembered the email and the picture of his room. He jumped up and flicked on a second light, his eyes racing over his desk, the shelves, looking for a gap, a space that shouldn't be there. He pulled out his wallet. Driver's license, school ID, pictures—nothing missing. He jerked open the top drawer of his desk and saw the cards April had given him, the pictures from the sophomore dance, the Dairy Queen gift card his aunt had sent him, his grandfather's dog tags, some movie ticket stubs, an old lighter. He squeezed the phone as he gritted his teeth, the whole stay-cool plan burned away.
“What did you take?”

“I didn't take anything,” the caller said, confidence back in the artificial voice. “
You
took it.”

“
I
took it? I don't know what the hell you're talking about. You're the one that broke into my—”

He jumped at three quick knocks on the door. “Eric? Everything okay?”

Phone against his leg, he took a deep, steadying breath. “Yeah, Mom, I'm fine. Just, uh . . . just on the phone is all.”

“Okay, well, hold it down,” his mother said, then, from down the hall, adding, “and make it quick. It's a school night.”

“All right, I'm almost done,” Eric shouted back. He put the phone to his ear, expecting the line to be dead, but the wispy static was still there. Enough of this, he thought.

“Don't call me again,” he said. “If you do, I'm calling the cops. I have proof that you broke into my house—”

“You're forgetting something,” the caller said.

“Yeah? Like what?”

The static dropped out, making the whispered words loud and clear. “I know your secret.”

Eric laughed. “Oh that. Isn't that a line from
Scary Movie 3?
You could at least try to be original. Bye-bye, asshole,” he said, his thumb swiping over to end the call, but not before hearing one last raspy line.

“Check your email.”

Eric stuffed the phone in his pocket and went down to the kitchen, grabbed a stack of Oreos and a glass of milk, then sat in front of the TV in the living room and pretended to care about the
Monday Night Football
pregame show. He held out until the end of the first quarter before heading up to his room, shutting the door, and powering up his iPad.

There were four new messages. One from a skateboard company, one from the Armed Forces Recruitment Center, one from Fandango, and one from an unknown sender at an EarthLink account. With two quick taps he trashed the message.

A minute later, he sent it back to the inbox and clicked it open.

The picture popped up, and Eric gasped, stumbling backwards, his hands numb, his legs shaking, as he collapsed on his bed, the iPad thumping onto the floor.

He looked again, but the picture was still there.

“Oh, shit,” he said, no one there to see the color drain from his face.

S
HELLY
M
EYER PULLED HER HAIR BACK BEHIND HER
head, scrunching it up, holding it in place with her right hand, using her left to balance as she leaned over and puked into the sink.

Tried to, anyway.

The way her stomach had been acting—the noises, the rolling, the acid burn creeping up her throat—throwing up should have been easy. But no, it wasn't happening. It wasn't that kind of sick.

Someone knew.

Who it was and how they had found out she didn't know.

Yet.

But someone knew. And she had to find them.

She ran the water in the sink, cupping her hands under the faucet, letting the cold wash over her fingers till they were numb. She lowered her face into her hands. Water trickled along the curve of her neck, disappearing down the front of her white cotton shirt. It was good, and for a moment she allowed herself to relax. And then it was time.

She looked at her reflection in the polished metal mirror.

Black eyeliner, thicker than she'd worn it in middle school.

Blue-black lipstick, fainter than she liked, but darker than the dress code allowed.

Coal black hair, straight from the bottle, the more unmanageable the longer it got.

Crazy goth chick cliché in a Catholic-school uniform, the whole look still a bit foreign.

She wiped a paper towel across her face, slung her backpack over her shoulder, and walked out of the third-floor bathroom, looking for her victim.

Classes had been over for an hour, and the only students left were out on the fields or down in the locker room. There were a few straggler teachers, but they wouldn't be a problem. She'd only been at the school for three weeks, but by then it was obvious that the teachers who stuck around after the last bell were in no rush to get home. Nonna Lucia would have called them “ladies of a certain age and standing,” meaning over fifty and divorced. With cats. There were two male teachers at the school, and both of them could have fit in with that crowd if they didn't bolt out faster than the students. The ones who did stay usually clustered around the librarian's tiny office, eating grocery-store pastries and drinking instant cappuccinos. They were okay teachers, she guessed, entertaining and not too demanding, but none of them seemed like the kind you could talk to, not like Ms. Moothry or Mr. Becker. But that was another school and another life.

Shelly rounded the corner near the bio lab. The hall was empty.

Heather Herman: 72 Facebook friends, 0 in common. Likes Katy Perry,
The
Walking Dead,
The Slayer Chronicles,
American Idol,
Women's Premier Soccer League, Vancouver, and Moonlight Creamery double-chocolate fudge.

There was no place on Facebook to list the things she hated, but if there was, Shelly figured she'd be on it by now.

Down the west stairs, past the chapel and the room where Mrs. Holland tried to teach religion, the lessons always turning into class discussions about current events and “teen issues,” Catholic-school code for sex and drugs. There were the occasional Bible references, but Shelly knew them better than Mrs. Holland did—she'd even corrected Father Caudillo a couple of times when they'd talk after mass, him half joking about her one day becoming a priest.

But that had been before everything had gone wrong.

Shelly thumbed the metal button on the drinking fountain and swirled the warm water around her dry mouth. She spit it out and did it a second time, then started down the stairwell to the first floor and the side exit.

She knew how it would play out, how it
had
to go, and she could guess what would happen later.

Maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

There'd be the call to the principal's office, a visit to the counselor, then a meeting with her father—good luck with that—then the psychiatrist, maybe a scared-straight talking-to by a priest or a cop or an attorney, a couple of days' suspension, a week or two in detention, some mention about her Permanent Record, lots of strange looks and whispered comments from students and teachers, social isolation through June, and eventually, somewhere late in her senior year, a grudging acceptance back into the fold as her classmates focused on the phony nostalgia that was required near graduation.

If it
didn't
play out that way, if she didn't do all the stupid things the caller told her to do, didn't obey that mystery voice that knew her secret? She knew what that would be like too.

She paused at the bottom of the stairs, breathing in slow, then out slower, finding her focus, her game face, her thumbnail biting into the side of her finger, an old habit that explained the thin, curved scars.

That's when she saw her.

Locker open, books stacked on the floor, her back to the stairwell.

Just get it over with, Shelly thought, then moved without thinking, slipping into the hallway, letting the door close slow and soft behind her. It was too late to run, too late to get help, too late for both of them.