Free Deadly Little Lies by Laurie Faria Stolarz Page A

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.

20

    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