Free Fearscape by Nenia Campbell

anyone's mad at me? I wouldn't even know where to begin.”
    “ Oh, sure. Of course!”
    Val had a horrific image of Lisa peering through a magnifying glass like a grotesquely teenybopper version of Nancy Drew — in jeggings. “Don't tell anyone,” she added quickly. “I don't want anyone to know. I mean it. If you tell anyone, I'll stop being your friend.”
    “ But what if someone wants to know why I'm asking weird questions?”
    “ Don't be that obvious.”
    “ Easy for you to say.” Val could hear the eye roll in her friend's voice. “I'll do my best.”
    “ Thanks ….”
    “ You know, your stalker reminds me of Erik, from The Phantom of the Opera .”
    “ The movie?” Val asked, immediately thinking of Gerard Butler.
    “ No. The book. He was a lot more twisted in the book. Less romantic and tragic and sad. He even had a torture chamber.”
    “ You're really not making me feel better, you know!”
    “ Sorry. I just think it's a weird coincidence. I mean, the Phantom wanted Christine because he thought she had a beautiful voice, right? This guy wants you because he thinks you look beautiful when you run.” Lisa paused. “Weird, really, how a guy could take an innocent hobby and incorporate it into some twisted fantasy about sex and saving grace — you know?”
    “ It's creepy,” Val said, in a tiny voice. “I don't like it. Being watched all the time. Or feeling like I am. It's just as bad, either way. I miss feeling safe when I'm alone.”
    “ Hey — The Phantom of the Opera ended happily enough.”
    “ This isn't a movie , Lisa! And even if my stalker did look like Gerard Butler, I'd still freak out.”
    “ I don't think you have to worry about that,” Lisa said. “Him looking like Gerard Butler, I mean. Most likely he's a gross nerd with a small dick.”
    Val hung up on her without preamble. She let Lisa call her back three times before deigning to pick up the phone and let her apologize.

Chapter Six
    Ms. Wilcox wasn't even there when Val arrived at her classroom, and yet the door was wide open. Probably because of the janitor. Technically, students weren't supposed to be alone in a classroom without the teacher present but Val was pretty sure nobody had seen her, and even if they had, she could always say that the teacher had only stepped out for a second or that she thought the janitor counted as faculty — which they did, surely?
    She sat down at an empty table, inhaling the smell of paint. More important, she needed the time and silence to contemplate how she was going to talk to Gavin. She had a feeling that, Hi, are you the guy stalking me on Facebook? wasn't going to cut it.
    Maybe she should just ask him if he had a Facebook and work from there.
    Do you cosplay? Do you participate in historical reenactments? Do you like putting on creepy costumes while scaring the hell out of your classmates?
    She really was terrible at this, wasn't she? She sucked at being manipulative. If Gavin was guilty, he'd know immediately what she was getting at, which would be bad. If he wasn't guilty, he'd just think she was a freak, and that would be bad, too.
    Grateful that nobody was around to see her embarrassment, Val set her backpack down on the desk and basked in the silence. Without the new-age music Ms. Wilcox was so fond of playing, Val could focus on the details she generally ignored in the face of the sensory overload which resulted from a large class-size. The sour tang of paint, the earthy wood of the carving blocks, the way the trees outside caused the light on the floors to dapple. Dust motes in the air caught and reflected the early morning light, sparking like burning embers and reminding Val of faerie dust.
    Magic.
    Art was magic, in a way. Each drawing was a window into the mind that created it.
    Val pulled her sketchbook from its canvas prison and fished around the bottom of her backpack until she located her fine-tipped pens and charcoal pencils. Expensive, the lot of them, but the