Free Deadly Little Secret by Laurie Faria Stolarz

school. It was me who pushed you out of the way when that car was coming toward you.”
    “And why are you finally admitting this now?”
    “Because you’re in danger,” he says, his eyes wide and intense.
    “Excuse me?”
    “It sounds crazy, but it’s true.”
    “And how do you know this?”
    “I can’t tell you, and I realize it’s a lot to ask, but you have to trust me.”
    “I don’t even know you, really.”
    “Exactly. Which makes this all the more difficult.”
    “I’m not in danger,” I assure him.
    “You are,” he says, tensing his jaw. “At first I didn’t want to believe it, either, but after today, I’m sure of it.”
    “After today?”
    He looks back toward the moon. “Just think about it. Has anything weird or unusual happened lately? Is there anyone around you that you don’t trust?”
    “Wait—did you hear something? At school? Is there something that I should know?”
    He shakes his head. “It isn’t anything like that.”
    “Then what?”
    “You’re in danger,” he says again. “But I want to help you.”
    I shake my head, my mind hazy with questions. “I think I should probably go in. My parents are probably wondering where I am.”
    He nods and studies my face, his gaze lingering on my mouth. “Just think about what I said. And know that I’m here if you want to talk. You can call me anytime—day or night.”
    “Thanks,” I whisper, not knowing what else to say, or if I should even say anything at all.
    Ben nods and walks away. I watch him go until he’s swallowed up by the darkness. A few seconds later, I hear his motorcycle rev and take off.
    Instead of going inside, I sit for several more minutes on the front steps, wondering what just happened. And what it means.
    It just seems so weird—that I’m supposedly in danger. So weird, because his girlfriend was in danger, too.

22

    It’s almost seven thirty when I finally go inside. “Hey, sweetie,” my mom calls out. “Dinner’s not for another half hour. Soma noodle surprise with tempeh chunks and zucchini-prune juice.”
    As if that’s supposed to tempt me.
    I head into the kitchen to see if she needs any help, but she and my dad are in the living room, doing partners yoga. My mom’s lying on the floor in front of my dad, whom she’s got knotted up in the lotus position. Her feet are elevated and locked around his neck. “Care to join us?” she asks. “This is wonderful for digestion.”
    My mom’s family album—the one she normally keeps locked up in the cedar chest—is sitting out on the coffee table. It’s open to the picture of Mom and Aunt Alexia when they were kids, posing by the Christmas tree.
    “I’m not really hungry,” I say, wondering what’s going on, if Aunt Alexia is in some kind of trouble again.
    My dad, a conservative tax attorney by day and my mom’s yoga victim by night, gives me a pleading look. But, unfortunately for him, my downward-facing-dog days ended around the age of twelve, when my mom paid a visit to my class on career day and talked about the benefits of colon cleansing.
    “Matt called for you again,” she says, her voice rising above the Buddhist monk’s chant coming from our stereo.
    “What do you mean, again ?”
    “He called yesterday, but maybe I forgot to tell you.”
    “Is it something important?”
    “He didn’t say.” She plunges her heels into my poor dad’s shoulders in an effort to arch herself upward. “Someone else called for you today, too.”
    “Someone else?”
    “He wouldn’t leave a name.”
    “He?”
    She manages a nod in spite of the position she’s in. “When I told him you weren’t home, he hung up before I could say anything else. How was your date, by the way?”
    “Interesting,” I say, thinking about Ben—about how when I asked him why he didn’t call me instead of just coming over, he said he wanted to talk face to face. “Did whoever it was say he’d call back?”
    But my mother, having finally gotten into her