Free Switched by Amanda Hocking

little sad to see Finn go. Eventually, I shut the window and closed my curtains.
    After Finn left, I found Matt sitting on the steps, looking bewildered and pissed off. He wanted to yell at me about Finn, but he couldn’t seem to understand exactly what had happened. The best I could get out of it is that he vowed to kill Finn if he ever came near me, and I pretended like I thought that was a reasonable thing to do.
    The next day, school dragged on and on. It didn’t help that I found myself constantly looking around for Finn. Part of me kept insisting that the last few days had been a bad dream, and that Finn should still be here, staring at me like he always did.
    On top of that, I kept feeling like I was being watched. My neck got that scratchy feeling it did when Finn stared at me for too long, but whenever I turned around, there wasn’t anybody there. At least not anybody worth noting.
    At home, I felt distracted and ill at ease. I excused myself from supper early and went up to my room. I peered out my curtains, hoping to find Finn lurking around somewhere nearby, but no such luck. Every time I looked for him and didn’t find him, my heart hurt a little more.
    I tossed and turned all night, trying to decide what to do. I didn’t know how much longer Finn would hang around. There could only be so much time he could devote to tracking me. Eventually, he’d have to move on and find someone else.
    I wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t like the idea of him moving on when I hadn’t.
    Around five in the morning, I gave up entirely on sleep. I looked out the window again, and this time I thought I saw something. He was out there, hiding nearby. I just needed to go out and talk to Finn, to make sure he was still there. I didn’t even bother changing out of my pajamas or fixing my hair.
    Hastily, I climbed out onto the roof. I tried to grab onto the branch and swing to the ground like Finn had. As soon as my fingers grabbed the branch, they slipped off and I fell to the ground, landing heavily on my back. All the wind had been knocked out of me, and I coughed painfully.
     I would’ve loved to lie on the lawn for ten more minutes and try to ease the pain, but I was afraid that Matt or Maggie had heard something. I scrambled to my feet and rounded the hedges towards the neighbors’ house.
    The street was completely deserted. I wrapped my arms tightly around myself to ward off the cold that seeped in and looked around. I knew he had been out here. I had seen something. Maybe my fall had scared him away, like he thought it was Matt or something.
     I decided to walk a little farther down the street, investigating everyone’s lawn for a hidden tracker. My back ached from the fall, and my knee felt a little twisted and weird. That left me hobbling down the street in my pajamas at five in the morning. I had truly lost my mind.
    Then I heard something. Footsteps? Somebody was definitely following me, and based on the dark chill running down my spine, it wasn’t Finn. It was hard to explain how exactly I knew it wasn’t him, but I knew it just the same. Slowly, I turned around.
     
    6. Monsters
     
    A girl stood a few feet behind me. In the glow from the streetlamp, she looked ravishing. Her short brown pixie cut spiked up all over. Her skirt was short and her black leather jacket went down to her calves. A wind came up, blowing back her coat a bit, and she reminded me of some kind of action star, like she should be in The Matrix .
    But the thing that caught my attention the most was that she was barefoot. 
    “Okay… um, I’m going to go home now,” I announced. She just stared at me, so I felt like I had to say something.
    “Wendy Everly, I think you should come with us,” she said with a sly smile.
    “Us?” I asked, but then I felt him behind me.
    I don’t know where he had been before that, but suddenly, I felt his presence behind me and I looked over my shoulder. A tall man with dark, slick-backed hair stared