Free INTRUSION (Whitney Holmes Series) by Elaine Babich

turned off my phone. I thought I might need to get another phone number.

Chanda stayed and talked for a while then she went home.
    I was getting hungry and I asked my mom if I could eat something and she said she had made Jell-O a couple of hours ago, and asked if I would I like that.
    “Yummy,” I said sarcastically.
    “ I am sorry but the doctor wants you to have a liquid diet. I will make you some toast and eggs tomorrow,” she said.
    “ Okay, thank you, Mom,” I said.
    She brought me the Jell-O, which was orange, and I ate it.
    My dad came back and he said he had to be fingerprinted since he had touched the vase. He said, so far, there hadn’t been any fingerprints on anything we had given the police. They are hoping for a print on the vase.
    The phone rang and my mom picked it up. She mouthed to me that it was the doctor and she walked into her bedroom and talked. My stomach, which was already nervous, got more nervous. She was on the phone for five minutes and she came out of her room, smiling.
    “The cyst was benign,” she yelled.
    My father gave a whoop.
    “What does benign mean?” I asked.
    “ Not cancerous, it was just a normal cyst,” my mom said.
    “ That is so great,” I said relieved. I hadn’t realized I was really afraid that I might have cancer. The boys came over and hugged me and I hugged each one of them back.
    “ Tomorrow, we will celebrate by going out to dinner,” my father said.
    “ Sounds good to me,” my mom said.
    I laid on the couch the rest of the night. My neck hurt most of the night and I had to get up and take my pain pills twice.
    My mom wanted me to stay home another day and I didn’t fight her. I think the codeine in the Tylenol was making me a little loopy.
    I turned my phone on and I had so many messages that they couldn’t all come through. I was bored, so I listened to them.
    All of them were from the stalker. He was using some sort of voice-changing machine so I couldn’t recognize his voice. This scared me more than if he didn’t use it. I wondered if I knew this weirdo and he was toying with me. Why would he change his voice if we didn’t know each other?
    I made a list of every boy who had ever asked me on a date and then crossed out every name as I asked myself if any of them were capable of terrorizing me. I didn’t know anyone who was that mean, or that crazy. It seemed impossible that a sixteen-year-old male classmate, or maybe older, was the likely culprit. We were all just… kids.
    I made a list of every male teacher I had ever talked to, and every staffer. I asked myself if any of them had ever been the least inappropriate toward me, the answer was no. One by one, I crossed off all of their names, I was completely baffled.
    I thought of another list to make: boys at church who also went to my school, but didn’t have classes with me. Again, I came up with no likely suspect. Those boys were squeaky clean in my mind, in their choir robes and Sunday School skits.
    I thought of clubs at school, I was in a ton of them last year, before I had to drop out because I had mostly honors classes this year. A lot of boys liked me in glee club because it was just so fun and I was good at it. I had often had soprano solos in our many singing productions…
    “Ugh!” I said, ripping up all the stupid lists of suspects and burying them at the bottom of the kitchen garbage. “Stop it, Whitney!” I told myself out loud.
    I was frustrated and upset as I had mentally picked apart every single male I had contact with for the last year. I was unsettled and felt horrible for judging them: my classmates, my friends, my teachers, my church friends. I felt terrible and my head was spinning with all of their faces in my mind.
    I slept on and off most the day and when my father came home, I got dressed and we went out to eat. It hurt to put my shirt over my head, but otherwise I was better.
    We had a great dinner and the boys were in a great mood talking over each other,