Free Funhouse by Diane Hoh Page A

emotional and physical exhaustion, she had a hard time turning off the turmoil in her mind so that she could sleep. Her best friend was in the hospital, the result of tampering aimed at Tess, someone had played a terribly cruel joke on her tonight, and what was worst of all, she knew this wasn’t the end of it. There was more to come; she could feel it.
    What next? she wondered fearfully just before she fell asleep.
    She was awakened some time in the middle of the night, by the shrilling of the telephone on the lamp table behind her head. Struggling to wake up, she thought: Shelley. She’d forgotten or ignored the time difference. Typical Shelley.
    Swivelling awkwardly, she reached to pick up the phone. It wasn’t Shelley.
    “It’s your fault Gina’s in the hospital,” a voice she didn’t recognize whispered in her ear. “You messed everything up. You’ll have to be punished for that. Soon. Very soon.”
    Tess struggled upward on the couch, trying to comprehend the whispered words.
    “Did you like my present tonight?” the horrid voice continued.
    “Who is this?” she cried, knowing she wouldn’t get an answer.
    “Meow!” the voice said, and hung up.

Chapter 15
    A LL I HAVE TO do is wait. That’s what Lila O’Hare did. She waited, all those months, for her baby, and for Buddy to stop pressuring her to sign the adoption papers. She waited for someone to come to her rescue.
    No one did.
    And being alone took its toll on her; I could tell from the way her writing changed. As the journal went on she seemed more and more tired and hopeless. Buddy’s badgering was really getting to her.
    The question that had been nagging at me ever since I’d started reading the journal was still unanswered: Who was this Buddy? Was he still alive and living in Santa Luisa?
    And even more important: What was this journal doing in my house?

Chapter 16
    T ESS AWOKE THE NEXT day, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, to find that the rainy season had begun. Slate-gray skies overhead promised a steady downpour throughout the day.
    And like the weather, the atmosphere inside Santa Luisa High School was grim. A sudden, painful acquaintance with multiple tragedies had affected every student and teacher. Even the usually raucous students walked the halls with heads down, talking in hushed voices.
    “Doesn’t anyone,” Tess asked at lunch, “think two accidents in less than a week is a little suspicious? Has anyone heard anything from Chalmers? He should know something about The Devil’s Elbow crash by now.” She didn’t mention her phone call of the night before. While it had terrified her, in broad daylight, it seemed a little fuzzy, and she wasn’t sure that it hadn’t been a dream. She had a feeling her friends wouldn’t be convinced, either. She would keep the phone call to herself, for now.
    “I heard it was a loose rail,” Beak said casually as he sectioned an orange, looping the peel around the wrist of Trudy, who sat beside him.
    Trudy chose to ignore him, focusing all of her attention on Guy Joe, sitting opposite her, beside Tess. “My dad said at breakfast this morning that Chalmers told him the rail would be fixed, and an accident like that wouldn’t happen again for at least another hundred years. A freak thing, he said.”
    “A loose rail? That’s it? A loose rail?” Tess shook her head and sank back in her chair. “Are we supposed to buy that?”
    “Tess,” Beak warned, “you’d better lighten up or you’ll lose it totally. Don’t let this stuff get to you, okay? It’s probably all coincidence, anyway. No dire plot, no sinister doings, just coincidence. Stuff happens, you know?”
    “Leave Tess alone,” Sam said lazily, dousing his hard-boiled egg with salt. “She had a rough day yesterday.”
    “We all did, Sam,” Trudy reminded him sharply. “And I don’t want to talk about this gloomy stuff anymore. I’m sick of it. And I am having my birthday party Saturday night, on the beach, the way I