Cold Calls Read Free Page A

Forces Recruitment Center, one from Fandango, and one from an unknown sender at an EarthLink account. With two quick taps he trashed the message.
    A minute later, he sent it back to the inbox and clicked it open.
    The picture popped up, and Eric gasped, stumbling backwards, his hands numb, his legs shaking, as he collapsed on his bed, the iPad thumping onto the floor.
    He looked again, but the picture was still there.
    â€œOh, shit,” he said, no one there to see the color drain from his face.

Three
    S HELLY M EYER PULLED HER HAIR BACK BEHIND HER head, scrunching it up, holding it in place with her right hand, using her left to balance as she leaned over and puked into the sink.
    Tried to, anyway.
    The way her stomach had been acting—the noises, the rolling, the acid burn creeping up her throat—throwing up should have been easy. But no, it wasn’t happening. It wasn’t that kind of sick.
    Someone knew.
    Who it was and how they had found out she didn’t know.
    Yet.
    But someone knew. And she had to find them.
    She ran the water in the sink, cupping her hands under the faucet, letting the cold wash over her fingers till they were numb. She lowered her face into her hands. Water trickled along the curve of her neck, disappearing down the front of her white cotton shirt. It was good, and for a moment she allowed herself to relax. And then it was time.
    She looked at her reflection in the polished metal mirror.
    Black eyeliner, thicker than she’d worn it in middle school.
    Blue-black lipstick, fainter than she liked, but darker than the dress code allowed.
    Coal black hair, straight from the bottle, the more unmanageable the longer it got.
    Crazy goth chick cliché in a Catholic-school uniform, the whole look still a bit foreign.
    She wiped a paper towel across her face, slung her backpack over her shoulder, and walked out of the third-floor bathroom, looking for her victim.
    Classes had been over for an hour, and the only students left were out on the fields or down in the locker room. There were a few straggler teachers, but they wouldn’t be a problem. She’d only been at the school for three weeks, but by then it was obvious that the teachers who stuck around after the last bell were in no rush to get home. Nonna Lucia would have called them “ladies of a certain age and standing,” meaning over fifty and divorced. With cats. There were two male teachers at the school, and both of them could have fit in with that crowd if they didn’t bolt out faster than the students. The ones who did stay usually clustered around the librarian’s tiny office, eating grocery-store pastries and drinking instant cappuccinos. They were okay teachers, she guessed, entertaining and not too demanding, but none of them seemed like the kind you could talk to, not like Ms. Moothry or Mr. Becker. But that was another school and another life.
    Shelly rounded the corner near the bio lab. The hall was empty.
    Heather Herman: 72 Facebook friends, 0 in common. Likes Katy Perry,
The
Walking Dead,
The Slayer Chronicles,
American Idol,
Women’s Premier Soccer League, Vancouver, and Moonlight Creamery double-chocolate fudge.
    There was no place on Facebook to list the things she hated, but if there was, Shelly figured she’d be on it by now.
    Down the west stairs, past the chapel and the room where Mrs. Holland tried to teach religion, the lessons always turning into class discussions about current events and “teen issues,” Catholic-school code for sex and drugs. There were the occasional Bible references, but Shelly knew them better than Mrs. Holland did—she’d even corrected Father Caudillo a couple of times when they’d talk after mass, him half joking about her one day becoming a priest.
    But that had been before everything had gone wrong.
    Shelly thumbed the metal button on the drinking fountain and swirled the warm water around her dry mouth. She spit it out and did