Ready for a Scare? Read Free Page B

nervous energy. Kelly glanced enviously at Paige flopping on her new teal-and-gray bedspread. Totally sophisticated.
    Kelly waved into her webcam.
    â€œHow’s Chrissie?” Paige asked. “Did she play games with you? Is she going to tuck you in?”
    Kelly screwed up her face. “Ha-ha. Very funny.”
    â€œI think it’s so cute that Kelly has a babysitter,” June cooed.
    Kelly gazed at a second box on her screen that framed June’s face. Forever the glamour girl, she wore pink satin button-down men’s-cut pajamas. Kelly doubted June owned a pair of sweats, and if she did, they were probably the velour kind, jeweled with rhinestones. June held two fingernails up to the camera. One was polished in iridescent purple; the other in a matte baby blue.
    â€œColor choice?” she inquired.
    Paige and Kelly both chose the sparkly purple. Kelly watched June, sitting at her vanity, her laptop certainly nestled among bottles of perfume and tubes of lip gloss, meticulously polishing her nails. Her long auburn hair fell like a curtain over her face as she bent in concentration.
    â€œShould we all polish our nails?” Paige asked.
    â€œOr we can make beauty masks,” Kelly suggested. “I read that if you mix avocado with honey and smear it on your face it makes your skin glow.”
    â€œYou serving chips with that?” Spencer’s voice broke through as he appeared in a third box on her screen. “I mean, seriously, we’re not really going to sit here andwatch you girls have some sort of spa session, are we?”
    â€œYou would look good in a green face mask,” Paige quipped. “Might mellow out all those freckles.”
    â€œWhoa! Back off the freckles,” Spencer warned. “You only dream of having this much character on your face.”
    Paige laughed. “Just joking.”
    â€œSo what’s the plan?” asked a voice from behind Spencer.
    â€œWho’s that?” Kelly spotted a silhouette hovering behind Spencer, just out of view of the camera.
    â€œShow yourself,” June commanded.
    â€œYou guess,” said the voice.
    â€œWell, from your voice I can tell you’re a guy.” June giggled. Kelly rolled her eyes. June had recently started using this fake flirting giggle. Didn’t she know it was so transparent?
    â€œDo you go to our school?” Paige asked, leaning into her camera to catch a closer glimpse.
    â€œYes,” the voice replied. Spencer sat at his desk, his secretive grin broadcasting to all their screens.
    â€œAre you in any of our classes?” June asked.
    â€œKelly’s,” he said. “Math.”
    Kelly quickly did a mental scan of her math classroom.Who was Spencer friends with in that class? Everyone she thought of, she rejected. She couldn’t think of anyone that Spencer would hang with. She threw out a few random names, but the voice said she was wrong, wrong, and wrong.
    â€œI give up,” she admitted. “You win. Who are you?”
    â€œThe mystery person is . . .” Spencer used his game-show-announcer voice. He moved away from the camera, and for a moment, all that was visible was the Avatar poster on his bedroom wall. Then a face filled the screen.
    Kelly gasped.
    His eyes were crossed and his upper lip curled back, exposing an expanse of gums and huge upper teeth. Gruesome!
    She needed a few moments to recognize Gavin Mahon. He was new to their school. He sat in the back corner of their math class. She had never spoken to him. She wondered how Spencer even knew him—and why he was hanging out at his house.
    Spencer squeezed back into the screen next to Gavin, who had now uncontorted his face, and introduced him to June and Paige. While they were comparing classes and saying hi, Kelly took a closer look at Gavin. He wasso unlike tall, sturdy Spencer. Gavin seemed younger and skinnier than other boys their age. His arms were thin and his neck