With the girls knowing not to send me anything except small-talk messages, I think I’m safe. But that’s the first mistake, because you never are, not really.

The text is from an unknown number, and the moment I click on it, the studio sees it too.

I’ll kill you like I killed your mother.

If you’re watching me, you know exactly what I just read, because they will post it instantly. If you’re not, it will be the headline in my recap.

I feel sick, and Emily can see something’s wrong. “You okay, Jess?” she asks, but I can’t speak.

She leads me to a seat, and I show her my phone.

“Shit,” she says, passing it to Hanna.

“Who sent this?” Hanna asks.

I shake my head and say, “Unknown number.”

They look at me, expecting more, but I want to throw up.

Since the show started, there have been weirdos and that stupid Magpie Man Twitter account but nothing like this.

“They have my number,” I say. “It must be someone I know.”

I look around the school, at all the strangers we call friends just long enough to get through the day. We swap our numbers with people we hardly speak to, and every couple of years, we delete names we don’t recognize anymore.

It could be any of them, because if they don’t have it, they can find someone who does.

There are plenty of people at school who will find this funny, and if I had to point a finger, it would be at the tenth-grade mean girls. They leave us alone because we’re older than them. But they make up for it with their sneers.

Like everyone, they whisper when I pass, but their whispers are louder. They don’t try to hide their bitchiness. They make it clear what they think of my show, my reasons, my life. Emily says they are jealous, although I doubt it.

My phone pings again.

You will be number 14.

“You need to show the police,” Emily says. “This isn’t funny.”

She’s right, about both, but the police couldn’t solve the crime when they had a dead body, so what help will they be with a couple of texts?

As it turns out, I don’t need to call the police. They’re waiting for me when I get home.

Chapter 34

When I open the front door, a man walks toward me, but it’s not my dad.

Next to him, a woman stands and smiles. “Jessica,” she says. “We’re here about the texts.”

Dad is sitting in his chair with a face like thunder. I imagine what they’ve told him and wonder if this is where he’ll draw the line.