I say that Brittany and I used to do that. But she and her family moved away last year, all the way out to Seattle. For a while she e-mailed me and called whenever she had a chance. But that was only for the first few months. I guess she found a new best girlfriend pretty quick. Girls like Brittany always do. I hadn’t heard a word from her for months. Still, when the call came, she was the first person I thought about, so I guess I’d been missing her.

“Brittany?” I said.

The silence on the other end somehow seemed more echoey, like the silence in a cave. It was a little spooky.

“Roger?” I said. “Is that you?”

The lack of response was feeling ominous. Even if it was the middle of the morning, a sunny summer’s day, it seemed as if things were getting darker around me.

I just couldn’t stand it any longer. “Who’s there?” I demanded.

“I am,” a voice whispered. “I’m coming for you.”

It was a voice as cold as ice. I felt as if spiderwebs were brushing across my face. I tried to say something, but I couldn’t speak.

Then the line went dead.

2

TOO SCARY

I SAT THERE STARING at the phone. I avoided touching it, as if it was a snake that might bite me. My good hand was holding my left hand so hard that my knuckles were turning white. My heart was pounding as if I’d just finished running the hundred-yard dash. I was breathing hard too. But I didn’t have that satisfied feeling I get after a sprint when I’ve won, like I almost always do. No endorphins. No satisfied feeling. Not at all.

How could six little words hit that way, like a fist punched into my stomach? It wasn’t just those words. It was the way they were spoken. It was the way they kept echoing in my mind. And I wished I had hung up sooner, that I’d never asked the question, that I had quit while there was still nothing but silence in response.

It reminded me of this one time when I was a little kid and my parents and I were in Providence visiting one of my mom’s friends. She lived in an old house like Aunt Lyssa’s, where I’ve stayed ever since I was well enough to leave the hospital and she became my legal guardian. I’ve finally gotten used to my aunt’s place and almost think of it as my own now, even though I still have dreams that I’m back in the house in Charlestown, where I lived with my parents.