Deadly Little Lies Read online

  I just can’t shake my last three sculptures. It seems so far from coincidental now, like maybe subconsciously I already know the future somehow, but my mind doesn’t want to face it. Or maybe my sculptures force me to look at what I already must know.

  And yet, how could I have known I’d forget my key?

  How could I have predicted that Ben’s eyes would peer at me through the door of the art studio?

  And how could I have known exactly how to sculpt his scar?

  My head throbs just thinking about it all and what it could mean, especially coupled with what happened last September.

  I never really questioned it too much at the time, but back when I was getting weird notes and packages—when Matt was plotting to take me captive—I started a new way of sculpting.

  My boss, Spencer, convinced me to stop trying to control my work, to let my pottery take on its own shape for a change. A control freak by nature, I’d been sculpting bowls and bowl-like things since the first time I’d held a ball of clay. It was easy and I was good at it. But when he suggested a new approach, I thought I’d try it.

  The result had been an abandoned car. I’d sculpted it over a handful of days: the dented doors, the crushed grille and bullet holes in the side. It was the same car I’d spotted in the trailer park where Matt had kept me captive . . . right down to the missing wheels.

  Should I be calling that a coincidence too?

  To add to my confusion, it doesn’t help that Ben swears it wasn’t him in front of my house the other night. So, is he lying? Was I imagining things?

  Could it possibly have been Matt?

  I look toward the back of the studio, wondering if I should turn around and head out the door. It’s not like anyone’s actually seen me yet. The place looks empty, and Spencer’s work light is switched off.

  I turn to leave, only to find that I’m not alone after all. There’s a boy standing just inside the door, staring right at me.

  I take a step back, my heart beating fast.

  “Are you okay?” he asks. He’s about my age or a little older, with wavy brown hair and olive-toned skin.

  “Sorry,” he says, approaching me slowly. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Where’s Spencer?”

  “Downstairs, loading the kiln. Are you okay?” he repeats.

  “Where did you come from?” I ask, bumping into the worktable behind me. I look toward the door, knowing I would have heard him come in.

  “Medland, originally.” He smiles. “It’s about a three-hour drive from here.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I was behind the counter. You walked right by me.” He extends his hand for a shake, but I don’t move an inch. “I’m Adam. Spencer hired me to pull molds.” He flexes his muscle to be funny.

  “How come Spencer didn’t mention a new hire to me?”

  “I don’t know; why don’t you ask him?” He gestures behind me. Spencer’s there.

  “I take it you two have met,” Spencer says, wiping a smear of slip on his jeans.

  “Not really,” I say.

  “Camelia, Adam; Adam, Camelia,” Spencer says, still wiping. There’s a streak of green glaze down his scruffy face.

  “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Camelia.” Adam extends his hand again. This time I shake it, noticing his sweaty palm.

  “Camelia’s an ace at throwing bowls,” Spencer says. “Don’t let her demure demeanor fool you.”

  “Hardly demure,” Adam says. “For a second there, I thought she was gonna take my head off.”

  “You startled me.”

  “No worries,” Adam says. “We’re working together now; I’ll let you make it up to me somehow.”

  “You’ll let me?”

  “Sure,” he says. “I’m new to the area, so I might be needing a tour guide.”

  “How new?” I ask.

  “This is my first semester at Hayden.”

  “The community college?”

  He nods. “And you?”

  “I’m a junior, actually . . . at the high school. That’s where Spencer and I met. He was subbing for my pottery teacher.”

  “And I couldn’t take my eyes off her soup bowls.” Spencer winks. “I’m telling you, this girl’s got talent.”

  “Can I see some of your work?” Adam asks.

  “Maybe some other time. I have a soup bowl to throw,” I joke.

  “Well, be sure it has big round coils.” Spencer winks again. “The extruder’s all fixed, by the way.”

  “The extruder is for wusses,” I say, referring to pottery’s version of a pasta maker, complete with various attachments that can transform even the biggest wads of clay into long noodlelike strands.

  While he and Adam head off to the back room, I use the wire cutter to slice myself a fist-size clump of clay. I’m determined to sculpt something simple and predictable today—something, ironically, exactly like a soup bowl.

  I know exactly the way I want my bowl to look: a bubblelike base with a tulip-turned rim, big enough for flowers, but not for a full bowl of fruit. I end up working for well over an hour, rolling my coils out by hand, stacking them atop the oval base, and then weaving them together to form ripples along the sides. The whole familiar process of it helps me relax—to concentrate on something simple—even though, for some reason, despite how supposedly foolproof coil pots are, I can’t seem to get mine the way I want it. It looks more like a bottle than an actual pot. The tulip spout has more of a screw-cap look. And the pot’s much taller and thinner than I’d imagined—more like a water bottle or a very narrow vase.

  I sit back on my stool, wondering how this happened. I mean, I used to have so much control over my bowls. I knew exactly the way they’d turn out before I even began.

  Instead of letting it bother me, I decide to call it a day and add the finishing touch. On the surface of the bottle, for no other reason than I think it might look good— might provide an interesting contrast to the shape of the bottle—I use a carving knife to draw a pomegranate.

  I’m just about finished perfecting the starlike end of the stem, when I feel someone’s watching me. I turn around, startled to find Adam.

  “Hey,” he says, standing only a few feet away. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Just a few seconds. What are you working on?”

  “Nothing much,” I say, about to turn back around. But that’s when I notice what’s in his hand.

  I see the pomegranate first. It adorns the front of his juice bottle, under a label that reads “Perfectly Pomegranate.”

  “Are you okay?” he asks, obviously noticing the confusion on my face.

  I look back at my sculpture—same bottle shape, same tubular ripples. Even the angle of the pomegranate is the same—the stem cocked to the right.

  He takes a sip from the bottle. Meanwhile, I hurry to cover my sculpture with some plastic.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Where did you get that?” I ask, wondering if maybe I saw the bottle before, if maybe, subconsciously, it stuck somehow.

  “Where did I get what?”

  “That bottle,” I demand. “Did you have it before, when you were standing by the doorway, when I first came in?”

  “Um, no,” he says, his eyebrows arched, like I’m full-on crazy. “I got it out of my bag just a second ago. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  I shake my head, feeling my face flash hot.

  “Do you want a sip?” He holds the bottle out as an offering, but I can’t even look at it now.

  “I want to get back to my work,” I mutter, feeling like an absolute freak—and knowing I must sound like one too.

  Finally Adam gets the message and turns away, leaving me alone.

  10

  I end up coming straight home after Knead, determined to get to the bottom of things. I tear off my coat, drop my books to the floor, and rush to my computer. I start
by Googling the word “psychometry,” recognizing some of the sites I’d visited when I first learned about Ben’s powers.

  Most of the sites say the same thing. People who have psychometric powers experience them in different ways. Some are able to touch an object and know where it’s been or what its history is. Others, like Ben, can touch a person or thing and get an image inside their head—an image that helps foretell the future.

  I navigate through a bunch of sites, learning more and more about psychometry—how some people, instead of getting a mental image, taste different flavors or imagine specific textures inside their mouths, all relevant to what they touch. And then there are those who hear things— like music, voices, and other sounds—whenever they touch something.

  I lean back in my chair, thinking how that’s sort of like what happened to me when I was in the basement, sculpting Ben’s arm, when I heard his voice calling out to me, leading me up into my bedroom.

  I spend another full hour reading everything I can, learning tidbits about how psychometric powers can be developed, but still unable to find the answer to what I’m really looking for: Can the power be transferred from person to person?

  I know it sounds completely crazy, and there’s absolutely nothing in these Web pages that even suggests such an occurrence. But how else do I explain what’s been going on?

  “Camelia?” my dad calls, knocking on my open bedroom door. “Dinner’s ready.”

  I swivel around to face him. “I’m not really hungry.”

  “Since when does hunger have anything to do with your mom’s cooking?”

  “You mean her not cooking,” I say, referring to her latest obsession with raw cuisine. The stove has become more of a storage space than a place to prepare food.

  “She’s making raw pizza.”

  “Sounds delish,” I lie.

  “That’s what I told her. Please”—he shudders, flashing me a container of Tums—“don’t make me do it alone.”

  “Okay.” I cave. “I’ll be there in a few.”

  But no sooner do I say it than my cell phone rings. It’s Kimmie, announcing that her parents are driving her crazy and she’s coming over—stat.

  I hang up and break the news to Dad—that I won’t be joining them for dinner after all. He’s a little ticked at first, but softens up when I promise him a trip to Taco Bell later, my treat.

  When Kimmie arrives, we camp out in my room and talk over bags of barbecue chips and Reese’s peanut butter cups—essentials she’s brought along. She tells me that her parents are fighting hard core, yelling at each other at all hours of the night.

  “And then the other day,” she continues, “I was working on some of my designs, something from my Bad Girl & Breakfast line.” She gestures to her outfit, which appears to be a silk black pillowcase with cutouts for the neck and arms. A chain-link belt is strapped around her waist. “And my dad told me I was wasting my time.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, reaching out to touch her arm.

  She shrugs, wiping a mascara-stained tear from her cheek. “It’s like he’s not happy about anything anymore, especially when it comes to me and Nate. It’s even worse for Nate. The kid’s only eight years old. He looks up to my dad like he’s a freakin’ superhero or something.”

  “Well, I hate to get all Oprah on you,” I say, giving her arm a good squeeze, “but it’s not your fault. Whatever your parents are going through has nothing to do with you and your brother.”

  “Tell my dad that. He’s constantly complaining that money’s tight because he’s stuck spending it all on us. Meanwhile, my mom’s so busy trying to make him happy. Trying to look ten years younger and fit into clothing two sizes too small. Now she’s reading all this weird couples stuff. Books about the ‘sensual years’ and satisfying your man. It’s all so gross.”

  “I’m sorry,” I repeat, not really knowing what else to say.

  “Whatever,” she says, blotting her black tears with a tissue. “I mean, at least it gets them off my back, right?”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “You’re already doing it,” she says, gesturing around my room with a chip. “Just don’t kick me out, okay?”

  “You can stay here as long as you want.”

  “What were you up to, by the way?” She glances toward my computer.

  “We don’t have to talk about me.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m so done talking about my parents. Let’s move on to something normal. Or at least as normal as your life can possibly be.”

  “Exactly,” I sigh.

  “Do I smell something scandalous?”

  I take a deep breath and tell her about the note I got in the bathroom today, about my conversation with Ben in the storage room, and then I segue into what happened at Knead with the bottle and the new boy.

  “Was he hot?”

  “You’re missing the point.”

  “Right.” She nods. “The point is that I can’t believe you played ten minutes in the closet with Ben and you didn’t even touch him.”

  “More like he didn’t touch me. But you’re still missing the point.”

  “And you don’t think there’s any possibility that all this sculpture stuff could be a coincidence? I mean, weirder things have happened—like with me, for example. I was once having these dreams about some random girl from grammar school, someone I hadn’t seen in years. And then, a week later, I bumped into her.”

  “Sounds like a premonition.”

  “More like selective memory. A couple weeks before the dreams started, my mom had shown me a newspaper article about the girl. I’d completely forgotten about it, because, let’s face it, the girl and I had nothing in common, what with her Gap attire and all—”

  “Sort of like mine?”

  “The point is that I may have forgotten seeing the article, but obviously my subconscious mind didn’t, because for whatever reason I dreamed about her. The fact that I saw her later—now, that was a coincidence.”

  “Well I’m done calling what’s been happening a coincidence. Plus, I heard Ben’s voice in my basement,” I remind her. “How do you explain that?”

  “Insanity?”

  “I’m being serious here. I mean, even you said the whole incident in sculpture class was like what happened when I sculpted my house key.”

  “Well, I honestly think you’re asking the wrong person,” she says. “You really need to talk to Ben again. If anyone would know about all this seeing-the-future stuff it would be him.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “And maybe it’s catching.”

  “Psychometric powers?”

  “You never know,” she says, rubbing my leg, hoping some power will rub off on her. “I’d kill to know who I’ll be taking to the prom.”

  “I can’t think that far ahead.”

  “Because of the note?” She pulls it from under the chip bag.

  “I just don’t want to do this again,” I whisper, feeling a knot form in my gut. “Do you think it’s a joke?”

  “That’s my vote. I mean, just think about all the pranks that went on last semester. Someone obviously saw you go into the bathroom and thought it’d be funny to harass you. Do you remember anyone specific in the hallway?”

  “John Kenneally.”

  Her face freezes, midchew. “I really doubt it’d be him.”

  I roll my eyes, wondering why she continues to defend him. All last September, John was completely obnoxious to Ben, harassing him whenever he had the chance. Somehow, despite all that obnoxiousness, Kimmie still found John attractive, telling me on a fairly regular basis how hot she thought he was.

  “And you don’t think there’s any chance it could be Matt?” I ask, pointing out the similar lettering on the note.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Do I look like I’m joking?” I can feel the flush of my face.

  “There’s a restraining order against Matt.”

  “Talk about a joke.�
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  “Matt wouldn’t be that stupid.”

  “Then what about the similar lettering?”

  “So the person used a red marker and wrote in capital letters, big deal. If I were writing a stalker note, I’d probably write in all caps too.”

  “Oh would you now?” I manage a smirk.

  “Actually, I’d probably type it instead. I’d also wear gloves, so that no one could trace my fingerprints. And I’d make all my stalker calls from random phone booths.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got it all planned out.”

  “Honey, I’ve got more plans than Wes has ugly shoes.”

  “And that’s a lot.” I laugh.

  “It sure is,” she says with a sigh.

  11

  February 7, 1984

  Dear Diary,

  Yesterday in art class, Mrs. Trigger made me rip up my painting and throw the pieces away in the garbage. It was a portrait of me with bright red streaks running from both my wrists. At least that’s what I told Mrs. Trigger: bright red streaks from a bottle of spilled nail polish, instead of trickles of blood.

  Mrs. Trigger said the streaks, nail polish or not, looked too scary and that girls my age should be painting pretty things like ponies and fields full of wildflowers.

  But that’s just not me.

  I use art as a way to get things out. Though just about everything I draw or paint seems to come out anyway. I mean, it comes true, which is one of the reasons I think maybe I should stop doing art altogether. Except knowing what happens before anyone else makes me feel sort of special, when I have nothing else to feel special about.

  Love,

  Alexia

  12

  After Kimmie leaves, and after my dad and I have taken a trip to Taco Bell to fill up on nonraw food goodness, I lie awake in bed wondering if I should take Kimmie’s advice and give Ben a call.

  It’s a little after eleven and I can’t sleep. I’m almost tempted to go downstairs to my studio. Instead I grab a random book off my shelf—Teens, Tweens, & Yogi Machines, obviously something my mother bought me. There’s a lengthy forward about finding your inner om. I try reading the first few pages, but I can’t concentrate. Finally I reach for my cell phone and dial Ben’s number.