Towering - By Alex Flinn Page 0,74

know we always wanted to think of ourselves as special, but face it: We’re not. We’re like maybe a million other girls who met a guy who said he loved us—then found out he didn’t. Zach is probably in the city with some other girl.

Honestly, Dani, you need to get out of your fantasy world. The child you’re carrying (which you somehow already know is a blond girl) is not the key to thwarting an enchanted drug ring. There is no destiny, no prophecy. She’s just a baby!

Please tell me you’re getting some help.

I love you but—again—I’m worried.

Emily

After reading the letter four times, I fell asleep.

I woke to the morning’s first light, and I said, aloud, “Call me.”

It may have been my imagination, but I thought I heard him say, “I’ll be there soon. An hour, maybe.”

But by eight o’clock, I still hadn’t heard from him. Perhaps, I thought, I could simply call and, if the old lady answered, hang up (that’s what Wyatt had called it) or say I had made a mistake dialing the number. Did people do that? And then, Wyatt might realize it was me and call. Probably.

I knew! I’d say I was a friend of his, if the woman answered, a friend from town.

I turned on the telephone and touched the square that said, “Phone.” A list of names and numbers showed up, Mom, Josh, Astrid. Who was Astrid? Celeste Greenwood. I touched that number. The phone began to make a noise, more like rattling than ringing. It did it twice, then someone said, “Hello.” I drew in my breath.

It was not Wyatt.

I had meant, if someone who was not Wyatt answered, to remain calm, to simply say, “Hello?” and ask to speak to him. That would, I suspected, be a perfectly normal thing to do.

Instead, I sat, mouth slightly open, listening to the voice on the other side of the phone, saying, “Hello? Hello? Who is this?”

The thing is, I knew that voice. It was too familiar not to recognize. And I knew if I recognized her voice, she would also recognize mine.

I touched the part of the screen that said, “End call.”

43

Wyatt

“I told you why.” I try to act like everything is normal, like it’s not creepy at all. “He was a friend of my mom’s. She said to look him up. No big deal. If you don’t know anything about him, I’ll go.” I made like I was going to walk out.

I saw a flash of silver, a knife. Then, it was against my neck.

“Stop right there,” Carl’s voice said.

I did what I was told. I stopped. He signaled me to sit down on a dirty sofa. I sat.

“Now, listen you little punk.” Even in the dim light, I could see spit flying out his lips as he spoke. “We know you’re lying. Not just suspect. Know.”

“You couldn’t because there’s nothing—”

“Zach never went to school with your mother or anyone else around here. He came into town for a month or two. He did two things while he was here. One was work at the bar, and I think you know what the other thing was.”

Involuntarily, I nodded. He’d gotten Danielle pregnant. But why? Why would he come to town, specifically to meet one girl? Or maybe he left when he found out about her being pregnant. Except, judging from her diary, she’d never told him.

Carl nodded. “So you do know about Danielle.”

“Danielle’s dead. That’s all I know. I’m staying with a woman, her mother. You know that, of course.”

I was trying to play dumb, real dumb, but also, nice. Specifically, I was trying to be a kid you wouldn’t want to stab.

“She talks about Danielle all the time, so I got curious. That’s all.”

“That’s not all,” Henry said behind me. “The old lady, she wouldn’t have known about Zach unless Danielle told her. And Danielle wouldn’t have told her.”

Did these guys know Danielle? It sounded like it. “Okay, I found her diary. She talked about Zach. But the diary ended after she found out he skipped town.”

Now, I wondered, had he skipped town? Or had someone killed him? Had these guys killed him?

“I don’t know what happened to Danielle any more than you do. Any more than anyone does. Her poor mother . . .” I realized Mrs. Greenwood definitely hadn’t had anything to do with Danielle’s disappearance. “Her mother’s always crying about her, and I found the diary, so I thought this Zach guy might know something. That’s all. Obviously,