Deadly Little Games (Book 3)

Chapter 3

I spend the remainder of the block in the nurse's office before heading to the cafeteria for lunch, where Kimmie, Wes, and I sit at our usual spot by the exit.

"So, let me get this straight," Kimmie says. "You and Ben are fighting because you were fantasizing about macking with your ex?" 

"Except, Adam isn't exactly my ex," I reminded he. "We only went out a few times."

"But you still want his tongue in your mouth," Wes says, pointing at the with a sausage. He's stabbed the center with a plastic fork.

 Wes has been our friend since freshman year. He's a fairly uncomplicated boy by day; most of his drama shows up at night. His dad, a former juicehead turned dickhead, hates the fact that Wes isn't "more dick, less chick" --he actually says that. He also calls him Wuss instead of Wes.

"You're sick," I tell him.

"But tasty." He takes a bite of sausage.

"At first, I thought Ben's touch power was a bonus," Kimmie says. "But if he can read your mind on cue-- learning about all your seedy fantasies-- then maybe it's more of a drawback."

"First of all, I don't have any seedy fantasies," I tell them.

"Maybe that's your problem," Wes says.

"No," I say, correcting him. "My problem is that I'm thinking about Adam and I don't want to be."

"You're not just thinking about him." Kimmie raises her ruby-studded eyebrow at me. "I thought those lips you sculpted in pottery class looked a little too luscious to be Ben's."

Wes leans forward and readjust his wired-rimmed glasses. "What am I missing?" he asks, eager for the dirt.

"Three words," Kimmie says. "More. Random. Body parts."

"Except, that's four words," I say.

"Well, whatever." She rolls her eyes. "It's still significant. Not to mention creepistic."

She's obviously comparing my sculpture of Adam's mouth to the one I did of Ben's arm a month ago, when I was trying to remember that branchlike scar that runs from his elbow to his wrist. A day or two after that, I sculpted Ben's eyes, as if they were peering at me through glass.

Both of those sculpture turned out to be premonitions.

Ben isn't the only one who's able to sense things through touch.

Over the past several months, instead of making my usual bowls and vases, I've been scuplting things from my future. First it was the car--the same one I spotted on the day Matt took me captive. Then there was the pinecone, which looked just like the air freshener that dangled from the rearview mirror of Matt's car. About a month ago it was a swordfish, similar to the wooden cutout affixed over the door of finz restaurant, the place near where Debbie Marcus was hit by a car.

Debbie was a girl at school whose friends made it look like she was being stalked. They sent her creepy notes making her believe that Ben (once on trial for the murder of his girlfriend on the clff that day) wanted her to be Victim Number Two.

Debbie believed it, too. One night, on a walk home from a friend's house, anxious that Ben might've been following her, she was going and was struck by a car. The accident almost took her life.

When she came out of her coma two months later, even though Ben wasn't to blame, she was determined to make him pay--to make someone pay--for her lost time. And so she tried to frame him for stalking me in hopes that he would be forced to leave our school once and for all.