FEARFUL: Scary Stories of the Evil App

6

The laughter that followed made my skin crawl, but anger quickly replaced my fear when I spun around and found my brother there, sniggering.

"The S stands for Scaredy-cat."

"Stop calling me names!"

"Just said you shouldn't have done that." He shrugged. "I'm editing."

"What's your problem? First, you electrocuted me, and now that video prank."

"Prank?"

"You know!"

"No idea." Jake walked past me and opened the laptop.

He was right. The recording was nothing but a video of him speaking to the camera. Did I imagine everything?

"Whatever. Don't leave your crappy videos on a loop while you're not around."

"Why?"

"It's hard enough living with one of you," I said, storming out of the room. "Can't deal with a bad copy of you too!"

"You are a bad copy of me."

On the gloomy landing, too upset to know where to go, I heard my twin talking to himself for the first time.

* * *

The next day, after breakfast, Mom called my aunt, the shrink extraordinaire. Although their call only lasted half an hour, I swear, Mom bragged about my brother for an hour and a half.

"Go to his channel and like all his videos, Anna."

Ugh. A guy can only roll his eyes so many times, you know?

That afternoon, when I arrived from C.J.'s (we were supposed to facetime Rory, but Mr. Celebrity Gamer stood us up), Mom and Jake were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table.

"Hi," I said.

"Cut!" Jake shouted. "Can't you see I'm doing a profile on Mom?"

I just blinked at them and didn't even bother replying.

"Don't be rude," Mom scolded him. "We'll be done in a moment, Baby."

"That eyePhone is sewn to his hand." I pointed at Jake. "When is my turn to use it?"

Mom avoided the question by asking me if I'd spoken to Rory.

"You mind?" Jake interrupted us. "We're losing daylight."

Fed up with my brother's attitude, I headed to my room, dragging my feet up the stairs. With bitter resentment boiling in my stomach, the only thing I could think of was how much I hated that stupid—

"Phone?"

I stopped dead in my tracks.

Was that my twin's evil eyePhone lying in front of our bedroom door? How? Jake had it with him downstairs a second ago. It made no sense.

For a long moment, I only stared at it. A voice in the back of my brain told me there was something wrong about this, warning me not to touch it.

"This is silly," I said to myself, swallowing hard and reaching for the phone.

When the floorboards creaked a little beneath my sneakers, I realized how quiet the house was all of a sudden. Why did I feel like I should turn around and run downstairs? I wondered, hearing my own heartbeat thumping in my ears as my fingers drew closer to—

I gasped as the smartphone came alive with an incoming call.

"Like me, love me." It moved, vibrating against the carpeted floor, inching towards me, playing that same sugary song that Video Jake had sung the day before. "Fake it and fool me."

That catchy tune gave me the willies.

"Mom?" I called down the stairs. She didn't reply.

The phone rang until it went dead.

"Get it together, S," I muttered.

Another call from a blocked number came in. The screen turned blazing white again, casting ghostly shadows on the landing walls. I swear I wanted to go back to the kitchen, but my curiosity was too much for me. So I pressed the green receiver icon.

"Hello?"

"Hi, S."

It was that weird voice again! The same one from Jake's prank video.

Have you ever been to a cheap theme park with animatronics? Those lifelike mechanical puppets with fake skin and phony hair? If you haven't, google them, and you'll see for yourself their movements are bizarre, their smiles are menacing, and their bulging eyes are mad.

If those robots spoke, they'd sound like this. Almost human. But not really.

"You hit a new level in the lame-o-meter, Jake," I said.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you reject me?"

"Drop it, Jake."

"I told you, I'm not Jake."