The Last Secret You'll Ever Keep by Laurie Stolarz (summer reads txt) 📕

“It is,” she says. “What is your emergency?”

“I’m at Smitherton’s Salvage. I’m trapped inside an abandoned bus.”

“Smitherton’s Salvage,” she repeats. “Okay, let me check. Hold on just a second. That’s in Pineport, Maine, correct?”

“Yes,” I burst. “I’m trapped—secured to a railing.”

“Can you tell me your name?”

“It’s Terra Smith. I’m from Dayton, Massachusetts.”

“Okay, Terra. Can you tell me more about this bus?”

“It’s in the salvage yard, surrounded by junk—car parts, scrap materials. It’s hard to even see the bus.”

“How about the interior of the bus? Is there writing on the walls—phrases, quotes, pictures, including a ghost on the ceiling?”

I look up, spotting the ghost; it’s about four feet tall. How does she know? Did Peyton call? Is help already on the way?

“Do some of the pictures look like illustrations?” she asks. “Like they belong on the pages of storybooks, rather than on the interior walls of a school bus?”

Wait, what? My skin turns to ice.

“Does the junk outside the bus trap you in, barricading the windows and the doors?” she asks.

“It does,” I say.

“And are you speaking on a pay phone that doesn’t really work?”

I look at the phone, feeling my heart steel.

“Terra? Are you still there?”

“I am.” I nod.

“And are you speaking on a pay phone?”

“How do you know that?”

“The same way I know that you’re pretty screwed.” The person laughs.

My stomach twists. Bile shoots up into my mouth.

“What do you wish for?” she asks.

A thirsting wheeze escapes from my throat. This can’t be happening. I must be dreaming.

“What do you want more than anything else in the world?” she asks.

I look toward the emergency door, on the other end of the bus. Is it barricaded too? I tug on the zip tie once more, wincing at the burning-cutting sensation. My entire wrist is weeping with blood.

“Helloooo?” she says. “Why aren’t you answering? Has a cat got your tongue?”

I shake my head, flashing back to the voice of the guy who took me … that night in my room as he hovered over my bed. “Who is this?”

“It’s Clara, silly. Don’t you remember me? My name means light. Do you know what your name means?”

My name?

“I go to the Fox Run School,” she says before I can attempt an answer. “Do you want to hear about the party I got invited to? It’s for Sarabeth’s twelfth birthday.”

My eyes slam shut. My head starts pounding.

“Just drop three coins into the well and make your wish. Sound good? Just be careful what you wish for because it might very well come true.”

I take a deep breath. “Where is the well?”

“It doesn’t exist, remember? It’s all in your head—the well, the book, escaping, me … They’re all just stories you’ve made up to elicit attention. Don’t get me wrong; I like stories too—love them, actually, which is how I knew you’d love this bus with all its words and characters. It’s candy for a storyteller, don’t you think?” She laughs again.

I hang up. And pull at the zip tie—hard—again and again.

No go.

I try some more, grunting, screaming, crying, seething.

The phone rings again.

I pick it up. My voice tremors over the words, “What do you want?”

“What do I wish for, you mean?” a male voice asks. “I thought you’d never ask. To continue playing the role of a hunter, your external antagonist.”

External?

“Do you want to play too?”

The phone clicks.

My insides shake.

With trembling fingers, I hang up again and try calling 9-1-1 once more. This time, it just rings and rings. I press zero for the operator.

Nothing happens.

No one answers.

I gaze up at the ghost on the ceiling, then at the group of blue people drawn on one of the windows. Silver words are scribbled just beneath the people like storybook pages, like the water-well book.

Like the girl on the phone said …

These words and pictures are the pieces to yet another story—one I’m supposed to make up? One that’s already going on? One that will lead me to Peyton?

I’m not really sure.

And I have no choice but to find out.

NOW

50

I continue tugging with my wrist, trying to get the zip tie to break, wrenching the fastened part against the metal railing.

Nothing works.

Even my thumb … I move it inward to make my wrist smaller, but I still need another few millimeters to pry my hand out.

I look around for something fine and sharp, like a needle or a pin, to jam into the lock. But there isn’t anything, at least not that I can see. I check my sweatshirt zipper, but it’s too wide, way too thick. What else can I use?

I peer back at the phone, wondering how hard it would be to take it apart. Freshman year at Emo, Charley disassembled one, inspired by a dystopian story involving a phone that could call different time periods. But what if I need the phone? If it rings again or I can get it to call out?

The message from Peyton, scrawled across the wall, glares at me. Where is she now? And what does she mean by not being deserving of my friendship? Is it because she lied to protect her privacy?

Or something more?

What if it wasn’t even her on the phone?

I continue to pull on the zip tie, assuming the guy who took me before is the same person who’s taken me now, because he knows so much—about me, about the water-well story … Unless he learned it from the chat site. Did he? Could he have read the water-well entries somehow, even though I made them locked? Is that why the Jane Anonymous website has been shut down? Because it got compromised?

Is he the same person who took Peyton before too? What would be the odds of that—of both of us ending up on the Jane Anonymous website, both victims of the same person? How did I even learn about the chat site to begin with?

A poster at work.

Did the guy who took me put it there? Was he lurking in the library? Did he leave those books on the return rack?

I grab the phone