Chapter 50

SCARY STUFF

Hey, Katie. It’s me again. Just give me a call when you get this, okay?”

I hang up and immediately start to worry that Brainzilla’s voice mail isn’t working. Then I worry that my phone is defective. I pick it up and listen. Dial tone. But wait—what if she just tried to call me during that one second that I was holding the receiver to my ear? I click off. It still doesn’t ring.

I start to dial her number again and am interrupted with a call-waiting beep. I click over.

“Did you see what those assholes did to us?” Zitsy demands.

“I know—it’s totally messed up. Listen, can I call you back in a few minutes?”

“I can’t get through to Brainzilla.”

“Me either.” My throat is thick.

“Keep trying,” Zitsy says, then clicks off.

The moment I get a fresh dial tone, I call Katie again.

“Hello?” a strange voice says.

I’m so surprised that someone has picked up the phone that I actually drop the receiver and fall off my bed. Literally. I didn’t even know that was possible. I haul myself onto my knees and grab the receiver.

“Oh—uh—sorry, I’m trying to reach Katie Sloane?”

“Hi, Kooks.”

I stare at the number display on my phone and slowly realize that the limp voice is Brainzilla’s. It sounds too exhausted, too zombielike to be my best friend. But it is. God, I wish I could just reach right through the phone wires and give her a hug. “Did you see—”

“The Yale lady friended me,” Brainzilla says.

I feel like I’m falling, sliding down a deep hole. I have to lean back against the bed frame to steady myself. “What?”

Dead air on the other end of the line, and Brainzilla’s words start to seep into my brain. The Yale lady friended me. The meaning snaps into place. “She saw it?”

I can hear Katie’s breath, ragged and uneven. I wait a moment for her answer, but it never comes. Instead, I just hear the soft click of the receiver.

My best friend since preschool has just hung up on me.

She has never hung up on me before. Never. Not once.

I call back, but I get dumped straight into voice mail again. “Katie? Katie?”

But I’m shouting into a black hole, a deaf in-box. I hang up.

Even though it’s useless, I can’t stop myself from calling again. And again.

I leave something like fifty-seven voice mail messages. I fill that black hole until nothing more can go in it. Her voice mail is full, but I keep on calling.

From my end, it sounds like it’s ringing in an empty room.