For a while, I let the phone ring, thinking that Jessica would get it before I could reach it.

Except the phone keeps ringing. Even when it most definitely should have gone to voicemail. It rings and rings, and after a solid minute I’ve finally had enough. I know who it will be.

I make sure to slam the sketchbook back into the nightstand. I don’t want anyone else seeing those sketches. I don’t want anyone else to understand my truth.

“Jessica!” I yell out when I slam open my door. Where is she? Why isn’t she answering the phone?

She doesn’t answer.

I make my way down the steps. I don’t see her in the living room. Maybe she went out. Maybe, unlike me, she actually has real friends who want to spend time with her.

The phone keeps ringing.

“What?!” I grunt.

Mom would not appreciate me answering the phone like that. But she isn’t here. No one is.

“Temper, temper,” Rachel says, her voice once more gravelly, echoing like she’s a dozen voices in the bottom of a well. “Anger like that will get you in trouble.”

I swallow.

“What do you want?” I try to make my voice sound forceful, try to make it sound like a demand. Instead, it comes out as a quiet squeak.

“I already have what I want,” Rachel-who-is-not-Rachel responds. The tone of her voice makes me shudder. She sounds … pleased. “At least, for the most part. The question is, do you?”

“What are you talking about?”

She giggles then, high-pitched and childlike, and the phone goes dead.

The moment it does, I hear a vibration coming from the living room. Two quick pulses, and then silence.

Slowly, filled with dread, I hang up the phone and make my way toward the noise.

It’s coming from Jessica’s phone on the coffee table.

I don’t even have to pick it up to know that this is wrong. Jessica never goes anywhere without it—she wouldn’t have left it behind if she went outside.

At least, not by her own free will.

With a trembling hand, I pick up her phone.

Instantly, an image comes onscreen.

Jessica. Looking terrified in the middle of the woods.

And behind her, with a ferocious grin, is Rachel.