by Dan Rix
“Hold on, hold on, I hear something—” Her eyebrows pinched together. Slowly, she lowered her phone and stared at it.
I grabbed her arm. “What?”
“I don’t know, that was . . . that was weird.”
“What?”
She just shook her head.
“Megan, what?”
“It was really faint, but I think it was us talking. But it wasn’t from today, I think it was from last night. Like a delayed recording.”
“So it’s in this room?”
“Yeah, but . . . but phones don’t do that.”
I felt around the floor near me. “Maybe I brushed it last night and it started recording, and then just now I hit it again and it played it back to you.” I lifted my plate of breakfast and felt underneath—nothing there—and I quickly gave up. “Look, it has to be somewhere.”
“Leona, something’s weird about this,” she said, still studying her phone.
“You think someone’s pranking us?”
“I don’t know. Something’s weird.”
“But it was invisible,” I said. “It was wrapped in dark matter. I had it last night. No one else could have possibly gotten their hands on it.”
Megan’s phone buzzed loudly, and we both jumped.
“It’s a text,” she said.
I leaned over her shoulder. “From who?”
Fear flashed in her eyes, and she glanced sideways at me. “From you.”
Her finger wobbled as she tapped open the message, and we read it in silence.
HI LEONA
I HAVE YOUR PHONE LEONA
As I stared at the text message, an icy tingle drew down my spine. “Who sent that?” I whispered.
“You did,” said Megan.
“I mean, who has my phone? Text them back.”
“What should I say?”
“Here, I’ll do it.” I took the phone from her and typed in my reply:
Who I’d thud?
I sent the text before reading it.
“You couldn’t spell it right?” she said.
“Stupid autocorrect,” I muttered, trying again:
Who is this?
Satisfied the phone hadn’t butchered the message, I tapped send and waited.
“What if he doesn’t text back?” said Megan.
“It could be a girl.”
“It’s probably Tina Wilkes.”
“How’s she texting on an invisible phone?”
“Good point,” she said.
The phone vibrated violently in my hand, nearly giving me a heart attack. Another text bubble appeared on the screen:
I AM DARK
“Okay, that’s just creepy,” said Megan. “What’s with the all caps?”
“I know, it’s annoying,” I said, typing out another text:
Can I have my phone back?
Almost instantly, another bubble flashed on the screen:
I HAVE YOUR PHONE LEONA
Growing irritated, I typed back: Obviously, since you’re texting me on it. So can I have it back or are you stealing it from me?
A long pause, then:
I DO NOT UNDERSTAND LEONA I HAVE YOUR PHONE LEONA HI LEONA I AM DARK LEONA
The words hovered on the screen, and slowly goosebumps prickled down my arms. Who was texting on my phone?
No . . . what was texting?
“It has my phone,” I whispered, as a spooky thought occurred to me.
Hands shaking, I tapped out another question:
Are you dark matter?
Another pause. Throat dry, I swallowed and wiped my sweaty palms on my bedsheets. Then came its response:
YES LEONA
Chapter 5
Megan and I shared a stunned look. We were texting dark matter. Texting it. Communicating with it . . . and it was intelligent. Intelligent life. This had to be some kind of landmark event for humanity.
But how was it possible?
I had wrapped dark matter around my phone. It must have gotten inside the case and melded with the electronics, and now it was using my phone to communicate.
Like it had used my brain to communicate.
“Should we talk to it?” I said, my pulse ratcheting up. “What should we say?”
“Let me talk to it,” said Megan.
So many questions . . .
“Leona, let me talk to it,” she persisted.
“Hold on. I’m talking to it.”
“Then say something. It’s waiting.”
I studied the screen, confused. “Do you think it moved my phone? It must still be on the cell network somewhere, right? Since your phone is recognizing it . . . but where is it?”
“Who cares—?” She made a grab for the phone.
I yanked it away. “Stop. We need to think about this.”
“It’s going to get bored. You’re being boring. Let me talk to it, Leona.”
“It wants to talk to me,” I said, distracted.
She scrambled over my lap and grasped for the phone, and I twisted away from her.
“Stop it,” I warned.
“It’s my phone,” she said.
“And it’s communicating from my phone,” I said.
“Ask it what it is?”
“Hang on,” I said, trying to think of what I wanted to ask it.
I texted:
Where is my phone?
The reply came instantly:
I HAVE YOUR PHONE LEONA
“That’s what it just said,” said Megan. “Is that not what it just said three times? You’re going to piss it off.”
“Shh! I’m thinking.”
“Leona,” she whined, “let me talk to it!”
I shooed her away and typed in another question:
What are you?
A pause, and just when I thought we’d get something good, a text bubble appeared on the screen.
I AM DARK
“Okay, you’re done,” she said, snatching the phone out of my hands. Her fingers raced across the keypad, and I leaned over her shoulder to read her text:
Hi, this is Megan. I’m the cool one. Where are you from? We are from planet Earth.
“See, you have to be specific,” she said, sending the message.
We waited, but the dark matter took its time.
I scanned my bedroom. Where was it?
No sooner had I had the thought than the phone buzzed in her hands with a new message:
I’M HERE LEONA
I tensed up, and a nervous tremor passed through my heart. Was it reading my thoughts?
The phone buzzed again:
YES LEONA
I stared at the screen, and unease pooled deep in my stomach.
“It still thinks it’s you,” Megan muttered, shaking me off. “Let go.”
Only then did I realize I was gripping her arm. I let go, leaving a red imprint of my fingers. Before she could type a reply, another text bubble flashed on the screen.
I’M HERE LEONA
Then another one right after:
I’M ALWAYS HERE LEONA
“Stop it,” I whispered. “Stop . . . tell it to stop.”
“I’m not going to type that,” she said. “Let’s ask it what it wants.”
“Block it . . . block my number . . .”
“What?” She stared at me. “Why? We’re communicating with it.”
“Give me the phone,” I said, tugging it back from her. Whatever this was, it had gone too far. I pressed my finger into the power button and held it.
“Wait,” she said, hitting my hand away. “One more question. Just one more q
uestion.”
“We shouldn’t be talking to it,” I said.
“What’s with you?” she said. “Aren’t you curious? Ask it what it wants. Just one more question.”
I hesitated, then tapped out:
What do you want?
My fingers smeared sweat across the touchscreen. After a pause, the phone gave its answer:
YOU
I was still staring at the phone in shock when it rang in my hand, making me jump. An incoming call.
“It’s calling us?” Megan said.
I studied the digits filling the screen, and each buzz sent jitters of panic into my bones. But it wasn’t a call from my phone—it was another 805 area code, a number that looked only vaguely familiar.
Probably a telemarketer.
“No, it’s . . . it’s not me.” I handed the phone back to Megan so she could take the call and turned away to process what I’d seen, my mouth dry and sticky.
Dark matter had my phone.
But where? Where had it taken it?
It wanted me.
The thought made me feel cold.
No, it was messing with my head, playing mind games . . . it probably said that to everybody.
No, Leona, said the little voice in my head.
Not everybody, Leona.
Just one other.
“Get out,” I spat, whacking my temple.
Megan shook my arm and forced her phone into my hand.
“What? Who is it?” I said.
“It’s for you,” she said, her eyes narrowed.
Fearing it might be dark matter after all, I raised the phone shakily to my cheek. “Hell . . . hello?”
“When I call you six times in a row,” said a guy’s impatient voice. “You pick up.”
“Emory?” I almost didn’t recognize him. He sounded different—dazed and excited—and my pulse sped up to match. I hadn’t heard from him in a week. “Yeah, my phone’s acting weird.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “You’re never going to believe this. You’re never going to believe what happened.”
“Believe what?”
“It’s my sister . . . this morning . . . my dad heard something in her room and went to check—” Another voice cut him off—his mom?—and I caught snippets of an animated conversation in the background. He came back a second later, laughing. “Look, I got to go. I’m burning the soufflé. I wanted to be the first one to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” I breathed. “What was in her room?”
“I still can’t believe it,” he said. “It’s crazy. My dad opens the door, and then—” Another interruption, followed by clanging in the background and more excited back and forth.
“Emory, what?” I clutched the phone so hard to my ear I could hear the plastic squeaking.
He came back. “You ready to have your mind blown?”
“What happened?”
“It was her,” he said. “Just sitting there on her bed like it never happened.”
“What?”
“Leona, she came back. She’s alive.”
“Your sister?” I croaked, unable to find my voice.
“Here, she’s standing right next to me.” He pulled away from the phone. “Say hi, Ash . . . yeah, it’s Leona.”
And then a girl’s voice, metallic over the phone. Her voice.
“Uh . . . hi, girl-named-Leona.”
Chapter 6
I dropped the phone like it had bitten me. My heart boomed in my ears, obliterating all other sounds. Megan leaned in, clutching my arm, her eyes and mouth wide open in shock. She’d heard.
Alive.
Ashley Lacroix was alive.
Not just a hallucination this time.
Not just a figment of my subconscious reflected back to me by dark matter.
This time she was here in the flesh.
But we’d killed her—Megan and I. We’d dumped her body in the woods. I’d seen her rotting corpse.
Trembling, I picked up the phone and raised it to my cheek. Emory’s tinny voice continued to hiss excitedly from the speaker.
Something inside me felt sick.
“But . . . but what about the body?” I gasped. “You said you found a body, you said the police identified it . . . you said it was her.”
Next to me, Megan squeezed my arm tighter and mouthed, “Body?”
She didn’t know I’d led him there.
“Hold on,” said Emory, and I heard a door close—moving to where Ashley couldn’t hear. “That wasn’t her. Some other girl who was dumped in the woods, maybe. My dad says the DNA sample they tested was probably contaminated.”
“Then where has she been for the last three months?” The question came out overly accusing, but I didn’t care.
None of this made any sense.
“Apparently, she hitchhiked to South Carolina to visit some kind of healer about her sleepwalking,” said Emory, chuckling. “That’s where she’s been this whole time.”
“In South Carolina?” I said in disbelief. “She’s been in South Carolina? For three months? And she didn’t call home once to let her family know she wasn’t dead?”
“Leona, I literally just found out this morning that my baby sister is alive after thinking she was dead. I don’t know every little detail, okay? She said the healer insisted she come in secret, that they had some kind of arrangement. So yeah, if you ask me, I’d say this guy sounds shady as hell, but you know what? I’m not going to get on her case about that right now because I love her more than anybody on earth and I’m just grateful she’s alive. I called you because I thought you’d be grateful too. We can work out all the details later.”
I winced at his words, mortified at my own callousness. “You’re right, I’m sorry,” I whispered. “This is . . . this is amazing. I’m really, really happy for you.”
“I want you to come over for dinner tomorrow,” he said.
“You . . . what?” My heart jolted.
“Yeah, I want you to get to know her.”
Dinner. With Emory and his parents and the sister I’d murdered. The prospect brought instant terror. This couldn’t be allowed to happen. “Tomorrow? I . . . I can’t tomorrow . . .”
“Be here at six,” he said, and hung up.
I stared at the phone in my hand, too stunned to close my mouth.
Megan tugged it out of my grip and pocketed it, startling me back to the present. “So . . . Ashley’s alive,” she said calmly. “That’s either really good or really bad.”
She’d heard the entire conversation, no doubt.
I shook my head, lifting my gaze to hers. “But we killed her,” I muttered. “She’s dead. She’s supposed to be dead.”
“But she isn’t.”
“But she was. We hit her going fifty miles per hour. You checked her pulse. We dragged her body into the woods and left her there. She was dead.”
“Shh,” she said, glancing in the direction of the kitchen, where my mom was washing dishes. She rose to shut the door. “Okay, let’s talk about this. Maybe she wasn’t really dead. Maybe she got up right after we left and hiked back to the road. Maybe that was why she was out there. She was hitchhiking.”
But I saw her rotting corpse. “No, Megan. She was dead. I know she was dead.”
Megan folded her arms and shrugged. “Then Emory just prank-called you and she’s not actually back.”
“Why would he do that?” I said, lip curled. “That’s not funny, that’s morbid. Only you would think that’s funny.”
“Then how else do you explain it?” she spat. “Either she’s alive, and we didn’t kill her, or she’s still dead and that wasn’t her on the phone. Make a choice.”
“Ma
ybe we killed someone else,” I murmured.
“Someone else who looked exactly like Ashley?”
“We don’t know that, Megan. It was dark. We were freaking out. Do you remember what she looked like? All I remember is she was blonde and pretty, but the rest is a blur.”
“Not me,” said Megan. “I have a perfect image of her face burned in my brain.”
“Because we saw pictures of Ashley afterward on the internet,” I said. “Sometimes the brain can do that. It changes your memories based on stuff you learn afterward to make things consistent. So we thought we killed Ashley, and later we remember the girl’s face as Ashley’s. That’s textbook psychology.”
Megan stared at me. “So you think we killed someone else?”
“I’m just saying it’s a possibility.”
“Then two girls disappeared that night. How come we haven’t heard of the other one?”
She had a point, but my mind was still too wound-up to stop and think. “Over the phone—you heard her—she didn’t sound like she remembered me. She was like, ‘uh . . . hi, Leona,’ like she had no idea who I was. You heard that, right?”
“Yeah, because you hit her with a car and knocked her out. You probably gave her brain damage.”
I dragged a hand down the back of my neck, now pacing my bedroom. “This is so screwed up . . . so freaking screwed up,” I ranted. “What are we missing?”
Megan’s eyes lit up. “Wait . . . if we didn’t kill her, if we didn’t actually kill her, then we’re off the hook, right? We don’t have to feel guilty anymore . . . right?”
The same hope had crossed my mind, but I’d already snuffed it out. “We killed someone, Megan. There’s a body rotting in the woods, and we put it there. Someone is dead because of us. Maybe not Ashley, but someone.”
“Why do you keep talking about a body?” she said. “What body? If she got up and walked away, then there’s no body.”
I looked at her and licked my dry lips. “She was dead, Megan.”
“Yeah, I thought so too. We’ve been wrong before.”
“What if we were set up?” I said. “What if someone was trying to make another girl disappear and make it look like we killed her?” I flipped around and stomped across the room. “Never mind. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”