A Pretty Little Parody [PLL]

26. The Call

That evening, I chronicled everything that had happened so far in my diary. These days, I was writing more about friend drama than anything else--A’s mysteriousness, Henry and Evan’s new relationship, Alec’s mom and my dad getting together, Tristan’s perpetual creepiness, and, of course, my thoughts and feelings about Eli being missing. I loved writing in the diary, especially with my sparkly grape-scented purple gel pen--it gave me a nice happy high whenever I used it. I wrote one last sentence about Alec’s escape from the food court, then laid down the pen and picked up the cell phone to see if Alec had texted me in the last few hours.

Nope. Damn! I bit my tongue in frustration. This wasn’t supposed to happen to me. Alec was supposed to break down to me, to need me. And then I’d confess about how disgusting it was that our parents were cheating with each other, and we would devise a clever yet sexy plan to break them up. But instead, he was being so quiet, it was almost like he didn’t care that I was going through the same exact thing as he was.

My phone buzzed. I jumped and quickly typed in the password to unlock it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t Alec; it was just A with some bad news. He couldn’t make it to my party.

“UGH!” I rolled around onto my stomach and screamed into my pillow. Why did all the bad stuff have to be piling on now? It was official--as of right now, my life as Sasha Peterson was shittier than a steaming hot pile of dog poop.

My phone rang again. I sniffed and looked at the screen. It was a number I didn’t recognize--did I want to pick up? Then I realized that I was so pathetic that I was lucky that someone wanted to talk to me at all, and pressed the phone to my ear.

“Hello?”

The voice on the other end was scratchy, feminine, and slightly familiar. I tried to remember where I’d heard it before, but couldn’t quite place it. “Sasha Peterson?” it said.

“This is she,” I said in my most authoritative voice. “Who are you?”

There was a high-pitched giggle. “I have your brother,” it went on. “Eli. He’s so sweet.”

Instantly my heart started beating faster and I felt my blood pressure rise. “Eli? What are you doing with him? Have you kidnapped him? Who is this?”

“Yes, he’s here with me now.” The voice sounded bored. “And yes, let’s just say he’s been...forced to keep me company as of late.” There was another giggle. “And who am I? That’s a secret I’ll never tell.”

“Tell me who you are!”

“You know you love me.”

“No, I don’t! Where are you keeping my brother?”

“Tell you what. I’ll text you, and if you do the things I ask you to do, just right, maybe you’ll get him back. Safe and sound.”

“Just tell me where he is, goddammit,” I said through clenched teeth.

“No can do!” There was a kissing noise. “TTYL. I’ll text you.” Then whoever it was hung up.

“Damn it to hell!” I threw my phone on the ground. The call had come in from a blocked number, probably a pay phone or a burn cell. I thought about paying a stalker to track down the caller’s identity for me, but I only had about two thousand dollars left from this week’s allowance and I wanted it to spend it on some cute heels I saw at Neiman Marcus.

So concealed identity it was.

A knock sounded on the door before I could think of what to do next. My mom stood in the doorway. She was wearing a white dress with a Peter Pan collar that made her look fifteen instead of twenty-four, and she’d done up her makeup so that she looked fresh and youthful, too. Yeah, right. This was all a ploy to make herself look innocent, I knew. It wasn’t like she actually looked good in white or anything.