BROKEN SYMMETRY: A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller (36 page)

Aaron stared at his car. A dent stretched across the door, broken glass and crumpled metal, bashed inward. Bare steel glinted underneath, deformed and scraped white. Black flecks of paint streamed in rivulets along the asphalt under his feet.

“No
—
” he whispered, and he laid his palm on his car’s frame.

It wasn’t a fender bender. The dent was too deep, as if someone had deliberately driven into it, their toe to the floor
—
or beaten it with a crow bar.

Aaron pulled the handle, and the door collapsed an inch and screeched open. He stared at the ruined door, and pressure tingled in his sinuses, like two thumbs pressing under his eyes.

The driver’s seat was soaked from the mist, and the door didn’t close. It just banged against the side and swung back open. Aaron squeezed his shirt into a ball and flung it across the parking lot.

Then his cell phone rang.

“Hello,” said Aaron.

“Aaron Harper, how are you?” said an icy drawl.

A chill slithered up Aaron’s spine
—
Clive Selavio.

He scanned the deserted school, the houses across the street. “Who gave you my number?” he said, his heart pounding. All he heard was Clive’s heavy breathing infused with static.

“I told you to stay away from her,” said Clive.

“How’d
you get my number?”

“But you didn’t
listen
,” said Clive.

The air stirred in Aaron’s ear, like someone breathing behind him. He spun.

Nobody.

“It was you
—
” Aaron’s eyes darted across the street. Down in the shadows between two bushes, hunched over. Nobody.

“It was
you
—
that was my car, asshole!”

Clive chuckled. “Next Friday,” he said. “Expect me. I have a little surprise for you, Aaron Harper.” Then he hung up.

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