Deadly Little Lies Read Online Free PDF

business.
    I fish around my brain for something remotely intelligent to say. “Were you in Boston?” I ask, remembering how just before he’d left he’d mentioned possibly visiting a cousin there.
    “That isn’t really important. What matters now is that I’m here.”
    “And why are you here?” I say, disappointed by how closed off he’s being.
    “I don’t know.” He looks away. “Maybe I’m sick of homeschooling.”
    “And that’s it?” An impromptu hiccup escapes from my throat. I try to cover it up with a lame little cough.
    “You want a better answer?”
    “I just thought there might be more to it.”
    “More, like what?”
    “Like maybe you thought I was in danger again.”
    “How would I know that?” he asks. “I haven’t touched you in months.”
    “Maybe you heard something or sensed it somehow. . . .” I pull the bathroom note from my pocket and try to hand it to him, but Ben refuses to touch it. He starts to take another step back, but between the wall and me, he’s totally pinned. “Here,” I say, opening the note up for him. I hold it out just inches from his face.
    “‘It’s not over yet,’” he reads.
    “I got it today, right after I spotted you spying on me in the art studio.”
    “Spying on you?”
    “Is there something you want to tell me?”
    “Where did you get that?” he asks, gesturing to the note.
    “That isn’t an answer.” I take a step closer, and he folds his arms across his chest. “Why were you outside my house the other night?” I ask.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I saw you across the street, looking up at my bedroom window.”
    He shakes his head and looks away again. “Not me.”
    “And why should I believe you?” I ask, thinking back to last September, when he lied to me about his identity— when he didn’t want me to know that it was him in the parking lot that day, when he pushed me out of the way of that oncoming car.
    “Believe what you want,” he says, “but it wasn’t me in front of your house.”
    “But it was you outside the art studio today,” I say, to be sure. “I saw you watching me in the door glass.”
    “And so what does that prove? I was looking for you.”
    “Yes, but why ?”
    Still shaking his head, he chews his bottom lip. His forehead is sweating and his jaw is visibly clenched.
    “Just say it,” I demand. “I want to hear the truth.”
    “Okay, fine,” he says, letting out a breath. “Even though I’m back, I still think we should keep our distance from one another. I think it’ll make things easier.”
    “Easier for who?”
    “For both of us.”
    “You can’t honestly mean that,” I say, suddenly feeling like the walls are closing in, like the ceiling is bearing down onto the crown of my head.
    “It’s for the both of us,” he repeats.
    I shake my head, refusing to believe it—to believe him —especially since he can’t look me in the eye.
    “But I still care about you,” he continues, glancing back at the note. “I mean, we don’t have to stop talking completely. We can still be lab partners.”
    “How generous of you.”
    “Don’t be like that.”
    “Like what?” I snap. “Aren’t you even a little bit concerned?”
    “Did you ever think that maybe the note is a joke?”
    “But look at the writing—it’s the same as in Matt’s notes. Nobody else saw those notes but us.”
    “That’s what you think, but who knows? Maybe Matt showed them to someone else.”
    “Why would he do that? He’d risk someone telling on him.”
    “I just don’t think you should make assumptions.”
    “You sound like Ms. Beady.”
    “Well, maybe she’s right.”
    “Then who was outside my house?”
    “I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Maybe a neighbor, maybe a salesperson—”
    “At three in the morning?”
    “I don’t know,” he insists.
    “Something isn’t right,” I say, thinking about what happened in my pottery studio that night. I glance toward his arm. The treelike scar