Now You See Me ... Read Online Free PDF Page A

— obviously a losing battle. Just walking into the kitchen made Lena break into a sweat.
    â€œMmm.” Mr. Giff mumbled a greeting through a bite of toast covered in warm, foamy jam skimmings. “Wanf smmm?” he asked with his mouth full.
    It did smell good, but Lena shook her head. Herstomach was jumping all over the place. She wanted to talk to Abby.
    â€œI’m heading over to Abby’s for breakfast,” Lena fibbed, slipping her messenger bag over her head and making her getaway before her dad asked for help. “Happy canning.” She waved, and was out the door.
    The urge to run the three blocks to Abby’s house was beaten down by temperature and tiredness. Lena walked as quickly as she could without breaking a sweat, trying not to let the nightmare replay in her head.
    Abby was sprawled on a futon on the screened-in porch of her house on Bixby Street, wearing old-man boxer shorts and a tank top. Her skinny brown arms and legs were flung out wide, as if they were afraid to touch anything. She was awake, but barely. When she saw Lena, she held out her hand like a star trying to block photographers.
    â€œStop with the paparazzi!” she mumbled. “It’s too early for pictures.”
    Lena tried to laugh at the joke, but all she managed was a feeble smile. It
was
too early for pictures. She didn’t even know why she’d worn the camera.
    Well, actually, she sort of did. Ever since she’d bought the Impulse, not wearing it felt really weird. Whenever she took it off, an anxious feeling came over her, like something terrible was going to happen. And that was what she wanted to talk to Abby about.
    â€œI think I’m being haunted,” she blurted.
    In an instant Abby was wide-awake. She sat up and swung her long legs over the edge of the futon. Her dark eyes looked worried. “You think you’re being what?”
    â€œHaunted,” Lena repeated in a hoarse whisper. Now that she’d said the words, she suddenly felt a little woozy. She steadied herself against the pillar at the top of the stairs. “You know, by that boy,” she went on. “And the tower. The things that are showing up.” Lena took a deep breath, several slow steps, and climbed into the hammock that was strung across a corner of the Starlings’ porch. “I think the camera is haunted, or like, a medium — one of those things ghosts use to communicate,” she finished. Wow. She wasn’t really planning on saying all of that — it just kind of came out.
When did I decide I was being haunted?
she wondered with a shudder.
    Lena pulled the tower picture, the one that hadstarted it all, out of her bag and stared at it for a long time. Abby sighed, got to her feet, and worked her way into the hammock beside her so the two of them could look at it together.
    The hammock swung slowly back and forth, the fabric creaking on the hooks that held it. Lena heaved a sigh. It was a bit of a relief to have put her spooky suspicions into words, and another relief that Abby hadn’t laughed. But if what she said was true, things would undoubtedly get a lot worse before they got better … if they got better at all.
    â€œYou can’t get that tower out of your head, can you?” Abby finally asked. “I wish I had seen it. Or not seen it. Or whatever.”
    â€œI wish you had seen it, too.” Lena pressed her lips together. “Or that I hadn’t. Actually, I just wish I could stop thinking about it, or dreaming about it….”
    â€œDreaming about it?” Abby echoed.
    Lena nodded. “And not good dreams.”
    â€œEw. Nightmares.” Abby’s eyes looked genuinely worried now. She put her hand on Lena’s shoulder for an instant, then took it away to pick up one of the photos. “Hey …” Abby pulled the picture closer to her face. “This is weird.”
    The whole thing is weird,
Lena thought. But she leaned