Scary Out There Read Online Free PDF Page B

who’d talk to anyone about anything.
    She flipped back through her notes, humming quietly, justthinking about her triumph. “Pretty crazy about the server though, right?”
    â€œCan’t you talk about anything else?”
    â€œFine,” she said, even though she was pretty sure she’d been talking about nothing but Cassegrain reflectors all week. He was being way crankier than normal. Maybe he still hadn’t forgiven her for proving him wrong about the Spirit Lamp.
    They worked in silence, adjusting the tension on their springs. As Nim was calculating ratios, Austin came around the table and leaned on the back of her chair. If he wanted to check her work then go right ahead, but he wasn’t going to find anything wrong with it. She hunched over the mirror mount, measuring the angle. She’d forgotten her protractor and was using the hands on her watch as a sort of rough guide.
    â€œCheating,” Austin said, nodding at the watch. In the glass, she could see the reflection of one hazel eye as he gazed down at her.
    She sat very still.
    His voice was low and oddly satisfied. He didn’t really sound that much like Batman after all.
    â€œLeave me alone,” she said, even though he wasn’t touching her.
    She’d spent so long solving mysteries, but now and for the first time, she actually understood. Everything. To be a girl in a place boys thought they owned meant you never got to own it too. They wanted you modest. Grateful. Helpless, even whenthe truth was, she was better than him. Would always be better than him. It didn’t matter.
    The war between them was over, but that was a lie. She’d defeated him with the equivalent of an atom bomb, and in the real world, he had simply reset. It was never over, and she would be forced to prove herself—always—again and again. Nothing was ever better.
    â€œWhat?” he said. “I’m just saying.”

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What Happens to Girls Who Disappear
    CARRIE RYAN
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    S he’d read the novels and seen the movies. She knew the popular guy just didn’t suddenly decide to fall for the class outcast. And Cynthia knew she filled that role at her small parochial high school: her interest in European board games, her collection of vintage hair accessories, her odd hobby of amateur taxidermy. They marked her as other .
    Except that Cynthia was beyond other . She was practically nonexistent. A ghost in her own hallways.
    Her problem was that she wanted to believe. Because, in the movies the hot guy may only ask the weirdo out because of a dare, but eventually he always sees who she really is and falls in love.
    In the movies he makes her beautiful. Wanted. He makes her matter, and everyone else sees it too.
    Well, other than that one movie with the pig’s blood, but there’s always an exception to every rule.
    And the rule for Cynthia was that she was nothing, and she’d stay that way until graduation. But in her heart, in the place of her most secret dreams, she craved to be the exception.
    That was her downfall.
    And like any good downfall it started innocuously enough. When the first text came in, Cynthia’s phone vibrated against the hard plastic desk chair, rattling loudly in the silence of the math test. She jumped from the surprise of it, her hand reaching back to slap against her pocket. This caused a sea of snickers to ripple around her. Cheeks already flaming, she tried to slump out of existence, but it was too late.
    With a beleaguered sigh Mr. Banks held out his hand, not even bothering to look up from the stack of papers he’d been grading at his desk. “No phones in class,” he droned. It was the same message he gave day after day but the first time Cynthia had ever received it.
    Because Cynthia never got texts.
    Shoulders slumped, she slipped from her desk and shuffled to the front of the room. Every whisper, every giggle, was a needle scraped across her skin, giving off a