Social Themes
"So, do we have a deal?" Mr. Evans asked.
"Unbelievable," I muttered under my breath.
"I don't understand," Mr. Evans said.
"The whole thing is unbelievable. First you try to threaten me. Then you try to bribe me. And now you do the two together, trying to bribe me and threatening me if I don't take the bribe."
"I don't like to think of it in those terms," he said.
My real life friends are gone. My online friends are just a bunch of liars. For a while I used you and your horoscopes to give me hope, but now I realize how stupid I was. Mr. Selenski tried to warn me, but I wasn't listening. I guess I didn't want to hear.
I can't believe I've been writing to you like this. You must have had a good laugh. And here I am doing it again.
You won't be hearing from me anymore.
I lay on the gritty wooden floor of the filthy shack, frozen with terror. For weeks I had been hearing about the two girls who had disappeared, but I had never in a million years thought that something like that was going to happen to me.
But here I was, tied up, groggy, panic-stricken—and waiting. Waiting for whatever had happened to the girl who had been found "not alive." Waiting for whatever had happened to the other girl.
This couldn't be happening to me.
But it was.
