Ned reaches the phone just as the answering
machine picks up. With the receiver to his ear, he listens to his
own voice rattle off, “Sorry we missed you…”
Nothing sorry about it. He should change the
message, if only while his roommate is out on semester break. “I
don’t feel like talking to you right now, and don’t bother leaving
a message because I’m not calling you back. You still there? Hang
up already, will you? Jesus, go away.”
He hadn’t always been this bad.
The machine beeps in his ear, then cuts off
because he’s answered the phone. For a long moment he listens to
steady breath on the other end of the line, dread curling into the
pit of his stomach. He knows who this is. Hang up, that
voice inside him whispers, but his fingers have forgotten how to
work and Jake would
