Away Games by Lynn Townsend
The phone was one of those old-style rotary hunks of powder-blue plastic with gray smudges on the handset from years of being tucked between ear and shoulder. People still use these things? Wendy thought. She was leashed to the wall by eighteen feet of bunched up, knotted cable. Talking on that thing was going to be like eating a plate of spaghetti. One piece at a time. With chopsticks.
Hesitantly, she lifted the handset. An unfamiliar noise—so that’s what a dial tone sounds like—issued from the ear-piece. Waaaaaaaah.
Her sister’s kid had a toy phone like this; she poked her finger into the hole and spun the wheel. Click, click, click. Vzzzzzzzzt. Click. Vzzzt.
Wendy flopped down onto the sofa. Her aunt’s house was hideous, filled to the brim with yellow and
