Deadly Little Lessons by Laurie Faria Stolarz

but my roommate made a friend over boccie ball, and I guess the game went into overtime.”
    I take a seat on his rumpled bed and do my best to relax, but the crying seems more distant now, and I can’t help worrying that I’m wasting critical time.
    “I wish I had something flavorful to offer you,” Wes says. “But how about a jug of water for now?” He gestures to the gallon jug on his dresser. “Don’t mind the residual Nutella stains on the spout.”
    “I’m fine.”
    “So, what’s up?” He plops down beside me on the bed. “Why the sudden urgency about my car?”
    “I might need to go somewhere,” I tell him, eyeing his car keys on the desk.
    “Well, I could’ve guessed that. But I need way more information if I’m going to deem you Audi-worthy. Care to enlighten me as to what’s going on inside that twisted mind of yours?”
    And so I tell him. Everything. About Sasha, about how she’s the reason I ended up at Sumner, and how I believe that it’s her crying that’s been stuck inside my brain. At the end of it all, I almost expect him to bop me on the head to try to knock some sense into me, but instead he’s surprisingly silent.
    “Say something,” I tell him, suddenly feeling self-conscious.
    “I’m not sure where to begin. I mean, Sasha freaking Beckerman?”
    “I assume you’re familiar with the case.”
    “What makes you think you’ll be able to find Sasha when the police haven’t been able to?”
    “I don’t know that I’ll find her, but maybe I can help in some other way. I mean, there’s a reason I hear her voice, right?”
    “And how are you so sure that it’s her voice?”
    “Because that’s what my gut tells me.”
    “And what does your common sense say?”
    “You really think this sounds crazy, don’t you?”
    “Okay,” he says, “let’s just say for argument’s sake that it’s indeed Sasha’s voice inside your head. Why you? Why your head, I mean? It’s not like you know the girl.”
    “No, but we have something very significant in common. We were both adopted.”
    “And you think that you two are the only ones that that’s ever happened to? I mean, seriously, do you watch Maury Povich?”
    “No, but when I was researching summer programs, I came across her case,” I say, proceeding to fill him in on how I’d also seen it mentioned on the unsolved-mysteries show at the diner. “Anyway, I started to delve deeper, and then, when I was sculpting, the crying voice came to me.”
    “And so you just assumed that it was her?”
    I shake my head and tell him about the t -shaped piece I sculpted. “It could’ve been the letter t or a plus sign.”
    “As in two plus two equals crazy?”
    “As in I had no idea whose voice it was at first. But then one day, when I really focused on Sasha—on everything I’d been researching, including a video of her that I watched a kazillion times—the voice came to me again.”
    “When you were sculpting?”
    I nod. “It was like I conjured it up, like I was definitely on to something big, because the voice got really loud, and I may’ve even heard her call out for her mother. I can’t really say for sure.” I sigh, realizing that I’m babbling. “Anyway, the voice has been in my head ever since. The crying, I mean. And it doesn’t go away.”
    “Wow,” he says, leaning back on his bed. He reaches for the Magic 8-Ball on his dresser, shakes it up, and flashes me the result: OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD .
    “Does that mean you won’t help me?”
    “Well, of course I’m going to help you, but do you think it can wait until dawn?”
    “Not really. I mean, I hear her crying voice now . I want to see where it will lead me.”
    “You do realize how nutty that sounds, don’t you? Okay, yes, I know it’s you , that you’re superpsychometrically talented and all, but where do you honestly intend to go at this hour? Denny’s for a Moons Over My Hammy?”
    “So, you won’t let me take your car?”
    Wes shakes the