Deadly Little Lessons by Laurie Faria Stolarz Read Free Book Online Page B

sweat,” I say, happy to abandon my work-in-progress—for now, anyway.
    While Spencer goes into his office to make a phone call, I wedge out my clay, taking note of my knuckles and joints in preparation for my sculpture. And then I begin to form the shape, beginning with the wrist.
    A couple of seconds later, I’m interrupted by the sound of my cell phone ringing in my bag. I’m tempted to pick it up, suspecting it may be Adam, but since my fingers are thoroughly saturated with clay, I decide to let it go to voice mail.
    I close my eyes, trying my best to concentrate, even though part of me fears that I may have a psychometric episode (since I’m here at Knead rather than at home in the privacy of my own studio). I continue to work anyway, reassuring myself that my pottery has been premonition-free lately, and so have my dreams. The clay is silky-smooth against my waterlogged fingertips. I run my palms over the mound, thinking about Spencer’s suggestion that I get away.
    But then I hear someone crying.
    I look toward Spencer’s office, but the door is closed. Spencer’s in the kiln room. I can see him loading the kiln with pieces ready for firing. Still, the crying persists. (A female; I’m almost sure of it.) I close my eyes again and concentrate on my sculpture, assuming that the voice is in my head, and that this in fact is part of a premonition, but with each breath the crying gets softer and less urgent.
    “How’s it coming?” Spencer asks, stepping out of the kiln room.
    “Did you just hear something?” I ask.
    “Something like me loading the kiln with a bunch of tacky garden trolls?”
    “I guess,” I say, unwilling to get into it. Instead I look back down at my hand-in-progress, expecting to see a partially formed wrist.
    But instead I see the shape of the letter t : two intersecting tubes of clay stare up at me, confusing me, shocking me, making my heart beat fast.
    “Is everything okay?” Spencer asks. “No chance I’ll find you writhing around on the floor and moaning like a wounded cat?”
    I shake my head and roll the t up into a ball before he has a chance to see it. “I’ll be fine.” I do my best to form fingers from the mound of clay, but I can’t think straight. Meanwhile, the faraway whimper continues to play in my mind.

L ATER, AT HOME , still shaken up about the voice I heard at the pottery studio, I log on to my computer and do a search for the word psychometry , remembering a blog I cyberstumbled upon a few months back called Psychometrically Suzy.
    On her blog, Suzy talked about an incident in which she heard her father’s voice, long after he’d passed away, while touching an old hat that had belonged to him. There were a couple of similar entries—instances where she was able to touch an item and smell, see, or hear something from the past—but unfortunately, in none of the posts did she discuss how she coped or dealt with what was happening or how having a touch power affected her life and relationships.
    And right now I kind of need that. I need someone I can talk to, or at least read about, who understands, firsthand, what I’m going through, especially since Ben isn’t here.
    Not so surprisingly, there still isn’t too much else online about psychometry. I find a couple of sites dedicated to defining what it is, a site to help people develop their own touch powers, and another that says that those who possess extrasensory powers are doomed to the depths of hell. As if I needed hell on my plate in addition to everything else.
    I click on a blog entitled Touched, written by someone named Neal Moche. Since there are no pictures, nor any details about the author, my first thought is that it’s going to be a dud, but even so, I identify with it right away.
    There are pages and pages of entries. Some of them are locked, but a few are open, for anyone to read. And so I start with the one that was written yesterday.
From the Journal of Neal Moche
    He’s here again, at