Hunted

by Dean Murray

Jackson was the first to speak. "Is everything okay?"

  I nodded. "Just a call from my mom checking up on me. Given all the…drama at home right now I figured I'd better get far enough away that nobody would hear me."

  "Understandable. Miss Winters is ready to load the bus up. Tristan and the rest of the football team left twenty minutes ago."

  Right after they'd left me alone.

  "Okay, then I guess we'd better get back to the bus."

  I got an even bigger shock when I made it to the bus. Someone had dropped off a bouquet of brilliant yellow sunflowers for every single female on the team, including Miss Winters. The old man from my dream had indeed recognized my uniform.

  Every single one of us was in danger now.

  Chapter 16

  It was a good thing that I had Sheree with me for the ride home. It took everything I had to get in the bus without freaking out, but I knew that my life depended on maintaining an appearance of calm. There was no reason for the old man to send the entire team sunflowers unless he was going to watch us and see who became the most unsettled as a result.

  I tried to covertly look for him as I sat down in a seat next to Sheree, but just because I couldn't see him didn't mean that he wasn't there. It was possible he was just using binoculars or something similar to watch from a long ways away, but I knew that wasn't the only option. The mere fact that I'd ended up inside of his dream was pretty conclusive evidence that he wasn't normal, that he had some kind of supernatural power. For all I knew he could make himself invisible and he'd watched me from a distance of inches at some point during the night.

  It was the kind of thought that made me want to start screaming and crying, but I held myself together because I didn't have any other choice, not if I wanted to survive what was coming.

  Sheree was a godsend. We didn't talk about anything earthshattering, but Sheree wasn't just nice, she was also a surprisingly good storyteller. I got her started telling me about some animated show that she loved and got sucked into the story almost in spite of myself.

  Originally she hadn't wanted to tell me about what happened in it because she said it would ruin the story when I watched it myself. I told her not to worry about that, that I didn't expect to ever watch it myself, but by the time we'd made it halfway back home I'd started to reconsider my stance there. The series sounded silly on the face of things, but she painted the characters as such lively, sometimes silly, individuals that I started to think that maybe I should watch a few episodes just to see if it was as good as she made it sound.

  Sheree started yawning when we were still forty minutes from home. She apologized profusely, but I could tell that she was exhausted. It took some convincing, but she finally agreed to close her eyes and take a nap.

  I was starting to think that Sheree's lack of energy lately might have something to do with our stunting practice session. I didn't remember her being this tired all of the time before I'd stopped in for help that one night. I knew I was tired a lot after I spent an extended amount of time in someone else's dream or manipulating my own dream, but it didn't linger for me like it was doing for her. It was possible though that my ability to dream walk somehow cushioned me from the worst of the fallout.

  Hopefully Sheree would be okay in another few days, but it was one more thing to worry about. I resolved to leave Sheree's dreams alone for the next few weeks at least. Maybe once I'd confirmed that she bounced back without any long-term problems then I might practice with her again one night, but not for now.

  Once Sheree fell asleep I was alone with my thoughts. I was doing the best I could to keep from breaking down, but it was a losing battle. Just when I felt like I couldn't take it any more, I looked up and saw Jackson watching me. His smile was a little hesitant, but it was enough to remind me that for all that my new powers had brought a lot of bad into my life, they had brought good with them too.

  I got a text from my dad about fifteen minutes before we got back to the school.

  Sorry, Adri, I'm stuck at work still. Will you guys be okay walking home or do you need me to try to get away?

  A text from my dad, even one telling me that he wasn't going to pick us up, brought a smile to my face.

  We'll be fine. Don't work too late.

  Once we arrived at the school, I woke Sheree back up and then the two of us made our way to the front of the bus. Miss Winters stopped me just outside of the bus and handed me a wad of cash.

  "One of the benefits to what I do is that I always have a lot of cash from tips. Here's some money to pay for the clothes that were just ruined. Don't worry, it's not coming from me, the girls on the team are all chipping in to cover this."

  I wondered if she was going to say anything about the fact that the 'chipping in' hadn't been voluntary, at least not if they wanted to stay on the team, but after several seconds of silence I just nodded.

  "Thank you, Miss Winters. I really appreciate it."

  Sheree gave me a tired smile and then frowned. I followed her gaze and felt my stomach sink a little. Cindi was already a block away. Sheree and I had been pretty close to the front of the bus, while Cindi had sat in the very back with Missy and the others. I knew that she hadn't made it off of the bus before me, but she'd apparently come straight off of the bus and started towards our house without waiting for me. I said a hasty goodbye to Sheree and then started after Cindi. I was walking fast, but I didn't manage to catch up with her.

  Something was obviously still bothering her because she was in her pajamas and pretending to be asleep by the time I made it into our bedroom.

  Luckily I had a dreamless night, which meant I woke up on Saturday morning full of energy and ready to go accomplish anything. Dad and I had a quiet breakfast together. I wondered if we'd see Mom or Cindi before we got done, but neither of them ventured out of their respective bedrooms. I thought about telling Dad what had happened the night before, but I didn't want to tell him about the money yet, and if I told him about the rest of the events without telling him that I had a way of replacing my clothes then I'd just stress him out.

  Instead, he read through the news on his tablet while I planned which stores I would be hitting. We cleaned up our dishes and then I told him I wanted to go to the mall. He nodded and an hour later I was walking into the mall.

  Shopping wasn't usually something that I enjoyed, but then again, I didn't usually have any money to spend. This time I not only had money, but I needed to spend it or I'd run out of clothes before the end of the week. It made for a more enjoyable time except for the fact that I constantly had to stop myself from spending too much. There was a dizzying array of gorgeous clothes to pick from, but I knew just how much I normally paid for my clothes and after walking through the fifth store where jeans were more than one hundred dollars each I realized that shopping still wasn't any fun when you had money but were trying to stick to a budget.

  After nearly an hour and a half of wandering through the mall I finally remembered the store that my mom had told me about back when she'd first decided that I needed new clothes. I double-checked the address on my phone and then decided to walk there.

  It was like heaven. The prices were only a little higher than I was used to paying, but the clothes were incredibly cute. I replaced my jeans and tank top, picked up some new shorts, and another top that would work for the winter, and still had enough to go back over to the mall to pick up a bra and stay inside of my budget.

  I started back for home a little after two as my stomach reminded me that going without food wasn't really an option these days. Mom and Cindi were gone when I got home, which was convenient considering that I wanted to talk to Dad alone, but it kind of bugged me that they'd slept in late and then left Dad all by himself.

  The door to Dad's office was open, so I went in and sat down next to him. "Do you have a minute, Dad?"

  "For you? Always."

  "So…some girls squirted me with hair dye at the game last night."

  His eyes went wide and
I saw him looking at my hair, trying to decide whether or not it was different than he remembered. I continued before he could get a word out.

  "Everything ended up okay…sort of. My clothes were pretty much ruined and they got the bottom inch or so of my hair, but I just had Miss Winters cut the black part off."

  "I'm so sorry, Adri. Are you sure you're okay? Is that why you went to the mall today?"

  I nodded. "Yeah. Miss Winters was actually a lot cooler about everything than I expected her to be. I didn't see who did it, but they were definitely cheerleaders from our team and most of the team was waiting outside of the locker room to see how bad they got me. When I told Miss Winters what had happened she yelled at the rest of the team for something like half an hour. When nobody would tell her who did it she told the rest of the team that they were buying me new clothes, and if they didn't chip in that they were off the team."

  "Ah, that was rather shrewd of her. If any of the girls' parents complain she can just point out that their daughters can get out of contributing just by telling her who actually did the prank. It also has the benefit of possibly creating some friction between the real culprits and the rest of the team."

  "Yeah, she's actually a lot smarter than I gave her credit for."

  "Good, I'm glad that she's taking such a stern position with this. Did you manage to find clothes that you liked at the mall?"

  "No, but I went to this used clothes store that Mom told me about and shopped there. I got some cute clothes that I'm pretty happy with."

  There was a twinkle in his eye as he looked down at the bags in my left hand. "Did you want to show me what you found?"

  "No, it's okay. I can show Cindi later. Mostly I just came to tell you that I bought everything I needed to and I have about two hundred dollars left. I want you and Mom to have it. Mom racked up extra credit card debt to get those other clothes for me and this should cover at least some of what she spent."

  As I spoke, I pulled out what was left of the cash that Miss Winters gave me and tried to place it in his hand but he pulled back out of my reach.

  "That's a really amazing gesture, Adri, but I don't expect you to do that."

  "But I want to help out. Things are tight and I can help so I should."

  He shook his head at me as he closed my fingers back around the money, making a fist.

  "I don't mind taking care of you girls and your mother. I think that's my responsibility as a man. I know it's not fashionable these days for guys to say that kind of thing, it means we're the kind of chest-beating Neanderthals that used to club our women over the head before dragging them back to our cave, but that's how I feel. I have a good education and there's no reason that I can't take care of the family from a financial standpoint."

  "But the economy is so bad right now, Dad."

  "You're right, it is bad, but I still have a job and while this isn't always the case, usually I've found that when a man has to depend on his wife or kids to help support the family it's because he's either chosen not to earn as much as he could, or because he's refusing to sit someone in the family down—possibly himself—and tell them that they are trying to maintain too extravagant of a lifestyle."

  I dropped the money on his desk. "You just finished saying that isn't true in all cases, Dad. Let me help."

  "It's true in our case though, sweetie. I'm guilty of both of those things. I've had some time to think about things since we talked about all of this last. This bit about your mother and the money she's spent on her photography equipment is just a smokescreen in some ways. If I hadn't changed jobs a few years back, we'd be making forty or fifty percent more than we are right now."

  "But you did that for us. You did that so that you'd be working fewer hours so that you could spend more time with us."

  "Yes, and I think that is a valid life choice, but having made that choice I should have sat Cindi and your mother down and told them unequivocally that certain expenditures were going to go by the wayside. I didn't do that, and now we…I…am reaping the consequences. Money is constantly tight despite the fact that I'm back to working long hours."

  "Are you guys going to get a divorce?"

  I couldn't stop my voice from quavering a little bit, but I did manage to keep my eyes from filling up with tears.

  "I still don't know, honey. Hopefully our little vacation this week goes even better than I'm hoping and we'll come back with a good foundation to start working through some of these issues."

  Dad looked out the window for a second as though searching for the right words to say.

  "I really do love your mother and I care about her deeply, just like I care about you and Cindi. I see a lot of things in her that I still admire. I love that she throws herself into projects with such reckless abandon. I love that she doesn't let the details get in the way of trying to go after what she wants. I think those are really good things in the right amounts, I just feel like she's lost the rudder that would allow her to use them as strengths rather than weaknesses. Maybe we've both lost our rudders."

  "Where did things go wrong, Dad?"

  "I'm not sure, Adri. I've looked back over our lives trying to figure that out. I think I took that stroll down memory lane partially out of a desire to fix things, but I think it's also been because I want to know so that I can warn you and Cindi before you're both my age and suffering from some of the same regrets."

  Dad cleared his throat, probably trying to hide the fact that his voice was becoming thick with emotion, and continued.

  "I think it was a lot of small things. When we got married, I was so sure that we were headed towards a happy, full life. I could see all of the ways that we complemented each other, all of the strengths we had individually and the way that they worked well together. I've thought back again and again and I just can't see any one individual event or even two or three events. It was like a hundred small branches in a path and while we didn't choose the wrong fork every time, we chose the wrong path most of the time."

  "So you just kind of drifted apart?"

  "I guess, but it was more like we just became two different people, people who cared about different things, people who didn't have anything in common except for the two of you."

  The tears that I'd been fighting started to pour down my cheeks, which then caused Dad to stand and pulled me into a hug.

  "No matter what happens I'm still going to love you, Adri. Your mom will too. Even if the worst comes to pass we'll still make sure that our feelings about each other don't get in the way of taking care of the two of you."

  "Thanks, Dad. I really hope that it doesn't come to that."

  "Me too, sweetie. Me too."

  Chapter 17

  I called Miss Winters after Dad and I talked and set up a time for her to touch up my hair. It turned out that she was only a fifteen-minute walk away from us. It was crazy to think about just how many people were packed into such a small area around us. We didn't live in the center of the city or anything, but I still saw hundreds of homes on my walk to Miss Winters' house and I only knew a handful of our neighbors.

  Miss Winters greeted me with a smile and then seated me in her kitchen and started working on my hair.

  "I'm really sorry that things have gotten so bad on the squad for you, Adri. I really do wish I could just wave a magic wand and make all of you girls the best of friends."

  "It's okay. I never expected to fit in on the team anyways. To be honest I never would have even considered trying out, let alone joining, if not for Cindi practically begging me to."

  "Well, I for one am glad that you joined up. It would have been a real shame for you to never have developed your talents, you're a natural. You're already as good a flyer as anyone else on the team."

  I felt myself blushing. "That's very kind of you to say."

  "It's no more than the truth, Adri. Speaking of which, I've had a little more time to think about that extra punishment that I mentioned. I'm still a little up in the air about it, but I don
't think that replacing your clothes inconvenienced whoever sprayed you down very much. I had hoped that doing that would have made someone else on the team step forward, but that hasn't happened either."

  I nodded. She was more or less going back over the same ground as Dad and I had covered earlier.

  "Anyway, I feel like I have to do something else to drive home the point that while I can't make you all be friends, I at least want you all to treat each other decently. I think that Missy is the key. Even if she wasn't involved she should have known what was going on, and as the captain of the team she should be better than that. I'm thinking of putting you in her place as one of the three starting flyers."

  I shook my head. "I don't think that's a good idea, Miss Winters. That's just going to make the other girls hate me even more. Besides, I may be picking things up quickly, but I still don't have any experience doing stunts in games."

  "Everyone starts as a novice somewhere, Adri. I understand your reluctance, but it wasn't that long ago that I was in your shoes. I remember being on the team, I remember some of the pressures and I remember just how catty the girls can be. I just hope that if it comes to it that you'll agree to help me out. I have to punish whoever did this or I'll continue to run into the same kinds of problems next year and the year after that."

  "I'll help you however I can, Miss Winters, you know that."

  "I appreciate that, Adri. Your hair is done. What do you think?"

  She'd done an amazing job. She hadn't just cut it, she'd styled it and I looked like some kind of movie star or something. I told her as much, which made her smile, and then she showed me how to style it and I headed home.

  I expected for Mom and Cindi to be back by the time I got home from my hair appointment, but they stayed out late. Not just a little bit late, late enough that Dad and I both ended up going to bed before either of them came home. Dad texted Mom about the time that we started preparing dinner, but she just texted back saying that we shouldn't wait for them.