I heard Ellen drop her things by the front door and make her way to the kitchen whistling a happy tune. I could tell that her mood was soaring. Images that I assumed correlated to her happiness flashed through my head, but she was flitting from one idea to the next too fast for me to follow. Her good mood made me feel even better in mine. She paused in the doorway when she saw me sitting at the table grinning stupidly to an empty room. Her happy tune ended mid-whistle.
“What are you doing?” she asked taking off her shoes slowly, her sunny face worried.
“Sitting at the table.”
Her eyes narrowed at my response. I recognize that look! She’s met a boy! Wait, can she hear this?
“Yes, she can,” I said tartly.
“Well?” she demanded, opening the refrigerator to get a drink.
“I’m going to call Alex,” I told her.
“Why?”
“So you can’t ask me any more questions.”
Cheater! I’m glad she’s found Alex. Sam wouldn’t raise his kid wrong. A vision of her at the office, at her desk, floated through my head. Sam walked up and they started talking. No, it was beyond talking, it was flirting. Then the vision changed, and I knew I was witnessing a daydream.
“Mom! Rated R!” I said to stop her from going any further.
Her eyes flashed to mine, and she blushed. “I can’t control what I think!”
“I know, but still…there are some things your children shouldn’t see…”
She blushed again and undid her hair, so she could hide her face. The light bounced off her brown hair, and I saw the highlights of red that I always coveted.
“You like him, then? Alex’s dad?”
Her pale face uncomfortable, she said, “Why don’t you go call Alex?”
I stood and started out of the kitchen. “I think I will. And I think I’ll invite them both over for dinner next week.”
She followed me down the hall. “You wouldn’t!” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because…just because.”
“Mom, you haven’t been on a date since I was born. You like him. Sounds like he likes you. This way it won’t be awkward, and we can disguise it as something else if it goes monumentally wrong.”
“I don’t know, Clare. I mean, I work for him…I’ve known him since I was little and everything, but if it goes sour, I don’t know if he would be forgiving enough to let me keep my job.”
I paused on the bottom stair, thinking over her words. I turned and brushed back a strand of hair, which had fallen across her face. I knew I was about to cross a boundary, but I didn’t care. It had to be said.
“That’s not what’s worrying you. I know that you think about my father all the time, but you can’t keep waiting for him to come back. He’s not coming back. You need someone to make you feel like you’re the most important person on the planet. That’s what dating is about. I honestly think Sam would do that for you.”
“You make me feel important,” she answered.
“Not in the way you really need.” I touched her face, then started back up the stairs. “You only get one shot at this life, Mom, and you might as well live while you’re alive.” I paused again and turned back with a wicked smirk. “Plus, you need to sex up.”
“Clare! Watch your mouth!”
I grinned. “How does next Wednesday sound?”
She stared up at me with wide eyes but didn’t answer. I nodded at the hopeful tenor of her thoughts. “I’ll take that to mean it sounds fine.”
“Clare?” she called before I could slip away. “I know your father isn’t coming back. I’ve known that for a long time. It’s just that the thought of dating, of letting anyone that close again….” Terrifies me.
“What’s that thing you’re always telling me?” I asked.
“Dogs can’t look up?”
“No, the other thing.”
She smiled. “If you let fear rule you, you miss the moments of life that count.”
“Something like that, yeah.”
She rolled her eyes at me, getting the message, hating that I was turning her words back on her.
“I’m going to order a pizza and watch a scary movie. Come back down after your phone call,” she pointed a finger at me dangerously, “but only if you leave your dating advice upstairs.”
“Done,” I agreed.
Alex was ecstatic about the idea of playing cupid, falling in line with my plan immediately. We made all the arrangements, then spent the rest of the call talking about school. After my phone call, I went downstairs to find the pizza had gotten cold and Ellen was well into her movie. I took a slice of the cheese and spinach and joined her in the living room, where dead bodies and gore were piling up on the TV screen. As I sat, she looked over from where she had cocooned herself in a blanket to ward off any psychopathic, chainsaw-wielding murderers who might be nearby.
“I’m going to go into town tomorrow with Donna, do you want to come? We’re leaving around ten thirty.”
Donna was an old friend, also the principal of my school, who Ellen had recently started spending girl time with. I knew they were going shopping or something else equally as dreadful. I frowned at her. What were the chances of her leaving thirty minutes before I was supposed to meet Daniel? Was it coincidence? I brushed the strange feeling away.
“No,” I said, not looking at her, “I have plans.”
“With Alex?”
“Um.” Sometimes my superpower didn’t feel too super.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “Are your plans with this boy I’m not allowed to mention?”
I turned to her, wanting to explain suddenly. “He’s just a friend, Mom. He’s offered to show me some things about the car so we don’t have to keep taking it to the mechanic. But that’s all, I swear.”
Yeah...right. “All right. I’ll have Donna pick me up so that you and mystery man can have the car to bond over.”
“You’re awesome.”
“I know.” She smirked as she started on her fourth slice of pizza, her eyes returning to the gore on the television.
I sat down in the small, wooden chair in the kitchen. Then, I stood again, too full of nervous energy to stay seated for long. I paced the length of the kitchen, checking the clock every five seconds or so, feeling ridiculous. Ellen had already left, leaving me to anxiously anticipate Daniel’s arrival by myself. She had teased me before she left, her smug smile spelling payback for inviting Sam over.
I sat back down again. Then I stood.
What would Daniel and I talk about? Would conversation be as easy as it was before? Would he be freaked out I had asked him over so soon? I sat down again. He’d been the one to volunteer teaching me – did that mean he really did want to be my friend?
A loud knock came from the front door, and I jumped. I looked at the clock to be sure. He still had fifteen minutes. Was he early? Or was it someone else? I ran down the hall to find out.
I opened the door, trying to calm my racing heart and hopeful thoughts. Daniel grinned at me as he leaned against the doorframe casually. He was wearing a pair of jeans with holes in the knees and a simple grey shirt – work clothes. I smiled at him, glad he had come.
“I was thinking,” he said as soon as he saw me.
“I’m proud for you.”
I stepped around him and out onto to the porch, noticing there wasn’t a hint of winter breeze. The sun beating down on the porch actually felt good. The long sleeve shirt and old blue jeans I had thrown on suddenly felt too hot. Had someone stolen winter?
“I was thinking you owe me for doing this,” Daniel continued.
“Is it really friend-like to extort someone for a favor?”
“Yes.” He circled around me and opened the screen-door for me. “In return for helping you grasp the mystery of all things car, I’d like to hear you play a song.”
I stopped walking. “Well, this was nice, glad you could drop by.”
“Come on! What harm could it do?”
&
nbsp; “Tons.”
“Please?” He smiled the smile I had seen him use on the girls at school when he was trying to get his way. I crossed my arms defensively.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
I looked at our brown grass, so I wouldn’t have to look him in the eyes and be tempted to give in. “Use your charm smile on me. I don’t like it. I know you’re used to getting your way when you use it, but it won’t work on me.”
I peeked up at him, to see if he had put it away. He had. In its place, he wore a funny expression as if I’d caught him doing something bad again. “You’re the first person to notice that.”
“Yeah, well, stop. You can use it on the others, but not on me.”
“But asking you to do something doesn’t work either!”
“Thems the breaks, huh?” I said, swerving around him.
“Please?” he begged again. He caught up to me and tried to assault me with the green pools of light he called eyes. He wasn’t trying to force me now. He was really asking. “Call it a friendly favor.”
“You can call it whatever you want, but it’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?”
“What if I suck? What if I’m not as good as your expectations? What if you think I’m the worst thing since the 90s?”
He started laughing at my comparison. “I promise to withhold judgment.”
“That is impossible to promise.”
His cocked his head to the side. “Why are you so definitive when it comes to things like that? Like you know what’s possible for people to think or not think?”
I shifted nervously and looked away. As I did, I spotted a black Audi parked behind the wagon. Eager to change the subject, I pointed at it. “Is that yours?”
His eyes were sparkling strangely, but he allowed the change of subject with good grace. “Yep. It was a birthday present.”
“Some birthday present,” I said, impressed.
I couldn’t imagine being able to buy somebody a whole car for their birthday. Maybe a cup holder, if I saved my money.
“You’re loaded, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Yes,” he admitted.
I had thought as much from the hints from others, but his confirmation stung. What did he know about saving every penny just to have food next month? What did he know about picking up the pieces of his life every six months or so, because his mom had lost her job, or simply felt it was time to move on, to avoid the unsavory characters of my world? We were too different. He would never understand the chaos of my world. It made me sad.
He noticed my expression. “You’re not going to judge me for that too, are you? I can’t help it, you know. It’s my parents’ money, not mine.”
“That’s what rich kids say,” I said. “But no, I won’t judge you for that. I’m done doing that to you.”
I opened the driver’s side door of the wagon and popped open the hood. In comparison to the sleek Audi, it looked like someone had spat it out of a garbage compactor, after running it over with a tractor on ugly day.
“Thanks.” He looked up at the cloudless sky. “I’ve arranged for there to be pleasant weather for our lesson, but I think we should start if I’m going to get anything through that thick skull of yours.”
“You arranged the weather? What? Did you have a conversation with God or something?”
He smiled and leaned forward, his midnight hair splashing across his pale forehead. My fingers twitched with the impulse to brush the hair back so that it wasn’t obscuring his face.
“Something like that,” he said with a smile that hinted at an inside joke. “You see this here? That’s the alternator and this,” he pointed to another part of the engine, “is the exhaust manifold…”
He continued listing off parts in a patient voice. I leaned over the opposite side of the car, listening carefully, cataloging everything he was telling me. I didn’t want him to have to tell me twice – a part of me was looking for ways to impress him. I focused on remembering and all my worry of not knowing what to say fell away as swiftly as the morning.
It was one o’clock before we stopped for lunch. Daniel heard my stomach rumbling almost as loudly as our old car and insisted we take a break. I hadn’t been keen to stop, but he had been pushy and stubborn. He sat at our tiny table while I made pasta salad.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything?” I asked again feeling rude for eating while he wasn’t.
“I ate a late breakfast.”
“You’re just afraid I can’t cook and you’ll end up poisoned.”
“That too.”
I heard a phone beep, and I peeked back at him from where I was draining my pasta. He pulled out his phone and pushed a couple of buttons. The message was not a happy one. His eyes went from playful and happy to shocked and angry in a single push of a button. The blackness circled for one long moment then disappeared as he shut his phone with a snap. I sat down opposite from him with my food. “Is everything okay?” I asked.
“No…” The sound of the door banging against the wall and quick footsteps down the hall cut off his reluctant reply.
His reaction was much quicker than mine. He jumped up at the sound, his chair hitting the linoleum floor with a loud bang as he found his feet. The tension rippling through him was palpable, and I realized I was holding my breath. In that instant I understood something about him. I saw a darkness I hadn’t seen before. It was a manifestation of the dark I had seen in his eyes.
After a second, which lasted an eternity, he relaxed and righted the chair he had knocked over. He sat down quickly and fixed his expression as Alex came running into the kitchen. He gave me a cautiously apologetic look, but I ignored it. I was too busy trying to understand his reaction.
Alex looked surprised when she saw Daniel, but she was too worked up to comment. “It’s terrible! Have you heard?!” she said as she collapsed into the chair next to me.
“I didn’t know you knew where I lived,” I said.
“Oh, don’t be silly, everyone knows where you live.” She paused, a thought occurring to her. “I didn’t mean to barge in, I just got excited…”
“You’re welcome to barge in any time you want.”
“Thanks. So, you haven’t heard?” she asked, her blue eyes wide with anxiety.
“I just did,” Daniel replied holding up his phone.
“Is someone going to explain?” I asked. The kitchen was silent, her thoughts blocked from my mind. The answers I should have been getting were nowhere to be heard.
“They just found a body in the woods off NC-12,” she said.
“Like a deer body?” I said hopefully, not wanting her to mean what I thought she meant.
“No. A man. Ryan Holt.”
“Was his death strange or something?” I asked, pushing away my food.
“Well, we have your typical deaths – car accidents, people freezing to death, fires, that kind of thing – but we’ve never had a death like this.”
“Like what, exactly?”
I started to hear a murmuring, and I recognized the sound as what had happened when I’d first started developing my gift months ago. The murmuring got stronger, and I heard: It’s too nasty, I shouldn’t tell them. Poor, Mr. Holt! Poor, dear, man! I wonder what his sister and mother are going to do!
I looked over at Daniel. His eyes were distant, as if he wasn’t in the room with us anymore. Could I hear Alex, because he was distracted? If so, then my not being able to hear her was something he did consciously. But how could he unless…unless he was like me? I experienced a moment of panic. Perhaps he was just psychic, or some other kind of weirdness, I didn’t have a name for yet? That could be it…I knew, after all, that anything was possible.
I zeroed back in on Alex as she started talking again. “They found him almost torn apart. They think it might have been an animal, because a human just wouldn’t be capable of that kind of violence. From the description I got from Jennifer, it was pretty sic
k.”
“Do they think it was the same thing that attacked those bears?” I asked. The image of the running creature just behind my house floated through my head. Goosebumps erupted along my arm. Had I witnessed Ryan Holt’s killer?
“They think it might be, yeah. The damage was the same. The Forest Ranger is completely stumped. She says the markings don’t match any animal she knows of.”
“Maybe, it’s bigfoot,” Daniel said.
I laughed and looked at him. His eyes weren’t distant anymore. I concentrated, and found that Alex’s thoughts had been drowned out again. One day, when I didn’t think it would give my own secret away, I would have to ask him about that.
“That’s not funny!” Alex chided him. “Somebody is dead, ripped to pieces!”
“Sorry.” He didn’t sound very sorry. I wondered about the nasty look on his face.
My eyes on Daniel, but talking to Alex I said, “Who was Mr. Holt? I mean what did he do for a living?”
For some reason, I felt like this mattered.
“He was a retired Army Ranger. He’d been on disability for a while, because of a bullet in the knee. He’d been really depressed, but he was just starting to turn his life around. I talked to Jennifer, whose Mom knows his sister, and she said he’d just quit drinking and had found a job with the sheriff’s office.”
“He worked for the sheriff?”
“Yeah. Sheriff Cobb. You can see why it’s all over town.”
“And you had to help spread the word?” I asked, wondering if I’d mistaken my initial judgment of her.
Her blue eyes met mine in cool annoyance. I’d never seen eyes so capable of making me feel like I was five-years-old and had just done something wrong. Even Ellen lacked that ability. “No,” she said. “I wanted to explain why I would be spending the night. Dad’s over in Asheville for the weekend, visiting my Grandma. I didn’t want to be at the house by myself. Not with a murderer wandering around.”
Her word stuck. Murderer.
“Sorry.”
“You’re forgiven.”
She smiled and looked between Daniel and me. Now that she had gotten the important news out of the way, I knew teasing wouldn’t be beneath her. She might not spread my interest to the school, but that wouldn’t stop her from making me uncomfortable in front of Daniel. I could see as much in her eyes.
“Pity I can’t stay the night too,” Daniel said preemptively, directing his words at Alex. He obviously saw the teasing coming as well.
“Ellen might flay me alive if you did,” I said.
“At least without your skin you wouldn’t have to worry about things like poison ivy or skin rashes,” Daniel said.
“But it would kill my complexion.”
“There’s an upside and a downside to everything in life, I guess.”
“Yeah, and you should avoid the downside if you can,” I said, thinking of my personal philosophy on life. Endure the bad and celebrate the good, even if the good was miniscule. Ellen had taught me that.
“True. Do you think Ellen would flay me alive if I stood guard outside to make sure no scary monsters came to get you?” His tone was playful, but his eyes were serious.
“If you didn’t tell her, she probably wouldn’t care. I might get annoyed, though.”
“Why?”
I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t need to be protected.”
“Everyone needs protection,” he said softly. “Even me.”
“You have to learn to depend on yourself for your own protection.” I looked down at the table to avoid his eyes. “Besides, depending on others makes you weak.”
“No, it doesn’t. If anything, it’s a sign of strength.”
“Say you depended on others for everything then one day they weren’t there anymore. What would you do?” I questioned. “Wouldn’t it make you vulnerable, more apt to suffer? Depending on yourself prevents that kind of pain.”
“I see your point, but depending on people is what this life is about. Trusting someone with your secrets, and your life, that means something. I think being afraid to depend on others makes you weaker.” He thought about it for a second then added, “I do, however, think a person should choose who they depend upon with caution.”
“I guess, maybe, I’ve just had a hard time finding people worthy enough to depend upon.”
“Not even Ellen?”
“Ellen is different.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. It was obvious. “She’s my mom. And she’s Ellen.”
“Others can be just as supportive.”
“Not in my experience. Most people just care about what they can get from you rather than what they can help you through.”
“I hate to imagine the people you’ve met.”
“You really would,” I told him, thinking of dozens of people I had thought were my friends only to find them selling me out simply to join the Elite.
“Do you think you could trust me?” he asked.
The question felt like a natural extension of our argument, but then again, it didn’t. There was a pause as I contemplated my emotions on the subject. “You would be a likely candidate for trust, from what I know of you, but you’re nowhere near proving it to me.”
“I don’t think I could prove it to you.” Daniel knocked on the wood table. “Not a lot gets through.”
“More than you’d think,” I said contrarily.
He was about to retort when Alex purposefully coughed to remind she was still very much sitting at the table. I jumped, having forgotten about her. I noticed Daniel and I were leaning towards each other again, talking very close. I leaned away, putting her between us again. She was smirking as if we had just proved something to her.
“What?” I asked.
“I can’t believe you two have only known each other for a week. You bicker like an old married couple,” she answered.
Daniel and I exchanged a look. Did we bicker like that? He stood abruptly, and I thought from his body language he was resisting the urge to look behind him at the forest. Had she embarrassed him to the point that he wanted to leave? Would he take the apparently life-threatening forest over staying here?
“I think we should show Alex what bickering really is,” he said playfully.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Back to the car?” I asked.
“Back to the car,” he agreed.
It was quite late, past midnight. Alex and I had sat up talking about school and the man who had been killed. Daniel had left around four to go eat dinner with his family, a half hour before Ellen got back. He had waved at us cheerfully as he left, but I knew something major was bothering him. I hadn’t known him for long, but he couldn’t keep the emotions out of his eyes like he could the rest of his face. That was where I saw the truth of him.
Was he bothered by the man dying or something I’d done? We had bickered constantly as he taught me about cars, even going so far as to change Ellen’s oil for us, which, according to him, hadn’t been changed since the year the car had been bought. But we had both enjoyed that. Maybe he was upset that I wouldn’t play guitar for him. I looked past Alex toward the lonely, neglected guitar I had bought ages ago at a pawnshop. What would it hurt really? It would be a test to see if he would laugh.
Alex and I had a blanket stretched across our knees and tea in our hands as we sat opposite one another on my window seat. After discussing Ryan Holt’s death to the point of redundancy – the question of what killed him and how it was possible, remained unanswered – we moved on to lesser happenings, like Mark.
“I think Mark is angling to ask you out,” Alex told me as we looked out my window.
I chuckled dryly at her words. I was pretty certain he wanted to ask me out. I’d heard him thinking of different ways to ask since my arrival, but he couldn’t seem to pluck up the courage. He thought I was an easy catch, but he was also intimidated by me. What if I said no? What if the strange-looking new girl said no? His ego wouldn’t allow for the rejec
tion. He was right to worry.
“I think so, too,” I agreed.
“What are you going to do?” I heard from her thoughts that she wanted to know how I was going to let him down. Somehow, she already knew I wasn’t interested in Mark. Perhaps, it was those x-ray eyes of hers.
“Simple military planning,” I told her.
“Huh?”
“A decoy followed by your basic flanking maneuver.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Just wait until he asks me. You’ll see.”
“Today was very informative,” she said after a pause.
“How so?” I asked carefully. Alex had a way of springing things on me, mainly because she didn’t think about them first.
“Clare and Daniel sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-”
“Shhh!” I hissed, embarrassed. “There is no kissing. There is no sitting in a tree. We’re just friends, like I am with you. It’s no different.”
“Yeah. Whatever. I just know I’d love to be that friendly with him.”
“What does that mean?”
“He is adorable, and he is totally, irrevocably, interested in you.”
She looked back out the window with a smile, gratified that she’d made me blush. I battled the blush, accepting the fact I would be hard pressed to keep things from Alex. She saw too much with those baby blues.
Wanting to change the subject, hating that I hoped she was right, I brought up something I had noticed in the past week. Something I was curious about for multiple reasons.
“So…I noticed that everyone at school kind of treats you like a quick-stop counseling center. You’re always getting pulled to the side so someone can talk to you, and you’re expected to give advice. How’d that happen?”
“I’m sort of the unofficial school counselor. Everyone knows the real counselors don’t do diddlysquat. They think they do, but they don’t. The other kids just want someone they can relate to, someone to be nice to them. That’s me. I listen, and tell them what they already know or what they want to hear.” She lifted one shoulder slightly. “I got the job not long after I moved here. Once people started realizing what they told me didn’t get spread to the school at large.”
“Has a girl named Amanda come to you? I don’t know her last name. She’s in my gym class, mousy brown hair, glasses…”
I saw a vision of the girl whose jealous, angry thoughts I’d been hearing a lot of during my week.
“Yeah that’s her.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
I froze, realizing my mistake. The picture had formed in her thoughts.
“You didn’t? I swear I heard you say her name.”
“Is this like the, ‘someone called you fat,’ thing?”
I laughed uneasily. “Do you know her?”
“I do. She hasn’t come to me, but then again, I wouldn’t expect her to.” Poor kid. Having to deal with a dad who’s an alcoholic most days and rabid fundamentalist the rest of the time…and what with everyone treating her like a second-class citizen because her mom ran away with the pharmacist, to get away from her dad…
“Why wouldn’t she come to you?”
“She’s shy. Besides, I think she resents anyone who she thinks of as popular. She used to hang out with Jennifer and Michelle, but they were the forerunners in ostracizing her because of… certain things that happened. No one pays her attention anymore, and I think she just kind of gave up.”
My temper flared. “Girls suck.”
“Not all girls, Clare. We’re pretty cool.”
“That’s true.” I frowned thoughtfully. “But if everyone comes to you, and you know everyone else would spread your secrets, who do you talk to?”
She shrugged and her eyes grew pained. A vision of a beautiful blonde woman floated through my head. I remembered Ellen telling me about Sam’s wife and cursed myself for the unintentional reminder. Alex’s mom had died in an airplane crash when Alex had been only six. The vision of her mom was enough to let me know that it still bothered Alex, despite her appearance of nonchalance.
“I have a journal I write in,” she said quietly, “and I talk to Dad about things sometimes. He’s understanding and gives great advice, though I can’t tell him everything. He is my dad, after all.”
“That’s not fair.”
She shrugged and her face lit back up. “It’s got me thinking I should be a psychologist. I could do a lot of good. The way people react to my advice…it’s a good feeling.”
I looked at her and started playing with my necklace, something I did when I was nervous or trying to think. “You can come to me about things if you want. I can keep a secret just as well as you can, and you know how I feel about people spreading stuff around. I can’t promise that I’ll have the best answer, but I promise to listen.”
I bet she could keep a secret… I’ve never had anyone offer to be my confessor before… “I might just take you up on that.” She smiled. “It means a lot you offered.”
She sat up and hugged me. I hugged her back, feeling an odd sense of sisterhood. At that moment, I wished she had been born my sister, that I had that connection to her. It was a strange feeling.
“Sure,” I said awkwardly.
She yawned as she released me, tired tears glistening in her eyes. “I think I’m going to bed.”
“I think I’m going to stay up and stare at the creepy forest.”
“Don’t let bigfoot get you,” she said, throwing back the blanket and heading towards my bed.
“I won’t.”
She rolled into the covers and clicked off my light, somehow knowing I didn’t mind the dark. Her breathing steadied and slowed as she drifted towards sleep. I settled into the blanket, wishing I had Daniel’s jacket back instead, and stared out into the night. As I thought about Daniel’s jacket, and his cool eyes, a warm feeling of being protected surrounded me.
I pressed my head against the cool glass and stared at the swaying trees. Even though the dark night and fierce wind battered harshly at my old house, I felt safe, feeling he was out there watching over me. Whatever monsters the darkness hid, they would not bother us tonight.
Chapter 7
The Watchers (Book 1: The Watchers Series) Page 6