The Watchers

by Lynnie Purcell

  “Hungry?” she asked.

  “Starving,” I replied, stuffing my face.

  She ate in a great rush, our talk having put her behind schedule. Food hanging out of her mouth she ran out the door. “See you later!”

  “Wait for it…” I said to the bowl of pancake batter that dripped uncooked batter onto the counter. The clock turned over a couple of seconds. I heard the door reopen.

  “Clare, have you seen my phone?”

  I picked up Ellen’s phone from its place on the counter and put my hand around the corner of the door. She ran down the hall and plucked it from my fingers.

  “Thanks!”

  The door shut with a bang. As soon as it shut, the tension I felt boiled over, filling my stomach with butterflies. How long would I have to wait for Daniel? I had learned he was compulsively early, showing up a good fifteen minutes early to even the most minor event. Whether it was to the movies, a study date, or to simply hang out, he was always there before it was time. I washed the breakfast dishes then paced the length of the kitchen. I hadn’t actually told Daniel what time Ellen went to work. Did he know when to come over? I sat down at the table and started tapping impatiently on the light colored wood. I stopped when I realized I had adapted his bad habit.

  I waited impatiently for over an hour, alternating between sitting and pacing. The rain stopped, wayward droplets falling from the trees in response to animals scurrying along their branches. Patchy sunlight filtered down through the rolling clouds. Each shift in the light was an eternity. I opened the kitchen window, thinking the sweet smell of rain-drenched earth would help my nerves. It just made me feel more impatient.

  It was past time for me to go to school when I realized that Daniel wasn’t coming. I had embarrassed him or offended him or in some way made him feel like I didn’t care for him. I thought about the way I had told him to leave. I cursed my stupidity, my foolish mouth. I stood again and walked around the table in an endless circle recalling every stupid thing I had said.

  I practically jumped out of my skin when I heard the door open softly and footsteps crossed the hall. I ran to the kitchen door. My heart pounded excitedly; he’d come after all! For the first time since meeting her, I was disappointed to see Alex. Her welcome smile slowly turned into a frown as she stared at my face. What in the world? “What’s wrong?”

  I answered without thinking. “Have you ever seen ‘Sixteen Candles’?”

  “About a million times. It’s my favorite movie.”

  I’d known that when I asked my question.

  “You know the scene when Molly Ringwald is crying in the car and Anthony Michael Hall comes in and sees her utterly devastated over a boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Multiply that by a million, and you’ve only touched the surface of where I’m at,” I said, not able to pretend any longer.

  “What…” A thought occurred to her, and she interrupted herself. “Wait, does that make me Anthony Michael Hall?”

  I put my hands over my face and sat. “I don’t know,” I groaned.

  She sat next to me, her thoughts trying to play catch up to what I was telling her. This has to be about Daniel! Her thoughts turned smug. She does like him! But what happened? Did they have a fight? I mean a real fight. Not those ridiculous fights they have… Hmm…The way she’s acting she must have done something wrong? But what?

  “I might have said the wrong thing to him,” I answered.

  A second passed, then another. I dropped my hands slowly, realizing what I had done. I started to form an excuse. She cut me off. Her thoughts were racing around the fact that my answer matched her thoughts too closely, but when she spoke she was calm.

  “What did you say to him?”

  I stared at her for a moment then ran a hand through my hair realizing I needed a shower. I hadn’t bathed since my encounter with the pool. The pool! Why did everything have to change?!

  “I’m not going to go into all the details, but he shared something personal with me, and I told him to leave, because I wasn’t ready to handle it.”

  “Clare!” Her voice was exasperated.

  “I know! I know! I feel like an ass! You don’t need to add to it.”

  “You can’t expect me to give you any kind of advice without knowing the particulars.”

  I frowned then realized that I was looking for her advice; that I wanted to know what to do. But I couldn’t tell her all the weird stuff, and the weird stuff had a lot to do with, well, everything.

  “It’s okay,” she said all at once, surprising me, “you can trust me with your secret. I know how strange you are.” She paused and smiled at me. “And I don’t just mean personality wise. You and Daniel are both strange in ways that other people aren’t.”

  My insides turned to ice. She knew I was different. She knew we were different. I went through a dozen excuses trying to come up with an explanation or some way to make her less suspicious. Everything I came up with sounded ridiculous. She was too smart, and I was too awful at lying. She looked at my panicked face and reached out to pat my hand. “Don’t have a heart attack. I’ve known for ages that Daniel is different. It’s pretty obvious.” She frowned as she searched for the right words. “When he’s around people, it’s like he’s thinking light years ahead, analyzing every movement before he acts. Sometimes, I can see that it’s a thin thread holding him back from the damage he could do. It’s as if he wanted to, which I’m pretty sure he doesn’t, he could kill every single person in town and not get a scratch.”

  I shivered as her words, which were bizarrely accurate, brought up another reason for my fear. I had seen what he was capable of. The vision swam in front of my eyes again: a score of dead rapists and murderers lying in a pool of their own blood. They had deserved their fates, but I knew he enjoyed killing them. Too much.

  “Clare!”

  “Huh?” I asked dazed.

  A satisfied smirk crossed her lips. It took me a moment to understand why. She hadn’t said anything out loud. I cursed my tired brain, but Alex didn’t bring up the knowledge she’d just learned. She brought up the thing that mattered most to her. “What did he share that made you force him to leave?” she asked.

  I stared at her without answering.

  “Okay, well, if you’re going to be all secretive, I’ll just guess.” Again, she didn’t have to think about what she was saying. It came out in a boiling rush. “He did something, like protecting you from whatever happened at the pool, and in doing so you saw how much he liked you. You, in turn, pushed him away, because you’re so freaking used to depending on yourself. You pushed him away, because something about him scares you. Maybe, it’s the fact you’re used to people ignoring you and he can’t. He won’t.” She x-rayed me with her eyes. “Well, here’s my advice, take it or leave it. I don’t think there is a better person for you to divulge those feelings to than Daniel. He’s craving the same kind of companionship you are. Only, unlike you, he knows he craves it. I think he would keep your secrets, support your weaknesses, and celebrate your strengths, until his dying day. That’s the type of person he is. That being said, I think you should show him you want him. If you want to be with someone, you shouldn’t let your fear keep you from them.” She stood abruptly. “But you don’t have to take my advice.”

  I stood as well. Even though I towered over her, I felt as if she were the one doing the towering.

  “How do you do that?” I demanded, wondering if she had a superpower too.

  Something about her…she just saw everything free of pretense and clutter. It’s like when she took a look at me with her baby blues she could look past the surface and see straight into my soul.

  “I look. I listen.” She brushed her short hair back and pain flashed in her eyes for a second as I heard: I wish I could keep out some of what I saw. “Now, go take a shower, and I’ll drive you to the sheriff’s office so you can give your statement. It’s why I came over. Well, that, and I really wanted to skip math.”
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  “I don’t know why you’re being so bossy all of a sudden,” I huffed.

  She ushered me out of the kitchen, putting her hands on the small of my back to get me moving. “Because that’s the only way people get through to you – brutal honesty with a hint of bossiness thrown in for good measure.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  She gave me another gentle push to get me walking up the stairs. “I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to.”

  “Promise something?” I paused on the steps, fighting a smile.

  “Sure.”

  “Promise to talk to me like that more often?”

  “I’m certain that won’t be a problem.” She went to the living room and flipped on the television, settling onto our old sofa. “You don’t have to hurry with your shower, either. I told Mr. Simpson that I might not make it to his class. I would love you forever, if you could help me miss Chemistry, too.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I did everything I needed to, taking extra time as promised, and went back downstairs to find Alex sprawled across the couch watching one of those horrifying modeling shows.

  “Are you serious?” I asked when I saw what she was watching.

  “Shhh!”

  “You are serious!”

  I sat down on the arm of the couch and stared at the TV in amused disgust. One of the anorexic looking women started crying, because another model had talked about her behind her back. It cut to the model who had said the mean things, her sassiness obnoxious and overdone.

  “God!”

  Alex clicked the program off and jumped up. “It’s just one of those guilty pleasures,” she said defensively.

  “You should feel guilty.”

  “It’s just a show!” she disagreed.

  “It’s a show that teaches girls that being generic and bland is beautiful. It also teaches that backstabbing and insincerity is how you get things in this life. It shows that to be beautiful you must first be awful. I can’t think of anything worse than pushing those ideals onto the rest of us. I mean, most people don’t, and shouldn’t, look like that! Shows like that is one reason there are so many insecure girls, and I hate them with a fiery passion.”

  Alex blinked at me, startled by my anger. “You’re right,” she said. “I didn’t think about it like that. I won’t watch it ever again.” She held up two fingers. “Scouts honor.”

  I laughed, already feeling sheepish. I couldn’t spout off to her like I could to Daniel without feeling guilty. He had proven he could argue back with emphasis and didn’t resent me for my honesty. Not everyone was like that.

  I held the front door open for her then we crossed the yard to her car in silence. Alex started the engine of her Jeep and spun it around, so we were facing the proper direction. I held onto the door, trying to keep my seat.

  “Sorry for going off on you about that show…” I apologized, as we started down the road.

  “It’s cool. I get to yell at you for things. It’s only fair you yell back sometimes.” She smiled briefly then over the roar of the wind asked, “Were you waiting for Daniel when I came over?”

  I should have known she wasn’t going to drop it so easily.

  I started playing with my necklace anxiously. “Yeah, he was supposed to come over once Ellen left.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, he wasn’t at school this morning when I went in to make my excuses. Maybe something came up?”

  “Maybe.” I wasn’t betting on it.

  She squealed around another corner and headed down one of the numerous deserted highways surrounding the town. The stores and the bright shops on Main Street faded with the turn and the occasional farmstead became the dominant structure.

  “Where’d they put the sheriff’s station? South Carolina?” I asked after ten minutes of driving on the same road. My mood was sour. Had Daniel thought I would show up at school looking for him? Was he too afraid to see me again?

  Alex shrugged. “Everything just takes a little longer around here. Driving places…conversations…” She made a face. “That and the old station on Main Street burned down when a drunk guy crashed his car into the building two years ago. They thought building out here would be safer.”

  “Oh.”

  An overwhelming swirl of thought reached out to me in a great storm. I flinched from the sound, wishing someone would make mental earplugs. The sound increased the closer we got to the station. I couldn’t get specifics from the chaos, but something had definitely happened. Something bad. The voices buzzed like bees whose nest was being attacked by a hungry bear.

  With another squeal of tires, Alex pulled into a small parking lot. Tall pines arched over the brick building. The trees and the dark red brick made the station look folksy and unabashedly southern. I looked around for Andy Griffith, figuring he couldn’t be far off.

  The swirling voices grew louder, obviously coming from the building. I tried futilely to block them out, but it was useless. Alex frowned as she tried to squeeze her Jeep into a space too small for it, having no other choice because of the number of cars parked there.

  “Something must have happened. There’s never this many people here.”

  They say the animal got her!

  It just doesn’t make any sense!

  I wonder if they’ll let ol’ Sue and me hunt her alone or force some fool on us?

  I think I’ll concentrate the majority of the searches here near Route Seven and spread out from there. I’ll need you to call the Adamses and make sure it’s okay for us to search on their land. I wonder if Bubba brought his dog? Check and see, Chuck. Jim should lead the second wave of searches here and here, he’s got the best eye for terrain.

  “I think you’re right,” I said.

  As we entered the station, I saw that it wasn’t a beehive that had been disturbed, but rather an anthill. People swarmed around the large, open, office looking at reports and maps, planning a course of action, often stumbling into each other. Their thoughts and plans swirled around in my head, my brain latching on to the information even as I marveled at the activity.

  I had gotten used to a slow way of operating around here where people casually strolled up the streets, stopping to talk to a friend or passerby, where conversations were conducted over well-cooked meals. This was proof these southern folk could move fast when provoked. It was proof I had never expected to get.

  “Who are we supposed to talk to?” I asked.

  Alex grabbed my arm. “This way.” She deftly wove between the swarming people. We had to jump out of the way of several very woodsy men who were gathering their gear and yelling at each other in their hard-to-understand mountain dialect. Around the people, Alex found the man she had been looking for. She stopped in front of a small desk shoved into a smaller corner. “Hey, Chuck.”

  The man looked up, and his moon face transformed into a friendly smile. “Hey, Alex, how’s your dad?”

  “Just fine, thank you.”

  He frowned, trying to place where he had seen me before. I squirmed a little under his gaze, avoiding eye contact with him. He had been one of the officers at the school yesterday. He was the one with the quick thoughts, wondering how I had survived when the fire had been well above boiling point. He remembered me all at once, noting I looked better when I didn’t look like a wet dog.

  “How can I help you ladies?”

  “Clare here has to give a statement of what happened yesterday,” Alex said, putting a hand on my shoulder.

  “Oh…of course. Daniel talked me to about that…but with everything that’s…” His eyes swept the bustling office. “We’re kind of swamped, but you can use the interrogation room to write your report down.”

  “Okay,” I said eager to get this over with and leave, so I could have some peace. Chuck stood and searched for the form I needed to fill out.

  Alex wasn’t as distracted by the voices as I was, her thoughts focusing on ant hill. “What’s happened, Chuck?” she aske
d, looking around the crowded room.

  He hesitated. I don’t want to scare them, but maybe I should tell them so they don’t go wandering around in the woods… “A Forest Ranger went missing. She was one of the people we had tracking the animal that killed Ryan.”

  I hadn’t realized they were still searching for the animal. It had been weeks. The flash of what I had seen behind my house rose up, a stark reminder that someone had died, and someone who cared enough to hunt for his killer had gone missing. Alex gasped at the news, her thoughts immediately focused with concern for the missing woman.

  “Where did she go missing?” I asked before she could get Chuck sidetracked with platitudes.

  “Near Route Seven, towards the Adams’ estate. The sheriff just told me to call them and get permission to search their land, so…”

  He rattled the paper at me and started walking towards the interrogation room, waddling a bit due to his excessive weight.

  “When did she go missing?” I asked, skipping a little to catch up. He was large, but he could move fast.

  “She didn’t report in like normal yesterday evening, and she always reports in. Then, one of the other Rangers found her bag and blood nearby.”

  “Do you know if she has any idea what’s behind the attacks?” I asked.

  “No,” he said sharply. I heard the truth. I still can’t see how that human footprint she found relates to Ryan, or why she was so determined to make us think a human had done this. The other print we found was more convincing. I mean the man was literally torn apart! I’ve seen plenty of people on drugs capable of killing, but nothing like that. “Here you go.”

  He opened a wooden door and Alex and I filed in. I sat down in the sterile room, on a rickety chair, and immediately started writing so he would leave. He gave a cheerful wave and disappeared to make his phone call and organize the search.

  “Can you believe that?” Alex asked as soon as the door was shut.

  I hesitated. “Yes.”

  She sat down opposite me. “You can?”