If he’d ignored me or even glared at me, it might have been easier, but he did neither. He didn’t speak, but if we came face to face, he nodded politely the way you might do with someone you barely knew. His eyes were the worst, though: void of any emotion. It was like looking at someone in a trance.
I made an unexpected discovery in the book club meeting, too. When I first got to the room where the club met I took a seat between Annie and Sharon. To my surprise, Annie reached over and patted my hand.
“It doesn’t always hurt this much,” she whispered, just loud enough for me to hear.
I looked sideways at her and saw a shadow of sorrow in her eyes. I knew instantly that she understood exactly how I felt. She and her ex-boyfriend, Todd, had broken up sometime during the summer after going out for close to a year, but I hadn’t given any particular thought to it except to think it was too bad, since they’d seemed so happy together.
Now, with one quick glance, I saw that she had carried the same pain that was weighing so heavily on my heart. And just as clearly, I could see that it wasn’t gone yet, though it might not be as intense as it had been when it was fresh.
Is that going to be me in four months, I wondered? Still walking around hiding a wound, even if it isn’t as raw and painful as it is right now? That thought made me realize how sincere Annie was, reaching out past her own pain to offer me a few encouraging words.
“Thanks,” I whispered back, meeting her eyes.
A ghost of a smile crossed her face and her head tilted down ever so slightly — a barely perceptible acknowledgement of my gratitude.
I forced my attention back to the group, though I couldn’t bring myself to join in the general discussion about the book we were reading. I noticed that Greg remained silent, too, but when we moved on to talking about our own writing he read a few paragraphs from a story he was working on. It was about a whooping crane under a silent moon.
“Oh, Greg,” Sharon said softly when he’d stopped reading. “That was beautiful.”
“It was,” Lynn spoke up. “It was… haunting.”
“Is it supposed to be symbolic of anything?” Jason asked.
“It’s just a story about a crane,” Greg said. He closed his notebook. “Who’s next?”
“I’ll go,” Ben said quickly. “I have a poem.”
Ben always has poems. That’s all he writes. They’re in free verse and, to be honest, I really don’t know whether or not they’re any good. This one was something about a castle that had been deserted so that it fell into ruin. Then this guy came along on a flying horse, and when he looked at it he had magic eyes or something and it was suddenly restored because that’s how he saw it.
“Very interesting,” Mr. Grimes said when no one else commented.
“Yeah, it was good,” Nora added after a pause. “Anyway, I have a short story. Well, just the beginning of one. Should I go next?”
Nora’s piece was a love tragedy, but it was totally unconvincing. A couple of the girls said it was nice, which made Nora look a bit cross.
“It’s not supposed to be nice,” she said. “It’s supposed to be moving.”
“Yes, well,” Mr. Grimes said. “Everyone takes away something different from a story.” Then he told us we should probably wrap things up for the evening and it was, mercifully, over.
Drama club wasn’t a joy that week, either. Jimmy teased me, Eric borrowed my favourite pen and forgot to return it, and Tina asked me how I’d feel if someone else started seeing Greg that soon after we’d broken up. The way she blushed when she asked left little doubt as to who she was hoping that “someone else” would be.
“I don’t care,” I said, though even the thought of it was like getting hit hard in the stomach.
“For real? You don’t mind?”
“I said I don’t.”
“I know, but if you mind at all…”
“Look, if you want to ask Greg out, you go right ahead. I really don’t want to talk about it for the rest of the night,” I snapped. Then I realized I’d let my emotions get the better of me: if the stalker happened to be in that group, he’d be suspicious about me snapping at her. I tried to cover by claiming I had a headache and apologizing.
Unless you’ve ever been through something like a stalking, there’s no way you can understand how much you’re affected by someone with this sort of obsession. I knew that every single thing I said and did at school could be under this creep’s scrutiny. Since I still had no idea who he was, I never knew when he was watching and listening, maybe even standing beside me or talking to me.
He did make contact with me twice over that period of time. The first time was another e-mail — the third that the police were able to confirm had been sent from the school. It basically said he was glad I’d realized Greg was no good for me.
The second was a letter sent through the mail. I didn’t actually see it because Mom checked the mailbox earlier in the day and when she found an envelope addressed to me in block letters, she called the police. They took it and checked for fingerprints and then put both the letter and envelope in plastic bags.
There were no fingerprints on the letter itself, and the only ones on the envelope were from the mailman and my mom.
“This guy is being careful,” Officer Mueller told me when he came by to tell us they hadn’t turned up a single print from the stalker. Then he went over extra security measures we should take, and promised that patrol cars would cruise our neighbourhood as often as possible until he was caught.
“Don’t assume anyone is safe,” he cautioned me. “Now, if you’re feeling up to it, I’ve brought a copy of the letter he sent and I’d like you to go over the text to see if anything he says means anything to you.”
I took the page he held out.
Soon you will be mine. I will come for you when the time is right, when everything has been made ready.
The pathway waits for your footstep. The door opens.
When all light has been obliterated, your bridegroom will come.
I read the letter three times, trying to steady the shaking of my hand. Laying the page on the table, I turned to Mueller and shook my head.
“I don’t know what he means,” I said. “But it sounds like he plans to come after me.”
“You’re not walking anywhere by yourself, are you?”
“No. Nowhere. And everywhere I go — even at school — I have this alarm keychain my dad bought for me.” I showed him how it worked and the shrill siren blared for a few seconds until I shut it off.
Mueller smiled with embarrassment at the way he’d kind of jumped a bit when the alarm first went off. “That’s great. It would sure bring help in a hurry,” he said.
I told myself I was prepared for anything. I even convinced myself that I wished the stalker would come after me so we could catch him and it would all be over.
I guess that’s what we were all expecting by then, so it was a surprise to everyone when he made a mistake that led police right to his door.
It happened on Friday evening. Mom, Dad, and I were watching a movie we’d rented. And then the phone rang.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Ever since the night I broke up with Greg, I’d stopped avoiding the phone and instead started answering it every chance I got. There just wasn’t any point in having someone else get it when I was going to have to go speak to the creep anyway, and this way there was no chance he’d hang up if I didn’t answer.
On this evening, when the phone rang I looked at the call display and saw an unfamiliar number registered, but no name. Still, it was more than we’d had before.
“Hello?”
“Shelby.” It was the now-familiar drawn out whisper of my name.
“Yes,” I said, cutting him off before he’d finished, “it’s me. What do you want?”
“You,” he said. It came out in a sigh, sad and heavy, as if he was sorry to have to say it.
“Who are you?”
“It’s al
most ready,” he whispered, ignoring my question.
“What is?” I asked. Mom and Dad came into the kitchen, their faces anxious and questioning. I nodded. Neither made a sound.
“Just one more thing to take care of,” he said, again offering no answer to my question. “Then, I’ll be seeing you.”
“I’d like to see you right now,” I said. “Why don’t you come on over?”
I heard him start to laugh just before he hung up.
“Where’d the call come from?” Dad asked. He came over and put his arm around me, pulling me against him where, at least for the moment, I could feel safe.
“There was no name, just a number.”
“Press star fifty-seven,” Mom reminded me.
I did that and then we called the police and the phone company to make sure the information was passed on right away.
Officer Stanton arrived a little while later. “It’s not great news,” she said. “The call came from a payphone in the mall. We’ve got a couple of cars on the way, but the chance that he’s still going to be there isn’t great, and even if he is, they won’t know how to identify him.”
“Which payphone?” Dad asked, his head jerking up.
“I’m not sure. Does it matter?”
“It could, if he called from the phone across from the jewellers. There are security cameras in there.”
“In which case the phone call might have been caught on tape!” Officer Stanton said. You could tell she was excited as she spoke into her radio.
I tried not to get my hopes up, since there are two locations with payphones at the mall. But just a couple of moments later, Officer Stanton learned that it had been the one across from the jewellery store.
“The woman who runs the jewellery store said one of the cameras definitely takes in the phones, though it’s a little ways off so it’s not easy to see. Still, if the perp is on tape, it’s got to give us something. They’re getting the tape right now!” she said. “This could be the break we’ve been hoping for!”
Mom, Dad, and I piled into our car and headed to the police station, where we only waited about fifteen minutes for an officer to come in with the tape.
“Our machine is in here,” he said, leading the way to a room at the end of the hall. “We’ll just start back a ways, try to catch it at the approximate time the call was made, and see what we have.”
He rewound it a bit too far and we watched for a while as nothing happened other than shoppers passing by outside the store. The main focus was on the display cases, so the figures in the hallway weren’t very big. I wondered if I’d even be able to identify the caller when I saw him. At the same time, my impatience was growing.
And then, there he was. And while I couldn’t see his face, I recognized him immediately.
“Eric,” I gasped, shocked to see that he was the one. Even though Betts had told me he liked me, and he’d been kind of obvious about it himself after I broke up with Greg, I’d never really suspected him. He just seemed so harmless. “It’s Eric Green.”
“You’re sure?” “Yes. He has a unique jacket. See that design? The sword crossed with a candle — that’s been Eric’s trademark for the last few years. He does it on a lot of his stuff with some kind of permanent marker. And see — his baseball cap has the same design on the side of it. The pattern on the hat isn’t very clear on this video, but if you know what you’re looking at you can see what the design is.”
The officer went back and froze the picture a few times. I stared at the screen each time, as if I might be able to see something there that would explain why Eric had gone from being a perfectly nice, perfectly normal guy, to a weirdo who’d turned my life into a nightmare.
“I don’t suppose you happen to know where he lives.”
“I do, actually. I’ve been there a few times with some other kids. His place is on Gallant Drive.” I described the house, a pale yellow bungalow near the corner of Waters Road.
“Okay, we’ll send someone over right away. In the meantime, you folks might as well go on home. We’ll let you know what happens.”
We did as we’d been told, but all we did when we got home was sit at the kitchen table and wait for either a phone call or a knock on the door. No one suggested that we put back on the movie we’d been watching before the stalker’s phone call, even though we’d been enjoying it.
It was Mueller who pulled into the driveway close to two hours later. I could tell he had good news, but there was still something grim in his expression. I think it bothered him to have had to arrest someone that age for something so serious.
“Well, we got him,” he said. “He was already back home, pretending to be sleeping, when we got there. The jacket and hat were tossed over the back of a chair right where we could see them, too.”
“Did he admit it?” I asked.
“Not for a second. Denied it all the way in to the station.” Mueller shook his head in disbelief. “He’s still denying it for all the good it’ll do him. His big alibi is that he was home, all alone, fast asleep on the couch.
“Anyway, we got a search warrant. There’s still a team there going through things, but before I left they’d already found a copy of the letter he sent you, and another one that he was drafting. There was some other stuff written, too, which I won’t go into, but it was pretty sick.”
“How long will he be locked up?” Dad asked.
“We’re going to see if we can hold him over the weekend and get him in front of a judge first thing Monday. I figure he’ll probably be remanded, considering. At the very least, there’ll be a restraining order against him.”
“Which means?”
“Well, if he came anywhere near Shelby, he’d be picked up.”
“Even at school?” Mom wanted to know.
“Anywhere that he knows she’ll be. But let’s not worry about any of that right now. Hopefully the judge will remand him. The main thing is you know you’re safe right now.”
We all thanked him and my Dad asked him to be sure to thank everyone else who’d worked on the case, too. Mueller said he was just glad they’d got the guy. He wished us good luck before he left.
“Well,” Mom said, “it’s not really over with yet, but at least the guilty boy has been caught.”
“I never would have thought Eric could do something like that,” I said.
“It’s always the last ones you’d suspect,” Dad said. “You just remember what you’ve been through these past weeks, and don’t be going and feeling sorry for this creep.”
“I don’t,” I said, but I kind of did, in a way. I wondered what the other pages said and whether I’d be feeling less sympathetic if Mueller had given me the details.
“Anyway, I can finally get a decent sleep tonight! And tomorrow I can do some shopping without someone coming with me to hold my hand!”
I wanted to call Greg and tell him the news. Surely, when I explained everything, and told him how much I’d missed him, he’d understand. But I was too tired for such a heavy phone call, and decided I’d wait until the next day. Maybe I could even drop by his place on my way home from the mall. For now, I just called Betts. I had to tell someone, even if it was just a quick call before pleading exhaustion and saying I had to go.
As I drifted off that night, it seemed that everything was going to be okay again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I woke the next morning to the feeling of someone plopping down on the side of my bed.
“Shelby?” I heard Betts say. “You awake?”
“No… go away,” I mumbled.
“It’s almost eleven o’clock!”
“No it isn’t.” I pulled the comforter over my head, which dislodged Ernie from his spot beside me. Seconds later I heard the plunk of his feet landing on the floor and pattering away.
“Come on, you can’t waste the whole day in bed,” Betts said, poking at my shoulder through the blanket.
“What? You’re telling me this?” I grumbled. “You
never get up early on the weekend. I’ve called your place in the middle of the afternoon and been told you were in bed.”
“Yes, but this is your first day of freedom, remember? We have to do something.” She tugged the cover from my face and tapped on my forehead.
I opened an eye, regretting that I’d called her with the news the night before. “So you’re torturing me as part of a celebration of some sort, is that it?”
She giggled. “Good! You’re awake. Your mom said I should come and get your breakfast order and she’d make it while you were showering.”
“My own mother is in on this conspiracy?”
“’Fraid so. Sad, isn’t it?”
I groaned and sat up. I made a face at Betts.
“That’s attractive,” she said. “Oh, in case you want blueberry pancakes for breakfast, your mom said there are blueberries in the freezer.”
“She just randomly announced this to you?”
“I might have asked; I’m not sure. So, anyway, you want that?”
“Blueberry pancakes?” I said slowly. “I dunno. Mom usually makes too many. Whatever would become of the rest of them?”
Betts swatted at my arm, but I saw it coming and dodged her.
“Oh, wait!” I said. “I have an idea. You could help eat them.”
“Okay, so that’s settled,” she said. “Now go get in the shower.”
Fifteen minutes later I made it into the kitchen, where Betts was happily pouring syrup on a pancake. Across from her, Dad was in the middle of one, too.
“Morning, honey,” Mom said, crossing the room and hugging me. “Your breakfast is ready.”
“Thanks, Mom.” I sat down and poured a glass of milk, then snagged a pancake from the stack on the plate in the middle of the table.
“Hey, sunshine.” Dad reached over and squeezed my arm a little before lifting another fluffy forkful to his mouth.
“Hey,” I said. “You’re eating late this morning.”
“Brunch,” he told me.
“An extra meal is more like it,” Mom said, but she smiled and joined us at the table.
As we all dug into our food, I thought how ordinary it was: sitting down for a meal with my family (and Betts). And suddenly, I found my eyes filling with tears.
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