The Purity of Blood: Volume I (8 page)

“
Humph.
 
I don’t remember ever seeing him in here before,” Mike commented a
little territorially.

“Be nice,”
Tabitha said.
 
“He’s probably
lonely.
 
Professor Walker is out of town
for a while.”

“What does that
have to do with anything?” I asked.

Tabitha turned
back to me, a sympathetic look in her pretty blue eyes.
 

“Oh, didn’t I
mention that?
 
Daniel and the Professor
both live in that big house up on the mountain that we were talking about
before.
 
I’m not sure how they’re
related, but he came to NPU with the Professor from his last job.”
 
Tabitha paused and took a bite of her
dinner.
 
“I kinda feel bad for him.
 
He doesn’t seem to have any friends besides
the Professor.”

“Whatever,” Ryan
muttered before changing the subject.
 

When we turned
the conversation back to our hike, they continued to tell me all about the
animals we’d see and the waterfalls.
 
It
was nothing they hadn’t already told me before, but they were too excited to
remember.
 

My appetite gone
and my food half eaten, I went to push my tray to the side, but Ryan picked it
up for me.
 
As he did, our hands met for
a moment, causing me to unwillingly blush and look away.
 
That’s when Daniel caught my eye.
 
He was indeed staring at our table, at me
specifically.
 
He instantly turned away
and took a bite of something off his tray and then a drink from his mug.
 
Even though he was looking down at his food,
I could see the angry expression he wore.
 

I’d never
actually met him.
 
There was just no way
I could have done something to warrant his behavior towards me.
  
Part of me wanted to talk to Tabitha, to see
if she knew of some possible explanation that so far had eluded me, but the
larger part of me told me not to say a word.
 
I was just being paranoid.
 
He
must be like this to other people, not just me.
 
I shouldn’t take it so personally.
 
He was probably just some weirdo nut job.
 
But still, I didn’t like it.
 

I knew what I
should
do, what Tabitha would probably
have told me anyway.
 
I should confront
him if I felt this way.
   
Problem was, I
was afraid he’d laugh in my face if I did.
 

I wonder what his laugh sounds like.

Shaking my head,
I pulled my eyes away from him.

Snap out of it, Donnelly!

We were getting up to leave now and as I pulled my chair
back, I stole a glance in Daniel’s direction from beneath my hair.
 
He wasn’t watching me, but something was
definitely troubling him.
 
Yes, I wanted
to confront those haunting eyes, I knew this was probably the most logical
course of action.
 
But irrational as I
knew it to be, I was scared of what his reaction would be if I did.
 
If Daniel was anything, he was intimidating.

My alarm went off at 6 a.m.
 
WAY
too early, but it was inevitable that I’d need to hit the snooze alarm several
times before being coherent enough to actually swing my legs out of bed by
6:15.
 

I put some music
on in an attempt to wake myself up.
 
Luckily Darcy wasn’t home for me to wake up this early.
 
She’d spent yet another night hunkered down
with her fellow pledges in some undisclosed location.
 
In my still half asleep state, I managed to
get dressed and snack on a few granola bars along with some orange juice before
packing up my backpack and putting on my new hiking boots.
 
I’d worn them around a few times this week to
break them in, but was afraid it was a case of too little, too late.
 
Unfortunately I had a feeling I’d probably
have a few blisters by days end.
 
Oh, well
, I sighed.
 
Not much I could do about it now.
 
Making sure I had my cushiest pair of socks
on, I headed out the door.
 

The plan was to
meet in the Pond Road parking lot and ride up to the trail head in Ryan’s
Jeep.
 
When I found I was the first to
arrive, I decided to save my energy for the trail and took a seat on the
curb.
 
Still a little hungry, I pulled
out another granola bar and munched as I watched some squirrels scampering
about under a car.
 
Then for some reason they
scurried off to run up a nearby tree.
 

Strange, I wonder what scared them.

It was quiet,
too quiet.
 
There were no chirping birds,
no sound of students in the distance, no cars or music to break the stillness
that hung in the air.
 
I was finding
early Saturday morning can be an eerily quiet time on a college campus.
   

Closing my eyes,
I put my arms behind me and leaned back.
 
Perfectly content, I soaked up the vitamin D as I let the early morning
sun shine on my face.
 
It was true I
wasn’t a morning person, but I could appreciate the tranquility of this time of
day and took in a deep breath, inhaling the sweet smell of the newly cut
grass.
 

With my eyes
closed, I heard the sound of distant laughter, softly at first and then growing
louder.
 
After a moment I began to recognize
the individual voices.

“Yeah, she’s here already,” Mike said. “Now we just need
Ben.”

As we stood around Ryan’s Jeep, I
was the first to see Ben’s tall figure striding across the parking lot.
 
He was wearing that boyish smile of his that
always made me feel the faintest of blushes.
 
A breeze blew and swept a lock of hair onto his face.
 
Then reaching into his pocket, he deftly
pulled out a pair of sunglasses and slid them on while gently brushing his hair
back into place.
 
I wished he wouldn’t
cover his eyes.
 
Other than his broad
shoulders; they were my favorite feature of his.
 
Truth be told he had a nice tush too, not
that I’d ever admit to having checked it out … once … or twice.
 
I smiled to myself and blushed as I looked
away.

Where did those squirrels go?

“Come on, what
we waiting for!” Ben said as he slapped Ryan on the back.
 
“It’s time to hit the trail.”

Ryan sputtered
in surprise.
 
He hadn’t seen Ben’s
approach.
 

“All right,
everybody in!” Ryan said with a smile as he opened up the front passenger door
and looked at me expectantly.
 

“Hey, Ryan.
 
Mind if Tab sits up front?” Mike asked.
 
“You know how she gets car sick if she sits
in back.”

“Sure,” he
replied, trying not to sound to dejected.
 
“My lady,” he said to Tabitha as he gallantly took her hand to help her
into the front seat.

He really was a
nice guy.
 
Maybe if I was struck my
lighting on our hike today, there’d be enough of a meaningful spark between us
to start something.
 
Somehow it seemed
doubtful.

Mike ran around
to the other side of the Jeep and got in the back seat while Ben opened the
back door and gestured for me to climb in first.
 
Eager to be on our way, I reached up and took
hold of the side of the door and started to climb up, but my foot slipped out
from under me.
 
As I started to come
crashing down, I felt Ben’s strong hands grab me around the waist.

“Hey, watch it,”
he whispered in my ear.
 
“We haven’t even
left the parking lot yet.”

Thankfully the
others were laughing about something and hadn’t seen my klutziness.
 
When I turned around, he smiled.

“Thanks,” I said
quietly as I smiled back.

“Guess I’d
better keep an eye on you today,” he muttered in his soft musical voice.
 
I blushed yet again, but he didn’t see my
scarlet cheeks as I quickly climbed in and took my seat.

This would be
the longest consecutive amount of time I’d ever spent with Ben.
 
He usually hung out with us for an hour or
so, but always moved on to join another group of friends after that.
 
It was a trend I’d observed, but I don’t
think anyone else either noticed or thought anything of.
 
I wasn’t sure it was indicative of anything
myself, except that I tended to have an overactive imagination – or maybe it
was too much curiosity.

We made it up
the mountain and to the trailhead in a little over twenty minutes.
  
Speeding along, Ryan said speed limits
didn’t mean much early on Saturday mornings as all the New Paltz cops were at
the doughnut shop swapping stories about what trouble the ‘college kids’ had
gotten mixed up in on Friday night.
 
Having overheard a few stories from some of Darcy’s other friends; I
didn’t doubt they had a lot to talk about over their bear claws and coffee.

We parked in a
little turn out that contained space for a handful of cars and an entry sign
for the preserve noting a few posted rules.
 
Far away from the bustle of campus and town, it was peaceful here.
 
As we climbed out of the Jeep, I looked up at
the clear blue sky.
 
Fall was definitely
in the air.
 
It felt like change.
 
Maybe that’s why Fall had always been my
favorite season.
 
Lord knew I desired
change in my life.
 

Eager to be on
our way, Ryan slammed his door shut startling me.
 

“You awake yet?”
Ben asked as he looked down at me with a smile.

“Getting there.”
I murmured back through a yawn.

Gees, did I just blush
again?

We started down the trail single
file, laughing and talking as we walked along.
 
Everyone was in a good mood, I think glad to be away from campus and in
the company of friends on such a fine morning.
 
On the drive up the switch backing road the boys had selected a spot for
our picnic at the base of one of the larger waterfalls.
 
From what they’d said, I gathered it would
take us about three or four hours to get there.
 
It was more on the way back really, but was the most scenic and
convenient place along the trail to enjoy our lunch break.
  
Personally, I thought it was a little early
in the morning to be talking about lunch already, but the boys always seemed to
have food on their minds.
 
Funny, I’d
always heard it was sex.

For the first
twenty minutes the hike was completely downhill, which set me to thinking I’d
better not get too tired as the end of the hike would most likely be an uphill
climb.
 
But it was beautiful.
 
So far from the hustle of civilization as we
were, I think this was just what I’d needed.
 
With a slight nip to the crisp morning air, an ethereal green light
filtered down through the canopy of leaves the trees had formed above our
heads.
 
Moss covered a lot of the damp
ground of the trail where I’d occasionally see a set of animal tracks in a
particularly muddy patch of earth we passed.
 

Ben was behind
me – on purpose I think.
 
A few times
he’d been careful to point out a slippery patch of earth and warn me to watch
my footing.
 
There was something of an
old fashioned gentleman to him at times that made me wonder what his parents
were like, his father especially.

A couple of
times we’d stop to admire some straggler flowers that didn’t know enough to die
off with the fall.
 
By we, I mean Tabitha
and I.
 
The boys only stopped because we
did.
 
I’d brought along my camera and
occasionally paused to take a photo of one of the patched of particularly
photogenic brightly colored fall leaves that had started to spring up amongst
the green.
 
Ben, the only one behind me,
would patiently wait for me to finish, often pointing out something else that I
might like to photograph as well.
 
His
observant eye was exceptionally good at spotting things I would have missed.
 

About an hour
into the hike we came across a creek that ran along a rocky bed, and we followed
it up to a small waterfall where we took a rest break on the rocks in the
clearing below.
 
The sun was high now,
drying the dew and giving a new crispness to the air.
 

Perched on the
dry edge of a rock, I looked over at Ben.
 
He was staring into the woods with his back to us like he was looking
for something.

“What is it
Ben?” I asked.

“I don’t
know.
 
Did you ever just get a strange
feeling you couldn’t shake?”

“I don’t
follow.”

“Sometimes I
just get this feeling like something’s off … mostly about certain people, but
I’m getting it right now.
 
Almost feels
like I’m being watched.”