The Watchers (11 page)

“There’s something out there capable of
killing bears?”

“Yes. So, imagine how you would fare if you
went wandering around.”

“Point taken.”

“Where are we going by the way?” he asked. He
started to walk again, very obviously changing the subject.

“I need to give your jacket back to you. I
had it at school on Tuesday, but you didn’t show up.” I waited
expectantly.

He laughed. “Nope. Sorry. You’re not getting
anything else.”

“That’s not very fair.”

“Life’s not fair.”

I agreed with him but didn’t let it show.
“Fine. Then you’re not getting anything else from me either.”

“Fine.”

I clamped my lips together resolutely at his
words. There was no way I would speak first. I would win this
little contest of wills. Just like our tennis game, I was
determined to show him I could do it better. It was silly, but
irrevocably my personality.

In absolute silence, we crossed over to Main
Street, avoiding the Friday traffic, and the kids cruising around
in their cars. The thoughts I should have been hearing were quiet
as we walked, mimicking our last walk together. There was just a
warm wall of dark of silence. I had missed that silence.

When we got to the first small road leading
towards my house Daniel caved in. I saw him glance at me, his
amused smile transforming into a question. “Clare, remember when I
said that you’re not getting anything else from me?” he asked
seriously.

“Of course, I remember. That was like two
seconds ago.”

“Well, I take it back.”

“You just figured out I could be silent
longer than you,” I said.

“Maybe. Or, maybe I figure the only way I can
ask you questions is if I let you ask me some in return.”

“Well, I do have a question,” I said.

“Just one?”

“No... Are you lonely?” I asked before I
thought about it.

He stopped midstride, as abruptly as a person
walking into a wall. From the expression on his face, I knew I had
said something wrong. He didn’t give me the chance to speak.

“You’re wondering why I want to be around you
when I have a bunch of people at school I can hang out with. You
think I have to be lonely to want to talk to you outside of school.
You don’t have enough confidence in yourself to see that maybe you
would be an interesting friend to have, and that maybe I’m not
interested in hanging out with people so generic they make me
ill.”

I crossed my arms defensively. I hadn’t asked
for the reasons he had given, but now that he had brought it
up…

“I have plenty of confidence in myself. I
just don’t feel that same level of confidence in others. I’ve seen
how judgmental people can be, I’ve seen how they view me, I’ve seen
the kind of hidden agendas they carry around with them, and that
makes it hard for me to think that, after meeting me twice, you
would want to be my friend without wanting something from me.”

“What about Alex?” he demanded, taking a step
closer to me.

“What about her?”

“You’ve obviously taken to her as a friend,
why should I be any different?”

I thrust my jaw out pugnaciously, knowing the
answer to that, but not able to admit it to him. It was because I
could read her thoughts. I didn’t have that same advantage with
him. It made me uneasy…for several reasons.

“It’s just different!”

“Because I’m a man?”

“Because you’re as uniform as the rest!” I
said hatefully. He had cornered me and I resented him for it.

He looked up at me through his eyelashes, his
irises turning completely black again. I swallowed hard, but kept
my ground. His scary looks wouldn’t intimidate me.

“You should try getting to know me before you
make those kinds of decisions,” he warned coldly. “And you
shouldn’t judge people. It’s a sign of sloppy thinking.”

“I don’t judge people!” I exclaimed, my
indignation overriding my fear and the oddness of the moment.

“You’re doing a mighty fine impression of
it!”

We stared at each other in mutual anger, both
of us unrelenting. My stubbornness didn’t last long. I thought
about everything he had just said, trying to work past the burning
emotion. Guilt started to rise to the surface. Deep down, I knew I
was scared to trust him; scared because I was attracted to him in
ways I’d never really been attracted to someone before. I could
only see that leading me to pain and regret. I was scared because I
was used to erecting barriers, not tearing them down. And, I was
upset at how easily I saw him tearing those barriers down. My
anger, a defensive reflex, had me putting blame on him. But I knew
better. Surely, I wasn’t that infantile?

“I’m sorry,” I said finally.

He snorted in disbelief, though his eyes
returned to green. I decided to be honest with him, knowing it
would expose more of my soul to him. I wanted him to understand
though. It felt important.

“I am! I didn’t mean to judge you, it’s just,
well, you’re right. I’m not used to people being this interested in
my friendship. I’ve always been the island and the rock. I’m not
used to letting other people be a rock as well. Letting them be the
water that flows around me is more my thing.”

“That was sort of poetic in a, ‘you need some
help,’ way,” he said, his angry face melting into a boyish grin. He
turned away and started walking, forgiving me easily. I hurried to
catch up, glad he wasn’t holding a grudge. “And to answer your
question, I feel totally and completely alone. Every single day is
a fight against that loneliness. Even around my family…it’s
there.”

There was something familiar about his words;
familiar because I felt the same way. I felt my opinion of him
shift.

“Well then, I think we should be friends,” I
said.

He started laughing. “I thought it first,
remember that.”

“Yes, but I said it first.”

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

I hadn’t realized we had made it to the front
door. I blinked and looked back at my porch I didn’t remember
crossing. “What are you, a vampire?” I asked dryly.

The memory of his black eyes flashed in front
of my eyes.

“Come again?” he asked.

“Vampires have to be invited in to your….
never mind,” I trailed off not wanting to give away mine and
Ellen’s horror novel addiction.

“I won’t come inside unless you’d like me to.
A gentleman waits for an invitation.”

I dug the key out from under the mat and
opened the door, gesturing grandly for him to enter. “After you,
sir.”

“
Thanks.” Daniel crossed the threshold,
and, when the earth didn’t collapse, I shut the door behind us.
“Can I ask you a question, then?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Did that hurt?”

He turned pointed to my nose ring. I laughed
at his randomness.

“Not nearly as bad as the tattoos did.”

“You have a tattoo? Wait…tattoos in the
plural?” He followed me, walking right on my heels as I made my way
to the kitchen. “Seriously, do you have one? Where?”

I shrugged and didn’t answer, enjoying the
fascination in his eyes as I turned around. “I’ll get your jacket.
Wait here.”

“Okay.”

I took the stairs two at a time, almost
jogged down the hall, and took the second set of stairs in three
leaps. I picked the jacket off the window seat and shook it out,
hoping it didn’t look like I’d used it for a blanket the whole
prior week. I was about to turn away from the window, the jacket
over my arm, when I noticed a slight movement in the trees. I set
the jacket down, my curiosity too much, and put my knees on the
cushion, so I could see more of the forest. There was another flash
of color, and I realized I was witnessing something running through
the trees – something black and insanely large.

The hair on my arms and neck rose in alarm.
The shape disappeared, but it left me with a cold feeling in the
pit of my stomach. It was just an animal, I told myself firmly,
trying to calm my racing heart. It was just a deer. Only it was way
too large to be any animal I’d ever encountered. They didn’t have
polar bears in these parts did they? Big, black, randomly fast
polar bears…I set my feet on the hard floor and ran down the
stairs, not wanting to keep Daniel waiting. But the woods,
particularly with Daniel’s warning, were starting to freak me
out.

When I got back to the kitchen, he was next
to the stove casually leaning against the counter as if he had not
only built the counters, but had handpicked the materials that went
in to building them. He looked at me solemnly as I appeared in the
doorway, his face a study in innocent detachment. I gave him a
suspicious look, feeling I had just walked in on him doing
something bad. The memory of the animal faded from my mind at the
sight of him, though the goose bumps lingered.

“What?” I asked suspiciously.

He blinked once, his face maintaining his
study in innocence. “What?”

“You’re up to something.”

“Me?”

I held out the jacket for him to take. He
took it slowly, and I noticed he was being careful about not
touching my hand or any other part of my skin. Maybe he thought my
weirdness was catching? Or was it for another reason? We stared at
each other, waiting for the other to break the silence first.

He finally relented, seeing my obtuseness.
“All right, I was looking though this, which I thought you might
not like.”

He reached behind him without looking. With
one long finger, he drug around the small flowery book I kept by
the stove at all times. It was mostly filled with cooking ideas and
recipes I wanted to try out on Ellen, but it also had song lyrics,
random ideas and poorly written poems. It was the closest thing to
a journal I kept. I felt the blood rush to my face. I grabbed it
off the counter and cradled it to my chest protectively. “This is
private!”

“I had to run down a street naked once,” he
said quickly.

“What does that have to do with
anything?!”

“I thought you might forgive me for looking
if you knew something embarrassing about me.”

“It’s only embarrassing if you were
embarrassed,” I said.

What could he have to be embarrassed about? I
looked him over again, the heat in my face intensifying.

“I had to run past a nunnery, and the nuns
just happened to be walking to the local school for a fundraiser.
They saw everything God gave me, so yes, I was embarrassed. I
couldn’t walk down that street for years without feeling
ashamed.”

I thought about it for a moment. “Then I
forgive you.” I said.

He grinned, and I started laughing at the
expression on his face. He joined in, and our laughs somehow merged
into a seamless harmony that was as beautiful as it was
daunting.

“I think I should go,” he said as our
laughter trailed away.

“Oh…Okay.”

I didn’t want him to leave. For once, I
wasn’t lost in my head worrying about a million things or being
drowned by other people’s thoughts. It felt normal. I didn’t have
to be alone to feel like I wasn’t a freak of nature.

I didn’t want him to leave for another
reason. He made me feel good. I could argue and laugh with him in
the same breath. I’d never known someone I could do that with. It
was something that fit my personality perfectly.

“I promised to help a friend with her new toy
today,” he said quickly, his eyes locked on my face.

Could he see the disappointment on my face? I
fixed my expression.

“Toy?” I asked.

“She just got a motorcycle. I promised to
help her make it even more of a monster on the road.”

She?

“You know how to work on cars?” I asked
rather than ask about the mysterious “she.”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “My parents
encouraged me from a young age to look at why and how things run.
It’s carried over into a lot of things, including cars.”

“Do you think you could show me some things?”
I asked hopefully. “Our car is always breaking down, and it’d be
nice to not have to take it to a repair shop all the time. It can
get kind of expensive, and if I knew how to fix it...” He gave me a
funny look. “What?”

“The way you talk, it’s like you’re the
parent.”

“I feel like it sometimes. Ellen is
wonderful, but she’s impossibly flighty, irresponsible, and
forgetful.” I gave a small laugh. “She hasn’t even learned to turn
the stove on yet, and we’ve been here a week. But… I look after
her. It’s what I do best.”

He stepped into my space. “You shouldn’t have
to do the looking after all the time. It’s not fair.”

I swallowed heavily at the seriousness of his
tone, wondering what he meant. He changed topics, but his intensity
didn’t waver, mainly because he was still so close. “And anytime
you want to learn about cars, I’d be willing to show you.”

“What about this weekend?” I asked it
quickly, before I lost the nerve.

“That sounds fine. Tomorrow. I’ll come by
around eleven.” He stepped past me into the hallway brushing my
shoulder with his, the coat still draped over his arm. “Bye,” he
called as he disappeared through the front door.

“Bye,” I called back, knowing he couldn’t
hear me.

I took a deep breath. Then, for absolutely no
reason at all, I started laughing. It was like I’d been bottling up
all my emotions, the good feelings that he inspired, to celebrate
when no one was around. I sat down at the round breakfast table,
clutching my recipe book, laughing to an empty room as the light
streamed in through the many windows, illuminating my face. When
Ellen came home, I wasn’t sure if it had been ten minutes or ten
years, but I knew I’d been changed.

Chapter 6

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 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 ending mid-whistle.