The Watchers (13 page)

“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 of
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, like 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 sick.”

“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 to 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 was bought. But
we had both enjoyed that. Maybe he was upset I wouldn’t play guitar
for him? I looked past Alex toward the lonely, neglected guitar I
had bought ages ago at a pawn shop. 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
rejection. 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 diddly squat. 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 who’s 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 was 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.”