The Watchers (14 page)

“That’s not fair.”

She shrugged and her face lit back up. “It’s
got me thinking I should be a psychologist. I could do a lot of
good. The way people react to my advice…it’s a good feeling.”

I looked at her and started playing with my
necklace, something I did when I was nervous or trying to think.
“You can come to me about things…if you want. I can keep a secret
just as well as you can, and you know how I feel about people
spreading stuff around. I can’t promise that I’ll have the best
answer, but I promise to listen.”

I bet she could keep a
secret… I’ve never had anyone offer to be my confessor
before…
“I might just take you up on that.” She
smiled. “It means a lot you offered.”

She sat up and hugged me. I hugged her back,
feeling an odd sense of sisterhood. At that moment, I wished she
had been born my sister, that I had that connection to her. It was
a strange feeling.

“Sure,” I said awkwardly.

She yawned as she released me, tired tears
glistening in her eyes. “I think I’m going to bed.”

“I think I’m going to stay up and stare at
the creepy forest.”

“Don’t let bigfoot get you,” she said,
throwing back the blanket and heading towards my bed.

“I won’t.”

She rolled into the covers and clicked off my
light, somehow knowing I didn’t mind the dark. Her breathing
steadied and slowed as she drifted towards sleep. I settled into
the blanket, wishing I had Daniel’s jacket back instead, and stared
out into the night. As I thought about Daniel’s jacket, and his
cool eyes, a warm feeling of being protected surrounded me. I
pressed my head against the cool glass and stared at the swaying
trees. Even though the dark night and fierce wind battered harshly
at my old house, I felt safe, feeling he was out there watching
over me. Whatever monsters the darkness hid, they would not bother
us tonight.

Chapter 7

“Do not shoot each other with the arrows. Do
not point the arrows at each other, even to play around. If you do
shoot someone, you’ll be suspended…” Coach kept listing rules, but
I blocked him out. His disinterested voice made it easy.

We were in the gym suffering through a,
“don’t-kill-your-classmates,” pre-archery speech. Apparently, there
had been incidents in the past. I looked down the bleachers we were
crowded on and saw Mark arm wrestling another football player. I
rolled my eyes. I could see where any incidents, if they did
happen, were likely to come from. Mark really should be
listening.

“Does it say, ‘bad to the bone’?” Daniel
whispered from next to me.

His breath tickled my neck with his
closeness. I shook my head slightly and smiled softly. For the past
three weeks he had been trying to figure out what kind of tattoos I
had or if I really had any at all. I wasn’t about to tell him. It
was too much fun making him guess.

“Is it a fairy?” he guessed again, also
ignoring Coach.

“Is what a fairy?” Jennifer asked as she
leaned conspicuously close to Daniel from Daniel’s other side.

Mark had turned into something of a puppy
dog, following me around whenever he could – when Daniel wasn’t
around. Jennifer, not happy with Mark’s crush, was trying to get
back at me by hitting on Daniel every chance she got. I wanted to
explain that we were just friends, so she would stop but didn’t see
what good that would do. Besides, there was the fact that every
time she flirted with Daniel I wanted to punch something. Like her
face.

Daniel smiled his annoyingly fake dazzle
smile and said, “We’re playing twenty questions. You know…guess
what object or thing the other person is thinking about?”

“Oh, I love that game!” she gushed with false
excitement. “What have you guessed so far?”

“I’ve figured out that it is a mythical
creature, which has figured prominently in several stories.”

My eyes widened at the lie. For multiple
reasons. His lie was so natural and real sounding that I had to
wonder at his skill. Had he lied to me like that? His lie was also
very close to the truth. He gave me a warning look to keep me from
saying anything that would give away the lie. He wanted to keep the
tattoo thing between us, an inside thing.

“Did you ask if it had wings?” she whispered
over the teacher’s droning monologue.

“No, but that is a very good question. Clare,
does it have wings?” His eyes danced playfully with mine.

“Yes.” I replied pressing my lips together to
keep from laughing.

“Does it blend in with people?” Jennifer
asked intensely. She was starting to get into this, forgetting
about being malicious in lieu of the search.

“Yes.”

“Are they good or bad?”

“They can be either or neither,” I said,
shifting uneasily.

Jennifer was silent for a while as she
thought about my answer. Daniel was looking at me funny. Knowing if
I said it out loud, Jennifer would comment, I asked him with my
eyes what his deal was. He shrugged and looked down the bleachers.
I eyed him carefully, but with his eyes on the bleachers I couldn’t
get a fix on his emotions.

Coach finally stopped talking, and directed
us to go outside where the archery targets were set up. We followed
the others through the double doors and walked a sharp hill to the
practice football field. The morning dew on the grass collected on
our shoes as we walked.

“I don’t know what it is,” Jennifer finally
said, admitting defeat.

“An angel,” a voice floated out of the crowd
behind us. I turned and saw Amanda looking at me.

“That’s right,” I said cautiously.

She hadn’t responded to my attempts at
conversation over my weeks of trying. She had moved away as soon as
possible when I tried to talk to her, her thoughts angry and
annoyed at my attempts. Her mental insults about my depravity
didn’t hurt as much as her thoughts that I was trying to be nice,
so I could be mean later. I hadn’t gotten four words from her.
Admittedly, I had stopped trying. If she wanted to hate me, I would
let her. That was her choice.

“In the Bible, angels don’t really have
wings. Cherubs do,” she said quietly.

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

Flicking her hair in agitation, Jennifer
hooked her arm through mine. She pulled me in close, a confidant to
her opinion. “Don’t mind her and her crazy opinions. Her dad spends
all his time preaching crazy stuff to anyone who’ll listen, but I’m
afraid the only person who cares is little Amanda.”

Jennifer’s face had turned ugly. I unhooked
my arm from hers, so she couldn’t control where I was walking. Alex
was the only one allowed to do that, and she knew when it was
okay.

“But I do mind her,” I said through clenched
teeth. “She’s a person.”

I didn’t like people telling me what to
think. It was bad enough I had to hear their thoughts, but wanting
me to join in on them? Thanks, but no thanks.

Michelle and Jennifer exchanged a look. I
knew, despite not hearing their thoughts, they were thinking the
same thing: regret for making me cool and letting me hang out with
them.

Daniel gave me a warning look and casually
threw his arms over both girls’ shoulders, drawing them close. “My
money says Mark shoots himself with an arrow. Who wants to take
that bet?”

Both girls giggled and let him steer them to
where Mark was already waiting at the targets, bow in hand. His
excited face was comical against Daniel’s comment. Still seething
from her awfulness, I watched them walk away. It was all I could do
not to follow them and hit Jennifer right between her snobby eyes.
Watching Daniel steer them to the targets bothered me in another
way. I was jealous he hadn’t once touched me like that, that he
hadn’t touched me at all, even though we’d spent a good portion of
our time outside of school hanging out, including the past weekend
– when Ellen had left to visit an old friend in Greenville. I was
also grateful. Somewhere along the line, Daniel had picked up
people skills that I lacked. Or rather, he had picked up the
ability to please people but not let them have power over him. It
was another skill he possessed that I didn’t. I was more ‘all or
nothing’.

Amanda walked next to me in awkward
silence and, as Daniel walked ahead with the others, I was
gradually able to hear her thoughts.
This
doesn’t mean she’s any different. She’s probably just luring me
into something. I know how they can be. I used to be like
that.
I heard a mental sigh.
Children always pay for the sin of the parent.

“I like your necklace,” I said, searching for
something to say, wanting to take advantage of the fact she was
speaking to me.

She looked down at her cross necklace she had
unconsciously been playing with. “Thanks. My grandma gave it to
me.”

How dare she talk to her! She’ll pay for
that!

I stopped walking, shocked to hear that voice
again after a month of silence. I looked around the field
carefully, but couldn’t see anyone, or anything, that looked out of
place. My heart raced as adrenaline surged through me. I had
forgotten about the voice during my weeks here. I wondered if I had
missed hearing it because Daniel was around so much, blocking out
the others in that strange way of his, or if it just hadn’t been
around. A revelation came to me. Could that evil voice have
anything to do with the attacks, which were still happening,
including a farmer’s entire herd of cows this past week? It was
evil enough, and certainly had murder on the brain.

Amanda stopped walking, concern
coloring her face.
What’s she doing? Did I
do something wrong?

For the first time, I realized the mystery
voice I had been hearing was male. Not only was it male, but
something about the tonal quality was similar to Amanda’s voice. It
was as if they had learned to speak in the same place.

“Are you okay?” she asked, fearing I would
lash out at her.

I bent down and started untying my shoelaces.
“Yeah. I think I’ve got a rock in my shoe. You go ahead.”

She walked off and joined the rest of the
class. I peeked behind me, feeling like the woods, which were
utterly everywhere in this small town, were closing in. The vision
of the animal I had seen running behind my house became
superimposed over the woods I was looking at. Could that explain
the thoughts? Was that what I was hearing? Could bears think human
thoughts?

I could kill her now. I
could kill her and Marcus would never know it was me. He said to
watch, to figure her out, but I’m done watching. There’s nothing to
learn. I could make it look like an accident.
He went
through different ways of killing me. The thoughts trailed away,
but before they did I heard:
Her very
presence is an affront to God! She will pay for her sin!

I felt my stomach drop. Those thoughts meant
me. They were just too close to the mark for them to mean anyone
else. I looked around, wanting a reprieve from the hatred the voice
was funneling my way, and saw Daniel looking at the woods as well,
his face distant, his eyes narrowed. Did that look mean what I
thought it meant? When he felt my eyes on his face, Daniel’s eyes
dropped back down to earth. He smiled and gestured for me to take
the spot next to him. Running to his side, I took the bow he was
offering and pulled the silence and calm his presence brought to my
brain. I wrapped it around me as added insulation against what I
had just heard. Was it even possible for normal people to have
thoughts that horrible? I took a deep breath to steady my
trembling.

He leaned in close and whispered, “An angel?
Where?”

I couldn’t help but smile despite my fear.
What would he say if I told him he was looking at one? Well, half
of one.

“You’ll only find out by accident,” I
replied.

“I could get the whole class involved in
another round of the guessing game…”

I stuck my tongue out at him and knocked an
arrow. Concentrating, I released it with a sharp “twang!” It hit
the bull’s-eye.

“Nice shot,” he said. His face filled with
macho superiority. “But this is how the pros do it.”

He raised the bow, took aim, and released,
all in one fluid movement. The arrow hit dead center.

“Are you on magic pills that make you good at
everything you do?” I asked grumpily.

I’d learned a lot over the course of our
weeks together, including the fact that Daniel was practically
perfect at anything he tried. There wasn’t a sport he didn’t play
and a skill he hadn’t mastered. And – because I didn’t feel
inadequate enough – if his parents weren’t so serious about him
having the high school experience, he could be at Harvard by
now.

His voice had laughter in it. “No. If I had
magic pills, they’d do more than just make me good at sports.”

“What would they do?” I asked.

I released another arrow, trying for center
and missing. Daniel shrugged and released his arrow. He didn’t even
look at the target, but it hit dead center, almost in the same spot
as the first one.

“They’d let me hear what people were
thinking, they’d give me the ability to see the future, and they’d
give me super hearing and super strength. They might even give me
the ability to heal myself and breathe a long time underwater if I
were lucky.”

I turned to him, an eyebrow raised. “Is that
all?”

“No, there’s more.”

“So, even though you’re super athletic and
super smart, you’d still like to borrow some of Superman’s
abilities?” I said grinning.

“Of course, I would. Every guy wants to be
Superman.”

“I second that!” Mark said. He leaned around
Daniel to steal an arrow, not wanting to walk the distance to get
his, and winked at me. “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No! It’s
Mark!”