The Watchers (6 page)

“Who wouldn’t bypass the meat surprise? It’s
a surprise no one should have. But yes, I’ve been one since I was
twelve.” The day Ellen told me the truth. “Why? Is that strange or
something?”

“For this area it is,” Alex admitted.
“Everyone loves their meat. I’m one too.”

“Sweet.”

“Did you want me to go back inside and give
you a real minute of peace?” she asked.

I shook my head as I swallowed my food. “Tell
me more about Atlanta. I only drove through there a couple of
times.”

She smiled and started talking about her home
city with the sort of remembered fondness I had for a dozen cities
across the country. She was just getting into the stores where she
used to shop when Mr. Popularity walked past on quiet feet,
surprising me. I hadn’t noticed his presence, or felt any warning
thought. We paused in our conversation automatically, my body
freezing at the sight of him and the remembrance of his
deathly-black eyes.

He smiled warmly at Alex, and I sensed it was
genuine. “Hey, Alex.” His eyes slid to me, crinkling with
disdainful mockery. “You’re not making a pet out of the new girl
are you?”

I scowled at him, crunching my lettuce with
more force than necessary. “Woof,” I said dryly.

Alex laughed and made a face. “I know you
have better manners than that, Daniel,” she scolded.

I gave a skeptical laugh, which I tried to
hide with a cough. He kept walking, tucking his hands into his
pockets in a habitual gesture. His mocking smirk in response to my
laughter, as he disappeared down the hall, was annoying. I stared
at my salad no longer hungry, and tried to figure out if I was
annoyed with him or scared of him. Shouldn’t I be scared? And why
was it so fun to be annoyed at him?

She’s upset. I bet it’s
because of this morning.
“I heard about your tennis
game this morning,” Alex said honestly as soon as he was out of
sight.

I sighed, expecting the gossip to spread
quickly. “Did you?”

“Yes, yes, I did. I wouldn’t worry about him.
He has this reputation for never losing at sports. You know how men
can be about that.”

I laughed, agreeing with her explanation. Her
explanation didn’t answer the question of how his eyes had flashed
that eerie black color, though. People’s eyes didn’t just flash
black over competitiveness. No one I knew, at least. I didn’t
mention it to her, however; she might spread it around to the
school, and for some reason I didn’t want anyone to know about what
had happened. Not yet. Not until I had answers.

“Why wasn’t he in the lunchroom with the rest
of the…” I trailed off not wanting to offend her.

She arched an eyebrow. “Were you going for
mindless sheep or brainless crowd?”

I grinned…sheepishly. “Sheep. But I didn’t
mean to-”

“It’s fine.”
They are mindless sheep for the most part
. “He
never eats in the cafeteria.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. Maybe he doesn’t like cafeterias.”
Her tone implied it wasn’t her business. Or mine.

“Can’t blame him,” I replied.

She went back to explaining Daniel’s
behavior. “Sometimes…Daniel acts the way people think he should
act, instead of the way he is. He plays the
part…jock…prep…whatever. I call him out on it…keeps him honest.”
Her eyes sparkled with her smile. “I know why he does it, though.
In a town this small, you learn how to keep people satisfied that
they know everything there is to know about you, and keep the bit
of you that’s real to yourself.”

“Yeah, it’s called lying,” I retorted before
I thought about it.

I turned to apologize, realizing that I kept
sticking my foot in my mouth, but she was laughing.

“You don’t really lie I take it?” she
asked.

“A lie is a lie, but lying and keeping a
secret are two different things,” I qualified a little uneasily,
thinking my whole existence was a study in keeping a secret.

“Exactly.”

“So, are you two close? You seem to know a
lot about him,” I said slowly.

“You’re asking if we date.”

“No.” I thought about it. “Yes.”

She laughed again. “No, we don’t date. Daniel
isn’t really my type.” She rolled her eyes. “I like quiet boys, and
he talks too much. He’s also not easily caught. You have no idea
how many girls cry themselves to sleep, because he’s so
inaccessible.”

“I might,” I told her thinking of this
morning and all the girls who were daydreaming about him in rather
shocking ways. She gave me a funny look, and I added quickly, “Not
for that reason.”

“What reason, then?” she asked.
Does she pick up on the way people act as well? I
bet she does. She’s probably learned that people aren’t the way
they dress.

I looked at her, mildly impressed. “Jennifer
and Michelle were having eye-sex with him in gym. It was hard not
to notice.”

She laughed again, my answer satisfying her.
“The bell is about to ring. You want to put up your tray?”

“Yes.”

As I stood, I noticed a movement at the end
of the hall, which disappeared as quickly as the time it took me to
look again. I waited a moment, wanting to pinpoint the eavesdropper
by their thoughts, indignant that we were being eavesdropped on,
but the hall was completely silent, both in my head and externally.
Our eavesdropper had fled the scene of the crime. I frowned,
wondering who would eavesdrop on us. I pushed the weirdness away,
figuring it to be an overzealous classmate.

As I put up my tray, Alex asked me about my
next class – literature – and I found we shared it. She offered to
walk me there with more sincerity than Mark’s offer; she, at least,
didn’t want something from me. I accepted happily, feeling odd that
I had made an actual friend on my very first day of school.
Admittedly, her thoughts weren’t typical. She was nice, not because
she thought she could benefit from it, but because that was just
her personality. She was popular for that very reason. I could
sense the others respected her for her kindness and let her talk to
them in ways they wouldn’t let anyone else. From fleeting
impressions of Mark, Jennifer and Michelle, who stood to join us as
we passed, I also knew Alex was funny and always had a joke or a
smile.

Look at her, already fitting in with the rest
of the prideful degenerates. They don’t even know the danger they
are in, yet they let her in without question. They will pay.
They’ll all pay.

I stopped walking, causing Mark to bump into
me on our way out of the lunchroom. I ignored him, and looked
around for the owner of the thought, startled by the hatred in the
voice, startled, too, because I’d heard that same voice last night,
outside my house. I listened hard, but the lunchroom was too full
with the chattering masses for me to be able to pinpoint the owner.
I shook my head and apologized to Mark, noticing that Jennifer was
thinking I’d stopped on purpose to get him to feel me up. She
wasn’t happy with the thought. Alex hooked her arm through mine
again, and led the way out of the room.

Thanks to the curious people, who swarmed
around me as I walked, Alex and I were the last two into our next
class. Everyone else had already taken their seats, and was
chattering happily to their neighbors in the usual pre-class roar
of noise and excitement as we entered. Alex released my arm with a
smile, and went to take her seat in the middle of the room. She
immediately leaned over to her neighbor, a tiny boy with a bad
complexion, and started talking to him. His eyes brightened
noticeably when he saw her, and it was my turn to smile. I knew the
boy looked forward to her talking to him more than anything else
during the day. I also knew that she knew that and made a special
point to talk to him every day. As I handed the mousy woman at the
front of the room the slip to sign, my eyes traveled beyond Alex to
search for an open seat. Secrets and images swirled around in my
head in a poorly conceived dance of visuals and noise, making my
head pulse with the beat. Whenever I accidently caught eyes with
someone, their thoughts grew louder, then dimmed, as I moved on to
find a seat which was unoccupied.

I sighed in irritated acceptance when I saw
Daniel next to the only available desk at the back of the room,
talking to a boy in front of him. Although he was smiling, I
noticed him tapping one of his long pale fingers on the small desk
he was crammed into. I took it to be a sign of impatience or
irritation. Had he also come to the conclusion I would have no
choice but to sit next to him?

The teacher introduced herself as Mrs.
Heart as she handed me a large text book with Marlowe’s face
plastered on the front. Her thoughts were strong, but not
obtrusively so.
Poor dear, looks like she’s
been manhandled by a hedgehog. Shouldn’t judge, though. She looks
just like my cousin Jeanie… I really should call her. Haven’t
talked to her in ages…

I had to suppress the impulse to laugh out
loud at her description of my hair, liking her choice of words.
They were unusual. I didn’t need any more stares, though…or anyone
thinking I was a crazy person. It was my first day, after all. Book
in hand, I walked down the aisle and steeled myself for whatever
Daniel would say next, if he even talked to me at all. I marshaled
my sarcasm and disdain just in case, feeling I would need it and
more to deal with him.

As I sat down, he peeked over at me and
smirked again. I wondered what he was thinking and why he was
smirking. That was an idea…What was he thinking? I concentrated,
trying to hone in on his thoughts. It was difficult; I’d never gone
looking for one person’s thoughts in particular before – typically
people’s thoughts found me. As I concentrated, all the voices
flooded in, the sheer volume threatening to overwhelm me. It was
like listening to a waterfall of noise inside my head, without the
benefit of a muffler. I shifted through the thoughts of homework,
crushes, and a million other worries, but I didn’t hear any voices
that sounded like his. Not a single slither of thought which could
be mistaken for his. I turned to look at him, knowing that if I
looked at him I could find his thoughts easier. My leather jacket
creaked with the agitated movement as I searched out his strange
eyes. He was laughing softly at a joke the boy in front of him had
just made, the laughter not quite reaching his eyes. The laugh was
melodic and magical, but I still couldn’t hear his thoughts.

The new girl is staring at Daniel. They all
can’t get enough of him. I think he does the not dating thing on
purpose just to drive them crazy. I wonder if that would help
me…

A vision of a massive score of nameless girls
begging for attention surged into my brain, and I cringed. I
shifted my gaze back to the front, recognizing the owner of the
voice as the guy in front of Daniel. Would he point my staring out
to Daniel? I shifted uncomfortably in the tiny desk

“You ever wonder why people do the things
they do?”

I looked back over, my head in my hand, and
saw Daniel had his eyes trained on me. He had removed his letterman
jacket, and his blue t-shirt stretched over his muscles in an
obvious way. The boy in front of him had turned back around to look
through his notebook for his homework. I looked Daniel straight in
the eyes, one of my eyebrows arching at his question. “What’s that
supposed to mean?”

“I thought it was pretty obvious,” he said in
a tone which doubted my intellect.

“The question was obvious, but why you’re
asking isn’t.”

“You’re more concerned about the ‘why’ in
life then, not the actual act?”

I decided to play along with wherever his
thoughts were, curious despite my uncertainty. Maybe I would learn
more about him…even if the conversation was bizarre.

“I guess I
am
more concerned with the ‘why’, yes. A good
deed if done in the spirit of evil is still an evil deed. But, if a
person does something with good intent, and that somehow turns into
something bad, I would be willing to forgive them, because the
‘why’ behind the act was good….I like to imagine all the possible
‘whys’ before I leap to a conclusion. I think it helps me not judge
too hastily when someone does something I don’t like. Now,” I
raised an eyebrow at him, “will you tell me
why
you are asking?”

He smiled and looked down at his hands. He
had stopped tapping. “I was wondering where you stood, if you’d
thought about it at all.”

“That’s a peculiar way to initiate a
conversation, don’t you think?”

“Should I have started with the old, ‘if a
tree fell in the forest,’ routine? Would that have been
better?”

I made a face at him. “Why you would ask a
question like that at all is the puzzle, I think.”

“Yes,
why
was the question.” His eyes danced with mine
playfully. “Can’t a guy just be curious?”

I gave him another mocking look, trying to
follow his shifting moods.

“Oh, I get it. A guy can’t be curious, or
think about philosophical things, if he’s a football player. We’re
too stupid.”

I rolled my eyes at his assumption. I had
been thinking more along the lines that people didn’t ask something
like that unless they had an agenda.

“Yep. You guys are too stupid, and live too
much in the present, to be truly deep. All that beer chugging and
grunting gets in the way.”

“So, what, you think you’re deeper than me,
because you look like you just stepped out of a Nine Inch Nails
concert?”

“I prefer Black Sabbath. And no, I think I’m
deeper than you, because I don’t expect people to kiss my ass.”

He actually laughed; a real laugh. I could
tell from the way it reached his eyes. “I don’t expect people to
kiss my ass!”