The Watchers (8 page)

“Yeah?”

“If I wasn’t so against clichés, I’d say you
were my sunshine.”

“It’s a good thing you hate clichés,
then.”

“Yeah…but you are, you know…my sunshine, not
a cliché.”

“I love you, too,” I said.

She dropped her arm and leaned against the
counter, deep in thought. Her thoughts were focused on the idea
that I would pay for her sin. I walked down the hall and out the
front door, trying to block her sadness. Hurrying to get away from
her guilt, it somehow mirroring mine, I barreled through the door
and walked up the street, finally not feeling the bitter wind on
me. My thoughts moved back to my father and the reasons why we
moved so much; a place I often went when I saw Ellen in such a
mood.

Ellen had never been one to keep secrets from
me; she was as honest as she was a free and loving spirit. Too, the
secret of what I was, of what I would become, was too dangerous to
keep from me. I had to understand. I had to know why secrecy was so
important, and why our lives depended on me keeping that
secret.

When I was twelve, we had rushed home to pack
after running into a strange man on the street. He had followed us
for two blocks, his strange red eyes obtrusive as he stalked us. We
had finally lost him in a crowd of people, but hadn’t taken the
encounter lightly. As we packed, she had told me in her wonderfully
direct way that angels existed and some of them, the ones that were
set to watch over humans in the beginning, had fallen from grace by
taking humans for mates. She told me how the fallen angels wandered
the earth still, occasionally falling in love with humans and
making little mistakes like me. That was also the day I learned
about the others like me, who were the sons and daughters of
angels. They were at war. She didn’t know over what. She did know
that the ones like me, the sons and daughters of angels, were
divided into two sides, and that each side searched endlessly for
recruits. It was the reason we had to keep a low profile and run as
often as we did. If a person wasn’t willing they killed them, so
the other side couldn’t have that person as an asset. That’s what
people like me were to them – an asset. There was no good side;
there was just pain and death if they found you.

I wondered for the millionth time how my
father could leave us to that fear and constant paranoia. He had
abandoned us to a war we didn’t know how to fight. He could have
protected us, he could have made sure we were safe, but he had
walked away without even a letter to say where he had gone. Had
Ellen and I been mistakes to him? Had he really loved her, or was
she just a blink of an eye in his long life? Was I paying for his
sin now?

I turned on Main Street and the thoughts,
which had been fuzzy and distant, reached the point that I couldn’t
ignore them anymore. They surged up like a tornado, circling in my
head:

That must be Ellen’s kid. Look at her walking
in this cold, what’s she doing?

17, 18, 19 No. Huh. I was sure I laid out
twenty.

No! No! You put the starch in first!

I wonder if Billy would be willing to take me
to Fiji for our honeymoon?

Billy is going to tell her tonight that we’ve
been seeing each other. I’m glad. I’m tired of hiding it.

Of course I love you,
baby.
Visions of a young couple kissing in the dark
flew up, their passion filling my brain.

I put my hands over my ears trying to drown
out the noise, but it was useless. I gasped as more chattering
voices flooded over me, visions circling, and I started walking
faster. I needed a place that was silent, a place I could be truly
alone with my anger.

As I walked past a small store, my head
lowered against the wind and the thoughts, I felt an unexpected
presence. I turned instinctively and saw Daniel outlined by the
door, holding a plastic bag in his hands. I stumbled away from him
and kept walking up the sidewalk, not really wanting to hear any
more thoughts. Despite his eerie silence, I knew I would hear him
eventually.

“Hey, where’s the fire?” He jogged to catch
up with me, his long legs closing the distance easily.

“I just set one, that’s why I’m walking so
fast. I don’t want them to catch me,” I said.

“I wouldn’t have figured you for being a fire
starter.”

“There are probably a lot of things you
wouldn’t figure me for,” I retorted.

I walked even faster, feeling self-conscious
despite myself. I didn’t know where to put my hands suddenly. They
searched for a home, nothing feeling comfortable. I settled for
shoving them into my coat pockets.

Daniel chuckled at my words. I looked over at
him and saw he was looking at me strangely. “Seriously, where are
you going? Can I give you a ride?”

“What is this, some kind of outreach program
or something?”

“What do you mean?”

I stopped walking and faced him, my hands
finding a familiar home on my hips. My sour mood and the circling
voices in my head had me speaking my mind without thought. “It’s
been my experience that guys like you don’t pay attention to people
like me unless you A. want something, B. want to pull a prank or do
something mean, or three feel sorry for me.”

“You said three instead of C.”

“I know…”

“If you’re going to list something, you
should do a proper job of it,” he said.

“You’re very odd.”

I started walking again, realizing he wasn’t
going to answer my accusation. Was it, ‘D.’ none of the above? As I
started walking the voices in my head lowered perceptibly then cut
off completely as if my talent had suddenly found its kryptonite.
All I heard was his voice and the occasional, normal, sound of the
residents of King’s Cross going about their lives.

“You just met me,” Daniel said.

“Doesn’t mean you’re not strange.”

“True.”

After a moment of that strange, blissful,
silence, he said, “So, really, where are we going?”

Now it was “we.”

“I don’t know…I’m just walking.”

“I like to just walk, sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“Well, who likes to walk all the time?”

“Marathon walkers?”

“There’s no such thing.”

“According to you.”

“According to everyone, Clare.”

I peeked over at him again, a little startled
by his familiarity, and the way he said my name. “Can I ask you a
question?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, but you don’t
really seem…”

“Generic, mindless, and full of my own
self-importance?” he asked

“Like a football player.”

He laughed and rolled his eyes.

“How’d that happen?” I asked archly.

While he was certainly athletic, his vibe was
very different from that of the average football player. It just
didn’t seem to fit him.

“Sometimes, the best defense is a good
offense, Clare.” His smooth voice was light, but I sensed he was
serious. “In my case, a good offense means playing on the football
team.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Not everything is as it appears.”

I snorted. “You can say that again.”

“Not everything is as it appears,” he
repeated.

It was my turn to laugh.

“Don’t you have a car or something to get
back to?” I asked.

We had made another turn onto a side street
going away from the downtown. I was certain he hadn’t parked this
far away. It was rude, but I couldn’t help the feeling he was
acting interested because, like Mark, he thought I was loose. I
wished I was better at really reading people, without the thoughts,
like Alex seemed to be.

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Yes.” I shook my head knowing that wasn’t
true. “No. Look, I’m not really very good with people being
this…”

“Attentive?”

“Yes.”

“Because you’ve perfected the art of blending
into the background. Your looks have always insured people never
really see you. People see the illusion you’ve created, instead of
the reality. You don’t know how to handle people being interested
in you beyond the novelty of your perceived oddness.”

I hugged my arms against my chest not liking
how accurate that sounded. Had he somehow crawled into my head
while I wasn’t looking? “Sounds to me like you’ve taken Psych
101.”

“I’ll take that to mean I’m right.”

“I like my privacy. Is that wrong?”

“Nope.”

He looked up at the cloudless sky, his eyes
reflecting the dusk. I looked up, too, noticing for the first time
that a person could see more of the sky here without the buildings
getting in the way. It was nice in a ‘secluded,
nothing-is-around-beware-of-banjos’ way. It was funny it took his
glance heavenwards for me to notice.

“Can I walk you home?” he asked suddenly.

I looked back down. My feet slowed then
stopped. “I don’t sleep around,” I blurted out.

His dark eyebrows went into his hair line. I
started playing with the necklace Ellen had given me a long time
ago, feeling agitated and nervous. I really didn’t want him to be
interested in me for the same reasons Mark was. Well, maybe not
entirely.

“I mean, I know that Mark just wants to know
me because he thinks I’m easy, but I’m not. I’m not like that at
all. I want something more lasting…something permanent. My mom got
pregnant at seventeen, and I know how hard that was on her…I don’t
want that either…” I trailed off realizing I was rambling, and
giving more of my personality away than I’d intended to give to a
stranger.

His eyes had melted from astonishment to
understanding, to something else I couldn’t place. “I don’t sleep
around either,” he said seriously.

We started walking again, his words releasing
me from my agitated state.

There was a moment of silence in which I felt
like an idiot before he added, “I’d be careful of Mark, by the way.
He likes to think of women as a conquest waiting to happen rather
than a person waiting to be understood.”

I gave him a penetrating look. He didn’t feel
the same way? “Then why are you talking to me? Really?”

“I’m talking to you, because you’re the first
person to beat me at any sport, ever.” I made a face, wondering if
he was still upset about that. “And because you’re different.”

“I am that,” I agreed.

We walked in thoughtful silence then, our
feet headed in a wonderfully purposeless direction.

“Does this mean you’re letting me walk you
home?” he asked playfully as we roamed the streets, the night
starting to quietly whisper to us.

“We’ll see,” I said preparing to step off the
curb.

“Wait,” he commanded.

The bag in his hand flashed out and caught me
in the gut. I stumbled away from the curb as a sports car blew past
us and squealed around the corner of the next block without heed to
the stop sign it had just run. I held on to my stomach where the
bag had hit and watched the car pass out of sight.

“How’d you do that?” I asked.

“Do what?”

“Know that car was coming!”

“I heard him, didn’t you?”

“No,” I said, checking the street in
triplicate before I stepped down again.

“It’s not my fault you’ve got stone
ears.”

“What’s in the bag?” I asked not looking at
him, afraid my eyes would give away how much his hit had hurt. I
was certain he hadn’t meant to hit me that hard.

“Stuff for my parents, for an experiment
they’re doing.”

“They’re scientists right?”

He smirked like I had confirmed something.
“You’ve been checking up on me.”

“Small school,” I shrugged, feeling the heat
in my face. I’d heard that factoid in Mrs. Heart’s thoughts.

“Yeah, it is. But what do Jennifer’s parents
do for a living?”

I thought over all the thoughts which had
assaulted my brain today, glad for my “gift” for once.

“Her mom is a professor at the college. Her
dad is a doctor…internal medicine.” I looked at him innocently.
“Did I pass?”

He grinned playfully and didn’t answer. I
took that as a ‘yes’.

My teeth started chattering as we stepped
back on to the sidewalk, and I realized that with the setting sun
the already chilly wind was growing colder. The first chance I got
I would have to buy another jacket, maybe a fleece one. He looked
over at the sound of my teeth knocking together.

“You’re cold. Do you want my jacket?” He was
already taking it off.

I laughed sarcastically. “And somehow if I’m
less cold that will make up for the fact that I took your jacket
and you are now freezing? Isn’t that a bit archaic?”

He ignored me and laid the jacket on my
shoulders in bossy confidence. I settled it around my shoulders,
resigned that I would have to accept it. I could tell he would get
his way…eventually. Plus, I sort of liked the gesture.

“You’re pushy, do you know that?” I said.

“Of course. It comes with being an all-star
quarterback and having people kiss my ass all the time.” His eyes
caught mine. “Are you warmer?”

“Yes,” I huffed, grumpily. He looked at me
expectantly. I couldn’t help it, I laughed again. “Fine. Thank you
for the jacket.”

He smiled happily. “You’re welcome.”

I looked at him in his blue t-shirt and
jeans, admittedly admiring what I saw. “But aren’t you cold?”

“I’m tough, I can handle it.”

“Ugh!” I said. “Talk about typical male
pride.”

“I just like to think that chivalry isn’t
dead.”

“Of course it’s dead,” I retorted.
“Technology killed it…Murdered it dead.”

He made a funny grunting noise of agreement
but didn’t say anything else in response. As we circled another
street, I could see him deep in thought, as if he was considering
something especially important. I left him to those thoughts,
content to be left alone with mine.

“Clare, can I ask a weird question?”