Watcher

by Valerie Sherrard

  “Weird thing,” he said, exhaling hard, “is I believe you. But I don’t feel like sticking my neck out to help you, because there’s no point to it.”

  “You mean you could do something?”

  “Forget it. It’s not worth the bother. Maybe you didn’t do this, but something else will come along. The end result will be the same. I’m not wasting my time for a punk like you.”

  “You wouldn’t be,” I said desperately. “I’ll straighten up. I mean it.”

  He looked at me and for a second I thought he was going to laugh. Only he didn’t. He sat quiet and I could almost see him weighing it all out. And I saw his eyes soften and drift while he was thinking, and then it was like he pulled back, and they started to get hard again.

  “One chance, man,” I said, knowing he’d decided, knowing he wasn’t going to help me. “I can do it. I will do it. I swear.”

  And then the miracle.

  “If I do this for you, you will come here every week and I will ask you questions and you will never, ever lie to me again. If you take so much as a puff, you will tell me so. If you’re late for a single class, I want to know it.”

  “Okay,” I said, and I meant it.

  “I’ll talk to the Crown,” he said. Whatever that meant, it must have worked, because there were no more charges.

  From that day on everything changed between Daniels and me. I owed him, but for some reason that made a bigger difference in how he treated me than the other way around. And, instead of doing the in and out routine, we started to talk.

  First thing every appointment, he asked me the two questions he’d promised. He’d watch me like a hawk when I answered, looking for any sign that I wasn’t being truthful, or that I was holding anything back.

  I never lied or hid anything from him. I never had to.

  We talked about other stuff, too, and sometimes he made me mad, like the time I got talking about what it was like not to have a father.

  “Oh, boo-hoo,” he said. “My old man was drunk most of the years I was growing up. He made life at our place pure hell, no two ways about it. Nothing you can do about that stuff; you’ve just got to get on with it.”

  “I wasn’t looking for sympathy,” I said hotly. “I was just saying that’s how it is.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he said. His voice got quieter. “Things aren’t always easy, I know. Where is your old man anyway?”

  “No idea. He took off when I was a kid.”

  “Why don’t you look him up? Maybe you can find him, ask a few questions.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said, but I knew I never would.

  I sometimes wonder how different things would have been if Daniels hadn’t helped me, and I’d ended up getting sent away somewhere.

  One thing is sure, it wouldn’t have been good. And none of the stuff that happened when The Watcher came along would likely have taken place at all.

  chapter nine

  Even though, like I said, I’d mellowed out a lot since back then, I was no pushover. And I wasn’t what you’d call excited at the thought of spending my Saturdays in a stupid bakery — for zero pay.

  “You know we’re just going to be wasting our time,” I said to Tack. “That girl has to have a boyfriend already. There’s no way someone who looks like her is just kicking around free.”

  That was when he told me that he knew for a fact that she didn’t — because he’d checked her out. Weirdest thing was, he’d persuaded his ex-girlfriend, Teisha Johnson, to get the information for him. If I asked someone I used to date to do something like that, all I’d get would be a slap in the mouth.

  Before I could spend much time thinking about that, though, he dropped another bomb. According to Teisha’s sources, the girl, whose name was Mira, went to a private school and wasn’t allowed to date.

  “You mean to tell me …”

  But Tack waved off my protests. He actually insisted that once Dunja got to know him, she’d be only too happy to have her niece dating him. I thought of the aunt’s unfriendly face and knew he was hallucinating.

  Even so, just before five o’clock on Saturday morning, off we went, Tack whistling and me plodding along half asleep. I muttered a few things about how this girl was clearly going to be trouble and he was a mental case if he thought otherwise, but he just kept on smiling and whistling.

  It occurred to me at one point that if he was crazy to be doing this just to be around this Mira person, then I must be even crazier than he was, to be going along for absolutely no good reason. Except, he’d do the same thing for me if things were switched around.

  Like last month, at Pockets — a neighbourhood pool hall — he’d put down coin, but when his turn came up, this girl I sort of like, Lavender Dean, was on the table. He stepped off and gave me the spot without a word, which I knew he’d do.

  That’s a small thing, of course. I mean, it’s not like he gave me a kidney or anything, but it’s one of the ways you know someone is solid, when they do the right watcher thing without even stopping to think about it.

  Anyway, when we got to the bakery that morning, Mira wasn’t even there. I managed to keep my mouth shut about that, but it wasn’t easy.

  Dunja was no joy to work for, either. She acted like we should know what to do without being told and made what I know were rude comments in another language when we didn’t. Even Tack was losing some of his cheerfulness after a couple of hours of that.

  Then Mira arrived. She smiled at us and said hello, but after tying on an apron (something which I hate to tell you, Tack and I were also wearing) she spent most of her time out front — first setting up the displays and later waiting on customers.

  By twelve o’clock, which was the time Dunja had generously decided to let us — the unpaid help — off work, I never wanted to see flour or shortening or sugar again. And don’t even get me started on eggs. I’d been given the job of separating forty of them, which is no easy thing considering how slippery they are and how easy it is for bits of shell to break off and end up in the bowl.

  But I did it, and what do you think happened next? Dunja threw the yolks into this batter she was making and then, not five minutes later, she beat the whites and tossed them in too! I mean, if you’re going to put them all in there anyway, why take them apart in the first place?

  The worst thing was the way the place smelled. Think about it. There I was, no breakfast, stuck in a kitchen with breads and cakes and cookies and stuff all baking away. It was all I could do not to start eating my way out of bondage, like the prisoner I was.

  “You’d think she could have given us some lunch,” I grumbled as we headed toward our street.

  “Mmm,” Tack said. It was hard to tell if he’d even heard me.

  Except food was suddenly unimportant, because there, on the other side of the street, was The Watcher. He was standing in front of a shoe store just a short distance ahead of us, but he was looking in our direction.

  This time I decided to act like I didn’t notice him, just to see what he was up to. Sure enough, as soon as we passed him he started ambling along the same way we were going, staying on the other side of the street, moving steadily enough to keep us in sight.

  “Tack,” I said, “don’t look now but there’s a guy across the street who’s been following me for the last few weeks.”

  “Say what?” Tack started to look, which was exactly what I’d just told him not to do.

  I bumped into him on purpose, throwing him off balance enough to keep him from gawking and letting the guy know I’d spotted him.

  “Don’t look,” I repeated.

  “Aw, man, who’d be followin’ you?” Tack said.

  “I dunno, but I’ve caught him at it a few times recently,” I said. “C’mon, let’s speed up a bit and see if he stays with us.”

  We stepped it up, hurrying along until we reached our street, which was at the next corner. We turned up and went a short way. I pretended to drop something and start searching around for it. T
ack joined me.

  “That’s him,” I hissed, a jolt running through me at the sight of the guy, now heading straight toward us from around the corner.

  But the guy must have realized that he was spotted. He turned off the sidewalk and headed toward the same apartment building he’d used for cover another time. Only, when he got to the security door, he made a big show of checking through his pockets and acting like he couldn’t find his keys.

  He pressed a buzzer — or maybe more than one — and a minute later he pulled the door open and went into the building.

  “Looks like the dude lives there,” Tack said.

  “No, he knows we saw him and he’s just covering for himself. Did you notice how he ‘couldn’t find’ his keys and had to get someone to buzz him in?”

  Tack thought I was imagining things at first but when I explained about how I’d caught the guy watching me a couple of other times in the past week or two, he stopped scoffing.

  “Who you think it could be?” he asked as we got to my apartment.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “My father, maybe.”

  “Serious? You think that’s your father?”

  “Maybe. I don’t really remember what he looks like, but this guy seems kind of familiar to me, so it could be him.”

  “You got no pictures of your dad? Nuthin’?”

  “Mom got rid of anything like that a long time ago. All I have is a vague idea, and I know his hair is dark, like this guy’s.”

  “Wonder what he wants,” Tack mused.

  “Beats me. Maybe he got curious about what I look like. And I’m only guessing about who this guy is — or could be. I just can’t think of anyone else who might be following me around.”

  “You gonna talk to him?”

  I shrugged. All of a sudden I wished I hadn’t mentioned the guy to Tack at all. I changed the subject, which was as easy as mentioning Mira.

  While Tack got animated discussing his big plans to win over the girl and her aunt, I let my mind drift. I realized that if I was going to find out who The Watcher was and why he was following me, I was going to have to come up with a plan.

  The idea to give him the slip and start following him hit me almost immediately. I turned it over in my head, knowing it wouldn’t be quite as simple as it sounded. I’d have to fine tune the details if I was going to make it work.

  In the meantime, there were other things going on. It seemed the patch job on Lynn’s relationship with Conor hadn’t quite done the trick. When I got back to the apartment she was there again, only this time she had a battered old suitcase and a couple of bulging trash bags with her.

  chapter ten

  “Where’s Mom?” Lynn asked sullenly as soon as I came through the door. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but at least she wasn’t crying at that moment.

  “Where is she usually?” I said. “She’s somewhere in the building smoking and drinking coffee, talking about how the government should be giving single mothers more money to live on, or what a loser the last guy she dated was, or which reality show she likes the best.”

  Lynn almost smiled. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Did she say anything about cooking today?”

  “I wasn’t talking to her this morning. She was still sleeping when I left.” I almost told her about the bakery thing, but stopped myself.

  “Yeah, well, I gotta talk to her. I need to stay here for a while.” She looked at me pointedly, like she was waiting for me to offer her my room. As if.

  Actually, this same scene had already played out about six, eight months ago, and it had turned into a big pain for me. Mom and Lynn had both gone on and on about how girls need privacy more than boys do. They couldn’t explain why, exactly, but they kept at the theme with true female persistence, giving “reasons” that amounted to nothing. Like, Mom kept saying, “because she’s a girl, that’s why,” with her hands on her hips until I thought I might flip out completely.

  After what seemed like a three day long, non-stop argument, I’d given in — just to shut them up. This time, it wasn’t happening.

  Still, I knew from experience that they could wear me down if they were really determined. I figured a pre-emptive strike was in order. I waited for about an hour, then plunked down on the couch beside Lynn, who was drowning her sorrows in a stupid soap opera.

  “Uh, do you know anything about...?” I let my words trail off deliberately. She can’t stand that and I knew she’d practically torture me, if she had to, in order to get me to finish what I’d started saying.

  “What? Do I know anything about what?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “Porter, you tell me what you were going to say right now!” She tilted her head sharply and put on what she probably considered a fierce face.

  I almost laughed at that. What was she going to do, overpower me with her massive five-foot-three, hundred-and-five-pound physique? She’s tried that a few times over the past years, when she’s been especially outraged over some “terrible thing” I’ve done. And let me tell you, it doesn’t take much for her to see a thing as terrible.

  Anyway, she’d come at me when that happened — arms flailing and (I swear) eyes closed. Nuttiest sight you ever saw. She was no more threatening than a housefly and about as much of a challenge to swat away. Not that I actually swatted her. I’d just get hold of her wrists and stand back until she wore herself out trying to kick me. Then I’d kind of walk her to a chair and plop her down.

  This was no time for any of that, though, not if I was going to save my room. I pushed those thoughts off and kept a serious look on my face. Then I let her slowly coax it out of me, but not until I’d made her swear she wouldn’t tell anyone because it was embarrassing. I thought that was a nice touch — kind of made it sound more realistic, in case she wasn’t entirely convinced.

  “Okay, okay,” I said at last. “Do you know anything about fungus?”

  “Fungus?” she said, in a tone that was so disgusted you’d have thought I’d offered her some for dinner.

  “Yeah, like, in a rash ... on a person.”

  She looked horrified. “Whereabouts?” she asked, leaning away from me.

  “Uh, it’s kind of a travelling condition,” I said, barely managing to hang onto my straight face. “It seems to move around. First it’s in one place, then that clears and it shows up somewhere else.”

  “Eeeww.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s real itchy, too.” I scratched a couple of spots on my legs and chest for good measure. “And scaly. Want to feel it?”

  “No!” she nearly shrieked before getting a hold of herself. “I don’t want to be mean or anything, but it could be contagious. You should see a doctor right away.”

  “I dunno, it’ll probably clear up eventually,” I said. “I’ve only had it for a few months.”

  “Porter! You have to see a doctor! Does Mom know about it?”

  I shook my head sadly. “You’re the only person I felt like I could talk to.” I thought that was a nice touch. Lynn’s face softened.

  “I’m so glad you felt you could come to me,” she said, almost choking up. “But you have to see a doctor!”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Just don’t tell Mom.”

  “I won’t, if you promise to get it looked at right away.”

  “I will” I said solemnly. “I’ll go to the walk-in clinic tomorrow, right after school.”

  I don’t want you to get the idea from this that I’m one of those casual liars who’d rather make something up than tell the truth. I’m not. I’m no saint, but I’m usually pretty truthful. This, however, was an emergency situation and I preferred to think of the story as more of a trick than an actual lie. Anyway, when Mom came home a couple of hours later I didn’t think I was going to have to worry about a big fight over my room. I was right.

  First Mom raved about Lynn’s situation, going on about how she’d always said Conor was no good (she’d never said that) and how Lynn should be dating a doctor or la
wyer (she must think doctors and lawyers are just dying to date high school dropouts) and of course she can stay with us as long as she needs to and Porter will be glad to let her use his room again.

  I didn’t even have to open my mouth.

  “Uh, no, that’s okay,” Lynn smiled, trying to act like she was being fair. “He let me have it last time. I don’t want to kick him out of his own room again.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Mom waved a hand as she spoke. “You’re a girl. Girls need more privacy than boys.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Lynn repeated. She looked at me uneasily, like even the mention of using my room might cause fungus to start growing on her. “I’d rather sleep out here.”

  They went around it a couple of times, which was entertaining for me, since I had no part in the argument. In the end, Lynn persuaded Mom that she wanted to be able to watch TV to help her fall asleep and the whole thing was dropped.

  “Did you kids eat?” Mom thought to ask then. “I can fry some eggs and wieners for you.”

  “That’d be great,” I said quickly, before Lynn could tell her we’d had some Kraft dinner a while earlier. I can always eat.

  “I don’t know, maybe one egg for me,” Lynn decided. “I’m too upset to be able to eat much.” That was true. She’d picked at her bowl of KD and almost half of it had gone into the garbage.

  Mom fussed over her as she cooked. She went on about how the whole thing was a blessing in disguise because it would give Lynn a chance to get back on her own two feet.

  “You’ve got to keep your strength up,” Mom told her (for what, I couldn’t tell you — Lynn hadn’t worked in six months or more).

  “I will, Mom,” Lynn said, sniffling.

  Mom nodded. “Well, eat your egg, dear. Remember that time heals all wounds.” (How that tied into eating an egg, I had no idea.)

  There was no mention of Lynn getting a job, which you’d think would be on the top of the list for someone who was supposed to be getting back on her own two feet. Maybe that was because Mom hadn’t worked in so many years herself. I used to wish she’d get a job, spend some time in the real world, or barring that, that she’d put a little more effort into taking care of our place. The apartment gets pretty grungy sometimes and even the laundry builds up until I lug it down to the washers in the basement.