Someone Was Watching

by David Patneaude

  “I’m sorry, Antkova,” she said, lifting her head and turning to look up at the stocky woman in the flowery blue dress. More powder drifted down from her head.

  “Don’t you like your hair, honey?”

  The little girl looked at the floor and slowly shook her head.

  “Well, it won’t have to be this way always. You can have your pretty blond hair back in a while.”

  “Before my mommy and daddy come and get me? They might not know I’m their little girl if I’m wearing this hair.”

  Antkova looked down at her with her sad-eyed smile. “It’ll be before that, honey.” She knelt down next to the stool and gave the little girl a hug, powder rubbing off on her face and hair and dress. “It’ll be before that.”

  14

  Thursday morning came early for Chris. It was still dark in his room when he woke from a series of short, restless naps, his stomach in a knot. He felt as if he were facing a day or several days that could turn out to be either like Christmas or a trip to the dentist to have every tooth in his mouth pulled, without novocaine. There probably wouldn’t be any in-between. They’d either find her or they’d find out how foolish they’d been. He didn’t even want to think about the kinds of trouble they could get in on the way to either alternative. And then they’d have to come back and face their parents—if they made it back.

  He looked at the clock—5:07. He’d hoped it was later. He wondered if Pat was awake yet and decided he must be. Pat’s nerves had been showing through his skin last night as they’d paced around the neighborhood like two cats with their fur on fire. Chris had figured then that neither of them would get much sleep, although he knew they both needed it.

  Now he had to lie here and stare at the ceiling for the next two hours. He couldn’t risk getting up, not yet. A suspicious mom and dad was the last thing he needed.

  Two hours later, he sat at his desk listening to his parents’ hushed voices drifting up the stairs. He signed “Love, Chris,” at the bottom of the note he’d just written, and read it silently to himself.

  “Dear Mom and Dad,” it began.

  Pat and I have gone to look for Molly. We think we know where she is. We think she’s not at the bottom of the river. It shouldn’t take long to find out if we’re right. We’ll be back in a couple of days. Watch the videotape again. Think about what we told you. It’s spooky. We have to check it out, but we’ll be careful. I’ll call you.

  It looked about right. Enough information but not too much. He didn’t want people chasing after them before he and Pat had a chance to find out what they needed to find out. He folded the note in thirds, wrote “Mom and Dad” on the outside, and tucked it into the desk drawer.

  His parents looked up at him and smiled when he walked into the kitchen. Surprised but not suspicious. Good, he thought. He’d considered staying in his bedroom until after they left for work so their suspicions wouldn’t get stirred up, but he wanted to see them. He needed to see them.

  “What’s up, Chris?” his dad asked.

  What does he mean by that? Chris thought.

  “Nothing much,” he said. “Some barking dog woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Then I smelled food down here.” He eyed the omelette and cantaloupe sitting on his mom’s plate.

  “This is mine, you little beggar,” she said, smiling and grabbing onto her plate with both hands as if Chris were going to pounce on it from ten feet away.

  His dad laughed. “I’ll make you one, too, Chris,” he said, getting up from the table. “I don’t think you’re going to talk your mom out of hers.”

  A half-hour later Chris watched them pull out of the driveway. Pat’s parents would have left a few minutes earlier. They always did.

  Chris was waiting outside the front door when Pat arrived five minutes later, red-faced and out of breath.

  “You ready?” Pat asked.

  “I think so,” Chris said. He’d left the note in the middle of the kitchen table.

  “Tickets? Money? Map? Clothes?” Pat said.

  Chris nodded. The tickets and clothes were in the backpack. He’d split the money up between his wallet, his socks, and the backpack’s zippered inside pocket. “How about you? You got everything—your money, change for bus fare?”

  “I checked about ten times,” Pat said.

  “Did you leave your parents a note?”

  “Yeah,” Pat replied, swallowing hard. “I told them what but not where.”

  Chris checked the front door to make sure it was locked. “Let’s go, then,” he said, looking at his watch. “We’ve only got about ten minutes before the next bus.”

  They left the yard at a fast walk. Two boys in T-shirts and jeans, each with a small pack on his back, looking as if they were heading off to the park for the day.

  They covered the three blocks to the bus stop in a hurry. The bus was crowded with people on their way to work downtown. Chris stood in the aisle next to Pat and watched people napping over the morning paper. He imagined the headlines reading, “LOCAL BOYS MISSING, FEARED DEAD.” A shudder shot through him. He looked at Pat for comfort, but Pat was in a world of his own, his eyes darting around the bus.

  “Looking for spies again, Pat?” he asked softly.

  “These people are just pretending to be going to work,” Pat whispered with a nervous grin. “We both knew they’re spies, and who they’re following.”

  “I don’t think they’d follow us very fast,” Chris said. “They look like they’re in a coma.”

  “They’re pretending.”

  Chris nodded toward the two-person seat next to Pat, where a fat woman sat by herself. She was slumped over in the seat with her eyes closed, breathing heavily, a magazine propped up over one side of her face to block out the sun.

  “She’s doing a good job of pretending,” Chris said, and they both laughed. None of the other passengers even looked up.

  Once downtown, they made a quick connection with the bus to Mitchell Field. It wasn’t as crowded, and they found seats toward the back. Looking out the window, Chris was reminded of the trip to Greenwater. It already seemed like a long time ago.

  Chris and Pat had both been to the airport with their parents before, but they agreed that it seemed bigger now and less friendly. They found the Central Express ticketing area and looked on the overhead monitor to check for flight 151 to Tampa. It was departing on time from gate 22. Since they already had their tickets and they had no baggage to check, they skipped the line at the ticket counter and headed for the gate.

  Five minutes later they’d gone through the security area and were standing at the check-in counter for flight 151. So far so good, but Chris’s nerves were telling him otherwise. He felt as if he were five years old again in a classroom full of strangers, on his first day of school, watching his mom walk away and leave him.

  “Do you gentlemen have a seating preference?” the young man behind the counter asked as Chris handed him the tickets. His name tag said Jay Miller.

  Chris wasn’t sure what that meant. He waited for Pat to say something, but Pat didn’t seem to know what the guy was talking about, either. Pat looked at Chris. “I don’t know,” he said. “Do you have one?”

  “Not really,” Chris said, glancing back at Jay Miller, who looked amused.

  “We’re not very full this morning,” Jay Miller said, checking his computer. “I can give you window seats, aisle seats—just about anything you want. What sounds good?”

  “A window,” Chris said. He wanted to see where they were going.

  “Just put me next to him,” Pat said.

  “Row nineteen okay?” Jay Miller said, grinning.

  “Sure,” Pat said.

  Chris had no idea where row 19 was, and he doubted that Pat did, either, but at least they were about finished. Jay Miller seemed like a nice guy, but his smile was making Chris even more nervous.

  “So, which one of you is Rocky Sims?” Jay Miller said, his pen poised over the ticket packet. Pat hes
itated and then held out his hand for the ticket and boarding pass.

  “Not sure, huh?” Jay Miller said, still grinning. He marked the seat number on the pass and handed the packet to Pat.

  Keep smiling, Chris thought. Keep thinking we’re just a couple of ignorant kids. “He just daydreams a lot,” Chris said, reaching for the other ticket folder. “Let’s go, Rocky.” They headed for seats by the big window where they could watch the planes take off and land.

  “Have a good flight,” Jay Miller called after them.

  “Thanks,” they both replied.

  Chris was shaking his head as they sat down. “Rocky Sims,” he said under his breath. “What a dumb name. And the least you could do is recognize it when somebody talks to you.”

  “I like it,” Pat said indignantly. “And besides, I was nervous.”

  “About what?” Chris said, trying to sound calm.

  “You know why, Fred,” Pat said, lowering his voice. “Speaking of dumb names. Fred Barnes.”

  “Can I help it if I grew up watching The Flintstones?” Chris whispered. “It’s good enough to keep people off our tails if they decide to check the airlines.” Chris hoped it would be, anyway—at least for a few days.

  Chris watched Pat rummage through his backpack and pull out two bananas. He offered one to Chris, who shook his head no. His stomach was full of butterflies, and they were getting more active. Planning this trip had brought out one set of emotions; actually going on it was allowing a different group to surface. Fear and doubt were right up near the top.

  The big plane was only half-full. Pat and Chris’s seats were midway back on the right side. There were no passengers in the six other seats in their row, which stretched across the plane and was divided by two aisles. Chris was glad for the space. He hadn’t been looking forward to lying to more people about where they were going and why.

  He was thinking of the “why” part when the plane inched away from the terminal. He watched Pat check his seat belt and grip the arm rests. “Don’t fall out,” he said to him in his most sincere voice. Pat ignored him. Chris went back to his thinking, looking out the window at the pavement drifting slowly past.

  Suddenly they were accelerating down the runway. A moment later they lifted off. The plane gained altitude and banked to the right, and for an instant Chris felt as if they were about to slide back to earth. But then the plane righted itself and continued up. Below him Chris saw the city, and then it was gone, and they were climbing through cottonball clouds. And he was thinking—still thinking about why they were going. He figured that he’d stay focused on that—on finding Molly and bringing her back—and he’d be able to keep the feeling in the pit of his stomach under control. If he could just concentrate on where they were going, the journey there might not seem so scary. But right now he was scared—not only of what lay ahead, but also of what he’d left behind. What were his parents going to think? What were they going to feel?

  He looked down at a puffy blanket of clouds—and suddenly he felt exhausted. Suddenly he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He let them close, and drifted off, still thinking about Molly.

  “Chris,” he heard someone say through a fog. He opened his eyes and glanced around, not sure where he was at first. Then he remembered. He looked at Pat, who was staring at him with a funny expression on his face. “Did you say something?” Chris said.

  “You been in a trance?” Pat asked. “I tried talking to you a couple of times before I figured out you were asleep. You tired?”

  “Just thinking,” Chris said. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing much. I was just saying that things are going okay so far. I mean, we made it on the plane and everything. I think it’s even the right plane.”

  “I hope so,” Chris said. Pat was right. So far, things had gone okay. So far, they’d been able to avoid trouble. He wondered how long that would last.

  He looked up to see the flight attendants approaching with a cart. He didn’t feel hungry, but he might as well try to eat something. He wasn’t sure when they’d get another chance, and this food was already paid for.

  They ate their meal quietly. Chris picked at his food and stared at the countryside flowing by far below: serpentine rivers; straight-arrow highways crisscrossing in perfect cloverleafs; forests and lakes; mile after mile of brown and green fields in squares and rectangles and circles; and here and there a small town or a range of hills rising above the plain.

  After the flight attendant took the remains of their food, the boys lay back in their seats and dozed off. When Chris jump-started himself awake, the plane was in its descent. But a dream had awakened him, a dream of Molly standing in a green rectangular field and waving to him. He looked out the window. The terrain had changed. There were no more fields—not the same kind, anyway. The ground below looked green and boggy, and lakes and swamps and narrow paths of water dotted and striped the land. Florida. Somewhere over Florida.

  15

  The air outside the air-conditioned terminal was familiar but different. Still humid. But thicker, heavier. And the afternoon heat lay on them like a sponge.

  They located the ground transportation booth and learned from the woman behind the counter that they could get on a van to the bus depot, where they would be able to catch a bus to just about anywhere they wanted to go. She let them use her phone to call the depot, and for an instant Chris imagined himself asking if there was a bus leaving for Milwaukee that afternoon. He thought about how much easier it would be just to get on the bus and head for home, and not have to face whatever was ahead of them. But it was only a thought; he concentrated on Molly again, discarding the idea of skipping out as if it were chocolate-covered liver, and asked the man on the phone about the bus to Westview. They could easily catch the next one, he said, which departed at 3:30.

  No one in the group of people waiting for the vans seemed to pay much attention to them. Chris guessed that kids on their own at a Florida airport were no big deal. But he was glad when the van arrived. He found himself worrying that something would happen to mess up their plans.

  An old lady and a middle-aged couple got in the van with them. The couple got out first, at a high-rise hotel. The old lady turned to look at Chris and Pat as the van got back on the road. She faced frontward again, but Chris knew something was on her mind. He looked out the window, pretending to ignore her. She turned around again.

  “You boys going to the bus depot?” she asked.

  Chris looked at Pat, who was faking sleep. “Yes,” he said.

  “Where you off to?”

  “Westview,” Chris said.

  “Westview,” she said, drawing the name out musically. “I know people in Westview. Used to visit there when my husband was alive. Good fishing there.” She nodded her head slightly, as if registering a long-ago memory. “Have you lived there long?”

  What was this, twenty questions? Chris was hoping for some time to think. “Just visiting,” he said. He looked out the window again, wishing she’d take the hint. There wasn’t a mountain or hill or even a high spot in sight. It was flat—the flattest place he’d ever seen. A good place to ride a bike, he decided, but not quite what he’d envisioned. He could see palm trees—he’d expected to see those—but they were bigger, more unreal, than he’d imagined, and the houses were smaller. Except for some big homes near the hotel, he’d seen mostly small stucco boxes in rows of faded pink and yellow, lining each side of the streets. Many of the bigger streets were cluttered with convenience stores, fast-food restaurants, and gas stations. He decided that they hadn’t seen the best part of town.

  “Who are you visiting there?” Every time she said “there” it came out “they-uh.”

  “My aunt and uncle.”

  “Oh,” she said thoughtfully. “What is they-uh name?”

  Chris thought for a moment. “Smith,” he said finally. Something original.

  “Don’t know any Smiths,” she said.

  “Oh,” Chris said, hoping sh
e didn’t know everybody in the town.

  The van crossed a busy intersection and pulled up in front of the bus depot. Pat woke up miraculously as the driver slid the side door open for them, allowing a wave of hot air to flood into the van and give them a taste of what waited for them outside. They got out reluctantly, paid him, and started for the entrance. Chris had thought about giving him a tip, but he didn’t know if he was supposed to, or how much to give. Besides, he was still having a hard time believing that it cost them ten dollars each to get here. But the lady at the airport had told them that a taxi would be more than that. He wondered how long their money was going to last them.

  “You boys have a nice trip,” the old lady called to them before the door slammed shut.

  Chris and Pat turned and waved toward the van. The old lady smiled at them through the window as the van drove off.

  “Thanks for your help, Sleepy,” Chris said.

  “You were handling things okay,” Pat said sheepishly. “I didn’t want to mess up your story. Besides, I think she liked you.”

  “She liked the company.”

  A half-hour later they were on the bus for Westview and points north. Except for a white-haired couple near the front and two college-age girls in the middle of the bus, Chris and Pat were the only passengers. They sat in the back.

  “I wonder how this bus company makes any money,” Pat said.

  Chris shrugged. All he could think about now was their destination, what they were going to do when they got there, what they’d find. It seemed as if it had been a year since they’d gotten on the bus to Greenwater. Now the final leg of their tour was almost over. Suddenly two more hours didn’t seem long enough. What if they’d been wrong? There’d be no more hope. All the suspicions would be washed away. The only thing left would be crushing disappointment, and a long trip home to angry parents.

  He looked out and watched business districts transforming themselves into neighborhoods with houses and yards—bigger, nicer houses and yards with swimming pools and lots of palm trees and strange-looking shrubs and flowers. More like the Florida he’d seen pictures of. They were on a main road now, picking up speed as the afternoon traffic thinned out. Except for trees and buildings, the terrain was still flat in every direction.