I was thinking about Emry, how it had been weeks since I had seen him. It felt like years. I was thinking about what he was doing. Was he sad and depressed again? Was he sitting there in his jail cell thinking of me too? The idea that he was in jail thinking of me and I was in a grocery store thinking of him seemed lame yet romantic all at the same time. I was going to have to take a chance that Buck wouldn’t be working and make it down there to see him sometime soon. Then my thoughts drifted to Buck. He hadn’t called me, and I couldn’t blame him. My family was seriously messed up, and in the process of it all, I was getting messed up too. I would make distance between us if I were in his shoes. Plus, I had punched him in the eye. I wondered what he had told all of his cop friends when they asked him what happened. Had he told them the truth? They would surely have harassed him if he had.
Then I thought about Emry’s sorrowful blue eyes again, like tiny puddles of the sea when they welled up, yet I had never seen him shed a true tear yet. He was good at controlling his emotions. He probably had had lots of practice. I didn’t even know how long he had been in jail.
I looked up. What aisle was I in now? PAPER PLATES, GARBAGE BAGS, TIN FOIL hovered in bright white letters above my head. Up ahead I saw a woman round the corner in front of me. Wait a minute. I knew that person.
I hurried up and rounded the corner myself but only peered around it hoping she would still have her back turned toward me so I could figure out exactly where I had seen her before. I pressed my back against the end of the aisle against some boxes of crackers. An older lady passed by me and gave me a disapproving look. I stared at her back briefly and then stretched my neck out so I could peek down the next aisle.
There stood a short, thin woman wearing tight skinny jeans and a loose red short-sleeved sweater that exposed one of her shoulders. I watched carefully as she positioned herself with her back still toward me and stood up on her tiptoes to inspect a can of soup at the very top of the shelf. Her bright blonde hair bounced as she settled back on flat feet once again. For a moment, I was able to see her side profile. I gasped. It was Candace, Emry’s ex-wife. He had referred to her as Candy. A pang of jealousy ripped through me just then, and I jumped back and pressed my body against the end of the aisle.
What a coincidence , I thought. Candace and I in the same exact store at the same exact time. Then I felt another emotion that I was not used to feeling. I suddenly wanted to watch her every move. I wanted to see exactly how she moved and memorize her facial features, because I knew that she had been with Emry. My Emry. He was more hers than he was mine. She had been married to him. Again, that sick feeling came over me. Jealousy and disgust all at the same time. She looked all wrong for him. How could he have ever been attracted to her? Then again, look at me. I was nothing to gloat over either.
I found myself stretching my neck to get another look at Candace. I realized she was gone, and then I found myself panic stricken. I raced down the aisle and glanced around to the next one. She wasn’t there. My heart rate picked up as I practically ran to the next one, and finally, there she was. This time I didn’t hide. I decided to pretend like I was browsing that aisle as well and I even walked by her.
What on earth was I doing? What if she had turned around to look at me? What if she recognized me and questioned me about my little visit with Emry? I wouldn’t even know what to say to her. I walked quickly down the rest of the aisle and straight out the doors. The wind whipped all around me as I felt the bands of cold snow-sleet mix fall violently into my face. It burned, but I barely felt it. I rushed to my car and tried to focus on slowing my breathing as I slammed my door shut. I leaned my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes. What was I now, a stalker? Why did I care so much about her anyway? He told me he was completely over her and had no feelings for her whatsoever. But it irritated me that she had been there to visit him. What if she still loved him and wanted to be with him? She looked like the kind of girl that once she had something in her head, she wouldn’t stop until she had exactly what she wanted, even if that meant destroying a girl like me. Then again, I felt the exact same way about her. She had her chance with Emry and had blown it. He didn’t want her anymore. It was time for someone else to have a turn, and that someone was me.
I opened my eyes and tried to focus on the large automatic sliding door at the front of the store. It opened and I held my breath, but only a couple with a small child walked out. I watched one of them press the child against their chest as they ran toward their vehicle and tried to shield him from the sky belting ice their way.
I relaxed again. What was I going to do here exactly? I didn’t want to go back home. I had barely been at the store for maybe a half hour or more. Carlin would surely still be awake when I got back. I had no interest in holding a conversation with her or having to listen to her try to hold one with me. We didn’t like each other. That much was clear. She didn’t seem to like my mother much either, so I wondered why she was even there to begin with. Maybe she was trying to steal my father away to get even. If so, she was in for a big surprise when she found out that my father was already taken by Mrs. Anderson.
The doors of the store opened a few more times, and a little while later I sat straight up in my seat as I squinted to make out who I thought was Candace. Whoever it was, they weren’t too good at running in high heels as the accumulation from the sky had increased. Just a few parking spots down from me she stopped and threw open the trunk of her car. It was enough for me to recognize those skinny jeans. It was Candace. She was driving an old red clunker with quite a bit of rust around the edges. I watched as she jumped into the driver’s side and started up the car, the engine coming to life as she turned the key and put the car in reverse. I found myself putting my own key in the ignition and starting mine as well. My hand moved to the gearshift. Now what? She started to pull out of the parking lot, and I frantically pulled my car out after her. I was going to follow her.
She drove quick for the roads being so slick, and I felt nervous keeping up with her, afraid that the tread I had decided could make it through this winter without getting new tires might make my car suddenly slip. Scenes of me wrecking flashed in my mind as I imagined my car going off the side of the road and slamming into the guardrail. Maybe I would spin completely around and hit another car head-on or go into the wide, deep ditches that were on both sides of the road. My right hand moved to double check that my seatbelt was securely in place. Then it moved to meet my left hand that was gripped tightly on the steering wheel. There weren’t many other cars on the roads. I figured everyone else was being smart tonight by staying inside and avoiding driving altogether, like I should be. I didn’t even know why I was acting so psychotic now. What exactly was I expecting from this situation? I couldn’t just follow her into her house.
Candace went to the edge of Seneca almost toward where the prison was, but then she turned down a narrow road that winded into a more country section of town. The snowy mixture falling from the sky started to come down harder in heavy sheets. I cranked my windshield wipers on high and strained my eyes to see. Her rear taillights had disappeared suddenly from my vision. Where had she gone? My heart began to thump in my chest. I slowed and thought I saw a lane up ahead on the right. I moved closer toward it and saw brake lights. Was that her? It had to be. A heavy mist lifted from the ground making it even more impossible to see. I waited a few minutes, my car stationary in front of the lane, and once I couldn’t see the brake lights anymore, I counted to 60 in my head, giving her a minute to get out of her car and into her house, then I pulled into the lane a little bit. It wasn’t a very long driveway. I shut off my own headlights and the ignition next.
Now what? Was I going to go up and knock on her door, give her a friendly smile and say, Oh, hi, I’m Anna James. I believe you may remember me from the prison? We were both visiting Emry Logan on the same day, and because of you, my time was cut in half with him. If you wouldn’t mind, I would love for you to tell me everything yo
u know about him. Oh, and by the way, I hate you too for having been married to him before.
I almost laughed out loud. I was a stalker! This was just plain crazy.
I reached in back seat and grabbed an extra scarf, a wool hat and an extra heavy pair of gloves I kept as spare back there and put them all on, wrapping the scarf a couple times around my head so that
really the only thing that remained uncovered were my eyes. I got out of the car and shut the door quietly. I felt the wind and wet moisture instantly hit my face. The bitter cold air sent a burning sensation down my throat as I breathed it in. Sleet hit my eyelashes, and I put my head down as I tried to stay along the edge of the driveway. After a few steps, I attempted to lift my head and saw the red car parked in front of a small brown house. A gust of wind blew again. It knocked me back a little. I struggled to regain my balance.
A yellow light flickered on in one of the front windows. I watched a figure move across the room inside and assumed that it had to be Candace. I moved closer to the window. I could see wallpaper with roses dotting it and a chandelier dangling from the ceiling. Candace came into view. She had already changed out of the clothes she had been wearing at the store and now was sporting an old faded black sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. Her damaged bleached blonde hair hung midway down her back. She was pacing back and forth in the room. I squinted my eyes to see what she was doing and realized she was on the telephone as she had a cordless tucked under her chin as she walked in circles, her lips moving frantically as she spoke.
I looked up to the sky. I pulled my scarf down so that the sleet and snow could freely hit my face. I could feel it pelt my cheeks and then melt, sliding down my skin in thick droplets. I knew I really shouldn’t be here right now. This felt too dangerous for me. What would Emry think if he knew I had followed his ex-wife, had practically walked up to her front window and had been watching her? He would surely think I was completely insane, some sort of freak. I definitely felt like a freak now, and a foolish one at that by letting these crazy impulses take over me. I threw my arms up in the air in defeat. This was ridiculous.
I looked back toward the window. Candace was nowhere to be seen. I turned around and started back down the driveway to where my car was parked. I had almost reached it when I suddenly saw headlights flash my way and turn into the lane. I dived to the ground behind my car and ducked down out of sight, my body crouched low. An old Toyota truck rolled slowly by me and stopped right beside Candace’s car. I peeked around the edge of my bumper. The truck’s engine roared, and I could see its windshield wipers going back and forth as the passenger-side door opened and a girl jumped out, waved once to the driver and ran to the front door to get out of the weather. I didn’t get a very good look, but I knew at once that it had been Traci, Candace’s daughter. Emry seemed to have spoken fondly of her. I was a little envious of that fact as well. I had no idea why. She was just a little girl, after all.
The truck backed out of the driveway and I waited until it was completely gone before getting back in my car. I turned the key in the ignition and backed slowly out of the driveway, even though I fought every impulse inside of me to floor it in reverse just to get out of there. I drove a little ways down the road before stopping the car and leaning my forehead against the steering wheel. I was on the verge of hyperventilating.
I had just drove to some stranger’s house and watched her through the window in the middle of a snowstorm. Something was seriously wrong with me. Heat from the car vents blasted my face. I just sat there for a few minutes with my body slouched over, my eyes closed tight. Emry’s face popped back into my head as I tried to picture him as perfectly as he was. I tried to remember all the details of his face. His soft brown hair and how the edges just touched the outer edges of his eyes, his perfectly small, rounded nose and smooth cheeks dotted with freckles. I imagined his lips, the bottom one a little fuller than the top and how they parted just a little as he breathed. His hands resting before him, the nails looking chewed, and his tan arms with biceps clearly visible underneath the orange jumpsuit. A prison jumpsuit.
A horn blasted loudly from behind me as I jumped so high my head actually hit the roof of the car. I looked in my rearview mirror and winced from the brightness of the high beams obviously meant to give me the hint to get out of the way. That’s when I realized that I still had my car parked in the middle of the right lane. I put the car in Drive and pressed my foot on the gas pedal. It lurched forward, and with the adrenaline still zipping through my veins from the night’s events, I recklessly sped down the slippery roads of Seneca.
I still didn’t feel like going to my house. I felt like an emotional wreck, and I didn’t want to have to walk in there and face all of them right away as I figured they’d all still be up watching TV. The snowfall was lighter now. I turned down the speed of my windshield wipers. I eased up on the gas pedal and slowed the car down as well, trying to think of where I could go. I knew where I wanted to go. I wanted to go to Seneca County Prison, but I knew that was impossible and tried to erase the thought out of my mind as quickly as it appeared. I wish I had had more friends to turn to for a place to hang out. Most of the girls I had been close to in high school were now married and actually had lives. Most of them didn’t even live in Seneca anymore. I felt cornered as if there was nowhere else to go but home. I considered pulling off in some abandoned lot and sleeping in my car. But that wouldn’t be fair to my mother. She would be worried sick about me and probably already was with how I had left, not to mention the amount of snow that had just fallen down in the past few hours.
I began driving down a familiar part of Seneca and then I breathed a sigh of relief as I neared the antique store and pulled into one of the front parking spaces. I shuffled through my pant’s pocket to see if the key to get in was still there. Sure enough, my fingers gripped tight around it. I removed the heavy scarf from around my face along with the long coat, both dripping wet from my recent stalking expedition at Candace’s, and tossed them in the backseat.
Once inside the store, I flicked on the lights and took off my other coat to hang it up. I looked around and soaked up the silence for a moment before plopping down in an overstuffed antique leather chair in the corner of the front room and tried to relax. I tried closing my eyes, and a million different thoughts automatically ran through my mind. Maybe I should try this again. I reopened my eyes, and then after a moment, shut them tightly, only this time I pictured myself in a white box with nothing around me but pure white walls. I tried to focus on how there was nothing but white around me, nothing to look at but the whiteness, the blankness, as I tried to clear my head and not be so bombarded by the thoughts and emotions that now haunted me every second of every day from the moment I woke up and sometimes even in my sleep. I deserved a few minutes of peace to reclaim my sanity that I had felt almost certainly slipping away from me tonight.
This was exactly what I had needed, a moment to myself which is something that was rare and far between nowadays. It seemed like even in my bedroom in the very house I had grown up in that was supposed to be my place of comfort, I would attempt to do something such as this, but then I would hear a noise or someone’s voice and the realization that Carlin and all of her shadiness was being allowed to lurk about the house provoked my emotions just enough to make me never feel comfortable there. A safe haven, that’s what this store was. I needed to spend more time in silence like this. I was finally starting to feel better.
That serene moment ended abruptly as I heard a loud noise coming from the back of the store. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck rise as I sat up and listened, my fingertips indenting into the arms of the old chair. I heard someone’s voice, almost like a hiss, and I swallowed the newly formed lump in my throat as I stood and slowly crept toward the back of the store.
Had I caught a burglar breaking into my mother’s store? No one else had a key but my mother and me, and I knew she certainly hadn’t stepped foot in here since her heart had sta
rted acting up again.
I gasped for air as I realized I had been holding my breath and my lungs felt like they were on fire from doing so. I walked on the balls of my feet and cringed as I heard one of the floorboards screech underneath me. I paused. I heard nothing. Then somebody rushed around the corner and slammed into me, the blow knocking me backwards as I stumbled to regain my balance. I heard a loud thump as whoever had run into me had fallen onto the floor. Once I was able to stand upright again, my eyes scanned the floor in front to see what had happened.
“What are you doing?” a familiar voice snapped at me.
Carlin was lying at my feet, her hands behind her as she groaned in pain and gave me this disgusted look as if this whole situation was entirely my fault.
“What am I doing?” I yelled back at her. “What are you doing?” I watched Carlin get back on her feet. I offered her no help. She put her hand on her back as if she had pulled something, her eyes fierce with anger and aimed accusingly at me. “Helene asked me to get a receipt, and I dropped a metal box on my foot. I was coming in here to get some ice out of the fridge and …” She glared at me and pointed a finger in my face. “Look what you’ve done now!” Her face twisted in a pained expression.
I shook all over from how angry I was becoming, the intensity of the powerful emotion increasing by the second. “You came here for a receipt this time of night in the middle of a snowstorm?” I screamed, utterly outraged.
“I needed some peace and quiet,” she began to explain but then decided to direct the focus of conversation to me once again. “What about you?”
“Me?” I asked, suddenly feeling like shoving her with all my might and watch her fall back onto the floor.
Strange in Skin Page 10
