I zeroed back in on Alex as she started talking again. “They found him almost torn apart. They think it might have been an animal, because a human just wouldn’t be capable of that kind of violence. From the description I got from Jennifer, it was pretty sick.”
“Do they think it was the same thing that attacked those bears?” I asked. The image of the running creature just behind my house floated through my head. Goosebumps erupted along my arm. Had I witnessed Ryan Holt’s killer?
“They think it might be, yeah. The damage was the same. The Forest Ranger is completely stumped. She says the markings don’t match any animal she knows of.”
“Maybe, it’s bigfoot,” Daniel said.
I laughed and looked at him. His eyes weren’t distant anymore. I concentrated, and found that Alex’s thoughts had been drowned out again. One day, when I didn’t think it would give my own secret away, I would have to ask him about that.
“That’s not funny!” Alex chided him. “Somebody is dead, ripped to pieces!”
“Sorry.” He didn’t sound very sorry. I wondered about the nasty look on his face.
My eyes on Daniel, but talking to Alex I said, “Who was Mr. Holt? I mean what did he do for a living?”
For some reason, I felt like this mattered.
“He was a retired Army Ranger. He’d been on disability for a while, because of a bullet in the knee. He’d been really depressed, but he was just starting to turn his life around. I talked to Jennifer, whose Mom knows his sister, and she said he’d just quit drinking and had found a job with the sheriff’s office.”
“He worked for the sheriff?”
“Yeah. Sheriff Cobb. You can see why it’s all over town.”
“And you had to help spread the word?” I asked, wondering if I’d mistaken my initial judgment of her.
Her blue eyes met mine in cool annoyance. I’d never seen eyes so capable of making me feel like I was five-years-old and had just done something wrong. Even Ellen lacked that ability. “No,” she said. “I wanted to explain why I would be spending the night. Dad’s over in Asheville for the weekend, visiting my Grandma. I didn’t want to be at the house by myself. Not with a murderer wandering around.”
Her word stuck. Murderer.
“Sorry.”
“You’re forgiven.”
She smiled and looked between Daniel and me. Now that she had gotten the important news out of the way, I knew teasing wouldn’t be beneath her. She might not spread my interest to the school, but that wouldn’t stop her from making me uncomfortable in front of Daniel. I could see as much in her eyes.
“Pity I can’t stay the night too,” Daniel said preemptively, directing his words at Alex. He obviously saw the teasing coming as well.
“Ellen might flay me alive if you did,” I said.
“At least, without your skin, you wouldn’t have to worry about things like poison ivy or skin rashes,” Daniel said.
“But it would kill my complexion.”
“There’s an upside and a downside to everything in life, I guess.”
“Yeah, and you should avoid the downside if you can,” I said, thinking of my personal philosophy on life. Endure the bad and celebrate the good, even if the good was miniscule. Ellen had taught me that.
“True. Do you think Ellen would flay me alive if I stood guard outside to make sure no scary monsters came to get you?” His tone was playful, but his eyes were serious.
“If you didn’t tell her, she probably wouldn’t care. I might get annoyed, though.”
“Why?”
I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t need to be protected.”
“Everyone needs protection,” he said softly. “Even me.”
“You have to learn to depend on yourself for your own protection.” I looked down at the table to avoid his eyes. “Besides, depending on others makes you weak.”
“No, it doesn’t. If anything, it’s a sign of strength.”
“Say you depended on others for everything then one day they weren’t there anymore. What would you do?” I questioned. “Wouldn’t it make you vulnerable, more apt to suffer? Depending on yourself prevents that kind of pain.”
“I see your point, but depending on people is what this life is about. Trusting someone with your secrets and your life, that means something. I think being afraid to depend on others makes you weaker.” He thought about it for a second then added, “I do, however, think a person should choose who they depend upon with caution.”
“I guess, maybe, I’ve just had a hard time finding people worthy enough to depend upon.”
“Not even Ellen?”
“Ellen is different.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. It was obvious. “She’s my mom. And she’s Ellen.”
“Others can be just as supportive.”
“Not in my experience. Most people just care about what they can get from you rather than what they can help you through.”
“I hate to imagine the people you’ve met.”
“You really would,” I told him, thinking of dozens of people I had thought were my friends only to find them selling me out simply to join the Elite.
“Do you think you could trust me?” he asked.
The question felt like a natural extension of our argument, but then again, it didn’t. There was a pause as I contemplated my emotions on the subject. “You would be a likely candidate for trust, from what I know of you, but you’re nowhere near proving it to me.”
“I don’t think I could prove it to you.” Daniel knocked on the wood table. “Not a lot gets through.”
“More than you’d think,” I said contrarily.
He was about to retort when Alex purposefully coughed to remind she was still very much sitting at the table. I jumped, having forgotten about her. I noticed Daniel and I were leaning towards each other again, talking very close. I leaned away, putting her between us again. She was smirking as if we had just proved something to her.
“What?” I asked.
“I can’t believe you two have only known each other for a week. You bicker like an old married couple,” she answered.
Daniel and I exchanged a look. Did we bicker like that? He stood abruptly, and I thought from his body language he was resisting the urge to look behind him to the forest. Had she embarrassed him to the point that he wanted to leave? Would he take the apparently life-threatening forest over staying here?
“I think we should show Alex what bickering really is,” he said playfully.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Back to the car?” I asked.
“Back to the car,” he agreed.
It was quite late, past midnight. Alex and I had sat up talking about school and the man who had been killed. Daniel had left around four to go eat dinner with his family, a half hour before Ellen got back. He had waved at us cheerfully as he left, but I knew something major was bothering him. I hadn’t known him for long, but he couldn’t keep the emotions out of his eyes like he could the rest of his face. That was where I saw the truth of him.
Was he bothered by the man dying or something I’d done? We had bickered constantly as he taught me about cars, even going so far as to change Ellen’s oil for us, which, according to him, hadn’t been changed since the year the car was bought. But we had both enjoyed that. Maybe he was upset I wouldn’t play guitar for him? I looked past Alex toward the lonely, neglected guitar I had bought ages ago at a pawn shop. What would it hurt really? It would be a test to see if he would laugh.
Alex and I had a blanket stretched across our knees and tea in our hands as we sat opposite one another on my window seat. After discussing Ryan Holt’s death to the point of redundancy – the question of what killed him and how it was possible, remained unanswered – we moved on to lesser happenings, like Mark.
“I think Mark is angling to ask you out,” Alex told me as we looked out my window.
I chuckled dryly at her words. I was pretty certain he wanted to ask me out. I’d heard hi
m thinking of different ways to ask since my arrival, but he couldn’t seem to pluck up the courage. He thought I was an easy catch, but he was also intimidated by me. What if I said no? What if the strange looking new girl said ‘no’? His ego wouldn’t allow for the rejection. He was right to worry.
“I think so, too,” I agreed.
“What are you going to do?” I heard from her thoughts that she wanted to know how I was going to let him down. Somehow, she already knew I wasn’t interested in Mark. Perhaps, it was those x-ray eyes of hers.
“Simple military planning,” I told her.
“Huh?”
“A decoy followed by your basic flanking maneuver.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Just wait until he asks me. You’ll see.”
“Today was very informative,” she said after a pause.
“How so?” I asked carefully. Alex had a way of springing things on me, mainly because she didn’t think about them first.
“Clare and Daniel sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-”
“Shhh!” I hissed, embarrassed. “There is no kissing. There is no sitting in a tree. We’re just friends, like I am with you. It’s no different.”
“Yeah. Whatever. I just know I’d love to be that friendly with him.”
“What does that mean?”
“He is adorable, and he is totally, irrevocably, interested in you.”
She looked back out the window with a smile, gratified that she’d made me blush. I battled the blush, accepting the fact I would be hard pressed to keep things from Alex. She saw too much with those baby blues. Wanting to change the subject, hating that I hoped she was right, I brought up something I had noticed in the past week. Something I was curious about for multiple reasons.
“So…I noticed that everyone at school kind of treats you like a quick-stop counseling center. You’re always getting pulled to the side so someone can talk to you, and you’re expected to give advice. How’d that happen?”
“I’m sort of the unofficial school counselor. Everyone knows the real counselors don’t do diddly squat. They think they do, but they don’t. The other kids just want someone they can relate to, someone to be nice to them. That’s me. I listen, and tell them what they already know or what they want to hear.” She lifted one shoulder slightly. “I got the job not long after I moved here. Once people started realizing what they told me didn’t get spread to the school at large.”
“Has a girl named Amanda come to you? I don’t know her last name. She’s in my gym class, mousy brown hair, glasses…”
I saw a vision of the girl who’s jealous, angry, thoughts I’d been hearing a lot of during my week.
“Yeah that’s her.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
I froze, realizing my mistake. The picture had formed in her thoughts.
“You didn’t? I swear I heard you say her name.”
“Is this like the, ‘someone called you fat,’ thing?”
I laughed uneasily. “Do you know her?”
“I do. She hasn’t come to me, but then again, I wouldn’t expect her to.” Poor kid. Having to deal with a dad who’s an alcoholic most days and rabid fundamentalist the rest of the time…and what with everyone treating her like a second class citizen because her mom ran away with the pharmacist, to get away from her dad…
“Why wouldn’t she come to you?”
“She’s shy. Besides, I think she resents anyone who she thinks of as popular. She used to hang out with Jennifer and Michelle, but they were the forerunners in ostracizing her because of… certain things that happened. No one pays her attention anymore, and I think she just kind of gave up.”
My temper flared. “Girls suck.”
“Not all girls, Clare. We’re pretty cool.”
“That’s true.” I frowned thoughtfully. “But if everyone comes to you, and you know everyone else would spread your secrets, who do you talk to?”
She shrugged, and her eyes grew pained. A vision of a beautiful, blonde, woman floated through my head. I remembered Ellen telling me about Sam’s wife and cursed myself for the unintentional reminder. Alex’s mom had died in an airplane crash when Alex was only six. The vision of her mom was enough to let me know that it still bothered Alex, despite her appearance of nonchalance.
“I have a journal I write in,” she said quietly, “and I talk to Dad about things, sometimes. He’s understanding and gives great advice, though I can’t tell him everything. He is my dad, after all.”
“That’s not fair.”
She shrugged and her face lit back up. “It’s got me thinking I should be a psychologist. I could do a lot of good. The way people react to my advice…it’s a good feeling.”
I looked at her and started playing with my necklace, something I did when I was nervous or trying to think. “You can come to me about things…if you want. I can keep a secret just as well as you can, and you know how I feel about people spreading stuff around. I can’t promise that I’ll have the best answer, but I promise to listen.”
I bet she could keep a secret… I’ve never had anyone offer to be my confessor before… “I might just take you up on that.” She smiled. “It means a lot you offered.”
She sat up and hugged me. I hugged her back, feeling an odd sense of sisterhood. At that moment, I wished she had been born my sister, that I had that connection to her. It was a strange feeling.
“Sure,” I said awkwardly.
She yawned as she released me, tired tears glistening in her eyes. “I think I’m going to bed.”
“I think I’m going to stay up and stare at the creepy forest.”
“Don’t let bigfoot get you,” she said, throwing back the blanket and heading towards my bed.
“I won’t.”
She rolled into the covers and clicked off my light, somehow knowing I didn’t mind the dark. Her breathing steadied and slowed as she drifted towards sleep. I settled into the blanket, wishing I had Daniel’s jacket back instead, and stared out into the night. As I thought about Daniel’s jacket, and his cool eyes, a warm feeling of being protected surrounded me. I pressed my head against the cool glass and stared at the swaying trees. Even though the dark night and fierce wind battered harshly at my old house, I felt safe, feeling he was out there watching over me. Whatever monsters the darkness hid, they would not bother us tonight.
Chapter 7
“Do not shoot each other with the arrows. Do not point the arrows at each other, even to play around. If you do shoot someone, you’ll be suspended…” Coach kept listing rules, but I blocked him out. His disinterested voice made it easy.
We were in the gym suffering through a, “don’t-kill-your-classmates,” pre-archery speech. Apparently, there had been incidents in the past. I looked down the bleachers we were crowded on and saw Mark arm wrestling another football player. I rolled my eyes. I could see where any incidents, if they did happen, were likely to come from. Mark really should be listening.
“Does it say, ‘bad to the bone’?” Daniel whispered from next to me.
His breath tickled my neck with his closeness. I shook my head slightly and smiled softly. For the past three weeks he had been trying to figure out what kind of tattoos I had or if I really had any at all. I wasn’t about to tell him. It was too much fun making him guess.
“Is it a fairy?” he guessed again, also ignoring Coach.
“Is what a fairy?” Jennifer asked as she leaned conspicuously close to Daniel from Daniel’s other side.
Mark had turned into something of a puppy dog, following me around whenever he could – when Daniel wasn’t around. Jennifer, not happy with Mark’s crush, was trying to get back at me by hitting on Daniel every chance she got. I wanted to explain that we were just friends, so she would stop but didn’t see what good that would do. Besides, there was the fact that every time she flirted with Daniel I wanted to punch something. Like her face.
Daniel smiled his annoyingly fake dazzle smile and said, �
�We’re playing twenty questions. You know…guess what object or thing the other person is thinking about?”
“Oh, I love that game!” she gushed with false excitement. “What have you guessed so far?”
“I’ve figured out that it is a mythical creature, which has figured prominently in several stories.”
My eyes widened at the lie. For multiple reasons. His lie was so natural and real sounding that I had to wonder at his skill. Had he lied to me like that? His lie was also very close to the truth. He gave me a warning look to keep me from saying anything that would give away the lie. He wanted to keep the tattoo thing between us, an inside thing.
“Did you ask if it had wings?” she whispered over the teacher’s droning monologue.
“No, but that is a very good question. Clare, does it have wings?” His eyes danced playfully with mine.
“Yes.” I replied pressing my lips together to keep from laughing.
“Does it blend in with people?” Jennifer asked intensely. She was starting to get into this, forgetting about being malicious in lieu of the search.
“Yes.”
“Are they good or bad?”
“They can be either or neither,” I said, shifting uneasily.
Jennifer was silent for a while as she thought about my answer. Daniel was looking at me funny. Knowing if I said it out loud, Jennifer would comment, I asked him with my eyes what his deal was. He shrugged and looked down the bleachers. I eyed him carefully, but with his eyes on the bleachers I couldn’t get a fix on his emotions.
Coach finally stopped talking, and directed us to go outside where the archery targets were set up. We followed the others through the double doors and walked a sharp hill to the practice football field. The morning dew on the grass collected on our shoes as we walked.
“I don’t know what it is,” Jennifer finally said, admitting defeat.
“An angel,” a voice floated out of the crowd behind us. I turned and saw Amanda looking at me.
The Watchers Page 10
