The Watcher Read online

“What took you so long?” she demanded.

  I raised my tray and made an apologetic face. “Had to wait for the onions to grow.”

  I was so queasy I didn’t know if I could eat at first, but the onion rings and cola slid right down—the miracle of grease and sugar. I kept looking around in case the guy returned. He had to have gone somewhere. He couldn’t have just disappeared.

  “Is everything okay? You’re acting weird,” Heather said.

  “I don’t want you to freak out.”

  “What do you mean you don’t want me to freak out?” she said. “What kind of opening is that?” Realizing how loud she was getting, she put down her drink and leaned across the table, lowering her voice. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Well, after the, um, dog chased me…there was this guy staring at me, and I’m not sure, but I think he’s here.”

  “You think he’s here?”

  “I might have seen him,” I replied.

  She sat up, looking around frantically. “Do you think he’s following you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, wishing I hadn’t brought it up. There were plenty of guys my age who wore gray T-shirts and jeans. I could probably count a dozen today in the mall alone. Besides, this guy was taller, well over six feet, and broader in the shoulders.

  “What does he look like?” She stood up. “We’ll go to security.”

  “No.” Grabbing her arm, I pulled her back down. Now I had her fear to deal with as well as my own. “I can’t even be sure it was him. I think I’m just freaking out.”

  “But—”

  “Even if it was him, he hasn’t actually done anything, has he? So he was in the park and now he’s here? That’s not a crime,” I said, but I wasn’t sure which one of us needed convincing: me or her.

  Taking a long, loud slurp from her almost-empty smoothie, she studied me, no doubt trying to figure out if I was telling the truth. “Okay, but if you see him again?”

  “We’ll go right to security,” I promised.

  Chapter Three

  That night, I had the strangest dream.

  Two great birds were locked in combat. Talons entwined, they spiraled toward the ground. One of them had blood pooling in holes where its eyes should have been. The other dripped blood from its claws. Behind them, the sky shone a purplish black, the color of bruises, and the air smelled of charcoal. As the birds fell, I kept wishing they would separate, that at least one of them would let go, flap its wings, and fly away.

  I even cried out, trying to startle them out of their fight, but their battle seemed endless. And I could do nothing but watch, unable to reach them, unable to stop their fall.

  ***

  It was the first day of school and the grounds hummed with excitement. Students hovered everywhere—some standing, some sitting, some walking and talking—greeting people they hadn’t seen in months. Above us, the September sun shone so bright and warm it could have been July. Blue sky reflected off the windows of the school, a tall, modern, wood building. Its three-story glass foyer let in tons of light and made me far too visible. Senior year should have been exciting, but all I wanted was to head inside where the walls could keep me safe.

  “Safe” was a relative term. When I got to my locker, I discovered it was next to Elaine Carter’s. Apparently I got her spot in AP Ancient Civ last year when I’d first arrived at Westmont. She’d never forgiven me. I loved the class, but Elaine’s obsession made it like those ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz—they came with a half-crazed witch chasing after them, too. Before Dorothy could find out what she was in for and say no thanks, it was too late. The shoes were already on her feet.

  Elaine always wore designer labels, not the knock-offs, and she’d had her red hair cropped short over the summer. If she weren’t such a bitch to me, I might have said she looked good. Instead, we gave each other tight-lipped smiles and fake hellos before I opened my locker and unloaded my bag. No point in being rude. Elaine ran a gossip blog so scandalous it would make Perez Hilton blush.

  Being her neighbor wasn’t only inconvenient, it was dangerous. I’d have to watch everything I said so it couldn’t be used against me.

  One of Elaine’s friends rushed up to her, so I hid behind my locker door, hoping they’d forget I was there. As I put my things away, I could hear the two of them gossiping.

  “Congratulations on getting your own column,” the friend gushed.

  Elaine had a column now? In the school paper? What had the rest of us done to deserve that?

  “Thanks, Lor,” Elaine replied. “It’s about time we put something relevant in there.”

  Something relevant? I had to bite my lip so I wouldn’t laugh out loud. With all the things going on in the world, how was gossip relevant?

  Lor quickly changed the subject. “That new guy you saw.” She chewed a piece of gum loudly as she spoke. “His name’s Michael Fontaine, and he transferred from Sealth High.”

  “Yeah,” Elaine said, “but is he newsworthy?”

  She cracked her gum. “He had a major accident or something last spring—almost died—and couldn’t graduate. So he’s repeating senior year.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Uh-huh. I hear he’s really different, too.”

  I wondered what Lor meant by “different,” but they changed the subject. Perhaps he had been disfigured, or confined to a wheelchair. Mom had told me all sorts of stories about terrible accidents from her years of working in hospitals, enough to put me off ever becoming a nurse. I was half-tempted to ask, but I made the mistake of asking Elaine a question about a guy last year, out of curiosity, and she posted on her stupid blog that I was interested in him. She hated me that much. So I kept my head down and hurried off to class. It was going to be a long year.

  I didn’t see my friends until lunchtime. Westmont High’s cafeteria consisted of an indoor concession stand and a common area the size of Macy’s with a wall of sliding glass windows rolled all the way open to let in the sun. Outside, a patio overlooked our track and football field, and the far edge of the school grounds backed onto a ravine.

  Heather dashed for one of the large patio tables. “Let’s sit out here.”

  I hesitated. Out here we’d be unprotected. Any sort of creature could come rushing right at us. “What if it gets cold?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s practically summer out here.”

  I nodded and sat with my back to the cafeteria so I could keep watch. Other students had obviously thought it was a good idea to spend lunch outside today, too. Some guys ran around tossing a football on the field, and a group of girls sat on the concrete, their voices a mixture of murmurs and squeals. Beside us, a few kids did their reading assignments in the sun. Everything seemed fine. There was safety in numbers, I hoped.

  Fiona soon joined us. As we ate, I told them both about the strange dream I’d had the night before—how real it seemed—expecting I don’t know what. Understanding?

  “Freud said that flying dreams are really about sex,” Heather answered plainly. She was planning to study psychology at college next year and had been reading everything she could get her hands on, from Freud to Psychology Today. She especially enjoyed diagnosing her friends. We were test subjects to her, lab bunnies.

  “Sex?” Fiona perked up. “Now we’re talking!”

  “Did you hear anything else Mia said?” Heather asked.

  “Sex? How did you even get sex out of that?” I gulped my orange juice and gazed out the window, wondering why I’d bothered saying anything. The dream was vivid and gory. The birds were tragic. Surely I didn’t see sex that way. Not that I’d had that much experience to base it on. Making out with Paul Mathers at a party last summer didn’t count.

  “It could represent two sides of your own nature battling things out,” Heather said. “You know, a fear of intimacy.”

  “I don’t fear intimacy,” I said, wondering if anyone else thought that about me. “Granted I don’t have a boyfriend, but does that mak
e me frigid or something?”

  “Okay, abandonment then.”

  At that exact moment, Heather’s boyfriend Jesse came along. He was with Dean, who slid onto the seat beside Fiona.

  Jesse hesitated. I wondered how much he’d heard.

  “Girl talk?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, welcoming a change of topic. “Have a seat.”

  Heather tucked a lock of blond hair behind her ear and grinned at Jesse. They were a blend of opposites. With his shoulder-length dark hair and leather jacket, he looked like a biker, while she was soft and feminine, verging on preppy.

  Around Dean, Fiona’s smile brightened and her laughter grew louder and more frequent. I couldn’t help but think she was compensating for being two inches taller than him, but he ate it up. At least Heather played it a bit cooler with Jesse, so I wouldn’t have to be sick.

  “Hey, we’re going hiking on Saturday—Fiona and I,” Heather said. “We’ve been going all summer. Wanna come?”

  “Yeah, we discovered this great trail,” Fiona chimed in.

  Hiking in the woods? Were they kidding me? I could barely stand eating outside on a busy patio.

  I hesitated. “You going, Jesse?”

  “Nope. Gotta work.”

  “Come on,” Heather insisted. “The weather’s supposed to be great.”

  Maybe I was being silly. It was time to live my life like a normal person again. “Okay,” I said slowly. Surely a hike would be fine. I wouldn’t be alone.

  Jesse motioned to someone behind me. “Hey, Mike. Why don’t you join us?”

  “Hi, Jesse,” said a rich, deep voice. It had just a hint of an accent.

  I checked over my shoulder to see who was speaking and froze. Mike? It was the guy from the mall!

  Fiona and Jesse moved over to make room for him at the table, and he ended up sitting across from me. Not knowing what to say, I studied the remains of my salad. If I recognized him, surely he must recognize me, too.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m Michael Fontaine.”

  This was the new guy? Up close, he was even more attractive, and when his eyes widened for that fraction of a second after meeting mine, I actually thought I saw starlight. Could he be any more gorgeous?

  “I’m Mia…short for Maria,” I offered. My palms began to sweat.

  “Hello, Mia short for Maria.” His lips curved into a hint of a smile, but his gaze scorched right through me.

  “H-hello.” I wanted to say something to him about the day before, but didn’t know how to start. Demanding to know what he’d been doing in the woods didn’t seem the best opening. “W-Where’d you come from?”

  He raised a perfectly arched eyebrow at me. “The lunch line?”

  “Actually,” I said, “I meant your accent.”

  “We moved here from England when I was ten.”

  He didn’t ask about me. In the background, I could hear Fiona laughing too loudly at something Dean said. The fact that I was having a totally awkward moment made her laughter even more irritating.

  “You seem really familiar,” I blurted. “Have we met?”

  He paled. “I don’t think so.”

  Now what? Obviously he didn’t recognize me, and I couldn’t trust myself to speak without sounding stupid. Mia short for Maria and have we met? God, I am so useless!

  One of the guys on the playing field shouted “Look out!” as a football hit the wall over my head. It landed on the concrete beside me. Michael got up and tossed the ball back to him.

  “Careful,” he said.

  “Thanks,” the guy shouted.

  Michael folded his long legs back under our table and took a bite of his cheeseburger.

  “Wasn’t it you?” I sputtered, wondering why I was going down that road again. What am I thinking?

  A muscle in his jaw twitched. “What?”

  Not wanting to draw anyone else’s attention to what I was about to say, I lowered my voice. “Weren’t you in the park yesterday morning?”

  He let out his breath and smiled down at his plate. “That was you?”

  So it was him. Sitting across from me, he didn’t seem too dangerous, unless you could kill someone with good looks. In which case he was lethal. “Whatever happened to…” I realized I couldn’t accurately describe what I’d seen, and there was a look in his eye that I couldn’t quite place. “Whatever happened to the weird dog?”

  His smile never wavered. “Didn’t see any dogs.” It made me wonder if I’d noticed anything in his look at all.

  “So you didn’t see anything?” I asked, trying not to show my desperation. I had hoped for a witness, someone to tell me I wasn’t crazy, that what I saw was real. But if it was, then what?

  “Some girl screaming in the park.”

  The blood rushed to my cheeks as I realized how insane I must have sounded. Not only was I asking about a dog he hadn’t seen, but I’d just let him know that the first time he saw me, I’d been screaming like a crazy person. No wonder he stared at me. Maybe I was seeing things and I actually was crazy.

  No. I was sure there was a dog, or something. But it wasn’t the time to make my point. “What about at the mall? What were you doing there?”

  “The mall?”

  “Yeah, what were you doing there?”

  “Um…” Swallowing another bite, he furrowed his brow as though he were seriously concerned about my mental health. “Shopping. You?”

  “Shopping,” I said. Here I was thinking this guy was some kind of stalker when it was obvious he didn’t recognize me.

  He turned his attention to his French fries and ate one. I followed by eating a forkful of salad. Heather and Jesse were telling a story about someone in their drama class, but Michael wasn’t listening. With his elbows propped on the table and his hands clasped, he took in his surroundings, sizing everything up. He seemed so observant; how could he not have seen that dog? Had it run away before he got there?

  Michael’s shoulders stiffened and he inclined his head like he was listening. Even though we had just met, there was something oddly familiar about him doing that, and not from the day before, either. It tugged at my memory like a headache. Had I seen him somewhere else too?

  He stood abruptly. “Excuse me,” he said.

  “Where are you going?” Jesse asked. “We’ve got another half hour.”

  “I have to be somewhere,” he said. He picked up his tray and left.

  Once he was gone, Fiona leaned across the table. “That’s the new guy, isn’t it?” she asked. “He’s really hot!”

  “Hey,” Dean said. “Should I be jealous?”

  Fiona giggled, stroking his arm. “Of course not.”

  “How do you know him, Jess?” Heather asked.

  “I used to go to Sealth too, remember?”

  Heather fed Jesse a french fry. “So, dish. What’s he like?”

  “Decent. He parties a lot, doesn’t take himself too seriously, used to ride a Triumph Daytona.”

  That last point made Jesse’s face light up but left us girls unimpressed.

  “It’s a motorcycle,” he explained.

  “I heard something about an accident,” I said. In spite of myself, I was curious, remembering what Elaine had been gossiping about.

  “Yeah, last year.” Jesse leaned across the table and checked to make sure we were listening before he continued. “Really bad, too. Totaled his bike.”

  “I heard that his heart stopped beating, but they revived him,” Fiona added, twisting a lock of her hair and smiling at Dean. “He spent almost three weeks in a coma.”

  “Who told you that?” I asked her.

  “Overheard Jen in the bathroom,” she said. “Her cousin goes to Sealth. It’s big news there.”

  “He’s lucky to be alive,” Heather said. She directed her next comment at Jesse. “I don’t know how you can ride that bike of yours.”

  “Do you want to hear this or not?” he asked her, frowning.

  “I know, I know,” Heather
muttered, scrunching her napkin into a ball. The fact that Jesse rode a motorcycle was a constant worry for her. It was the only thing they argued about.

  “He got in that accident on the night of Brad Morelli’s party,” Jesse continued. “Remember that night? Huge storm—roads were terrible. Apparently, a tree fell over right in front of him.” He reached for Heather’s hand, and she let him hold it. “I’d never ride on a night like that, not after a party.”

  “A tree fell over? Doesn’t that sound—I don’t know,” I said, not sure why the details of Michael’s accident bothered me so much. “I mean, don’t you think there’s something odd about him? Why is he here? Why didn’t he stay at Sealth?”

  I wanted to tell Heather that he was the guy from the mall but something held me back. I didn’t want to have to explain it with everyone there, especially when it was probably a coincidence. The mall and the park weren’t that far apart. He has the right to go shopping like everyone else.

  Heather’s eyes widened, and a deep voice behind me said, “We moved.”

  I practically jumped as I spun around. There was no doubt Michael had heard me. It was as if the gods had all conspired for me to say or do the wrong thing around this guy. I wasn’t even the gossiping type. What had come over me?

  “Oh, hey, Mike,” Jesse said, his face opening into an easy smile. If he was nervous about being caught, he covered well. “Speak of the devil.”

  Michael gave him a nod and motioned to where he’d been sitting. “Forgot my keys.”

  “Oh.” Jesse grabbed them off the seat and tossed them at Michael. “Here.”

  Michael caught them in mid-air. “Thanks,” he said to Jesse, then turned to me. The muscles of his jaw pulsed beneath his skin. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  My face heated like I’d been running a marathon. It was all I could do not to cry, but I refused to let my feelings show. Being called out was embarrassing enough. Tears would only cause a scene.

  “What was that all about?” Heather asked after he left.

  Jesse shrugged. “Never seen him act that way before.”

  She turned to me. “Just forget about him, Mia.”

  Forget about him? If only I could