He was a shade, staying far back and sliding from behind the undergrowth to behind street parked cars, not thinking for a second that I saw him. Being an invisible creep was his unique fucking calling, but he wasn’t quite as special as he thought. Such a loser. I finally made it home to our rented, sideways lean of a shack. Key already out, I was inside with the door locked behind me in barely a second. Our neighborhood was dangerous enough that you didn’t want to be caught hanging out on your porch any longer that you could help it…and that didn’t count the inhuman things that whispered in the shadows.
Retrieving my usual protection from my backpack and shoving it under the couch cushion, I tossed the pack on the floor. Homework could wait. Homework could always wait unless my brother was there to breathe down my neck and slap a book down into my lap. I curled up on the couch. That was a piece of cake for me as I was two inches shorter than any other guy in my class. Still waiting for that growth spurt. For the most part, people thought that with my skinny body, long and untrimmed black hair, pale eyes, and a baby face that I hated, I couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen. I was fourteen, though, and fourteen in a world where that was practically an adult.
Where fourteen was ten years more than old enough to know about men who followed you home from parks.
Bad people.
Sick people.
“Boogety-men.” I expected to hear Melanie’s name for them, a whisper in my ear.
I didn’t. Melanie wasn’t here to whisper. Melanie wasn’t anywhere. Never would be again.
No more thoughts of that. No. No. No. I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. Niko, my big brother, wouldn’t be home from his job for another couple of hours. Disappointed he wasn’t there to annoy but relieved I could put off any homework for a while, I bored fast of our four channels of fuzzy local TV. There were days we were lucky to have food, and cable wasn’t close enough to be a dream and nowhere near a reality. A half an hour later, I tossed the remote onto the scarred, wobbly coffee table, scrambled up from the couch, and went to check the refrigerator for a Grape Crush. I was fourteen, yeah, and already looking to get a job under the table no matter how my older brother fought me on it. I was practically a man—was a man on my mother’s Rom side, but I liked Grape Crush. It didn’t make me a kid. It was just good. I didn’t mind kicking the ass of anyone who said it wasn’t. I might be skinny, but I had nothing but muscle under that skinny, thanks to Nik, who taught me the kind of tricks that meant no one in my class after the first day of school messed with me, no matter how young I looked. They had learned better.
They were smarter than the man from the park.
He hadn’t learned.
He hadn’t learned a thing.
I didn’t mind—was happy as hell about that. He needed another lesson, and I loved to teach those kinds of lessons. Although his next one would have to be something fucking exceptional, as the first one hadn’t stuck.
I was going to have to put more work into this time. That I wasn’t as happy about. Lazy through and though, no denying that. I was opening the door to the wheezing, groaning fridge when I saw him again. He was peering through the kitchen window. For a split-second, I doubted myself, hardly had any idea whose brown-gray-hazel-blue-no color eyes were fixed on me—all that average in every part of him, every cell—he could’ve been anybody, anywhere, at anytime to all those who didn’t know how to watch, but, no. I wasn’t one of them, the blind. The slice of a moment passed and I knew.
I saw.
It was him—as average and chameleon-invisible as he’d been the other times I’d seen him. That was counting the hiding behind bushes and cars today, thinking I didn’t notice. Thinking he was unseen. Thinking he was invisible.
Invisible.
I snorted and didn’t bother to smother it.
Invisible.
Considering everything, that was funny as shit.
That’s when he bared his teeth at me behind the glass and it wasn’t a smile. Yellow and stained with dried liquids you’d want to know nothing about, that non-grin; he thought he was scary. He thought I’d be afraid he’d eat me up with those teeth.
Scary. To a little eight-year-old girl maybe, but I’d seen my mother, Sophia, bring home scarier “dates.” If they had the money and were willing to pay by the quarter hour, she’d take on Jack the Ripper…or worse.
This pervert…not all that.
Right?
I stared back at him.
Right.
I bared my teeth back at the window and flipped him off before returning to my search for a Grape Crush that I knew we didn’t have. Niko hadn’t been paid yet this week. It was ramen noodles and tap water until he was. Sophia had been caught shoplifting from yet another liquor store and had disappeared for a while. In a week or two, the newbie cops would be buried in other petty crimes and forget about her. She’d be back then. It was a system she’d had as long as I could remember.