The Watcher

Chapter Six



Tuesday morning before English class, a copy of the Westmont High School Gazette landed on my desk, startling me.

“What’s this?” Michael demanded.

I marveled at how he could still be gorgeous when he was scowling. His lips tightened into a hard line, he pointed to an article at the top of the page. The headline read: Local Girl Makes a Big Splash.

“Oh no!” I read the first few lines, which gave some vague details about my fall into the creek and then expounded on Michael’s prowess in rescuing me. The article made me out to be some kind of loser while he looked like a superhero. “Who wrote it?”

He pointed to the byline. “Elaine.”

Of course! “How did she hear about it?” I asked quietly.

“She wouldn’t say—something about journalistic ethics.”

“There’s irony for you.” Had Elaine overhead Fiona gushing about it somewhere? It was entirely possible. I’d have to watch what I said around Fiona, too.

He sighed, tore the paper in half, and tossed it into the recycling bin. I heard him mutter “Just what I need” before sitting down and ignoring me for the rest of class. As if it was my fault. On Monday he had almost been friendly. Now I was some sort of pariah he couldn’t be seen talking to—never mind helping. Several rows back, Elaine watched our interaction with a smug look on her face.

In class, we were reading Act 1 Scene 2 of Hamlet and Michael was asked to read the lead part. With his slight accent, the lines rolled off his tongue naturally. He was the perfect Hamlet. Judging from the faces of all the girls in class—even Heather’s—I wasn’t the only one affected by the sound of his voice. Hamlet’s grief-stricken first soliloquy—O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt—blazed through the room, melting a few of us in its wake. As he breathed new life into my favorite Shakespearean character, I felt like he was reading the words right to me.

The rest of the week, the teachers doubled everyone’s homework. I was assigned a six-page Gov/Econ report, pages and pages of math problems, and a quiz for Latin. Elaine had a permanent smirk, no doubt pleased by how much her article had humiliated me. Kids I barely knew whispered in the halls and gave each other looks as I walked by. Some of them asked me if the story in the Gazette was true, and a few junior girls asked me about being carried by Michael Fontaine—as if I needed reminding!

In class, Michael kept to himself. By the end of the week, it was like the incident in the forest had never happened. I wanted to ask him if he’d been at the hospital that Saturday, but he was even less approachable than usual. I’d hoped to see him at lunch or catch him alone in the halls, but outside of class he practically disappeared.

***

On the weekend, my brother Bill came up for a short visit. Mom took Saturday off and the three of us went sightseeing around the waterfront and Pike Place Market. My ankle was almost healed, so I could walk normally again. We even had a mini heat wave.

Sunday afternoon, Bill took me to the University of Washington’s Burke Museum of Natural History, so we could see an exhibit on ancient Egypt. He and I had been talking about it all summer and he’d promised to go with me. Though I’d first heard of ancient civilizations in grade school, Bill got me a book on Mesopotamia for my fourteenth birthday. I’d thought it was a joke at first, because it had mia—my name—in it. But since then, I’d been fascinated by the prehistoric civilizations, especially around the Mediterranean and Fertile Crescent.

The entrance to the exhibit was designed to resemble the temple at Luxor, with its high columns and hieroglyph-inscribed stone. If I squinted, I could pretend I was actually there. The main room opened up to be much larger than I expected, big enough to accommodate the crowd. The walls surrounding the glass cases were painted faux sandstone, and each case was labeled with the era it came from—Pre-Dynastic and Early Dynastic, and the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. Inside the glass cases were artifacts ranging from bronze and iron weapons to jewelry, hand mirrors, and cosmetics cases. On one side of the exhibit were replicas of paintings from inside a step-shaped pyramid; on the other side were mummies, mummy cases, and tombs. Bill and I saw a few items together, some scarabs and clay pots, but when I took my time reading everything, soaking it all in, Bill wandered off to look at things on his own.

I was inside a full-sized stone replica of the tomb of Kitines, examining an ornately painted mummy case, when Bill sneaked up behind me and grabbed my shoulders.

“Ahh!” I shrieked and stumbled backward into him.

Laughing, he caught me. “Gotcha.”

“Jerk!”

I punched his arm but he dodged it, heading toward the tomb’s exit. “You gotta admit this stuff is pretty creepy.”

“It’s not. It’s cool how advanced they were.”

Outside the tomb was a case of mummified animals that had served as pets in ancient times, mostly cats, but there was also a hawk and a tiny crocodile.

“Still want to be an archaeologist when you grow up?” Bill asked.

“When I grow up? I’m not five!”

“You know what I mean. You’re going to study this stuff next year, right?”

“I hope so.”

I stopped to admire a reproduction of a painting from the tomb of Menna, a man spear fishing in the Nile with his wife and family. The animals and marshes were captured in meticulous albeit stylistic detail, and the caption explained that the painting’s fertile environment symbolized the Egyptian belief in rejuvenation and eternal life.

“Any idea where?” Bill persisted.

“Not yet.” It depended on what Mom and I could afford, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask Dad for the money. But I didn’t want to get into that with Bill. Dad had paid for his education. I seriously doubted he’d pay for mine.

Near the end of the exhibit was a section on weaving. The caption outlined the evolution of fabric and Egypt’s history of working with linen and flax. When I saw it, some invisible string tugged at my insides, pulling me there.

“Saw that already,” Bill said behind me. “I’ll meet you outside.”

I nodded, my attention fixed on the display. Beside a case of fabric fragments, heddle jacks, and loom weights was a small replica of a loom that took up to four women to operate. I’d hoped something might click, but I’d seen these things in books before. They were nothing like what had come to me that day in the woods.

After the museum, Bill and I decided to go for coffee in the nearby U District. We found a small bohemian-style café with comfortable-looking chairs and dark wood walls. The place was surprisingly crowded for such a nice day, so I pounced on some red velvet armchairs and saved us a spot while Bill stood in line.

No sooner had Bill brought me a vanilla latté than something caught his attention; he did a double-take and almost spilled his cappuccino. A girl with honey-blond hair walked into the café. With her striking golden eyes and long legs, she belonged on a runway.

She walked up to the counter and ordered herself a mocha. As she did, the lights in the café dimmed and then flared. I turned back to Bill, whose gaze flicked in her direction despite his attempts to keep them focused on his drink.

“Did you see that?” I asked.

“Hmm?”

“The thing with the lights.”

“What thing?” he asked. Usually guys could be pretty annoying when they checked out a girl, but Bill was careful with me around. I could tell he was trying not to look. Having sat in class with Michael for the past two weeks, I could relate.

“Just flickering. It’s nothing.”

Bill changed the subject. “Dad’s seeing someone new.”

I nearly choked on my coffee. “Since this summer?”

“Yeah, before you left. They met through an online dating site.”

“Wow” was all I could think to say. I couldn’t imagine Dad meeting anyone online, but I wasn’t surprised he didn’t tell me, given how little we spoke. “How old is this one?”

“Closer to his age.” Dad’s last girlfriend had been only a few years older than Bill. Talk about awkward. “It’s still new, so don’t tell Mom yet, okay?

“Absolutely not. I’m not going to be the bearer of that news!” I remembered the first time Mom learned that Dad had been with another woman. I’d come home from school to find her crying on the sofa and Dad gone. It happened right after Bill went to Berkeley, so he didn’t know what we went through, how hurt she was. Even if Mom was over it now, she didn’t need to hear about Dad’s affairs.

“Well, he says to say ‘hi.’”

“Oh.” I bristled. I didn’t want to talk about dad or get any messages from him. Things were awkward enough—like he and I weren’t even family anymore. It would have bothered me that he and Bill got along, but Bill got along with everyone. His skills were wasted on computers. He should have joined the UN. Maybe he’d invent an app for world peace.

Avoiding the awkward silence that always followed the subject of Dad, I got up. “Want some water?”

Bill shook his head and I went to the counter to pour myself a glass. When I was there, I noticed the lights flicker again and checked the overhead halogens in case one was burning out. They were fine.

“Looking for something?” It was the pretty girl Bill liked.

“The lights are flickering,” I said, surprised I was telling her.

She smiled at me, putting a lid on her mocha. “Maybe it’s not the lights.”

“What do you mean?”

Still smiling, she shrugged and walked out the door.

When I returned to my chair, Bill asked, “Did you get her name before she left?”

Before I could answer, the lights flashed again and the power went out in the café. The cash register shut off and the espresso machine went down, inciting more than a few grumbles from both the staff and the people in line. Outside, two shadowy black blurs dashed across the street, too fast and too small to be cars.

They were more like dogs.

The skin on my neck tightened into tiny bumps. Could it be those shadows again?

Then there was a bright flash of light and the shadows were gone.

I turned to Bill. “What just happened?”

“A power outage.”

“That bright flash?”

“What flash?” Bill said.

Maybe it’s not the lights. The girl’s comment stuck in my head. If it wasn’t the lights, then what was it? Was I seeing things? Really?

The power returned to the building. If anyone else noticed those black blurs outside, they didn’t react. Surely they weren’t the same dogs, not in the middle of the city. They belonged in the woods. What were they doing here? Had they seen me? Heart galloping, I sank deeper into my seat, trying to hide.

Bill pulled a cloth from his pocket and started cleaning his glasses. With them off, you could see we were related. We had the same nose and high cheekbones, but his eyes were hazel like Dad’s. Mine were green, the same as Mom’s. “You know, you used to see things when you were little,” he said.

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did! Saw a woman flying across the sky when you were four.”

I couldn’t remember any of it. If I was some kind of freak with an overactive imagination, shouldn’t I be the first to know? “No fair. I was a kid.”

“Swore it was an angel watching over us,” Bill said with a chuckle. “Mom took you in for tests, and not eye tests, either.”

I remembered being taken to a brightly-lit office full of furniture that was as small as me. Mom talked with a gray-haired man while I explored a box full of dolls and toy cars, waiting. Eventually, I sat at a table covered in big sheets of colored paper. The man came over and sat on the carpet beside me and told me he was a special kind of doctor. He handed me the biggest box of crayons I’d ever seen and invited me to draw pictures for him. I don’t think I ever went back.

I contemplated telling Bill about the strange shadows, the flashes of light, the image of the loom—everything. Maybe I was seeing things again. But I changed my mind when he said, “Turns out you were fine. Well, fine enough for a freak.”

“I’m not a freak. Take that back!”

Bill laughed. I kicked him, but not nearly as hard as I wanted to.

“How about you?” he asked. “Any guys on the horizon?”

My thoughts jumped to Michael, the way he’d turned up to help me in the woods and then gave me the brush-off later, acting like a total stranger. Bill might have had some great advice to offer, but we didn’t have that kind of relationship and I wasn’t about to start one with him. “If there are, I can’t see them.”

He shrugged, adjusting his glasses. “Several guys have checked you out since we got here. They think you’re with me, though, so they leave you alone. And from the looks of them, that’s a good thing.”

“Eww! You’re my brother.”

“You let me know if you need me to take care of them for you.”

“Take care of them? You’re a comp-sci geek, Bill, not a mercenary.”

“You’d be surprised what a good hacker can do.”

Bill’s weekend visit ended much sooner than I would’ve liked. For a few brief days, we were a family again, and it wasn’t just Mom and me. After dinner that night, Mom and I drove him to the airport and I found myself missing him before he even left. By the time we said goodbye at the airport gate, both Mom and I were in tears.

***

On Wednesday afternoon, we had the team and club fair, so our afternoon classes were cut. Though it wasn’t mandatory, Mr. Bidwell, head of the Language Club, suggested so strongly that we be there that I half-expected him to take attendance, but he didn’t. When the bell rang, I noticed Michael slip out to the parking lot and drive away in a shiny new white Volkswagen GTI. It was a rainy day, so instead of being outside, all the booths lined the cafeteria. Each club—sports teams, multicultural clubs, and cancer awareness groups, to name a few—had its own table. In the middle of it all was the Environment Club, where Heather was working. She had an extra seat beside her so I sat down, propping my almost-healed foot on a box under the table.

“You’re helping?” Heather asked cheerfully.

“I said I would.”

“Right. I forgot with—you know,” she said and gestured at my ankle.

“Hello, Mia.”

I looked up at Heather’s math tutor smiling at me. A year younger than us, he’d skipped a grade and was at the top of our class.

“Hi,” I said, wishing I could remember his name. The caption on his black T-shirt read This is my clone.

Heather tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Hey, Farouk.”

Farouk. That was it. He leaned on the table in front of us and his dark, curly hair fell into his eyes. I remembered him being a lot shorter last year.

Farouk signed one of our petitions for using recyclable containers in the cafeteria, then turned to me. “How’d you hurt your ankle?”

“You didn’t read the gossip column?” Heather asked. I hoped she was joking.

He shook his head.

I didn’t want to relive the drama of it, so I let Heather tell the story. Fortunately, she didn’t play Michael up too much—unlike the article itself.

Farouk picked up a flyer for the city’s recycling program and curled it around his fingers. “Michael Fontaine. I heard he had an accident or something,” he said.

“We heard that too,” Heather chimed in.

“He nearly died,” I said a little too defensively.

“Hmm, a near-death experience?” When I nodded, his face lit up. “I saw that in a movie once. This girl dies and when she comes back, she’s all weird and different.”

“What movie?” I asked.

He put down the mangled flyer. “I don’t remember. It was old. I saw it on TV a few months ago.”

“You don’t believe movies are real, too, do you?” Heather asked, crinkling her nose.

“No,” he said, “but some people who have near-death experiences do change.”

“Change how?” I asked, leaning forward. Catching myself, I pulled back, embarrassed by how much the subject of Michael Fontaine interested me, especially since it was so one-sided.

“Sometimes the person is so different when they come back that other people think they’re possessed.”

“Possessed?” Heather leaned back and crossed her arms. Math genius or not, Farouk’s credibility was at stake if he believed in anything too “out there.” “You mean by a ghost or something?”

Before we could talk further, a crowd of freshmen swarmed our booth and asked us a bunch of questions. Farouk helped us hand out flyers while Heather chatted and I passed around the petition. Who knew we’d be so popular?

I tried to keep my thoughts from wandering, but failed. Was he saying that Michael had been possessed? It was almost too strange to consider. Everyone said he was different now, and there was something about him that was almost otherworldly, something you’d expect from a person who’d cheated death. But possessed? Maybe not.

When the crowd finally thinned out, Farouk was gone but I did see Michael down the hall whispering in Fiona’s ear. A shot of jealousy coursed through my veins. Of course he’d be into her. She was tall, willowy, pretty, and she knew how to get a guy’s attention. But before I could see any more, someone asked me a question about recycling for a second time, distracting me. When I looked again, Michael was gone.

As Fiona visited a few tables, I wondered what she was doing here. Didn’t she have a dentist appointment? Wasn’t that why she couldn’t work the booth? Or did she have something set up with Michael instead? Eventually, she came over.

“Hey, guys,” she said.

“I thought you had a dentist appointment,” I blurted.

“I’m heading out now,” she replied. “Believe me, I’d rather be here.”

“I bet,” I said, my voice dripping sarcasm.

“What’s with you?” Heather asked me. “If you don’t want to be here, I can handle it on my own.”

“I saw you talking to Michael,” I said to Fiona, ignoring Heather.

“What? When?” She did a great job of looking puzzled. Obviously she was up to something.

“Don’t pretend to deny it. I saw him talking to you at your locker not two minutes ago.”

Heather was calm. “Mia, I saw her too. She was alone.”

“Seriously, Mia. What’s gotten into you?” asked Fiona. “I haven’t seen him all day.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

There was nothing else to say, other than “Sorry.” I didn’t get the sense she was lying to me, and yet I was sure I saw him. If she was telling the truth, perhaps I was imagining things. It wasn’t the first time I saw things that nobody else did: shadows, flashes of light, images of a strange primitive place. Maybe something was really wrong with me.