The Watcher

Chapter Ten

I slept so deeply that night I almost missed my alarm. I awoke Thursday morning feeling jarred, and while I managed to pull myself together for school, I couldn’t shake the damp cloak of sleepiness that hung over me. Before my first class, I saw Damiel talking to Fiona at her locker. For some reason she wasn’t responding to him, not even flirting. Her normally straight shoulders curled in toward her chest, and she dragged books out of her bag as though each one weighed fifty pounds. Damiel was focused intently on her, and when he touched her arm, my stomach flinched in response.

Farouk joined me in the hallway, his gaze following mine. “Is Fiona okay?”

“I don’t know. She looks pretty sad.” I made a mental note to check in with her later. “What could Damiel be saying to her?”

He gave me a puzzled look. “Damiel?”

I motioned over my shoulder. “Yeah. Talking to Fiona.”

“I see Fiona, but Damiel’s not with her.”

I looked back in their direction and Damiel was gone. “That’s so odd,” I said, “he was just there. Didn’t you see him?”

Farouk was contemplative. “You know, my sister Fatima sees things.”

“I’m not seeing things!”

Unfazed by my reaction, he continued, “She had a vision about our uncle when we were ten.”

I thought about asking if Fatima ever saw shadows or strange flashing lights or even people who weren’t actually there, but decided against it. “What was it about?”

“She saw him in a car crash with a drunk driver on his way home. She was so upset, my mother convinced him to stay in the guest room that night. The next day, we heard about someone else getting killed in an accident on the same road. That’s when we knew it saved his life.”

I shivered. Did he think I was seeing things the way his sister did? “This is nothing like that. I’m sure he was just there.” I inclined my head in Fiona’s direction and bit my lip. The last thing I needed was to be having visions. First Michael, then Damiel? Was I incapable of talking to a gorgeous guy without hallucinating about him? Motioning in the direction of my class, I waved as Farouk and I parted ways.

Damiel kept to himself in English. He sat at the back of the room, and after smiling and winking at me he focused mostly on the lecture. Michael’s blue eyes were even more intense against the blue shirt he wore, and he even smiled a hello to me before he sat down. I was begi

I became increasingly curious about Damiel’s conversation with Fiona because, surely, I couldn’t have made it up. He could have been interested in her too, though from how sad she looked it seemed more like he’d rejected her. I kept an eye out for him at lunch, but neither he nor Michael was around.

I did spend a fun lunch break with Heather, Farouk, Jesse, and Dean in the cafeteria, where we finalized our movie plans for the next night.

“Where’s Fiona?” I asked.

“She had to go to the library,” Dean replied. “Something about a history test.”

Heather had begun treating the movie outing like some kind of team building exercise. She’d expertly pla

Farouk eyed me a few times during lunch, but thankfully didn’t say anything about our earlier conversation in front of the others. He seemed to have something on his mind, so I wasn’t surprised when he walked me back to my locker after lunch. I thought he was going to bring up his sister’s vision again, but instead he asked me a question.

“Are you seeing Damiel?”

Caught off guard, I stammered, “I–I wouldn’t say I’m seeing him, but he asked me out.”

He frowned and leaned on the locker beside mine. “Why go out with him?”

It took me a moment to realize what Farouk was asking. Was I leading him on by accepting a ride to the movie? Was it a date? Come to think of it, the others had paired off into couples. It was best to clear up any relationship confusion as soon as possible.

“Farouk, the movie is just a movie, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’s supposed to be quite good.”

I tried again. “I mean, you’re a sweet guy, and any girl would be lucky to date you—”

“I didn’t mean…” His brown skin flushed slightly red.

“Oh!” I said, embarrassed all of a sudden. God, did I sound full of myself!

“I saw you and Michael the other day and I thought…”

I heard a siren and ignored it at first, but its wails grew louder as it approached the school.

“No. No,” I said, “he’s seeing someone.”

The siren stopped, and flashing colored lights filled the halls. Everyone stopped walking to class as two paramedics rushed through with a stretcher. They hurried past us to the office, then toward the girls’ changing room.

Farouk and I joined the other kids who were following the paramedics, trying to figure out what was going on. A buzz of panic filled the halls as teachers tried to usher us into classrooms, but we wouldn’t move. We gathered, waiting to find out what had happened and who had been hurt.

A few minutes later they rolled the stretcher out, with a girl on it. I couldn’t see her face because the EMTs blocked my view, but one of her wrists was bandaged. Ms. Callou, the guidance counselor, followed behind them, her lips pressed firmly together, her T-shirt stained with blood.

“It was a suicide attempt,” I heard someone whisper. As everyone asked each other what was going on, I heard the whispered words “suicide attempt” echo through the halls.

As they passed, I saw a mass of strawberry blond hair and my heart caught in my throat. Her hands were over her face, but I recognized Fiona immediately. I took a step toward her, but one of the paramedics, a tall woman with graying blond hair, held up a hand to stop me.

“Make room,” she said.

“She’s my friend,” I explained.

“You can see her later.”

A hot rush of fluid hit the base of my throat. I swallowed hard and took a step back. Farouk touched my arm, and I turned to him. There was nothing to say. The combination of shock and surprise on his face told me we were both thinking the same thing. Why would bright, vivacious Fiona want to kill herself?

They’d closed the school after the ambulance left, as if sending us home would stanch the flow of rumors. Heather and I rushed to the hospital and spent most of the late afternoon in the waiting room. We hoped someone would let us see our friend or help us make sense of what had happened, but only her immediate family was allowed to see her. My mom wasn’t at work, so even she couldn’t help. After a nurse told Fiona’s parents that her condition was stable, her mother broke down and cried. Her father shook as he held her, his face gray and tight. He spoke to her in hushed tones. I’d never felt so useless, not even the day my parents split up.

Rather than burdening Fiona’s mom and dad further by hanging around, Heather and I decided to go downstairs. We wandered aimlessly, not sure where to go. Neither of us ready to go home yet, we ordered some flowers from the gift shop and headed to the cafeteria.

I picked at my beef vegetable soup, but Heather couldn’t eat at all. Her coffee sat on the table in front of her getting cold. She’d crumpled a paper napkin between her fingers, the edges twisted into points, and her eyes were red and splotchy from crying.