The Watcher

Fiona backpedaled. “Of course not lucky to have fallen…but lucky he was there.”

“It was nice of him to stay,” Heather said, studying me for a reaction.

I schooled my expression to a neutral one so she wouldn’t notice my rush of excitement from thinking about him. With my luck, she’d analyze my feelings, try to set me up on a date, and I’d embarrassed myself around this guy enough already, thanks. Whatever I felt would be best kept secret for now. “Yeah, it was nice, I guess.”

“You guess?” Fiona turned her head to look at me in the back seat. Then remembering she was driving, she turned back to the road. “The way he carried you was so romantic. If he’d carried me like that—”

Heather began to laugh. “I think we have a pretty good picture of what you’d do, Fiona.”

I laughed too, grateful for Heather’s injection of humor. The strange sensations and pain coursing through my body after the fall were overwhelming enough, not to mention all the strong feelings I’d had around Michael, or the strange things I’d seen. I didn’t need to add Fiona’s fantasies about him to the mix.

***

Luckily for us, the Emergency Room wasn’t too busy. Heather walked me in while Fiona went foraging for something to eat.

The nurse at the administration desk paged my mom and asked me to take a seat in the waiting area. Mom came down a few minutes later wearing the lilac-colored nurse’s uniform we’d picked out together last spring. It brought out her green eyes and softened the gray streak in her hair. After greeting Heather, she drilled me about the accident. Between her crazy hospital schedule and my starting the school year, I hadn’t had much time to spend with her since I’d returned from Denver. I had to admit, getting injured was a strange way to do it.

I told her about the log bridge and that some noise had startled me, for lack of a better explanation. I didn’t want to talk about the likelihood of seeing the same dog again, not with Heather present. If it were real, surely someone else would have seen it.

“Eight feet,” she said coolly. She was never one for big emotional scenes, not when it came to injuries. “It could have been a lot worse. How did you get back?”

Mom was far too smart sometimes.

This was where Heather chimed in. “A boy from school came by. He knew some first aid and helped us get Mia out.”

Mom squinted at me suspiciously. “Were there boys on this hike?”

“No, Mom.” It was silly to have to apologize for a boy helping us out. Mom could be so overprotective.

“It’s a popular trail,” Heather added.

Fiona joined us, carrying a large box of pizza in one hand and the slice she was eating in the other. She greeted my mom and plunked herself into the empty seat beside us.

“Hi, Fiona. Heather and Mia were just telling me about the accident.”

I tensed. This was not a time for Fiona to talk about the glorious attributes of Michael Fontaine—or his swimmer’s body. I didn’t need my mom prying about him, or worse trying to play matchmaker.

Fortunately, all she said was, “Yeah, it was really scary.”

The topic of Michael didn’t come up again. Instead, Mom shared a pizza slice with us and asked about our first week of school. I settled in with my pizza, hungrier than I expected, and let my mind wander.

Behind the administration desk, the paramedics rolled in a girl on a stretcher with tubes in her arms. A poppy-red blood stain pooled through the blanket on her chest. Doctors and triage nurses swarmed her, and the previously quiet ER erupted like an upturned anthill. As they wheeled the patient behind a room divider for privacy, I noticed a tall figure standing in the doorway bathed in a soft golden light. Michael. What was he doing here?

I raised a hand to wave at him as a nurse in surgical scrubs walked by, but by the time she passed, he was gone. Why didn’t he stay? Staring at the empty doorway, I wondered if my eyes had deceived me. I wished I could get up and follow him, to find out if he was real, but with my ankle not working right, he’d be a block away by the time I hobbled to the door.

A few moments later, Heather and Fiona left and I was led into a semi-private examination room with pale yellow curtains for walls. After checking me for injuries and applying a tensor bandage, the doctor said I had a mild sprain and recommended ice, over-the-counter painkillers, and rest.

Mom drove me home and set me up on the couch with a cold pack and some movies before she went back to finish her shift. I couldn’t focus on them. My mind kept wandering back to that house I’d imagined. Thinking I might have seen it in a book somewhere, I hobbled to my room and rifled through my books on ancient civilizations.

Sitting on my bed, I sca

But the doctor had checked me for any head injuries. I was, by all accounts, perfectly fine.

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.