On the Fringe (20 page)

I didn’t feel like delving into the whole story again, but figured she would never let it go until she knew everything. I briefly retold the events of the last twenty-four hours. Addie’s eyes grew wide—first with surprise, then worry. I purposely omitted the final detail, about how the Peeping Tom had most likely followed Dad home. The thought of that still terrified me.

“I’m so sorry,” Addie said, hugging me. “Now
I’m
freaking out. I hope the police catch him. And fast.”

“Me too.”

“Wait,” Addie stopped and grabbed my arm. “Remind me why we’re walking out here in the middle of nowhere? You do realize how completely vulnerable we are with all these overgrown bushes and total lack of witnesses? Your stalker could easily be hiding right over there, watching us this very second!” She pointed to a wild, prickly blackberry bush on the side of the path.

“First of all, this is hardly the middle of nowhere,” I said, stepping out of her grip while dodging a biking family as they zoomed by. “See? Lots of witnesses. And anyway, you forget the stalker was
at
my
house
. You think I want to be hanging around there right now?”

“True, but I still feel vulnerable out here all by our lonesome. Maybe we should head back, just to be safe.”

“Fine,” I sighed, not sure I even cared anymore. “But let’s cut through the park first.”

“Why?” Addie asked, stopping.

“I just want to check something out,” I replied, my mind beginning to churn.

Daniel

As soon as they crossed the street by the elementary school and started heading down the hill, I immediately recognized Larkey Park. But did Claire even realize where she was? I wondered if, when I told her about the accident, I’d mentioned the name of the park, or the fact that it happened to be less than a mile from my house. No, I was pretty sure I’d left that out. For a reason.

It seemed strange being here again so soon after my Memory Trace. Everything felt faintly familiar, like an echo. After surveying the area, soaking up as much detail as possible, I was surprised by how much it had changed from the memory I’d visited only recently. The trees were twice as tall, there was a new swimming pool and playground, and an entire wing had been added to the old animal shelter—now it was a wildlife museum.

Claire and Addie continued their conversation about Peeping Toms and dates-gone-bad as the pathway led them to the bottom of the hill. About halfway down, I pulled away from them a little, drifting to the colorful, new playground where a couple of kids were being pushed on the swings. Their laughter filled the air, energy spilling from them like some kind of soothing mist. I didn’t want to leave, especially when I felt their joy, like the color yellow, flooding through me.

Forcing my eyes from the calming movement of the swing, I glanced across the path. Over by an old fence, a white-haired couple sat together on a blue-checkered blanket. Would today be their last together, or did they still have hundreds left? The woman had a pink carnation pinned to her blouse, and the two of them were laughing about something. I wanted to tell them to soak it all in before it was too late—to forget everything but the present.

The wind blew a pile of old, crackled leaves across the pavement, distracting me enough to draw away from the happy couple, back to Claire. She had stopped walking, and was looking around, like she’d forgotten something.

“What are you doing?” Addie asked her impatiently. “I thought we were going home.”

“I know,” said Claire, seemingly lost in thought. “I just…I wanted to look around for a minute.”

Guaranteed she’d been here a hundred times since she was little. So had I. However, it never had any significance to either of us until now. Was everything clicking in her head as she put it all together—the street at the top of the hill, the bike pathway leading down the steep hill, and the fact that this was likely the only park I could ride my bike to as a kid?

Addie’s complaints lasted for exactly two minutes and eleven seconds, which was how much time passed before the cell phone buzzed to life from her back pocket. With her turquoise phone plastered to her ear, she continued walking on down the hill, leaving Claire still standing in the middle of the path, looking around.

I was about twenty yards away when a jogger with black shorts, a grey pullover sweatshirt and a black ski cap pulled down to his eyes approached Claire from behind. Instead of steering clear of her, though, he ran right into her, knocking her to the ground like he hadn’t even seen her.
Idiot.

Instantly I shifted to Claire. She was fine, though annoyed and probably embarrassed.

Addie turned around. “You okay, Claire?”

Claire waved her off while inspecting a slight scrape on her knee.

“I’m sorry,” the jogger said, coughing. He apologized three more times, and then extended his hand to her. She ignored his offer and walked away from him, toward Addie. The whole time I was focused on Claire, trying to gauge her reaction. I never paid much attention to the clumsy runner who insisted on sticking around to help her, but when he turned his head in my direction, I instantly felt my fists clench.

“I’m fine…really,” Claire coolly replied when he asked again if she needed help.

“I think you dropped this.” His voice was deep and hoarse, like a nasty wad of phlegm was lodged in the middle of his throat.

Claire stopped and turned to face him as he shoved a piece of paper in her hand. “Huh?” Claire said, looking directly at him. Her eyes grew wide as she covered her mouth. The jogger pushed past her, nearly knocking her over again, cutting across the lawn toward the wildlife museum.

Addie stopped talking mid-sentence, realizing that her best friend was
not
all right. Claire was shaking, even starting to cry as Addie rushed to her side.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, hugging her. “I thought you said you were okay. Did he hurt you?”

Claire didn’t speak—I couldn’t blame her. I looked to the pavement where the creased paper lay abandoned at her feet. Her name was scribbled across the front in thick, black ink.

Claire James

Except, it wasn’t the paper that terrified her, at least not yet. Claire hadn’t even seen the paper. She was still in shock from recognizing the face she’d seen in her window last night—the Peeping Tom. Claire stared straight ahead like the fright had frozen her expression, while Addie kept hugging her, brushing her fingers through her hair and asking her what was wrong.

Leaving them there, I hurried down the path in the direction Peeping Tom had gone. He didn’t seem to be anywhere, almost like he was trying to lose me, like he knew he was being followed. What was I going to do if I even found him? But I
needed
to find him, and then figure something out later.

After shifting to a street at the end of the alley, I looked up and down the narrow road lined with a bunch of small houses and a couple dozen parked cars, realizing how easily he could’ve gone into a car. Or even slipped inside one of the houses. I drifted up and down the street, looking for movement, listening for a car to start, then finally gave up and shifted back to the wildlife museum.

The front lobby was mostly empty except for a heavy, older lady sitting at the front desk, reading a magazine. A glass bowl of bite-size Butterfingers sat at the edge of the counter, reminding me of how much I loved Butterfingers. Beside the desk, stood a nine-foot-high stuffed brown bear with three-inch claws and spear-like teeth, guarding the entrance. A couple of rowdy kids ran through me down the hall, stopping long enough to gaze into glass cases filled with snakes and lizards. Not knowing what else to do, I followed the kids and surveyed the room.

Two snowy owls were perched in open cages near the ceiling while a bunch of random mammals slept in small glass rooms lining the white, lit-up hallway for us to watch their every move. I felt bad for them confined like that—too dangerous for adoption, but too familiar with humans to survive out in the wild. It was like they were in limbo. Some of the animals even looked depressed, their empty eyes gazing out at nothing as I drifted by. I wondered if they could see me—wished I could ask them if they’d seen a guilty jogger run by.

I was just about to give up and shift back outside to check on Claire, when I peered over a balcony and caught the flash of something grayish-black skipping off the last stair of a spiral staircase below. I shifted down there just as Peeping Tom exited through the basement door. He walked across the parking lot, weaving in and out of parked cars as I followed a few feet behind him. Finally, he stopped for a second at a four-way intersection and waited for a car to pass.

I drew in front of him to get a good look, but he didn’t seem to see me. Either that, or he was an exceptional actor.

The car passed, and he stepped off the curb, continuing his retreat before slowing down near an old black Saab with rusted rims and a cracked side window. After ducking into the front seat, he slammed the door behind him and, with a few thrusts to the gas pedal, started up the engine. I settled into the passenger seat as he pulled out abruptly and slid into the traffic.

The interior was disgusting. Old food containers and stained wrappers caked with food littered the floor and seat. The torn backseat held rotted remains of half-eaten meals and random pieces of clothing lying around, like the bottom of a closet. Thankfully, I couldn’t smell anything.

As soon as he turned onto the highway and headed toward the city, I shifted back to Claire, because I now had Peeping Tom’s disgusting car stuck in my head. Lucky for me, I could come right back to this very seat whenever I pictured the image in my head. That’s how it worked.

Claire was back in her room, sprawled across her bed, her eyes red and teary. Her mom and Addie were quietly talking about the note that was now sitting open on top of the desk.

“She’s positive it’s the same guy from last night,” Addie said.

But I wasn’t really listening. The words on the note seemed to pull me across the room. I stared at the message on the glaring piece of paper, furious. Struggling for control over anger boiling up inside me, I felt trapped without any way to release my hatred for this pathetic waste of a human being.

Not knowing how long before the Saab would find its destination, I took one final look at the message, and then thrust myself back inside the noxious car with the vile driver.

We were crossing the Bay. Peeping Tom listened to nothing. No music, no talk radio—nothing except the thumping sounds of the tires as they methodically rushed along like the beat of a drum across the seams on the bridge. Still, Peeping-Tom-Boy found it necessary to incoherently mumble to himself, prompting me to drift outside the car the rest of the way so I wouldn’t have to listen to him anymore. Who
was
he, anyway?

The car exited the freeway and wound its way through congested roads and one-way streets to the middle of a small, neglected part of town with boarded-up windows and graffiti applied to everything like wallpaper. As he downshifted around the next corner, the car screamed such an obscene grinding noise that I looked behind us to make sure the transmission hadn’t dropped out.

At last he pulled to a stop alongside an overflowing Dumpster I was certain reeked of the depths of hell, though I’d never been there—at least not yet. He hopped out and slammed the door after him, then found his way through a maze of trash along a walkway leading to a three-story apartment building. Most of the lights had probably burned out months ago, leaving a few remaining bulbs buzzing like electric mosquitoes.

After pulling some letters out of a rusting mailbox, he climbed a flight of crumbling concrete stairs and looked around. At the top, he made a quick right down another dark hall, stopping in front of an ominous brown door with tarnished gold-turned-green letters. It read 213.

The lock seemed stubborn. As he jiggled the handle, I glanced at the mail in his other hand to try and make out a name on any of the obscured address labels, zooming in so close that had he seen me, he would have thought I was a pervert.

Mr. Felix Marz.

His name meant nothing to me. It was just one small part of a bigger mystery, but at least I had a name for the face—a name I could give to Claire. Although, I wasn’t sure what she could say that would make any sense to anyone.

The door swung open, and I reluctantly followed him inside, annoyed at the urgency that demanded I follow this loser everywhere when I would much rather be, well,
anywhere
else.

Once inside the crawling walls of his decaying apartment, a piercing chill ran up my legs. Felix trudged forward through the mess into the kitchen, but I stopped in the dark entryway as a couple of flies buzzed in circles through my head. There, standing in front of me, with arms crossed and a beaming smile was the ghost of the guy I’d killed twelve years ago.

He seemed to be expecting me.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SURPRISE PARTY

Claire

I could hear the hum of hushed voices at the end my bed, but was afraid to listen because then I’d be forced to face a horrible reality. I hoped Daniel had been at the park with us and seen the runner’s face—then he would have seen the paper fall to the ground and gone after him….

But then what? There was only so much Daniel could do for me, which was why I could not seem to pull myself together. I should have never looked at that stupid note. The instant he placed it in my hands I should’ve just dropped it and walked away. But I couldn’t. Not once I saw my name written there.

Addie and Mom were standing over by the desk, scrutinizing the letter as quietly as possible. I was already past scared, beyond hysterics, close to the point of numb defeat. The words written on the paper still made me queasy. I tried to block them out of my head, but like an awful scene from a movie I wish I’d never seen, they kept coming back.