Scary Out There (5 page)

With a beleaguered sigh Mr. Banks held out his hand, not even bothering to look up from the stack of papers he'd been grading at his desk. “No phones in class,” he droned. It was the same message he gave day after day but the first time Cynthia had ever received it.

Because Cynthia never got texts.

Shoulders slumped, she slipped from her desk and shuffled to the front of the room. Every whisper, every giggle, was a needle scraped across her skin, giving off a sound like fingernails down a chalkboard.

She glanced at the screen before handing it over. The text stood out against the background picture of a blurry selfie taken at camp last summer.

HEY BEAUTIFUL.

One of her feet refused to move, staying rooted a split second longer than expected, and she pitched forward before regaining her balance. The wash of murmurs behind her notched higher. She tried to clear the lock screen, intent on
erasing the words but her fingers were too clumsy, and Mr. Banks plucked the phone from her before she could finish.

The words still blazed on the screen. Of course Mr. Banks read them. His eyebrows twitched. The corners of his mouth tightened. Not in a frown, but a smirk. He glanced at her, and she read it all in his expression. In the way he shook his head once before dropping the phone in a drawer.

That he'd known instantly what she'd already figured out: It was a mistake. Those words hadn't been meant for her.

For a moment she was afraid he'd actually laugh. Or worse, read the text out loud, demanding to know who'd sent it. Instead, he slid the drawer closed and hunched back over his stack of papers. “You can pick it up at the end of school.”

She turned back to her desk, eyes firmly glued to the ground. Every inch of exposed skin burned so hot she was sure those around her could feel the heat of her. For the rest of class she strained, trying to find words in the whispers. Trying to discern the tone of laughter. Feeling eyes on her, their judgment an iron casket closing tight.

That afternoon she hovered in the hallway, tucked between two banks of lockers, and waited for Mr. Banks to step out of his room. When he did, she darted in, yanked open his desk drawer, and fumbled for her phone. It was tangled among a nest of paper clips and old rubber bands. Capless pens and staples that had broken ranks from their glued brethren.

Sweat beaded on her neck. Though there was nothing
personal in the desk, it still felt like a violation to dig through it. An inviolate rule broken. But she couldn't face him. Couldn't risk him asking about the message. Phone in hand, she ran-walked to the door, the relief of near success practically choking her.

Mr. Banks was halfway down the hallway, headed her way. There was no way he missed her hasty retreat. But he said nothing as she scuttled past him with arms crossed and shoulders hunched. Eyes to the ground at all costs.

In her car she let the heat-soaked interior flush over her as she cupped the phone in hands shaky with adrenaline.

HEY BEAUTIFUL.

She didn't have the sender's number in her contacts, but that wasn't surprising. She had only three contacts beyond those of her family: a friend from camp, the owner of a local gaming shop, and a popular boy she'd overheard giving out his number at lunch one day. The area code was local, but running a reverse phone lookup yielded nothing.

She allowed a moment of unrestrained imagination. What it would be like if she
had
been the intended recipient. If she perhaps had some secret admirer. At first she pictured the boys in her class at school, but they all felt too familiar—too childish and immature.

They didn't feel
enough
for her.

No, she wanted someone sophisticated. Someone worldly who could pull her from her dull existence and introduce her
to bolder and brighter worlds. He'd be older, much older, with the beginning edges of salt threading otherwise pepper hair. His skin would be dark, his lips lush, and his accent lilting as his tongue curled around poetry in her ear.

He'd be like the heroes in books and movies. The kind who could offer forever and not just right now.

Her problem was that she wanted it so much that even the fantasy of it turned her stomach sour. With a tight shake of her head, she wiped the screen and dropped the phone onto the passenger seat. Her car started with a coughing wheeze, and she drove home with every sense trained on her phone, willing it to buzz again.

It did, later that night.

The screen blazed bright in her bedroom, illuminating her desk. She fumbled from the sheets, reaching for it. Keenly aware of how her heart tripped over itself with surprise and anticipation.

YOU AWAKE?

She tucked one leg beneath her and sat. “Yes,” she whispered. Because she'd never have the guts to actually write back. After a while the screen dimmed before going dark. But Cynthia just sat there in her empty room, thinking about how somewhere out there someone else stared at his phone, waiting for a response. For now, they shared this moment.

There was something a little beautiful and tragic in that, she thought.

•  •  •

The next day Cynthia checked her phone between every class, but there was nothing. The same that night and every other day that week. She guessed whoever was on the other end had realized his mistake and rectified it. She wondered if he now stayed up late texting with some other girl.

A girl nothing like Cynthia. Someone fun. Pretty. Interesting. Graceful.

She went back to tucking her phone in her back pocket again. No reason not to. So when it buzzed again during math that Friday, she jolted, knocking her book to the floor. It landed with a loud
thwap
that elicited several giggles. Mr. Banks raised his eyebrows in her direction, but she used the distraction of scrambling for her book to pull her phone free and slip it between her thighs, pressing them tight together to muffle any additional texts.

He continued lecturing about the difference between parabolas and hyperbolas but Cynthia no longer paid any attention. Every molecule of her being focused on the plastic case between her knees. Her breath shallower as she tried to figure out which she wanted more: another text or for the phone to remain silent.

At the end of class her thumb slid over the sweat dampened screen.

ARE YOU MAD AT ME?

She almost laughed. Had even begun to shake her head
in an answer. Before she remembered that the text wasn't meant for her.

The brief moment of elation crumbled. She turned the phone off and shoved it in her purse.

•  •  •

The next text came after Saturday night had tipped well into Sunday. She lay in the darkness, waiting. Trying to keep her courage up.

Because tonight she intended to respond.

YOU DIDN'T RESPOND.

She pushed herself up, tucking her hair behind her ears. Her fingers actually trembled as she clutched the phone. There was so much she'd imagined saying, so much she wanted to know about the person at the other end of the line.

Most important, she wanted to know what he expected. What he wanted.
Who
he wanted her to be.

But instead of asking any of that, she carefully typed out:
I'm sorry, I'm not who you're looking for
.

Then she reconsidered, deleted the last bit, and replaced it with:
you have the wrong number
.

She pressed send with a sigh.

Bubbles appeared on the screen, indicating that the sender was typing. Cynthia bit her lip, waiting, running the likely responses through her mind.
So sorry. My bad. D'oh
.

What she didn't expect was:
NO I DON'T.

Her eyes widened.
I'm not who you're looking for
.

HOW DO YOU KNOW?

It was a valid question when she thought about it. The answer was remarkably easy: because no one was looking for her. No one even knew her number. But she wasn't about to tell him that.

He didn't have to know she was a loser. She certainly wasn't going to tell him if he hadn't figured it out already.

I don't know who you are
, she sent him.

His answer took a while to type, Cynthia's heart pounding harder with each flash of the bubble on her screen. Until finally:
IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHO I AM THEN YOU CAN'T POSSIBLY KNOW WHO I'M LOOKING FOR.

She actually let out a laugh at that, though it was a little more high pitched than usual. For a moment she wondered if this was what flirting felt like. Curling her toes against the mattress she leaned back, smiling.
Who is this?

Those bubbles again, seeming to last forever.
THAT WOULD GIVE AWAY THE PUNCH LINE.

She stared at the response, the tip of her thumb running across the edge of her phone case. Snapping it off and back on again. What if this was a joke. Or a trick. What if out there a group of guys from school—from her math class, perhaps—were sitting around laughing at her?

Making her want just to expose how pathetic she was.

And why was it pathetic to want, anyway? Wasn't that what life was about? Every action humans take is born of want:
wanting to eat, wanting money, wanting friends and love and warmth and meaning.

To just not be alone. Or invisible.

Or
other
.

HEY, YOU OKAY?

Her thumbs hovered. The problem was, she didn't know the answer.

Ten minutes later, the screen an uninterrupted dark, she set the phone on her bedside table and lay down, staring at it. Her mind played an endless loop of all the ways the conversation could have gone, but there were too many possibilities and so many of them ended wrong.

Better to be safe, she figured, than wrong.

•  •  •

She spent the week with her eyes up, watching those around her. Wondering which of her fellow students was the one who'd been texting her. She hovered by lockers and half-filled lunch tables whenever she saw the flash of a phone, hoping to catch a glimpse of its screen.

Even though she knew it was ridiculous.

But she'd heard nothing more, a fact that had caused her mouth to turn dry with a sort of desperate regret twined through with longing.

Her imagination concocted more and more elaborate fantasies that sprouted like weeds in her mind. No matter how hard she tried to yank them out, they only spread wider, growing wilder.

So that when Thursday morning's chapel service rolled around, she was ready to try something more forceful. In the quiet of Communion, as students shuffled up the aisle toward the altar, Cynthia slipped her phone free and thumbed a text.

You still there?

Perched on the edge of her seat, she pressed send and scanned the auditorium. Waiting for a head to shift, a shoulder to drop as someone reached for their pocket. She held her breath, straining for the vibration in the silence.

But there was nothing.

Until.

YES.

Her heart quickened. She whipped her eyes across the other students. Of course several had phones hidden in their laps, but they all appeared bored. None of them with that sense of anticipation or expectation.

Just to be sure she thumbed out
Good
and pressed send.

None of them reacted.

She turned back in her chair. A smile began threatening her face, but then she noticed the priest frowning at her and she forced her expression into something more neutral.

But that didn't stop her pulse from singing.

•  •  •

That night she waited. Expecting that since she'd reestablished contact, she'd hear from him at any moment. But the evening passed. Then the early night. Then the late night. Then the
first of the morning. She considered texting him first, but that somehow felt too desperate.

He'd been the one pursuing her, after all. What did it mean if he'd given up? Perhaps he'd moved on to other prey. She'd known it would only be a matter of time.

Or maybe he'd realized she was the wrong number after all.

Either way, when she fell asleep just before sunrise, something inside of her felt newly hollow and fragile, and she didn't know how to handle it without breaking it.

•  •  •

It was early Sunday and of course Cynthia was awake. She didn't sleep. Couldn't sleep because of the waiting.

The waiting and the dreaming.

DON'T BE MAD AT ME.

The text lit up her room. The corner of her lip twitched with satisfaction. He recognized she had a right to be upset.

It made her feel a bit powerful. And so she flexed it, waiting before responding.

It worked. He bit first.

ARE YOU AWAKE?

She smiled and leaned back against her headboard.
So if you won't tell me your name, then tell me something else about you.

There was a part of her that couldn't believe what she was doing. Pushing. Engaging. Asking.

Flirting.

I LIKE MUSIC.

Music wasn't really her thing. But it could be.
What kind
.

OLDER STUFF. CLASSIC ROCK KIND OF STUFF. DYLAN. KING.

She frowned, a soft alarm buzzing in the back of her head.
How old are you?

The answer came fast.
YOUR AGE.

Cynthia picked at the corner of her phone case with her thumb.
What school do you go to?

There was a long pause. The bubbles of him typing didn't even appear for several minutes. Enough so that Cynthia had already swung her legs off the side of the bed and begun to pace.

IS THAT REALLY WHAT YOU WANT TO KNOW?

She let out a breath and sank into her desk chair.

ASK ME WHAT YOU REALLY WANT.

Heat washed over her. The problem was that there were so many things she wanted to know, but she couldn't decide which were more important. She wanted to know how he found her number. How he knew who she was. Why he'd texted her. If he liked her. Who he was. What he wanted.