ANTICIPATION

Watch the house.

So I did. Maybe I didn't need the instructions. There was something about the empty house next door that was hard to look away from. What other house was there to watch?

For hours, my parents fussed, asking different sets of questions than the police did.

I am alright.

I am alright.

I am alright.

The broken record of me only subsided after the ambulance left, the squad cars pulled away, leaving only the eerie quiet and sawed-off edges of the fence where Natalie fell.

The quiet soaked into everything, or maybe it was the low hanging fog. Quiet was never a thing I wanted to be unsettling. Quiet was what you need after being around people for too long, a thing that took up the night in a sleepy small town.

In bed, all the shock wore off, like it wasn't capable of numbing down dreams. I knew you weren't supposed to remember dreams, but that first night, the drip drip drip onto the sidewalk, onto the rose garden got into my head like Chinese water torture.

Drip drip drip. I imagined it dropping onto my forehead over and over, always in the same place. Pinned in place, there was nowhere to go, nowhere to look but up and—

Her face was dark, but I knew her eyes were open because I could always feel them on me.

And mine snapped open and the only thing above me was my bedroom ceiling. The Chinese were onto something. Why waste resources building elaborate wheels for breaking spines or stretchers to pull people's limbs out of their sockets?

All you needed was water.

I needed to move, to prove to myself that I could. I stumbled in the dark to the bathroom, half hoping to prove myself sane. It could be the faucet. There were several things in a house that can be responsible for dripping noises. There were lots of them.

But I stood in the bathroom with my hand under the tap long enough to figure out the faucet functioned perfectly fine, no leak, and long enough for my eyes to begin to adjust to the heavy darkness. If the shower head dripped, I would've realized that then, too.

Still, I waved my hand underneath the faucet a few more times, eyes trained on the bowl of the sink for even the tiniest glimmer of proof that maybe before I got there, a droplet or two indeed hit the porcelain.

Get a grip, Jane. I looked up into the mirror. In almost no light, I looked barely like anything but dark hair around a shadowy face. There was no angelic whiteness in my face, not under all my Filipino genes. In Boston, that didn't make me different but in our neighborhood in Cullfield, we were the only non-white family. Everyone else was a variation on the Driscolls, pale from an overcast winter, full of English and French heritage. Then there was me, much less angular, distinctly not European, and shorter than practically everyone in my classes. 

Eyes strained to try and see my features, looking for any signs I might be crazy, that's when I noticed it.

The dark shadow over my shoulder.

In the same Mrs. Driscoll's scream did it, the shadow turned my blood cold, begging my heart to stop or race, tearing it apart in indecision. The stinging in my throat threatened me with tears.

The temptation to call for my mother crept into my head, even after all the reassuring I did. I am alright.

I spun, reaching out for the light switch, my hand fumbling against the wall and in the process—

In the process I knocked the black towel from off the shower rod where I left it hanging. I didn't need to find the light to know what the shadow was.

It didn't stop me from running back to my room, choking back the ugliest noises trying to make their way out of my throat.

˚˚˚˚˚˚

Far too early in the morning, I tucked my knees up to my chest, trying to keep as much warmth in my body as I could from the threat of sharp 5am air. 

Watch the house.

There it was. My roof served as a pretty good vantage point. There was only one side of the Driscoll's house that I couldn't see, but from outside my window, I had an unobstructed view of the front yard and the back. This wasn't the first time I climbed out onto the roof from my window, but it was the first time I'd done so with the specific purpose of spying on the neighbors. 

The whole place looked like it could be a historical site, but it wasn't because being old was too low a standard in Cullfield, Maine. Every house in town looked like it stood through half a century at least, porches covered, pillars looming on either side of the front door.

Windows lined the whole front of the house, the green shutters of them open. Two leafy trees towered taller than the building. If that didn't speak for how old the house was, what would?

At maybe 5:30am, the little green Honda showed up. Usually, it curved into the driveway, but not then. Mr. Driscoll got out and walked up to the house like nothing happened. He didn't stop at the part of the fence that clearly had been cut so a coroner or medical examiner could carefully pull the metal out of his daughter on a metal table somewhere.

Like the note told me, I watched the house, noting the lights that flickered on behind the thin curtains. The main room, then one of the upstairs rooms, toward the back of the house. They flickered on and they flickered off while gradually the sun drew itself up the East horizon. Warmer light colored the house and the trees and the ground like nothing happened, like the moon hadn't told the sun that there, overnight, terrible things happened. 

Mr. Driscoll left the house pulling two large rolling suitcases behind him.

And he drove away. Simple as that.

Up on the roof, I opened the book for the first time, to the first page. That was what you do with books, start them from the beginning, but it started with three more envelopes. Under them, penned in that tight handwriting, read 

Natalie Driscoll

22 Topsham Avenue, Cullfield, Maine

They were the small kind of envelopes in pastel colors, meant for thank you cards or something like that. Maybe they were apologies from Natalie meant for the people she left behind and the only reason the package ended up in my mailbox was because it was closest and we were the same age and we went to the same school.

Kate Haumann. Sure. I knew of Kate. Popular girl, friends with popular people. She was blunt, but not as intentionally mean as movies made popular girls out to be. Not cruel, but also not necessarily sweet enough to go out of her way to sit next to a lonely girl by herself at lunch. 

Rhys Davenport. Weirder, because Rhys Davenport wasn't an easy person to socialize with for people who were good at socialising, let alone for an evident loner who was deeply unhappy. Rhys was too intense, having the kind of eyes that bore into you while you spoke to him.

Dean Garnett. Last envelope, and probably made the most sense of any of them. Dean gave me the first tour of Cullfield High school, the kind of person who put nervous, fidgety people at ease and joined every sports team and half the other clubs the school offered. 

I never saw Natalie talk to any of those people, but I only lived in Cullfield for a year. How was I supposed to know whether or not Natalie and Kate used to be best friends in Kindergarten or something like that? What if Natalie wanted to mend her bridges as her last act?

There wasn't anyone to ask questions. The directions were straightforward though, weren't they? Find the kids, give them the envelopes, and put the whole incident behind me.

Wait was the only thing written on that first page below Natalie's name and her address. 

Nothing but a word kept me from flipping to the next page. What else stopped me?

A chill up my spine, maybe. Wait and Watch the house.

Those were my instructions.

The cool, humid wind brushed against my skin, sending goosebumps rising all over my skin before I hopped back through my bedroom window off the roof.

______________________________________

A/N Tell me what you're afraid of. That's what I really want to know. 

//kc