Abandoned

by

Angela Dorsey

Smashwords Edition

Copyright Angela Dorsey 2011

www.angeladorsey.com

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Published By:

Enchanted Pony Books
on
Smashwords

www.ponybooks.com

####

Lauren knew she was being
followed the moment she saw the dark blue car outside the school on
Friday afternoon.

She’d seen the car the night before,
while she was at Piper’s house studying for a math test. Piper had
noticed it first. “Who’s that?” she said and pointed out the
window. “Do you know?”

Lauren glanced to where her best friend
pointed. The car loitered across the street, half hidden in the
shadows of evening, its windows dark with tinted glass. “No. Why?”
asked Lauren. “It’s just a car.”

“It was moving really slow as if the
driver was reading the house numbers. Then it stopped and no one
got out. It’s like someone’s watching our house or maybe the house
across the street.”

“They’re probably just lost,” suggested
Lauren, but her eyes drank in the details of the car: dark blue
colour, tinted windows that looked black in the dying light, a
white racing stripe along the side. It looked new. And expensive.
“Besides, you were supposed to be figuring out how to do question
5,” she added. “How come you were looking out the window?”

“I was
thinking
about math,” said Piper defensively,
pushing her tawny hair behind her ears. She bent over her math
book.

“Yeah. Right,” said Lauren
sarcastically.

Piper grabbed for a couch cushion and
flung it at her friend. Lauren ducked and the pillow bounced
against the window. Lauren jumped up and grabbed the pillow and was
about to throw it back, when she paused. Knowing someone was
sitting inside the car, possibly watching them through the window,
unnerved her.

“Can I shut the curtains?” she
asked.

“Sure,” said Piper. Lauren found the
cord for the drapes and pulled. Another pillow hit her in the back
of the head.

“Hey! No fair!” Lauren protested. “You
just wait!” She jerked the drapes the rest of the way closed and
chucked the pillow back at her friend. For the rest of the evening,
they didn’t study very much, but they had a lot of fun. By the time
her dad came to pick her up, Lauren had forgotten all about the
car.

But the next morning it was parked
across from her house. At first she didn’t notice it. She stood on
the doorstep, sleepily waiting for her golden retriever, Sweetie,
to relieve herself. Only when Sweetie trotted toward the street did
Lauren notice the car. With puzzled eyes on the car, she called the
dog. Sweetie bounded toward her and together they hurried inside
the house.

“How weird,” she said to the dog when
the door was shut safely behind them. “That car looks just like the
one that was at Piper’s house.” But Sweetie wasn’t paying any
attention to her. She knew it was time for her breakfast and was
already trotting toward the kitchen. “It has to be a coincidence,”
decided Lauren, and she pushed the car from her mind as she fed
Sweetie and got ready for school.

When she left the house for school, she
opened the door a few inches and poked her head around the edge.
The car was gone. “Goodbye, Sweetie,” she called loud enough so the
dog could hear her in the backyard, then stepped out of the house.
She was careful to lock the door behind her. Her dad had already
gone to work.

But halfway to the bus stop, she stopped
short, unable to believe her eyes. The car was parked just past the
bus stop and on the opposite side of the street, its dark windows
reflecting the street scene back to her.

Lauren ran to join the other kids at the
bus stop. She greeted the first-grader who always said a shy
“hello” to her, pretended to talk and laugh with her friends,
yelled at the boy who liked to tease the little kids, and watched
the car out of the corner of her eye. Though the windows were
tinted, Lauren thought she could see something through them. A
shape she couldn’t even recognize as being human. The hair on the
back of her neck tingled in alarm.

“Do you know whose car that is?” she
asked the other kids.

The answer was negative. No one had seen
it before. The boy who teased the little kids strutted a few feet
toward it to show he wasn’t afraid, then spun around and ran back
to the group when the school bus turned onto their street. He
jostled the smaller kids aside and took his place at the front of
the line. When Lauren took her seat on the bus, she looked to where
the blue car waited, just in time to see it pull away.

How sick! They were just sitting there,
watching us. Why would someone want to sit and watch a bunch of
kids wait for a bus? Lauren opened her math book. The test was
first period and she didn’t have time to think about anything other
than math. It must be a coincidence, she reaffirmed in her mind.
What else could explain it?

But the car was waiting for her after
school. It wasn’t as close or obvious this time, but now Lauren was
looking for it. She saw the sleek, blue and white exterior across
the street and close to the corner when she and Piper were only
halfway down the school sidewalk. She grabbed Piper’s arm and
pulled her friend behind the trunk of a tree growing on the school
lawn. “Look,” she hissed.

“What?” asked Piper. “I didn’t see
anything. Is it Tias? He’s been following me
everywhere
lately.” She rolled her eyes
upward.

“No,” said Lauren, shaking her head.
“It’s the strange car.”

“What strange car?” Piper said. Then she
gasped. “You mean the one outside my house last night? The one with
the dark windows?”

Lauren nodded. “It was across from my
house this morning. I forgot to tell you. It was at my bus stop
too.”

“You forgot to tell me!” Piper
exclaimed. “You could have a kidnapper chasing you and you forget
to tell your best friend? What else did you forget to tell me?”

Lauren waved off Piper’s complaints. “It
just didn’t seem that important until now,” she said. “I mean it
was a bit weird the way they just sat there and watched us at the
bus stop, but they didn’t
do
anything.” She peeked from behind the tree. The car was still
there.

“Can you see who is inside?” Piper asked
behind her.

“No, the side windows are too dark,”
replied Lauren.

“That’s so creepy,” said Piper. She took
a deep breath. “Who would be following you? And why?”

“Hey, they’re driving away,” said
Lauren.

“They probably saw us jump behind the
tree,” suggested Piper. “They don’t want you to get suspicious
because then it’ll be harder for them to grab you.”

Lauren swallowed nervously, then made an
effort to shrug her shoulders in an unconcerned way. “Maybe. But
now I know they’re watching me, I’m not too worried about it. I’ll
just always stay where it’s safe. They couldn’t have done anything
today anyway. I mean, what were they going to do? Grab me and throw
me into their car right in front of the school where all the other
kids and teachers are hanging out? That’d be stupid.”

“You never know,” replied Piper. “Be
careful, okay?”

“I will,” promised Lauren and picked up
her backpack. “But I better get going or I’m going to miss my bus.
See you later.”

“Call me when you get home?”

“Okay,” said Lauren and smiled. “Do I
need to phone after I take Sweetie for her walk too?”

“No. Your dad will be home then,” said
Piper seriously, then she noticed the twinkle in Lauren’s eye and
swung her backpack at her friend.

Lauren jumped out of the way, laughing.
“And after I eat a snack? They might be hiding in the fridge,
waiting for me to open it.”

“Hey!” said Piper. She punched Lauren in
the shoulder.

“Sorry,” Lauren said between bursts of
laughter. “But you looked just like Ms. Myers, all worried and
serious as if the world’s going to end any second.”

Piper glared at her for a moment, then
her face relaxed. A smile slipped over her lips and she punched
Lauren on the shoulder again, lighter this time. “Has anyone ever
told you how irritating you are? And you better go or you’ll miss
your bus.”

“Yeah,” said Lauren and swinging her
backpack over her shoulder, she ran toward the bus.

“Call me,” Piper yelled behind her.

“Yes, Ms. Myers,” Lauren shouted as she
ran. She ran up the steps of the bus and plopped down on the seat.
She waved to Piper as the bus left the schoolyard. Piper waved back
and walked toward her mom pulling into the parking lot.
Call me,
she mouthed to
Lauren and shook her fist.

Lauren only smiled sweetly, widened her
eyes innocently and waved. She was glad Piper was too far away to
see her hand tremble.