Lurker (9 page)

Come on, Laurel, pick up.

The phone rang twice and a hiss of static filled her ear. “Laurel?” she asked. The static rippled like someone crumpling a paper bag, pausing, then crumpling again. “Laurel. It's me, Mandy. Laurel?”

“This isn't Laurel,” a rasping voice said. Whoever was on the line sounded old.

He also sounded amused. Behind his voice, that crunching, crumpling sound grew faint and then burst forward, nearly deafening her.

“I'm sorry,” she said into the phone. Her speed dial must have glitched, and she got the wrong number. “Good-bye.”

“See you later,” the man said. The word was followed by what sounded like a cough. Or a laugh. Then the static erupted and the line went dead.

CUL8R

Mandy looked at the phone, terrified. Her heart thumped hard in her chest. Behind her, in the brush that ran beside the sidewalk, a twig
snapped. Branches rustled.

She ran. At first she sprinted down the sidewalk, but her fear intensified. Someone could leap out of the bushes, drag her in.
Oh God
. Checking for traffic ahead and behind her, Mandy ran into the middle of the road. In her mind, terrible things happened: the Witchman shot out of the brush, his stooped form moving with inhuman speed to catch her; he appeared as if by magic in the road ahead of her, one long finger pointing at her chest before he raced forward and lifted her from the street; he threw her over his shoulder, carrying her screaming to his special place behind the library, where he would…

Cut her open…. She was totally butchered.

Mandy let out a cry of fear and ran faster, trying to keep the Witchman out of her head. But it didn't work. With every step, his beaklike nose, his pointed chin, his wild eyes were with her. The fear of his outstretched fingers reaching for her back made her charge desperately down the street.

The familiar houses of her development, aglow with lights, fell in around her. She slowed her pace, caught her breath. A couple, chatting quietly, walked their dog on the sidewalk ahead. Behind
the walls and windows of the homes, men, women, boys, and girls sat down to dinner. TVs showed syndicated reruns of popular sitcoms and the national evening news. Eight blocks away, her mother would just be getting home from work.

It was still early, but for Mandy it felt very late.

 

Laurel held the slice of double cheese pizza in front of her mouth and looked at Mandy like she'd just said, “I want to work the drive-through window at Meaties.” Laurel put down the slice and wiped at her lips with a finger as if she'd actually taken a bite. “You're trippin',” Laurel said. “I didn't text-mess you.”

They sat in the kitchen of Laurel's house with a large pizza that had arrived two minutes after Mandy. Mandy didn't want any. She was still scared, and the fear tied a knot in her stomach, twisted it up tight so she couldn't even think about eating. She could barely get sips of iced tea through the tension in her throat. She was so upset, and all she wanted was some kind of rational explanation. The message must have come from Laurel.

“That's not funny, L.”

“And I'm not joking, M.”

“I called here.”

“But the phone didn't ring. Look, when have I ever been down with practical jokes? That was Naughty Nic's bag, not mine. Yeah, I get my giggle on bustin' some chops, but I don't play the mind screw.”

“Then who sent that message?”

“Uh, Dale?”

“No,” Mandy said. “The more I think about it, the more I'm sure he didn't do it. Hiding his ID like that would be too complicated for him. Even asking Matthew to do it would be too much effort.”

“What about your new boy, Kyle?”

“I didn't even know Kyle the night of Nicki's vigil.”

“Doesn't mean he didn't know you.”

“Oh, come on,” Mandy said. “That's ridiculous. Why would he?”

Laurel shrugged and retrieved her pizza from the plate. She took a bite and pulled back, cheese stretching like suspension wires between her mouth and the slice. She washed the bite down with a swig of her iced tea and leaned back in the chair.

“Your problem is, you're too rational,” Laurel
said. “You expect everyone else to act rationally. But that's not how people are. They want to be, and they can explain every weird-ass thing they do, but that doesn't make them rational. Even psychos got reasons. It's that method-to-the-madness thing. Now, you think someone is playing you, and you figure it's got to be someone that has a reason to be playin'. I'm just sayin' that some folks don't need a reason. Some folks get
their
giggle on just knowin' you're scared, whether they know
you
or not.”

Mandy tried to think of an argument, but everything she considered struck her as overly rational. Laurel was making sense.

“And let's not forget,” Laurel continued, “people say ‘see you later' all the time. Now, I can see why you got the creeps in you. I won't go anywhere near that library myself these days, but it's not exactly a death threat, you know?”

“It was that voice, though,” Mandy said. “When I thought I was calling you. The guy's voice.”

“Old people are scary,” Laurel said.

Mandy laughed.

“It's not that he was old. He just sounded, I don't know…He sounded wrong, but I can't
really describe it. It seems kind of stupid now. Maybe it was just being by the library that scared me.”

“Let's talk about it upstairs,” Laurel said. “Dad is floating around in the living room, and I don't need him finding something new to freak over. He'd probably make me drive a tank to school or something.”

“Okay.”

“Now, eat. Or I'll put this fine cheesiness away by myself, and my skin so doesn't need that.”

 

Before going up to Laurel's room, Mandy picked at a single slice of pizza. Her appetite didn't return, and the whole thing seemed to be annoying the hell out of Laurel. In her room, with Mandy sitting on the bed, Laurel went to her computer and killed the screen saver. Her wallpaper, a field of bright yellow sunflowers, burst across the monitor.

“The first thing to do,” Laurel said, “is forget about that phone call. We both know that nobody can jack into a line like that, unless they're FBI or magic or something. The signal got mixed up, and you called a wrong number. Unfortunately, you got
some old dude with Satan's voice who says ‘see you later' instead of ‘bye.'”

“I know,” Mandy said. But part of her didn't know. At the time, she'd immediately connected the wrong-sounding old man with the earlier message. It was hard to sever that connection now, no matter what Laurel said.

“So, that really only leaves the text messages.” Laurel typed while she spoke. “And, I think I have an answer to that. When we were talking downstairs, I remembered something. Here, come read.”

Mandy walked across the room and leaned over Laurel's shoulder to look at the screen. Her friend had loaded a news page from a tech site with the headline Cell Phones New Frontier for Hackers. She read the first two paragraphs, which described a series of cell-phone specific viruses.

“Does it say anything about receiving blind messages like I have?”

“No,” Laurel said. “But they only talk about a few of the service problems people have with these. See, a hacker doesn't know anything about you, but he's groovin' on knowing that he's messin' with your life and everybody else's. It's like I was sayin'.”

Mandy read another paragraph of the article, but
every third word was tech slang that she didn't understand, so she gave up. She'd take Laurel's word for it. After all, it made perfect sense. Neither of the messages, when taken out of context, was threatening in the least. One was just
hahaha
, and the other
CUL8R
, one of the most common phrases she'd come across. She used it herself.

“God,” Mandy said. “What jerks.”

“True enough,” Laurel agreed. “But before you call customer service, let's check out one more thing.”

“Okay. What?”

“Kyle.”

Mandy turned to Laurel with a smile and winked. Laurel nudged her with a shoulder.

“Ask him,” Laurel said.

“Check your meds. I'm going to.”

Mandy felt Laurel's arm snake around her neck as her friend leaned in close to read Kyle's reply. Mandy waited anxiously, but it was taking Kyle a long time to answer.

“He's going to bail,” Laurel said. “Boy has got glitches.”

“Just wait. Let's see what he says.”

“What did I say?” Laurel asked, tapping Mandy's shoulder.

“Doesn't mean anything,” Laurel said defensively. “He's got all week to bail on you.”

Oddly enough, Mandy was thinking the exact same thing.

The next morning, Mandy sat at a gleaming white table across from Drew. Most of the dread of the previous evening had faded, and Mandy felt a sense of calm sitting with her friend. They were in Corey's, the restaurant Mandy mentioned to Kyle the night before. Corey's was a modern diner with a floor tiled in black marble and high-tech light fixtures that looked like little Chinese hats. The place reminded Mandy of her own house, all slick and polished. As a result, she didn't usually like Corey's much, but this was where her friends gathered to drink coffee, gossip, and as was now the case, download information.

“We had the best time,” Drew said, sounding like it was the most unexpected thing to ever hap
pen. “He's just so cool, and did you see his car?”

Mandy was going to remind Drew that the BMW belonged to Jacob's father, but decided to let her friend enjoy the fantasy. “Yes. How cool was that?”

“I know. My God. Everyone was looking at us. I couldn't believe it. It was like a fairy tale.”

As Drew spilled out the details of her date—the restaurant where they had dinner, the movie they saw, the coffee place they went to afterward—she emphasized the story with broad hand gestures and enough
God
s to fill a sermon. Mandy looked at her friend with a smile. Nodded her head. And though she was trying to listen, keeping her ears alert for key words and pauses that required a response, her mind wandered. She remembered her dates with Dale: how he'd taken her to home-coming, even though he was sick with the flu; how they took turns picking films to watch, whether on DVD or at the movies; the way he held her just tightly enough when they kissed. She wondered if she would have these kinds of memories with Kyle, and she suddenly thought she would not. He was lines of text on a computer screen. He wasn't real yet, might never be real.

It occurred to Mandy then that Kyle might simply be a rebound. He was funny and seemed nice, and he was certainly good-looking, but if she was spending so much time thinking about Dale and their wonderful times together, she had to believe that she missed him. And how could she miss someone she didn't want or like?

Mandy made herself stop thinking about that. It was silly. Sure, she had a good time with Dale, but that didn't mean he was right for her. A lot of good traits didn't mean there weren't bad ones. She was just confused about Kyle. Last night, Laurel made a big deal about him having glitches. She spent most of the night talking about it. Sure, a lot of it was joking, but her concerns and warnings sank in. Besides, hearing all of the romantic details of Drew's date was bound to kick up fond memories.

“And when he kissed me good night,” Drew said, “I could barely stay on my feet. I almost fainted. I swear.”

“That sounds amazing,” Mandy told her. “When's he supposed to call again?”

“He already did,” Drew said, her cheeks bursting with blush. “This morning, just before I left. We're going to meet at the mall later and look at CD
players. Jacob needs a new system for his room.”

Mandy was about to offer another exclamation of joy for her friend, but the door to the restaurant opened and a familiar face appeared in the lobby. “Crap,” she said.

Dale stood in front of the hostess stand, looking around the restaurant as if searching for friends. When he spotted Mandy, he went rigid and looked at the floor.

“What?” Drew asked. “You don't think I should go?”

Drew was so caught up in her new romance that she was oblivious to everything else. Mandy looked into her coffee cup, hoping her hair would cover most of her face.

“Dale's here,” she whispered.

“Let's leave,” Drew said, all but panicked.

“Check your meds,” Mandy told her. She straightened up, feeling silly for having tried to hide. “I'm not going to let him run my life.”

Upon finishing this defiant statement, she glanced back at the lobby. Dale was halfway to their table, looking right at her. Maybe bailing wasn't such a bad idea.

“Hey, Drew,” he said when he reached the table.

“Hi, Dale.”

“Mandy.”

“Dale.”

She clutched her coffee mug between her hands, trying to keep them from shaking. Butterflies went full-on hyperdrive in her stomach. She searched for her cool, but couldn't find it. Having him standing so close just freaked her. And it didn't help that he was wearing the sky-colored sweater Mandy gave him for Christmas.

“How're you doing?” Dale asked.

“Fine,” Mandy said.

“Do you think we could talk?” he asked.

“I have to go!” Drew announced too loudly, already retrieving her bag and standing from the booth. “I have to meet Jacob. He's buying a new stereo for his room, and he really wants me to help him pick it out. You know how guys are. So…okay…bye.”

Amazed, Mandy stared at her escaping friend.
How could you?
Mandy wanted to ask. Drew looked back at her with an expression of wide-eyed desperation. Not knowing how to handle the situation, Drew chose to get away from it, as fast as her little traitorous legs would take her.

“She's dating Lurie?” Dale asked, taking the recently vacated space in the booth. “That makes sense.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Mandy asked.

“Nothing,” Dale said, lifting Drew's abandoned coffee and sipping from the mug. “Jacob's cool. Drew is cool. It makes sense.”

That's not what he meant,
Mandy thought. He was probably going to say something nasty, but knew it would piss her off even more than she already was, which would be quite an accomplishment, considering how she felt.

“Let's talk,” Dale said, putting down the mug. “How're you doing?”

Mandy refused to reply. At least, that's what she told herself when she could think of nothing to say.

“Did you get the flowers?”

“Yes.”

“Lame, right?” he said with a nervous laugh.

“They were beautiful,” she said through a tight jaw. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” he said. Dale tapped on the table with his index finger and looked at the room over Mandy's shoulders. “So, here's the thing. The
guys and I were talking, right? And they've been calling me an ass since all of this happened.”

“They have?” Mandy was shocked.

“Sure. They're not the cavemen you think they are. Anyway, they laid into me about being lousy to you, said I should have shown a lot more respect. And it's like, I didn't get it. I
so
didn't get it.” Dale let out a chirp of a laugh, continued to tap on the table. “So, my dad and I were watching the game the other night, and I told him what was going on, right? I told him I screwed up with you because I was messing around online. I told him about me coming to your house and acting stupid. You know what he said?”

“No. What did he say?”

“He said that I was young and shouldn't worry about one girl. The world was full of girls, and I could have as many of them as I wanted. He pointed at the game, right? His finger's all jabbing at those basketball players on the television, and he's saying, ‘You think any of those guys worries about what one girl thinks? Even their wives? Hell no.'”

“Charming,” Mandy said, picking up her mug and taking a sip.

“Yeah,” Dale whispered. “That's the thing, right? I see how miserable he is, and how miserable Mom is, and I never got it before. I mean, most people think we've got it all, right? But neither one of them is happy, and I suddenly got it. That's why I sent you those flowers.”

“I don't understand,” Mandy said.

“They have everything, and they don't really appreciate anything. Right? I mean, I don't know why. I don't know what else they want, but they must want something or they'd be happy. And it freaked me out because I've got this middle-aged
really
unhappy guy telling me I was doing the right thing. That's when I knew that I really, really screwed up.”

The butterflies in her stomach quieted. Her mind, which had been on red alert, ready to shoot back clever and biting retorts to his excuses, calmed. She had expected little from Dale, nothing more than what he'd said at her house before she slammed the door on him, but what he was saying now surprised her. She didn't know what to say.

“So look, here's the deal,” Dale continued. “I'm probably going to keep being a big dumb guy for a while. But I'm trying to be a little less dumb. I
don't expect you to take me back, okay? But I want to apologize again. No excuses. I screwed up. It was stupid messing around online. And I'm sorry.”

 

“He did not,” Laurel said.

“Yes, he did. I got that feeling like I was about to start crying, and I think if he'd said anything else, I would have.”

“You think he was playin'?”

“No,” Mandy said. “He was not playin'.” She adjusted the cell phone against her head while she poured a glass of iced tea, and then leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Totally
not
playing.”

“So what's Girl going to do now?”

“I don't know,” Mandy said. “I mean, we're not back together or anything. It's just so weird.”

“There's hope for boykind yet. So, ask me about gun practice.”

“How was gun practice?”

“Girl, don't ask,” Laurel said, then broke up laughing. “I sat in a room with a bunch of losers for four hours listening to some redneck extol the magical wonder of poppin' a cap. We didn't even get a shot off. That's for next week. So, I still have this thing and no bullets. Dad is upset. He thinks I
should have a license to kill by now.”

“I hate those things.”

“Yes, you and Princess Drew have made that clear enough.”

“After what she did, running out on me, you ought to pop a cap in her.”

“Yeah, except it worked out good, so I can save a bullet.”

“I guess so.”

 

Mandy lay on her bed staring at the ceiling. For the first time in weeks she didn't feel like something terrible was about to happen. In fact, she felt good. Finally, the dark cloud that hung over her since the night she'd caught Dale flirting online and since Nicki died was dissipating. She thought about what Dale said to her, thought again how great he looked in the sweater she'd given him. What she didn't know, though it teased her, was whether the conversation with him gave her closure on their relationship or opened the door for them to try again. It was hard not to think about it.

And naturally, when she thought about Dale, she thought about Kyle. How could she not? They were supposed to go out on Saturday night, but
Mandy felt none of the excitement she usually did when a boy asked her out. Maybe it was being asked via IM, or the fact that Laurel was with her when Kyle asked. Mandy couldn't be certain, but if Kyle was nothing more than a rebound, she'd know now. It would have to be totally obvious. If he wasn't, and she really liked him, that would be obvious too. Wouldn't it?

Laurel thought so. She told Mandy that her head should be clear now, and with that clarity came the possibility of choosing between Dale and Kyle. (“Are these my only choices?” she had joked.) Again, she told herself that Kyle wasn't really real. He was just lines of type in an instant message window. But that wasn't fair. In fact, it was kind of selfish and bitchy. Behind those lines was a person, a young man with feelings.

Do u think u'd like 2 kiss me?

Kyle had asked her that, and she'd said maybe. If he were standing in her room right then and asked, she'd say yes. Absolutely. Please. Because she needed to know what she felt about him. Was he just a distraction, something to kill time so she didn't have to spend every minute thinking about Dale or Nicki? Could she really use someone that
way, even if it was totally subconscious? She hoped not.

But there was a lingering doubt, and more and more, she believed she could.

“Ugh,” she said to the ceiling. She was starting to bring that dark cloud back. She had to think about something else. She decided to think about the trips she'd like to take once school was out.

Where should I go?
she wondered.
There are so many places to see. How do you pick just one?

Mandy didn't know. There was something romantic about not meeting, like they had the chance to really get to know each other before all of the physical stuff started. In English class, Mr. Stahlman talked about two poets who wrote to each other for a long time and by the time they actually met, they were already in love. They didn't even know what the other looked like, and based solely on letters, lines of text like the ones she read from Kyle, they fell in love. The poets' names were Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and their relationship was beautiful and historic. But Mandy had a hard time even thinking about her chats with Kyle as a relationship. Sitting in her desk
chair, staring at the screen, she thought it all felt kind of hollow. How could anyone know if the person writing was telling the truth? You had to see someone's face when they shared their lives with you. Maybe modern people were just more cynical. Maybe it was just Kyle.