Oftentimes, human nature baffled me.
Take now for instance. I was walking down the street with the only three friends I had - two of whom I was friendly with only by association, and instead of enjoying the afternoon heat courtesy of the blazing sun overhead I was too busy watching Dave and Alex rile up a group of girls who were clearly not interested.
It was blatantly obvious the girls wanted to be left alone. Even if they hadn’t been throwing out noises of disgust and screwing their faces up, there was a giant hint in the way they were backing away across the street at a pace just short of a dead run. Undeterred by their hostile attitudes and the rude gestures one of the girls was making, Dave continued to chuckle and wolf whistle like all of it greatly appealed to him.
My brow furrowed in genuine confusion over his actions. Why did he insist on antagonising them? And why wasn’t he taken aback by their vehement rejection of him? If it were me and someone I pursued rejected me so thoroughly and callously, I probably would have punched them in the face, not laughed genially like it was all a joke. Okay, there was no probably about it. I would have laid the fool out on the ground at my feet and then walked over him like the garbage he was. My pride would have demanded it, and that tiny sadistic streak wouldn’t have been appeased until I’d gotten my satisfaction.
“- okay, Jacey?”
I blinked at Alex who’d fallen into step beside me, tossing his football into the air and catching it repeatedly. Lost in thought, I missed most of what he said.
“What?”
“He was asking if you’re okay,” Ryder supplied from my other side. “You’re completely zoned out, space cadet.”
I immediately snapped open my mouth to hurl a harmless insult right back when a flash of movement caught my eye and I realised Dave was in trouble.
“Duck!” I screamed instead.
Unfortunately it was a wasted word, and really, I should have known better. Another baffling mystery of human nature was that most times when you yelled out a command, people tended to do anything but what you’d instructed. I might as well have yelled out “Dancing chicken!” or “Naked lady!” as far as Dave was concerned.
Because the second I screamed it at him, he defied orders and began whirling about, trying to identify the reason for my sudden outcry. I cursed his stupidity, watching as a brick flew from the window of a car driving past, aimed right at Dave’s head.
It was time for some fast thinking. I snatched the football Alex was holding and threw it with all of my might, even though Dave was no more than forty feet in front of me. It hit him square in the face and sent him keeling over backwards with a pain filled cry, the stray brick smashing into the concrete wall of the building beside him a second later.
Anger simmered in my veins as I glared at the car turning a corner, fleeing the scene.
The cackling laughter emanating from one of the open windows was unmistakeable. Raising a hand and pointing in a threatening manner, I knew Gus saw me. Better yet, I knew he understood the challenge. I’d be gunning for him, and this time I wouldn’t hold back.
His cackling increased in volume before the driver gunned the engine and the car sped out of sight, tyres screeching.
“Jesus, Dave,” Alex said, rushing not to help the guy up, but to retrieve his precious football. I snorted at his lack of camaraderie and beside me, Ryder chuckled.
“Priorities,” he said, and we both strolled over to help Dave up. Grabbing an arm each, we hauled him to his feet while he cursed like a sailor on leave. He yanked his arm out of my grip and gave me a venomous glare. I offered him my most innocent smile.
“Wasn’t that an amazing throw?” I asked him, studiously ignoring the angry fire in his eyes as well as the red mark over his left cheek.
“‘Amazing throw’? You just smashed me in the face with a ball going near sixty miles an hour at close range!” he yelled, flexing his jaw as if testing for further injuries.
I rolled my eyes at the exaggeration, but it was Ryder who saved me from escalating the situation. It was no secret that me and sarcasm were the best of friends, and I was all too inclined to point out the fact that I had graciously taken into consideration and then decided against using the ball to break his nose.
Also, in the space it had taken me to seize the ball and throw it, I’d thought of three possible targets. His crotch - he would have doubled over instantly at that one, which made it the most viable target. His stomach - again, he would have doubled over, but I wasn’t sure if he’d lean over far enough to miss the brick. And lastly his face - which had gleaned positive results.
He’d keeled over backwards beautifully, though something told me he wouldn’t appreciate me saying so at this time. In retrospect, he was lucky a puffy cheek and a bit of wounded pride was all he had to bitch about.
“Better a ball full of air than the brick that was headed your way,” Ryder said, his lips twitching in an effort not to laugh at Dave’s agitated state.
He reached over and clapped Dave on the back, trying to rid him of some of the dust clinging to his black shirt. The letters FBI were stamped on the front in bright yellow, and written underneath in slightly smaller print was FEMALE BODY INSPECTOR.
It was no wonder the guy could never get a girlfriend, I thought absently. He complained incessantly that it was due to his God awful Irish background that saw him cursed with flaming red hair and a thick smattering of freckles over the pale skin of his face. But really, I concluded that it had less to do with his appearance and more to do with his attitude. He was a total horn dog and chased after anything with ample cleavage. I suspected the only reason we were friends was because I was lacking in the chest department.
“Christ, Jacey,” Alex said, disbelief clear in his voice as he sidled up on my left, ball clasped firmly in hand.
“What?” I said shrugging irritably. “I told him to duck.”
“No, forget that,” he said, waving a dismissive hand in Dave’s direction. “I meant Christ, you’re a girl, and you can throw a ball just like Joe Montana, if not better.”
Putting aside the fact that I had no idea who he was talking about, I was deeply offended.
“You say that like being a girl means I automatically shouldn’t be able to.”
Alex raised his eyebrows at the testy note in my voice. Being the newest addition to our little group of misfits, he didn’t yet know that I detested the sexist outlook a lot of people had - where women were considered the weaker sex while men reaped all of the glory in life and were deemed the “superior gender” of the human race. Oh, but he was about to learn real fast if he kept up his boy-girl comparisons.
Before Alex could respond, Ryder sighed heavily. He’d been on the receiving end of this particular tirade once before and knew all too well what it entailed. He tapped Alex on the shoulder.
“Let it go, man. Just say, “nice throw” and move on. She doesn’t take well to people telling her what she should and shouldn’t be able to do as a girl. So if you value your ears, you’d do well to take my advice.”
Alex looked at me uncertainly and I raised an eyebrow, inviting him to take this further. I must admit, it felt good to have someone a few inches taller than me and twice my girth squirm uneasily beneath my stare.
“Nice throw?” he said, making it sound like a question rather than a statement.
I cracked a smile. “Thank you, Alex.”
“Does anybody care about my throbbing face?” Dave moaned, and I arched an eyebrow at him.
“It’s your own fault,” I said, my words a far cry from the apology he was no doubt fishing for. “If you’d just ducked like I told you to, none of this would have happened.”
“No,” he snapped back, taking a step towards me.
My back straightened instantly and I tensed, ready and willing to take Dave on. My eyes narrowed to slits and my jaw set, teeth gnashing together. I could feel the strain in my hands as they clenched into fists and feel the slight burn in my thighs as I distributed my weight more evenly.
It was an automatic response, one that came to me whenever I felt threatened or challenged. The instinct of fight or flight, though in my case it tended to be fight or fight some more. There was no running with me even if I knew I was heading into a losing battle.
Dave’s eyes widened in surprise and he came to an abrupt halt, clearly taken aback by my reaction. Or maybe he was taken aback by the way Ryder had smoothly shifted his body so I was half shadowed from Dave’s much larger figure. Not that it should have shocked him. Ryder was my best friend, and when he wasn’t stopping me from doing something stupid, he was trying to protect me from the stupid thing I’d already done.
He was no stranger to playing peacekeeper, especially amongst our little foursome where Dave and I had been recognised as the two most likely to come to blows over some inane topic.
While Dave and I were friends, and I used the term loosely, we both possessed short tempers and were extremely opinionated, neither one willing to back down when all was said and done.
As it was, Ryder and Alex were amazed it hadn’t happened already. God knew it was long overdue, and that each time Dave pushed me I became slightly more invigorated by the idea of pummelling him into the ground. Just went to show how much self control I had.
“None of this would have happened if you hadn’t gone and antagonised Gus last week at school,” Dave finally sputtered, having regained his composure and his fury. He ran a hand through his short curly hair. “That was Gus, right? Or have you gone and made some new enemy that we’re not aware of?”
I scowled at his comment. “Contrary to popular belief - your beliefs really, I do not go around and make enemies of everyone who looks sideways at me.”
But I inexplicably wanted to show them who was boss I added mentally.
“Yes, it was Gus who threw the brick at you. Stupid son of a bitch. Doesn’t know who he’s messing with.”
But he would soon find out, I thought. For once I was looking forward to school on Monday.
Dave snorted in amusement, and with that snort some of the tension encasing our little group eased. “I hope you’re SOB comment was directed at Gus and not me.”
“Would I ever say something like that to you?” I asked sweetly as Ryder moved back to my side, confident our spat was over.
“Not to my face,” he said, but a reluctant smile told me he was only teasing.
I walked over and picked up the abandoned brick that had been aimed at Dave’s head, the heavy concrete slab rough against my fingers.
“Well, he was certainly trying to make a statement with that,” Ryder commented dryly, taking it from me with one of his hands and tossing it in the air. I found myself strangely envious of his easy strength and fluid grace. Anyone would think he was idly playing with a tennis ball, not a six pound brick.
“Really? I’d say he was trying to kill someone with it,” Alex put in, giving Dave a pointed look.
Ryder and I sighed simultaneously, and I barely resisted the urge to roll my eyes at our blonde friend. He definitely lived up to his hair colour, or was at least born with more than his fair share of obtuseness. A bit of both, I decided when he continued with, “Or at the very least he was trying to maim you.”
“No, you think?” Dave replied, voice dripping sarcasm.
Ryder snorted and tossed the brick back to the pavement where it landed with a clack. “Okay, now that we’ve established ‘intent to harm’, can we also agree that we’re not going to retaliate in any way? The last thing we need is to provoke him into doing something worse.”
I hid a sheepish look behind my hand, coughing to help cover it up. Obviously he’d missed my threat when the car had driven by. If I could help it, I wasn’t going to draw attention to it now, lest he make me swear to stay away from Gus and his friends. Because then I’d have to promise I would, which meant the majority of my spare time would be consumed with finding a way around that promise so I could kick some serious Gus ass.
“You think I’m dumb enough to go after that psycho?” Dave asked, incredulous. He started off down the sidewalk and we fell into step beside him, me slightly behind everybody else.
“Ditto,” Alex said, tossing the pig skin up and down. “Besides, I doubt we need to provoke him. Seems like the type of guy who doesn’t bother with things like tit for tat.”
I made what I hoped was a noise of agreement. That way if Ryder caught me doing something I shouldn’t be doing later, like say, kicking the shit out of Gus behind the school gym, I could worm my way out of his patronising stare by telling him I never actually said I’d leave him alone.
“Just checking,” he said, and we rounded the corner onto one of the main streets. Being midday on a Saturday, the traffic was thick, the sidewalks packed with people. To our right was a line of coffee shops and numerous restaurants, the various food scents wafting over me, coffee and fried chicken the strongest.
Across the road were the different department stores, the storefronts screaming several different brand names at me. Not that I knew what was IN or what was HOT at any given moment. My wardrobe came complimentary of a la thrift store, my baggy jeans and plain tee straight off the racks that spelled ‘Second Hand’. It didn’t bother me none. As long as I had enough clothing to avoid a stint in jail for indecent exposure, I was pretty happy.
Besides, being a foster kid stuck in foster home number twelve didn’t do me any favours. It certainly didn’t help that my current foster parents were a bit flaky with handing over my government funded allowance so I could buy things like clothes and textbooks for school.
On a good day I had enough spare cash to buy a can of soda, so it was safe to say that shopping by preferred brand was a fantasy I could never hope to make a reality.
I was so busy inspecting a window display showcasing sweatpants with the word ‘Juicy’ scrawled across the butt that I crashed into Ryder’s solid back with an ‘Oomph’, not realising everyone’d stopped.
“Ouch,” I hissed, rubbing my squished nose. Ryder turned to face me with a questioning look in his blue-gray eyes. I always thought they looked like the colour of the ocean in the middle of a violent storm. Pale and dark and swirling, if you stared at them long enough you were almost convinced the colours changed before your very eyes.
“You weren’t listening to anything I just said, were you?” he asked, lips turned up in amusement.
“Um,” I started racking my brains for anything that might be relevant. I came up empty. “If I say yes, will you quiz me on it?” I eventually replied, screwing my nose up against the sting in my left nostril.
“Seriously, what’s up with you lately? Why do you keep zoning out?”
He wrapped a strong arm around my shoulders and hauled me up against the side of his body, ruffling my hair despite my screeching protest. When he let go, my midnight black hair was standing partially on end, the shorter layers sticking straight up.
“Ryder,” I moaned, trying to flatten it with little success.
It was a lost cause. I kept the thick mass short so it was manageable, but hacking it off had done little to stop it from doing whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted. The only part that behaved was the front, my bangs laying out over my forehead, long enough to fall into my eyes.
“Hey, that’s what you get for not listening.”
When I glowered at him, he laughed. “I said we were going to stop in at Nick’s and grab Dave’s board. Are you coming?”
I made a noise of disgust before I could bite it back. Nick was one of Dave’s close friends, and therefore a friend of Ryder and Alex’s by association. As for my relationship with the snarky know-it-all, it could be summed up in a few words - he was a creep. One I tried to spend minimal time with for not wanting to end up alone with him. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something about him just didn’t sit right with me. And it had nothing to do with his shifty little eyes or his grabby hands.
“Uh, no. I think I’ll pass. I’ll meet you later though.”
He nodded, but hesitated in following Alex and Dave who had crossed the road, shouting their goodbyes without so much as a backward glance.
“Go,” I said, nudging him with my shoulder. He allowed my push to rock him sideways but still hesitated, running a hand through his messy black hair. I smiled at the gesture. He always did it when he was agitated or worried, and I was betting that this time it was the latter, and also involved me.
“You sure?” he asked, confirming my suspicions. Those stormy eyes regarded me with more than a hint of uncertainty. “I can always stay here and hang with you.”
I shook my head and began walking backwards down the sidewalk, forcing people to manoeuvre around me while ignoring their disgruntled comments about teenagers having no manners or consideration.
“I’ll be fine. I don’t need a babysitter. Those two on the other hand,” I said, gesturing at Alex and Dave who were now tossing the football over the crowd, “should definitely not be left unattended.”
No sooner had the words escaped my mouth than Alex fumbled the ball and it bounced into the middle of the street. Heedless of the cars zooming by in each direction he lunged for it, and Ryder cursed, darting out into the road and neatly dodging a Beamer to drag both boy and ball to safety before one or the other met the end of their lives.
“Drop by my place tonight,” Ryder called, still holding Alex by the scruff of his neck like he was a naughty puppy. I nodded, and watched them disappear down a side street, chuckling as I imagined the lecture Alex would be receiving via our groups’ mother hen about safe practices when playing in the street.
Thoroughly amused, I was about to turn and head to the arcade further down the road when an unfamiliar sensation prickled my conscience. It had the fine hairs on the back of my neck standing on end and caused a shudder to roll through me. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it felt like, having a sudden awareness surge like that. It was unnerving and reassuring, welcome and unwelcome at the same time.
But what I did know with unimaginable certainty was there was someone watching me. I could feel eyes on me, measuring, scrutinising, trying to see right through me. I had no idea how I knew it, but I knew I wasn’t wrong, either.
The sensation continued to build in tiny increments, a soft warning, and I turned slowly in place, my sweeping gaze trying to catch anything out of the ordinary. Of course, looking for a pair of eyes that were focused on me was like finding a needle in a haystack. The street was busier than it had been a few seconds ago. There were tight lines of foot traffic flowing on the sidewalk. Shops full of impatient patrons wanting to buy something. Café’s packed to capacity with people even waiting for tables.
It was just another Saturday on Main Street, everyone going about their business. Despite the telltale sensation and my gut instinct, nothing leapt out me, and I was just about to give up entirely and put my delusion down to sheer insanity or possible heat stroke when my questing gaze locked onto someone else’s and I nearly fell over in shock.
Across the road and further down, outside the Abercrombie & Fitch store was a young man standing at the edge of the sidewalk, one shoulder resting against a lamppost. He was blatantly staring, his sharp blue eyes boring into my own while he remained unaffected by the people nearest him who were jostling him as they tried to filter through the crowd.
Shoulder length auburn hair that was slightly more red than brown hung loose and tucked behind his ears, fanning out over a worn black leather jacket. Dark blue jeans and scuffed black boots completed the ensemble, and from this far off I pegged him to be between six foot and six foot two. His lightly tanned, flawless skin only served to compliment his high, sculpted cheekbones, straight aristocratic nose, and full lips.
Putting aside the fact nobody I knew of would brave wearing all of those layers in this heat, I could say with much confidence I’d never seen this person before in my life.
Which would make sense if the guy was stalking me, I supposed. Not that I was going to be hasty and jump to conclusions, I chided myself, not willing to break eye contact with this stranger.
Not everything was doom and gloom, after all. There could be a perfectly good explanation as to why a suspicious looking young man was standing across the street eyeballing me like I was the gazelle and he was the lion about to attack.
Because that was exactly the vibe I was getting as I stood there dumbly, my legs locked in place and my arms frozen at my sides. He appraised me like I was his prey, and he was waiting for me to make the first and only mistake. The one that would cost me my life.
Right. And on that rather dramatic note I decided it was in my best interests to stop watching all of the SVU reruns that were on TV.
When he shifted slightly so he was facing me head on, I turned full circle just to eliminate the possibility that he might have been trying to look through me instead of at me. No such luck. I was the only one on the street immobile much to the disgust of a group of middle aged women preparing to leave the café I was stationed in front of.
Apparently I was stopping their merge into foot traffic. Not that I cared. I was too busy marvelling over how I’d gained the undivided attention of a perfect stranger to pay any heed to the annoyed twitters of some old bat who was wearing clothes meant for someone half her age.
I sighed irritably and stepped sideways to avoid being trampled, my eyes riveted to that sharp blue gaze. He followed each tiny movement I made, and when I raised my eyebrow in a bold move to let him know I was onto him, he didn’t respond in any way. It took less than a minute for me to become severely agitated - gawking people was a huge pet peeve of mine - and I was about to march across the road to find out just what exactly was wrong with his eyes when I was nearly sideswiped by three teenage boys.
One knocked me backwards as he gesticulated wildly, talking animatedly with his friends, and for the barest of seconds they blocked my line of sight completely. I shoved around them to start crossing the road but stopped dead in my tracks at the curb.
He was gone.
There was nobody leaning against the lamppost, and I couldn’t find a trace of him in any direction as I scoured the streets. Something I found absurd considering he’d been right there two seconds ago. He couldn’t have gone far.
Unless I’d imagined him to begin with.
I snorted. Yeah, right. If I’d imagined the whole thing, I wouldn’t have been standing in the middle of the sidewalk stuck with the fast fading sense that someone had just been watching me accompanied by the feeling of foreboding.