Olivia's POV
I stab the last piece of roasted chicken with my fork, while Mom slides her chair away from the four-person table and takes her already empty plate to the sink. Instead of immediately starting to wash the dishes, she moves to the row of white cupboards across the room. She grabs a dark green notebook and brings it over to the table, while I lower the fork with the untouched piece of chicken back onto my plate.
"Finish your chicken," she tells me and then opens the notebook on the last used page.
The moment she pulls out her phone, I know what she's going to use it for. The notebook is, after all, her old-fashioned way of keeping track of our finances.
Before she can scribble down the first number, I slide my chair away from the table and grab the crutches resting against the back of the chair beside me. I wordlessly hop toward the door leading into the single hallway.
"You told me you were starving enough to lick the plate clean. So, what is this?" Mom calls after me, but I'm already hopping down the narrow hallway.
At the last door to the left, right before the front entrance, I enter my square bedroom. The sunlight coming from the single window casts the almost empty desk and the chair hidden underneath my clothes in warm light, but I barely pay them attention. Instead, I head straight for the unmade bed perched against the wall across the room. I stop at the foot of the bed and rest the crutches on the ground. With a deep inhale I lift the edge of the mattress, which causes the heap that is a soft blue blanket to roll to the opposite edge of the bed.
Under the mattress lies a single brown envelope that I grab without a moment of hesitation. I let go of the mattress which causes a swirl of dust to explode into my face. The small particles shine like tiny pieces of gold, but I swat them away before they can get anywhere near my eyes.
Then I grab the crutches, spin around and hop back into the much brighter kitchen. Mom doesn't even glance up when I sit onto the chair across from her. Not until I throw the brown envelope on top of her notebook.
"What's this?" She lifts her eyes and wrinkles her manicured eyebrows. "Are you trying to bribe me into not having to eat the last piece of chicken?"
"It's to cover the hospital fees." I grab my fork again and lift the last piece of chicken to my mouth.
Slowly Mom opens the envelope but then drops it the moment she sees what's inside. "Where did you get this kind of money? You know what, don't answer that. I want the freedom to claim that I don't know anything when you get arrested for stealing."
"It's the money from last year when I worked in the café next to the hair salon," I say while chewing. "And I'm not a child anymore. I know how much a hospital stay costs and that a single mother working as a hairdresser can't afford it on her own."
"You want me to believe—"
I drop my fork, which causes it to clatter against the ceramic plate. "I didn't steal it, Mom. Now, take the money or I'll tell Dad that we need his help to cover my hospital fee."
The simplest mention of my father has her lips sewing shut. What matters though, is that she accepts the envelope.
Once I'm sure she's not going to protest any further I grab the crutches and move toward the back door right behind her.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to look for the stalker from the hospital." I open the door. "I still have some questions he needs to answer."
"You really think you're interesting enough for someone to bother to stalk you? If anyone were stalking either of us, then—"
Her words are cut off as I close the door behind me. I wobble down the side of the house until I reach the front-drive. There I finally stop and take a moment to figure out what to do next. Especially because the paramedics informed me that my phone had been smashed during the accident, which means I can't call anyone for back-up.
Because I've already used our neighbor's tall hedge as a cover, I need to find a different hiding place. I'm about to head across the road to the big tree on the front drive of the house across from ours when I find myself unable to move. I'm standing at the edge of our drive, just where it meets the road, while my crutches are already half a foot onto the road. Yet no matter how far I lean forward, my feet remain planted on the last part of the stone path leading from our house.
Something is preventing me from stepping onto the road.
I lift the right crutch to throw it onto the middle of the road when I catch a swirl of movement with the side of my eye. Twenty feet down the road stands the by now familiar guy dressed in the same gray sweater and with the same dark hair covering his forehead.
"I knew you'd be back." A smile crooks the side of my lips.
I steer my body away from the road and suddenly I'm able to move again. I put the crutches forward and use them to propel me closer to the stalker. The moment I move, however, so does he. He spins around and hurries down the street, away from me.
"Hey!" I shout after him and glare at his back.
The moment of distraction, when I'm not paying attention to my feet, is enough to cause me to miss a step. I lose my balance and fall onto the ground where I land on my knees. While the right crutch remains in my hold, the left one is torn out of my hands and clatters onto the road.
"Seriously!" I snap my eyes back to the stalker, who is still moving farther and farther away from me. I wrap my hands around my mouth and shout as loud as my high voice allows me to. "Hey, stalker! Are you really going to leave me like this?"
My words do their trick because the stranger stops and slowly turns toward me. Yet he remains rooted to his spot, which is now already forty feet away from me.
"Aren't you as my stalker supposed to care about what happens to me?"
He swipes his head up and down the road, probably looking for any witnesses, before he begins to edge back to me. His every step is laced with a second of hesitation until he finally stops two steps away from me.
"There you go," I say. "Now, can you help me up because I have a feeling I won't be able to do it on my own?"
I lift my hand, but instead of grasping it with his hand, he crosses his arms in front of his chest.
"Can you really see me?"
"Not this again." I drop my hand with a groan. "Where did you get the idea that I'm blind? Did it say in my hospital chart?"
"You used to be blind."
"No, I didn't." I shake my head. "Now, tell me your name."
"Why?"
"What do you mean why? I need to know the name of my stalker. It's the proper thing to do."
"I'm not your stalker." With an eye-roll, he runs his hands through his hair, which gives me the first peak of his forehead. But that's not the only thing it gives me. On the left side of his forehead, a nail's length away from his hairline, rests a thumb-sized scar. And because there is no vicious redness surrounding it, it tells me that it's an old one.
"There's no point in denying it." Despite the questions popping into my mind regarding the scar, I force myself to focus on the conversation at hand. "I already know about you, so there's no harm in telling me your name. It doesn't even have to be your full name. Your first name will do."
"Why?" he asks again, but then shakes his head. "Never mind. Just go back to not knowing about me."
"But I already know that you're stalking me. I can't just forget something like that."
"Then pretend you can't see me."
"First tell me your name and help me back up." I lift my hand again.
He glances from my raised hand to my face and then lowers his hands from his hair. "Samuel—that's my name."
"Good." I grab onto his hand and pull myself up.
The moment I'm standing on my own foot and a half, he tears his hand out of my hold and takes a small step back. His caramel eyes snap to his hand, while he grips his forearm with his other hand. The way he's holding the hand I touched away from his body reminds me why I should have known better than to touch a stalker. He's now probably going to worship his hand and swear to never wash it again.
"Why are you so obsessed with me?" I ask.
"You said you'd pretend not to see me."
"I never said that. Now, tell me why you're stalking me."
Instead of answering, he grabs the edge of the silver chain which ends in the front pocket of his jeans, and pulls out a round silver object. He flips it open and raises it higher, while I need another moment to realize that what he's holding is one of those old-fashioned pocket watches.
"Are you in a hurry to stalk someone else?"
"No." He snaps the watch close with a glare and puts it back into his pocket. "I want to leave, but there's still over an hour left."
"What do you—" I begin but suddenly the honk of a car jolts my attention.
I glance behind my back to find a black sedan standing in the middle of the road. For a second I have no idea what the driver's problem is, but then I notice that my left crutch is still sprawled across half of the road. I turn to my stalker Samuel to ask him to pick up the crutch for me, but all I find is an empty street stretching in front of me.
Not again.
With a groan, I pick up the crutch and watch the car drive by. So much for saying that he can't leave for another hour.
***
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- E