As I step out of the
shower, steam billowing around me, the tiny window and mirror instantly fog up.
I crack the window a bit to vent it out, since my fan is absolutely the worst
piece of machinery on the planet, and the bathroom slowly begins to materialize
around me.
Having thick hair is both a blessing and a curse. On one hand,
it likes to stay in place, but on the other, it gets ridiculously tangled.
Today it is especially disgusting—and not like I-just-washed-it tangled. Like I
drove straight through a tornado in a convertible with the top down, hair free,
strands meeting and quickly getting involved in relationships that I, as their
heartless owner, would have to end. My hair resents me for this, which is
probably why it feels coarse and brittle when I finally do untangle it all.
I eventually give up and twist it into a knot on top of
my head (I could have done that before I rigorously raked a comb through it and
saved me from a few split ends and saved my split ends from severe emotional
damage), and unravel myself from my towel to get dressed. A gust of brisk
morning air creeps in through the miniscule aperture of my window and assaults
me, and I scamper over to shut it immediately.
I want to ensure the remaining hot air stays trapped
inside, so I’m forcing the window closed as tight as possible when I feel a
pair of eyes on me. Pretending that I’m still fiddling with the window latch, I
slowly allow my eyes to drift upwards without the slightest inclination of my
head. There is no one outside—in fact, the world looks abandoned. I shift my
gaze from left to right, when I meet the eyes of something unmistakably alive
in a window in the apartment building across from mine. And it looks like
they’re staring across the path, through my window, and right into my
pretend-avoid face.
* * *
“Then what did you do?”
“I walked away from the window as casually as I could so
whoever it was didn’t think I was creeping on them or anything.”
“Right,” Gwen whispers, “because you wouldn’t want the
dude who was watching you naked to think you were creeping on him.”
“First of all, we don’t even know if he could see me
naked. Second of all, we don’t know if he’s a guy!” I hiss back.
She pauses from shelving books to look at me. “Why would
he be looking in your window if you weren’t naked?”
I try to form answers several times before she rolls her
eyes and says, “And if he was looking at you naked, then he’s a guy.”
“Not necessarily!” I say, louder than intended.
“Sh!” Patrick shoots from the reference desk.
Gwen makes a face and flips him off—but only after he’s
already turned his back to help someone.
“Why were you up at 6:30 anyway?” she whispers, picking
up Emma and shoving it in the
incorrect place (probably) somewhere in the Jane Austen section.
“That’s when the
birds that live outside my window wake up,” I mutter, stifling a yawn.
“Fuckers,” she mumurs.
We shelve in silence for a few minutes and listen to
Patrick’s “helpful” voice that is about three octaves higher than his angry
voice, which, as far as Gwen and I are concerned, is his regular voice.
“Why does he constantly tell us to shut up when he’s the
one with the loudest voice?” Gwen huffs.
“Perhaps he doesn’t know that higher pitches carry further
than lower ones,” I suggest.
“Maybe he should have learned that before coming to work
at the library.”
“Wasn’t it in the employee manual?”
“But was it in his
employee manual?”
“I am a
reference desk employee,” we say together, mimicking Patrick’s incredibly
shrill and shame-inducing way of speaking, which turns out to be a mistake,
because, as previously mentioned, pitches of a higher register carry further than
the whispers we should have used to make fun of him. Patrick’s mouth tightens
and his left nostril twitches ever so slightly, which means that Gwen and I
need to get to the no-talking zone of the library as quickly as possible so he
can’t yell at us.
Abandoning our carts of books, we speedwalk to the north
wing of the library that is roped off and has a sign reading, “TALKING
PROHIBITED,” which Patrick probably wrote because it sounds sinister and is
worded more difficultly than necessary. It’s a long way from the central
entrance, and I’m out of breath and my calves burn, but Patrick was just
finishing up helping a student, so we had to book it (dear God, I’m hilarious).
With stealth that would make any sniper proud, Gwen and I
split up, each of us picking a different set of shelves to lurk between. One
good thing—perhaps the only good thing—about working in a library is that it’s
really easy to avoid people. Which happens to be one of my hobbies.
It’s not so easy to avoid stools, though. As I nestle
myself in the music theory section, I stumble across one (quite literally) and
almost blow our cover. Quickly regaining my composure, I begin absentmindedly
messing up the shelves and am just about to begin rearranging them in the
correct order when I hear the brisk and important footfall of someone only
pretentious enough to be Patrick. I chance a peek between two notation
textbooks—it’s really quite astounding how someone who looks so thunderous can
have such a light tread. Knowing we’re both probably discreetly watching him
through the stacks, he starts making hand signals that roughly translate to,
“Get your giggly behinds out here so I can yell at you now.” I catch Gwen’s eyes and she shoots me a look that replies,
“No, thanks.”
We have both stopped moving altogether so that Patrick
cannot pinpoint our location as easily—and so I don’t knock over anything else.
He stands at the threshold of the North Wing, as if the ground on the other
side of his condescending sign is made of extra-bouncy trampolines. Or
something equally fun and disgusting.
“Caroline,” he
says softly. Ominously. I know he’s calling me first because I’m the softer
option. I’m more likely to break first. But I hold my own.
“Gwendolyn.” He says her name more sharply. If we hadn’t
had visual on him, it would have been impossible to determine where the sound
came from.
Still, Gwen and I don’t move. We’re waiting for just the
right moment. There’s a chance he might give up and go search another wing, but
Gwen and I know this possibility isn’t very likely.
Slowly, silently, I crouch so that I’m level with the
bottom shelf.
Come on, I will
his feet to move. Just one more step over
the line.
I can tell he doesn’t want to, even as his foot is raised
off the ground—but suddenly, he’s in the no-talking zone.
“Gwendolyn. Caroline,” He repeats.
Then, whipping out from somewhere between Physics and
Physiology, Gwen appears, hissing, “Sh!” and pointing to the “TALKING
PROHIBITED” sign.
* * *
The rain is my most favorite thing in the world. It
hypnotizes me until I stop whatever I’m doing to pay attention to it. The only
time I ever use my desk is when it’s raining because it sits right in front of
my window. I kid myself into thinking that I’ll get some work done while
listening to the rain, but within ten minutes, I feel my face slide into a
glassy-eyed stare and my thoughts are lost in the mass of oscillating charcoal
puffs crying in rage.
It is only when the rain subsides to a steady drumming
that I ease out of my reverie. I honestly think anyone who wished to control my
mind could just play rain noises and my brain would be ripe for usurpation.
I’ve literally spent twenty-five minutes staring out my window witnessing the
final stage of the water cycle. Yet, every time it fascinates me.
I take a few minutes to gather my bearings. My thoughts
are all over the place. Why do my elbows
hurt? Oh, cause they’ve been leaning on my desk. Why am I sitting at my desk? I
don’t ever sit here. This chair is kind of comfy. I should sit here more. Why
is there water on my desk? Is that from the rain? Or did I drool?
For all I know someone could have come in here and
brainwashed me. Next thing I know, there will be more and more gaps in my
memory, and I’ll suddenly be very skilled in combat. And then they’ll send me
to murder the President. (Who will
send me is still very unclear. My bet is on the Russians.) I’ll be so far gone
by then, I won’t be able to stop myself, and then, when the FBI or CIA or
whatever asks me why I did it, I’ll only be able to say, “It all started on a dark and stormy night…”
I shake my head and gather my homework that somehow
failed to magically complete itself, deciding that if I am ever in fantastic
shape, it is probably a warning that I’ve been brainwashed and am about to
assassinate someone important, for that is probably the only thing strong
enough to motivate me toward a more strenuous workout. (And by more strenuous, I mean something other
than climbing the stairs twice a day to get to class.)
Just as I’m about to switch off the light, a peculiar but
slightly familiar sensation creeps over me, and my eyes are magnetically drawn
to the window in the building directly across from mine, where that same pair
of eyes stares coldly out the window as if they’ve been there the whole time.
It may be the fact that it’s not 6:30 in the morning or it may be that I’m
completely clothed this time or quite possibly it’s the fact that I’m
half-hidden behind the shrub in front of my window, but I feel compelled to
stare back this time. Shut up, I
think at the birds in the hedge. You’ll
draw its eyes over here. Shut up, it’s raining. I don’t physically see the
eyes move—they don’t even seem to blink—but I feel a jolt of panic when they
somehow lock onto mine. Everything around me becomes blurry and out of focus;
yet, I’m hyper-aware of my body and my senses feel keener. For a split second,
there is nothing but me and the pair of eyes, somehow managing to keep contact
with each other despite the solid wall of precipitation and sporadic gusts of
wind between us. Then the blinds flick shut and I’m left by myself, watching
billions of threads of water spool into gushing streams upon the ground.
* * *
“Sometimes I feel like a spy—”
“You’re not a spy.”
“—You know, like when we sneak between shelves and
stuff—”
“You don’t sneak. You’re not sneaky.”
“I make it a game sometimes. Like, I try to see how many
books I can put away without people noticing me—”
“Stop,” Gwen says, planting herself in front of me and
gripping my shoulders with both hands. “First of all, that’s a ninja you’re
talking about. Second of all, you are not stealthy. You are the opposite of
stealth.”
“I’m totally stealthy!”
“I’ve seen you trip over nothing.”
“You’ve seen no such thing,” I snap. I’m calling her
bluff here; I have tripped over
nothing before—many times, in fact—I’m just pretty sure she hasn’t seen it.
“Yesterday when you were finding a book for someone.”
I purse my lips and suck in my cheeks while I think of a
viable explanation. “I didn’t think anyone saw,” is the best I can do.
“Another prime example of why you could neither be a spy
nor a ninja.”
I roll my eyes. “I hate it when you talk like Patrick.”
Gwen exhales slowly, thrusts her jaw forward slightly,
and looks at me through beyond irritated eyes. I probably should feel ashamed
for how much pleasure I’m getting out of this. Comparing Gwen to Patrick is the
most serious insult one can toss at her.
“I was pretty stealthy scoping out that face in the
window,” I add nonchalantly, just to make her face take on a different
expression.
She’s still seething.
“I guess I shouldn’t say face, because all I could really see were its eyes.”
She exhales, and I swear I see steam seeping out her
nostrils.
“Cold, calculating eyes. Green, I think. Like yours.”
Because she looks exactly the way you’re supposed to look
when jinxing someone (according to Harry
Potter), I quickly say, “Stop giving me that look. Your face will get stuck
like that.”
There’s
the slightest flicker in her poisonous expression, but as she sees I’m not the
least bit sorry, she relents and says stiffly, “Please explain this stealth.”
On the inside, I’m rolling my eyes at her forced
formality, but on the outside, I’m telling her about my second rendezvous with
the eyes in the window.
“You stared at the rain for 25 minutes?”
I shrug. “Give or take a few.”
“And that whole time, those eyes were watching you.”
“Well, they weren’t watching me until the very end, after
I’d already seen them, and if you’d been listening to my story, you would know
that.”
She turns and walks away, shaking her head and muttering
something that sounds an awful lot like, Least
stealthy person on the planet.
“Hey, wait!” I run after her. “I need your help! Tell me
what to do! I can’t deal with this guy on my own!”
“How do you know it’s a person,” Gwen says when I’ve
finally caught up to her. “What if it’s a poster someone taped to the window?”
“It blinks—very sparingly, and deliberately and kind of
slowly, but it blinks.”
“Why don’t you go over to that apartment see for yourself
what’s going on?”
I scoff so hard at her ludicrous idea that I choke on my
spit. Gwen pauses and waits patiently for me to regain a steady breathing
rhythm—like good friends do.
“Excuse me?” I gasp, when I can finally talk again. “You
want me to go over to the place that houses someone with eyes like that?”
Gwen looks at me as if she doesn’t see the problem.
“Those eyes are plotting
something, Gwen! The more I look at them, the more I know it’s true! They obviously
belong to a super sinister person, and you want me to go over there and just
ask it to stop staring out the window?”
She shakes her head impatiently and raises her eyebrows.
“Yes.”
“Well, here’s my
idea: you come over and see the eyes for yourself and then we’ll discuss the
practicality of approaching them, okay?”
Gwen rolls her eyes and waves her hand as if to brush
aside my fears and says, “Don’t you think you’re being a little paranoid?”
“Unless you don’t think you’re stealthy enough to observe without being seen.”
* * *
“Cara.”
“Sh!”
“Cara!”
“Sh!”
“Caroline!”
“What?” I
answer before she can get through my whole name.
“This is weird.” She scoots her chair over so she can
poke her head into the bathroom, where I’m crouched atop my toilet, looking out
the miniscule window.
“Go back to your post!” I hiss, waving my hand toward my
desk.
The window across the alley is dark, but I can see the blinds
are up. Our conditions are horrible, though. It’s not raining today (“Thank
God, or you’d be mesmerized for another 25 minutes of your life”), but the
clouds ferment overhead in an ominous shade of purple-gray that threatens an
imminent thunderstorm and obscures everything. It’s about 4:15, so it’s too
early for the streetlights to come on. For all we know, those eyes could be
sitting there in that obscure abyss watching us right now.
As if reading my thoughts, Gwen says suddenly, “Do you
think those sinister eyes of yours can see in the dark?”
“I wouldn’t put it past them,” I say solemnly.
“Do you think they can look separate ways? That they can
watch us both at once?”
“I hope not,” I say, shuddering.
“Do you think they
can shoot lasers?” Her voice has dropped down to a library whisper, and I
realize she doesn’t share in my sense of foreboding at all.
“You’re only joking about it because you haven’t seen
them,” I say, climbing off the toilet and walking back into my bedroom. “I’m
telling you, there’s something about them, and the more I notice them, the more
I feel that they have this weird control over me. I can’t explain it. You’ll
just have to see them yourself.”
“Cara, you just happened to see them at times that caught
you off guard, and so they just seem
sinister to you because of the circumstance. Really, I think you’re being—”
She breaks off because world outside is suddenly
illuminated—every detail seems magnified as the streetlamps throw everything
into bright, artificial light—a row of shrubs, an empty sidewalk, lines of dark
windows, and two unblinking, slightly scintillating eyes poking out from the
black square across the way, providing their own source of eerie light for the
otherwise black cave. Gwen stares back with a frown of uncomprehending
confusion. I keep my eyes focused on her, not daring to look out the window. I
don’t know if their eyes have connected, and I don’t know if it has seen us,
but Gwen sits unmoving at my desk, and I try as hard as I can not to move so
that it doesn’t shift its gaze onto me. A clap of thunder and a flash from a
third, natural form of light brings us back into the real world. I dart a quick
look across the alley, just in time to see the eyes retreat into the darkness,
and Gwen inhales sharply as if she hasn’t taken a breath that whole time. Then,
she looks up at me with an expression that finally displays the appropriate
amount of horror, and I can tell that she understands.
* * *
I’m a victim in my own apartment. I have covered all my
windows, but nothing helps because I know they’re out there. Two pinpricks in a
black rectangle staring through the blanket that serves as a makeshift curtain.
It’s almost worse not being able to see them, because I find myself peeking out
every now and then to check—just to reassure myself they are real.
Sometimes they’re there, eternal and unblinking, as if
they are a part of the window, and I think that perhaps I could learn to get
used to them. But then they vanish and I find myself constantly rushing to the
window to see if they’re back.
Gwen frequently forces me to stay the night with her, but
my dreams are filled with black caverns full of luminous eyes staring out from
the nothingness, which is worse than the real thing. Sometimes a sinister voice
accompanies the dreams—one that sounds suspiciously like Alan Rickman. (“Further
proof that the eyes belong to a man,” Gwen reminds me.) And sometimes the voice
is telling me to assassinate the Prime Minister, and I spend a good twenty
minutes freaking out to Gwen until she informs me that we live in America.
When the eyes are there, I sit at my desk, watching them
through the bushes. And when they aren’t there, I sit at my desk, waiting for
them to come back. I want to know if they can see me. And if they can see me, I
want to know why they watch me. And I want to know where they go, what they do
all day, and why they never blink. Sometimes I’m watching them so intently, I forget to blink.
Gwen and I move in cycles now. Since she doesn’t live
here, she’s not as taken as I am with the eyes, so she’ll volunteer to come
over after holing up at her place for a few days and observe them with me. She
sits at my desk, drumming her fingers obsessively, muttering things like, “Who are you?” over and over while I pace
behind her stringing my thoughts together.
“Sometimes I think if I figure this thing out, I’ll have
all of life’s mysteries solved,” I tell her.
“Blink, you
bastard.”
“They’re always there,
you know? Like the one thing I can count on.”
“Shut up, you
dumb birds, we’re in this together.”
“I know that if I sit in front of this window, I will see
those eyes at least once every day.”
“Turn on a light, you nocturnal freak, I want to see your
face.”
“It’s comforting yet unsettling.”
Our conversations are generally disjointed like that, and
we don’t ever really listen to each other. But the eyes are listening. I can
tell.
* * *
“Caroline, and Gwendolyn if you’re there (which I know
you are). I am not sure if you two are aware, but you have both been scheduled to work the past six days and you have both failed to report. As a result, I
have been left to staff the library by myself, and the reference desk has been
neglected—”
The ringing of the phone seems to startle both Gwen and I
out of our six-day-crazy spells, triggering an almost wholehearted return to
normalcy, and we hold a silent argument over who should get the phone and deal
with Patrick.
You do it, I
mouth. You’re saner than I am!
You do it! she
gestures back. He’ll accept bullshit from
you—he likes you better!
Being unable to argue with that logic, I pick up the
phone and say pleasantly, “Hello, Patrick.”
I’m surprised at how natural normal comes to me with
those eyes peering out the window, as if they’re ready to attack the lies I’m
about to tell.
“I am so sorry to have missed work the past six days
without notifying you. Gwen is too,” I add at her frantic motions. “You see, we
were both incredibly sick and totally bedridden. Raging case of diarrhea.” I pause, thinking he won’t pursue it.
I’m wrong.
“I, uh, had a chamber pot. Yes, I’m aware that I have a
cell phone, but my charger wasn’t near me when I was, um, diagnosed, and I was
already bedridden, so I couldn’t just get up and get it. I couldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom. The same for
Gwen,” I add hastily. “Uh, we were together. I probably gave it to her. Or she
gave it to me. My memory is really foggy. These last six days were tough.
That’s why I—we—forgot to come into work.”
The eyes blink slowly without feeling, as if calculating
the situation.
“Yes, she was with me. That’s right, in one bed. No, sir,
both of our phones were dead. Like I said, we weren’t thinking straight. Well,
we couldn’t. What if we got you sick?
Then there would be no one at the reference desk! Oh. Why wasn’t anyone manning
it? Because you had to shelve? Ah. I see.”
Gwen presses a button on the answering machine and
Patrick’s irritated voice bounces around my room.
“I know you two aren’t sick!” he says impatiently. “No
one would believe that story, and I live in the building across from you!”
He’s positively spitting. “I can see
you from my apartment!”
“We’re neighbors!” I say brightly.
“Don’t act like you don’t know,” he snaps. “You two have spent the last six days staring into
my bedroom window for God knows why! I see you every time I go in there!”
Gwen and I are silent for a moment, and everything seems
to come to a standstill. There is only one thought racing rapidly around in my
head: Those are Patrick’s eyes. From
Gwen’s horrified look, she’s thinking the same thing. Our eyes meet, and then,
displaying the stealth she bragged so much about, Gwen grabs the phone from me
and shrieks, “Stop watching us!”
* * *
Patrick hangs up the phone, feeling an uncomfortable
mixture of rage and confusion. At first, he thinks the girls are pretending to
be insane to get out of working again. But when he glances out the window and
sees their eyes wildly raking the area for something—he doesn’t know what—he
can’t be so sure it’s not a more serious issue. He backs further into his dark
room, afraid that they’ll see him.
“Not that they would do anything, right, Tolstoy?” he
remarks nervously to his cat.
The cat, however, blinks laconically and turns back to
the window to watch the birds outside in the hedge.
~ToriannaLamba
