Page 23 of Eyes in the Shadows

The image is blurry, like it’s been zoomed in or taken from very far away, and I’m in the very center of a black circle with crossing lines, like crosshairs or a target. I’m smiling with my eyes closed, head tilted up to soak in the sunlight. I’m wearing my pajamas and, though it’s blurry, I recognize the vague shapes in the background as the refrigerator and cabinets of my own kitchen.

Chills erupt under my skin. The pounding of my heartbeat is so intense it almost hurts.

With shaking hands, I pick the frame back up and something falls into the packaging below. It’s a note. Scrawled on a yellow post it in that same cramped scribble I have memorized is,Now you have one of yourself.

He has been watching me, just like he promised.

I press my lips together and look up at the window. The curtains are open, so he might be watching, even now. I don’t remember standing there, smiling in the sunlight this morning, but I was wearing these pajamas. Was this taken today?

My phone starts buzzing, making me jump, and my stomach tries to fall further out my butt. It couldn’t be… No way… Swallowing, I inch towards the couch where I left my phone. And the relief is so acute it’s almost painful when I see my sister’s face on the caller ID screen.

“Hey, Melissa,” I greet her. I sound out of breath and I know it’s my racing heart.

“Hey, you! How have you been?”

I slump onto the couch, dropping the picture into my lap. “Oh, you know… same old.”

“Cooking, reading, working?”

I laugh a little because I usually really am that predictable. This would be the first time we’ve spoken in the past five years where anything really different has happened and I can’t even tell her about it. “Eat, sleep, repeat.”

“Bo-ring,” she sings.

“Yeah,” I agree, staring down at the picture frame in my lap. I didn’t notice before when I was busy freaking out about what was inside it, but the frame is silver, and hefty. It’s plain, but in a way that looks expensive. It’s the kind of frame Melissa put her wedding portrait in.

My sister never really calls me to talk about me, though, so I throw that ball back to her. “But what about you? How’s Nick? How are the kids?”

“Nick is fine, whatever. He’s doing well in some fantasy draft or something and it’s all he fucking talks about. Avery is great, they just had a trip to the zoo with her class so she’s in her ‘I’m going to be a vet’ era, which is adorable. She’s telling me all these things she’s learning about lions and hippos. It’s so fun watching her be excited about stuff.

“And Warren’s front tooth just fell out and he informed me that he knows the tooth fairy isn’t real because some kid named Jeff told him. So now I have to go find some kid named Jeff and kick a 6-year-old’s ass.”

I laugh. “It’s only right. He can’t be allowed to keep spreading those lies. Just make sure it’s the right kid named Jeff.”

I can hear the smile in her voice. “Good call. And as for me…”

As she regales me with tales of a new breakfast she’s been making on repeat that she’s loving and how annoyed she is about a promotion that should have been hers going to someone else, I quietly have a crisis.

He’s watching me. He watches me. He’s been watching me.

I keep waiting for the fear or panic to set in. I keep thinking it’s going to freak me out, make me want to throw closed the curtains and hide in the dark forever.

Why the hell doesn’t this bother me like it should?

What has he even seen? I don’t sleep with the curtains open, or change in front of the window. At most he’s seen me pick my nose or itch my ass, which—while private—aren’t exactly earth shattering.

Which just begs the question: why? Why is he watching me? It makes sense he would be keeping tabs on me right after that night—he would have wanted to make sure I didn’t tell anyone about what I’d seen—but I would think that it’s been obvious for a while that I’m not going to be a problem.

So, why? It’s not like I’m all that interesting, as Melissa so generously pointed out.

As my sister switches topics to her last run-in with Avery’s hot teacher, I look down at the picture again. I should throw it away. My fingers tighten around the edge and I get up off the couch and head towards the kitchen trash can, shoved against the wall near the fridge. I stand over it, but can’t bring myself to let go.

When Melissa pauses for breath, I jump in. “Mel, what would you do if someone sent you something kind of creepy and stalkerish? Would you throw it away?”

“Yes,” she replies instantly.

“But what if… you don’t want to?”

She sighs and I swear I can practically see her switching her phone to the other ear in frustration as one of her kids—not sure which, they’re both equally loud—screams in the background. “Why do I feel like there’s a right answer but you’re not giving me the context I need to get there?”

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