DoubleDown V (6 page)

She touched the skin of his penis and rubbed it a bit, but as she did so, an image formed in her mind … her friend, Bonnie MacDonald masturbating.  She had wanted to catch her again but even though she’d snuck into Bonnie’s room several times, she’d never had any luck.

Karen replaced the guy’s hand and left, but she left the bathroom door open.  That’d give the guy a bit of a shock.

She walked over to the Starbucks.  It was closed but she stared in the window, knowing there’d be nothing much to see.

“You don’t seem much like a coffee drinker.”

Karen saw his reflection in the plate glass window, and of course she immediately recognized his voice.

“I suppose you drink coffee all the time,” she said.

“I do, but that’s because I’m much more mature than you are.”

She turned and faced Bobby Jersey.  In the year since she’d seen him, he’d grown bigger, filling out.  She knew that some girls at her school would consider him quite handsome.

But he scared her.  Not a lot, but a little.

“You’re the same age as me, remember?”

“Oh, I remember.”

“Hey,” she said.  “What are you doing here?  You don’t live near here.  Do you?”

“I was looking for you.  I want you to show me where you live.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer right away.  He just looked at her with the bright eyes that she remembered from the times they’d met at the beach.  After a minute, he smiled and said, “We’re normally on different schedules.  Sometimes time stops for both of us simultaneously, like now, but sometimes it’s just me or just you.”

“I know.  So?”

“So, I thought I could come and visit you when time stops and you’re frozen there, ready for me to do whatever I want to you.”

Karen wanted to laugh, hoping it was just a joke.  He was smiling and he made it sound light, like he was poking fun at her.

But … why was he here?  Why
did
he want to know where she lived?

“You tell me where you live,” she said.  “What’s your address?”

“16 Sunnyside Lane.”

He’d answered too fast. She knew he was lying.

She wanted to run away but couldn’t.  He was her only link to whatever power they shared.

He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth.  His tongue pushed into her, and she couldn’t help responding.  She put one hand on the back of his head to pull him closer.

Then he pushed one hand roughly up her shirt and pushed her bra off one breast, grabbing her and holding her tightly.

“Stop!”

He didn’t let her go, squeezing her breast again, laughing.

Then he let her go but he grabbed one wrist, stopping her from running.

Fear pulsed through her. She used her free hand to put her bra back.  She wanted to get away, to scream for help that couldn’t possibly come, to kick him in the balls, to slap him, to yell at him for doing that, but mostly she just wanted him to go away.

“Please leave me.”

“No.  Not until you tell me where you live.”

“No fucking way.”

“Oooh, the little girl swore.”

“Fuck you!”

He laughed at her. “When I’m free to move around and you’re frozen in time, you won’t be able to stop me from doing whatever I want with your body.”

“Leave me alone!”

He laughed once again, and she couldn’t help but look at him.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I was just screwing with you.  I wouldn’t do anything.  I just like to press your buttons.”

“Doesn’t really seem like that’s all it is.”

“Listen, I’m sorry.  I went too far.”  His voice softened, as if he really was sorry.  “I promise I won’t do that again.”

She listened, not knowing what to believe.

“At least not without your permission.”

Finally the smile got to her.  She knew he was playing her now, that the smile meant nothing, and yet somehow it meant a lot. No other boy paid any attention to her, and part of her was excited by the groping.

“So tell me where you live,” he asked again.

“No.”

He shrugged.  “There’s a fifty-fifty chance you’ll be called back before me.  I’ll just follow you.”

Karen knew he would do exactly that.  And would he follow through on his earlier threat?  One day, would she be reading or watching TV and suddenly realize he’d been there?   How far would he go if he did?  Would he just play a practical joke on her or would he hurt her?

She started to walk away from Bobby, not wanting anything to do with him.

“Watch this,” he said.

“What now?”

“Just watch.”

There was an old man walking across the street.  Bobby pulled something out of his pocket and showed it to Karen.  It was a box cutter.  She saw the razor-sharp blade and watched as he walked over to the old man.

“Bobby, don’t hurt him.”

The man was between steps, so he appeared to be balanced on one foot.  He was intent on where he was walking, and part of Karen briefly wondered what business he had this time of night.  Nothing was open.  Maybe he was just going for a walk in the fresh air.

Bobby didn’t hesitate.  He took the box cutter and slashed the old man’s neck.

Karen froze, not believing what she’d just seen.  The cut was deep, very deep, and although no blood flooded out, she knew that as soon as time started again, the man’s life was going to spurt away onto the sidewalk.

“Oh, my God … . Why?”

Bobby put the box cutter back in his pocket.  “Why not?  For fun, of course.  I just wish I could be here to see it.”

“You’re a monster,” she whispered.

Once more, Karen wanted to run away from him, but instead she found herself walking closer to the man, staring at the thin slice that crossed his neck.  She patted the man’s cheek and said, “I’m so sorry.”

Bobby pulled her around to face him.  She saw triumph in his eyes, laughter in his soul, and power radiating through every part of him.

She wanted to kiss him.

“Leave me alone,” she said.  Her voice was shaking, and she didn’t know anymore what she really wanted.

Then his face went blank.  “Shit.  I have to go.”

He pushed her away and ran fast down the street.  She guessed that he had a long way to go, and not a lot of time to do it.

The old man stared forward, nothing in his eyes but determination to meet his destination.

That night, Karen had trouble sleeping.  Everything seemed normal (well, as normal as any day could be for her), but when she went to bed and turned the lights off, her mind wouldn’t stop.

Bobby had gone to a lot of trouble to track her down today.  In some ways it was flattering and fun, in other ways it was fascinating and suspenseful; but now that she lay alone in her bed and the night spooks of her mind woke up, all she felt was dread and fear.

He’ll rape me one day. 

I’ll be sleeping in my bed, and I’ll wake up feeling hurt and bleeding, and I’ll know he’s found me.

But would he?  She struggled to pull back the funny parts of Bobby that she liked so much, the jokes and the ability to not take anything too seriously.

Then her mind would turn back to the old man, surely dead now.

I can never let him find me.

She’d stay away from the beach and keep a closer eye on things when she walked around town, but that was no guarantee.

Karen knew that everyone left footprints wherever they went.  Did he snoop on her Facebook page?  Did he know her cell number?  There were a lot of opportunities to follow her home from school or church.

I told him Dad’s name.

When her dad had died, she remembered talking to Bobby, telling him how lost she felt.  She tried to make a joke about her dad’s name, but now that comment was haunting her.  If Bobby remembered Parker Samson Richardson’s name, it’d be easy to find where she lived.  Easy as slicing an old man’s neck.

She didn’t have to be sleeping when he found her, of course.  If time stopped for her, and he had his freedom, it could happen anytime at all.  He could attack her at dinner or in the middle of English class, and she would just feel pain hit her out of the blue.

Only she would know what had happened.

Karen tossed and turned with worry, not falling asleep until after four o’clock.  When Mom woke her by jostling her arm, she cried out in fear, pulling away from the only person in the world that she could totally trust.

*   *   *

Two weeks later time froze in the middle of English Lit, with Mrs. Frey rambling on about the theme of
Hamlet
.  Although Karen had enjoyed reading the play, she hated the way Mrs. Frey would dissect every little bit of it and ask the class, “What does this scene
really
mean?”

Karen never got it, so she was thankful for a break.

She gave a mock salute to Mrs. Frey as she walked toward the door.  Her desk was at the back of the class, because the teacher liked to have all the troublemakers near the front.

Bonnie MacDonald was two desks over and one up from Karen; she went to look at her friend.  She only hesitated a second before running her hand through Bonnie’s hair and touching her cheek.  She thought about watching Bonnie masturbating and wished she could find a way to make that happen again.

Reluctantly, she left the class and passed through the halls to the closest exit.  Cautious, she looked around but couldn’t see Bobby Jersey anywhere.

There were several houses nearby that she’d never visited so she went inside the first one.

She found Alexander Michaels sitting in his bedroom.   Mr. Michaels was a forty-year-old chubby guy who worked the evening shift at Starbucks.  Karen had been served by him several times and was always a bit creeped out when he handed over the proper change and grinned at her.  She always felt weird.

He had his pants pulled down to his ankles.  His penis was flaccid, but she suspected it wasn’t going to stay that way for long.

Karen was pretty sure he lived alone.  The bed was unmade and the closet door was open.  Only a few men’s shirts hung there, no dresses or women’s clothing of any kind.

“Can’t say I’m surprised at that.”

Michaels was at a desk staring at his laptop.  He was in a chat room, and when Karen read through the notes on the screen she felt awful.  He was talking to a fourteen-year-old girl, pretending to be a boy her age.

Beside him was a stack of printed paper.  She flipped through it, shocked to see dozens of transcripts, each one with him talking to a young girl.  They all seemed to end with him asking to meet her.

She took the papers, and shoved them in a manila file folder, and carried them with her as she left.

“Gonna stop you, pervert.”

She wanted to slap the guy—or worse—but she thought it would suffice to mail the printouts to the police and let them take care of things.  Alexander Michaels would wonder how his precious papers disappeared, but he’d soon enough find them waved in front of his face.

When Karen was outside, she stopped, realizing that this was the first time she’d done anything while time was frozen that would significantly affect somebody’s life.

“Feels pretty good.”

She walked to the next house.  A woman was in the bathroom scrubbing a toilet with a toothbrush.  Presumably not her own.

Karen didn’t recognize her.  She was in her twenties, skinny, dressed in floppy gray jogging pants and a matching sweater.

The bedroom was messy here, too, and a framed photo of the girl and a man, both smiling brightly at the camera, lay on the floor.  The glass was cracked.

Karen left, not feeling good about things.  She couldn’t do anything to help the girl.

Why would that matter?
I’ve never helped anybody before.

She walked past several houses, wondering why the hell she should start caring about the people she spied on.  All she’d ever wanted to do was learn what they hid and add to her Secrets Journal.

She had a lot of entries now, including her priest, who she watched reading pornography online; several people who took illegal drugs when nobody was watching; thieves; liars; adulterers; and many others.  Her little town was full of the seven deadly sins … and more.

If she believed the Bible (and really, some days, she didn’t pretend to believe it, even to herself), all her friends and neighbors were doomed to rot in hell.

She sat on a bench beside a bus stop and thought about her family.  She missed her dad, and her mom didn’t have any secrets that Karen had ever found.  She might be the one exception to ascend to heaven one day.

Tina?

Karen’s older sister was just dumb.  One day she would realize that giving blow jobs and probably screwing her boyfriend wasn’t going to help her accomplish anything.  One day Jimmy Berenstein would see some other girl and dump Tina without a minute’s thought.

That morning, Tina had been getting ready for school with Karen, but there was something different.  She was too happy, too perky, and Karen realized now that she hadn’t seen Tina at school after all.

She knew where Jimmy lived and walked in that direction.  It wasn’t far from Karen’s home, which Tina thought convenient.

The house was a dump, a duplex, where Jimmy lived in one half with his dad.  Karen had no idea where his mom was, since she was never mentioned.

Jimmy’s car was parked in front of the house, and Karen wasn’t surprised that the front door wasn’t locked.  She walked in as if it were her own home and looked around.  The living room stank of stale smoke, with several half-empty glasses on the coffee table.  A big stain covered much of the rug.  Four bottles of Miller Genuine Draft were discarded in the middle of the stain.

She looked around but didn’t see anybody on the main level, so she climbed the stairs.  The master bedroom was empty, as was the bathroom, but Karen found what she was looking for in the other bedroom.

Tina sat on a bench and Jimmy sat behind her.  They were both naked.  He had an erection.