Pulse of Heroes (17 page)

This year was the first time that Michelle
had been invited to join an expedition somewhere near Fort Bragg. A
few people were going from her school, including Samantha and
James. They were going to be joined by a group of people from
another school down south, and would camp out on Wednesday night to
get an early drop on all the other abalone divers that were going
to show up. It was an epic show of bravery to dive down into the
murky freezing waters, unaided by any sort of scuba equipment of
course, and pry one of the giant shells off the rocks. Every year
people died. It was not a sport. It was a hunt, and people mistook
it for a game. The waters off the Mendocino coast were rough,
freezing and a popular spot for great white sharks.

Michelle lay on her bed holding the copy of
the photo and looking at the guy that ‘sort-of’ looked like Elliot.
She was smirking at her dim-witted self; how could she have
actually believed it was him? In her other hand, Michelle was
holding her cell phone up against her cheek, telling Samantha about
how she had begged her parents to let her stay home for Easter, and
how eager she was that she was going to meet some new people,
meaning guys, that were not from their school. Michelle was tired
of the same faces and needed to know that there was something out
there other than what Willow’s Creek had to offer. She said her
goodnights to Samantha and hung up the phone. She looked at the
photo for one more second, shook her head and tucked it back into
the book that lay by her pillow.

Michelle rolled over and reached up to turn
off her lamp when she suddenly saw a person sitting in her chair by
the desk. She gasped deeply out of fear. She couldn’t see who the
person was because the light from the small lamp didn’t reach that
side of the room. She was about to let out a harrowing shriek when
suddenly Elliot was at her bedside, holding her mouth shut with his
hand. She couldn’t scream.

A terrified Michelle looked straight into
Elliot’s eyes, but she couldn’t read them. What did he want? While
Michelle shook uncontrollably Elliot shined his beautiful smile at
her and put his finger to his lips in the hope that she would
understand his insistence that she stay quiet. Michelle was
terrified out of her wits, and saw her entire life pass in front of
her eyes. This was to be her end. She was sure of it. Elliot
obviously had deep-rooted psychological problems. She had messed
with the wrong guy, and now he was going to make her pay. He was
going to kill her. Her eyes began to tear up, but Elliot kept
smiling, motioning to her to stay quiet. She understood that he was
going to remove his hand from her mouth. He counted with his
fingers: one, two, and three… and Michelle immediately tried to
scream again but he was quicker than her. His hand was back against
her mouth.

Elliot shook his head and whispered, “I’m not
here to hurt you, I swear. You have to trust me. I just don’t want
the rest of your family to wake up, ok?” The blue hue of his eyes
kept changing faster then Michelle’s heart beat. Why should she
trust him, she thought? She had some maniac with crazy eyes holding
her hostage in her own bed, and she should trust him?

“Do you understand?” Elliot asked. Michelle
was left with no choice. She was either going to listen to what he
had to say or be choked to death. He was way too quick, so much so
that she hadn’t even seen him approach her bed from where he was
sitting. She nodded, and Elliot slowly released his grip. Michelle
didn’t scream again, she was defeated. Elliot carefully sat on the
bed next to her.

“I’m sorry,” were his first words. “I didn’t
mean to frighten you like this. I waited outside for you to come
home but when you did, your mom was out there too. I didn’t want
her to see me. I just wanted to talk to you alone.” Elliot looked
at Michelle, trying to read her thoughts through her facial
expressions. Did she believe him? Was she about to shout? He wasn’t
sure.

Michelle was still in shock and her mind
didn’t have enough time to comprehend the gravity of the situation.
“How did you get up here?” she asked in a regular voice, and he
again reminded her that she needed to try and keep quiet. When she
saw that Elliot wasn’t about to kill her right there and then,
although there was no telling if he was planning to do so later,
she closed her eyes and took a big breath. She thought about the
steps she had taken before she got into bed. Did she undress in the
bathroom or in the bedroom? Strange that she couldn’t remember such
a simple thing. He must have seen her look at the photo. He had
probably heard her whole conversation with Sam. She felt
violated.

“How did you get in my room?” Michelle
demanded again, whispering, but sounding stronger than before.

“I walked up the stairs and slipped in before
you closed the door.” Elliot relaxed his body a bit too much,
causing Michelle to jolt back against the wall.

“But I didn’t see you. There’s no way. How
did you bypass the alarm?” she asked, her voice rising loud enough
to where Elliot had to tell her to keep it down yet again.

“I moved quickly,” he answered, a bit
annoyed. “You don’t want to wake your parents, or do you?” Michelle
didn’t say anything, she just bowed her head down a bit and that
was good enough for him. He had her and she knew it. She was under
his spell again, feeling completely dumbfounded. She couldn’t
understand why somewhere deep inside her mind she was happy that he
was there with her, even if she was scared to death.

“Can we talk somewhere else?” he asked. There
was that smell again. Michelle could smell the fresh ocean mist and
slowly, without even noticing, she had started tilting her head
closer to his face and neck, breathing it in. She wondered what
kind of after-shave, or was it cologne that he was using? Elliot
got up off the bed and moved away from Michelle to the other side
of the room when he saw her getting too close to him. Michelle
looked up at him curiously.

“I can’t… I mean the alarm… when the numbers
are punched in it beeps pretty loud, and why should I go anywhere
with you anyway, the way you treated me? Besides, how did you find
out where I live? Did you follow me or something?” Elliot shook his
head. “I lost my job you know…” Tears began forming at the corners
of Michelle’s eyes but she stubbornly wiped them away. “Sometimes
it looks like I’m crying but I’m not. I’m just angry.”

Elliot looked down at the floor, obviously
shamed.

“That’s why I’m here. Xander told me and I
wanted to apologize to you personally. I thought we could just talk
this out… explain things, you and me. Put everything behind us. No
hard feelings. I just moved here and I don’t want to cause any
trouble. Did I hurt your wrist?”

Just then, Crumb crawled out from underneath
Michelle’s bed and made his way towards Elliot. He started purring
while rubbing his pudgy little furry body against Elliot’s legs. An
amused Elliot let out a short laugh and looked at Michelle. “See, I
can’t be all that bad,” he said. Michelle didn’t like her cat being
so close to Elliot at all, and suddenly without any fear whatsoever
she jumped out of the bed and scooped Crumb up from underneath him
and whisked him away. Michelle couldn’t believe she just did that
without thinking. Were those her motherly instincts kicking in? As
she held Crumb against her chest, she didn’t even consider the fact
that she was now standing there wearing nothing but a long and
practically see-through ribbed tank top that she had stolen from
her dad’s closet and a pair of bright yellow underwear with monkeys
printed on them. Elliot looked at Michelle and held back a chuckle.
He cleared his throat a little as a sign to let Michelle know that
she was standing in a compromising position, and only then did she
realize what she was wearing and that he was probably laughing at
her. She quickly moved back towards her bed, and tried to cover
herself with a corner of her blanket, while still holding Crumb. A
second later Michelle’s half-asleep mother opened the bedroom door,
asking what was all that noise she heard and was everything ok?
Michelle stood at her bed looking back and forth between her mom
and Elliot who was standing just inches away from her on the
opposite side of the open door.

“Yeah Mom, it’s just Crumb messing with
stuff,” Michelle answered innocently, holding him up to show her
mom that she had things under control.

“Ok,” her mom said sleepily. “Go to bed, it’s
late.”

Michelle walked over to the door and shut it,
only this time she locked it behind her. When she turned around she
saw Elliot at her window getting ready to slide it open. “No!”
Michelle whispered as loud as she could. Elliot spun around,
confused. “Everything is hooked to the alarm, even the windows. You
move it an inch and the whole thing is set to go off. Trust me. The
police will be here in less than a minute.”

“Why do you need to go to such extreme
measures? Crime is practically non-existent around here?” he asked.
Michelle shook her head and told him that it was a long story.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to
stay here any longer, with your mom being awake. She’s liable to
return,” he told Michelle.

“What about explaining things to me? You said
we could explain things. What about that glass bottle? And why did
you act like that, like you didn’t even know me? Are you on some
kind of medication? You don’t have to be embarrassed.” Elliot
looked at Michelle as if she was speaking a different language. She
lowered her voice and looked away from him. “I know that you guys
all have problems. Mr. De Costa told me, and I promised I wouldn’t
say anything to anyone.”

Elliot shook his head. “Hmmm… Is that what he
told you?” Michelle told Elliot that he shouldn’t feel bad because
it didn’t mean that he was nutty or anything.

“Really. Michelle, it’s not like that. I mean
yes, we are all working on stuff, but it’s a lot more complicated
than it seems.”

“What do you mean? Then how is it?”

Elliot thought for a while. As Michelle
waited for an answer, his expression changed from serene to
regret.

“Does this have to do with your eyes changing
color?” she asked. “I know what I saw. You know, the stuff you told
me to forget about because no one would believe me?” In a fast move
Michelle snatched her book from the bed, whipped out the photo from
between the pages and shoved it in front of his face. “And what
about this?” she asked, obviously satisfied with herself. “Will no
one believe this either?” Elliot looked at the photo and his
thoughts jumbled. He reached to grab it but Michelle wasn’t going
to let him have it and sprang back away from him. “Tomorrow, in the
woods after school,” she said. “I want to know what’s going on
here.”

For Michelle, it was more than just knowing.
It was about her sanity. If Elliot wasn’t crazy, she definitely
didn’t want to be, and the question of whether she was or not
scared her more than anything. She’d had enough with the guessing
games; she just needed to know. Michelle looked into Elliot’s eyes
and her honesty touched him. “Elliot, please. If you really came
here to apologize then just tell me if I’m going insane.”
Michelle’s eyes widened. She was pleading straight into the center
of his soul. Elliot’s features softened and his eyes looked like
two pools of blue. It was the first time that Michelle had called
him by name, and it sounded so familiar to him, so right. He
reached for her face with his hand and she moved towards him
without even knowing it. Just like she had felt in the woods, it
was as if she was being drawn into him. Like he was a powerful
whirlwind and she was a tiny feather. He held her cheek softly in
his hand and told her that he would try to explain things to her,
but he couldn’t promise everything, or that it would make sense.
Michelle stood there, transfixed. She began feeling lightheaded
like something was pulling on her and her body wanted to fall in
his direction. Her eyes went in and out of focus and when she
looked at his lips she wasn’t sure if she heard the words that came
out of them. She closed her eyes and Elliot gently sat her back on
her bed and carefully moved away from her. Slowly the strange
sensation ebbed, and when Michelle opened her eyes he was gone. No
alarm. No open window.

The next day, Michelle was exhausted when she
woke up. But as soon as she remembered what had happened during the
night, the memory alone pumped adrenaline throughout her entire
body and she was wide awake. Her mind was working overtime and she
couldn’t keep up with all the details. Her first inclination was to
wonder if she had dreamt it all, but when she showed up downstairs
her mom gave her a sympathetic look.

“Do I look that bad?” Michelle asked.

Her mother replied that she had seen her look
better. “What was the problem dear, I heard you up all night?” her
mother asked. Michelle mumbled something about Crumb annoying her,
and her mother suggested that maybe she should keep him outside her
room at night. Michelle walked over to the coffee maker to see if
there was any left. It was empty and she sighed in disappointment.
Her father was the coffee drinker in the house, while her mother
was the tea queen. On the days that her father wasn’t working for
the city, he woke up extra early because his other job, his real
job, was as a land surveyor, which meant that he was out there with
the contractors and engineers practically at sunrise.

It was going to be another one of those extra
long days at school, that was obvious, Michelle thought while
waiting for the recess bell to ring. At lunchtime she tried to be
social for everyone’s benefit, including her own. It was a
beautiful sunny day, and with the temperatures beginning to
increase, the excitement of spring was in the air. In the same
manner that blossoms started decorating the trees in whites and
pinks, so did the lighter colored outfits on the students at
school. Flowers opened up, extending their petals to the sun, and
so did pale limbs. It was like everybody was waking up from a long
stupor. Michelle was sitting on the bleachers talking to Anna about
the upcoming softball season. Anna was wondering if Michelle would
be interested in joining the team. Michelle wished that she had the
same energy that Anna had. Anna was like a walking school bulletin,
and she really did put a lot of extra energy into unifying the
school as if it was a living entity. Michelle owned up to the fact
that she actually really liked Anna; she was a good person and she
didn’t stick her nose up in the air like some of the other popular
girls did. But Michelle turned down the softball opportunity. She
knew that she shouldn’t have because she really did need the
exercise, but she was having a hard time buying into the whole
school thing. She had too much on her mind.