The Watcher Read Online Free PDF Page A

Black things don’t just come at you. He thinks you’re delusional.
    I blinked and shook my head. He seemed to be talking to me through a long dark tunnel. Everything—even the pain—was dim and distant. “My ankle took most of it.”
    He knelt in the water, facing me, and said, “I’m going to check it, okay?”
    I nodded blankly at the water soaking his jeans. He must be cold. I could no longer feel it myself. I knew on some level that something was wrong in my body, but the messaging was numbed somehow. All I felt was static, like my circuits had overloaded.
    Holding my heel, he untied my shoelace and removed my boot. I bit my tongue to avoid crying out. It tasted metallic. When he touched my ankle, pain exploded up my leg.
    “Oww!”
    “Sorry.” He frowned. “I really do have to check it.”
    “I know.”
    I braced myself for pain, but his touch was light, gentle, as though he were examining a wounded bird.
    “I’m going to check your spine,” he said. The tunnel sensation gone, I could sense how close he was, smell the mint on his breath. “Okay?”
    “Okay.”
    He leaned toward me and reached around my back to gently feel my bones. As he touched me, he searched my face for any sign of pain, and the tenderness in his eyes made me warm all over.
    A few moments later he helped me to my feet, offering me his arm for balance. I gripped it so hard my knuckles turned white, and I could feel the cords of muscles beneath his shirt. But I could stand as long as I put no pressure on my foot. The pain was fierce, and my balance so terrible I teetered on the rocks.
    “You’ll never make it up to the trail on your own,” he said. “It’s steep.”
    Well, that much was obvious. What was he going to do? Leave me there?
    He stepped in closer, and I had that feeling again, like I recognized him from somewhere. It wasn’t from that morning in the park either. I wracked my brain, trying to place him. Had we been to the same party? Hung out in the same café? Perhaps I’d seen his picture somewhere.
    “Trust me, okay? I won’t hurt you,” he said, and his voice sounded strange, almost musical, a chord rather than a single note.
    Before I could reply, he placed one of my arms around his shoulders, scooped an arm under my legs, and picked me up as though I were weightless. As he carried me up the steep hill, he didn’t seem to notice how close we were, his face inches from mine—too close and yet not close enough.
    Not knowing where to look, I gazed over his shoulder and noticed a strange light flickering behind him. Tinged with blue, it flashed and rippled in a flowing motion. What the heck was it? Was I in shock?
    When I looked back at Michael’s face, it was alight, as though a beam of sunlight bathed both of us, especially him, in a warm golden hue. Like that day I saw him in the mall, only more brilliant. I gasped.
    “Pain?” he asked.
    I nodded, not wanting to admit I was hallucinating. He’d think I was crazy. Again.
    A warm tingle filled me all the way to my toes. It made me feel open and exposed, as though a million eyes were watching me. Something inside told me to relax, and when I did, it eased not only my fright from earlier but all the pain I didn’t know I had, as if all of my struggles had been seen: the difficulties our family had through the divorce, the strange distance between Dad and me, even my awkwardness around Michael.
    My chest tightened and, as I exhaled, the tension released. Everything became warm and floaty and I felt completely accepted and at peace. An image of a lush garden on a hot sunny day flashed in my mind, as vivid as the inside of a dream. It surrounded a primitive house made of mud-brick and plaster. Inside was an open fire pit with a hole in the roof for smoke to escape. The bed, made of straw, was draped in furs. In the corner stood a simple loom, strung with hundreds of cream-colored threads that formed a half-woven cloth. This place, these things, seemed so