Silver and Salt(20)

Where fourteen was ten years more than old enough to know about men who followed you home from parks.

Bad people.

Sick people.

“Boogety-men.” I expected to hear Melanie’s name for them, a whisper in my ear.

I didn’t. Melanie wasn’t here to whisper. Melanie wasn’t anywhere. Never would be again.

No more thoughts of that. No. No. No. I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. Niko, my big brother, wouldn’t be home from his job for another couple of hours. Disappointed he wasn’t there to annoy but relieved I could put off any homework for a while, I bored fast of our four channels of fuzzy local TV. There were days we were lucky to have food, and cable wasn’t close enough to be a dream and nowhere near a reality. A half an hour later, I tossed the remote onto the scarred, wobbly coffee table, scrambled up from the couch, and went to check the refrigerator for a Grape Crush. I was fourteen, yeah, and already looking to get a job under the table no matter how my older brother fought me on it. I was practically a man—was a man on my mother’s Rom side, but I liked Grape Crush. It didn’t make me a kid. It was just good. I didn’t mind kicking the ass of anyone who said it wasn’t. I might be skinny, but I had nothing but muscle under that skinny, thanks to Nik, who taught me the kind of tricks that meant no one in my class after the first day of school messed with me, no matter how young I looked. They had learned better.

They were smarter than the man from the park.

He hadn’t learned.

He hadn’t learned a thing.

I didn’t mind—was happy as hell about that. He needed another lesson, and I loved to teach those kinds of lessons. Although his next one would have to be something f*cking exceptional, as the first one hadn’t stuck.

I was going to have to put more work into this time. That I wasn’t as happy about. Lazy through and though, no denying that. I was opening the door to the wheezing, groaning fridge when I saw him again. He was peering through the kitchen window. For a split-second, I doubted myself, hardly had any idea whose brown-gray-hazel-blue-no color eyes were fixed on me—all that average in every part of him, every cell—he could’ve been anybody, anywhere, at anytime to all those who didn’t know how to watch, but, no. I wasn’t one of them, the blind. The slice of a moment passed and I knew.

I saw.

It was him—as average and chameleon-invisible as he’d been the other times I’d seen him. That was counting the hiding behind bushes and cars today, thinking I didn’t notice. Thinking he was unseen. Thinking he was invisible.

Invisible.

I snorted and didn’t bother to smother it.

Invisible.

Considering everything, that was funny as shit.

That’s when he bared his teeth at me behind the glass and it wasn’t a smile. Yellow and stained with dried liquids you’d want to know nothing about, that non-grin; he thought he was scary. He thought I’d be afraid he’d eat me up with those teeth.

Scary. To a little eight-year-old girl maybe, but I’d seen my mother, Sophia, bring home scarier “dates.” If they had the money and were willing to pay by the quarter hour, she’d take on Jack the Ripper…or worse.

This pervert…not all that.

Right?

I stared back at him.

Right.

I bared my teeth back at the window and flipped him off before returning to my search for a Grape Crush that I knew we didn’t have. Niko hadn’t been paid yet this week. It was ramen noodles and tap water until he was. Sophia had been caught shoplifting from yet another liquor store and had disappeared for a while. In a week or two, the newbie cops would be buried in other petty crimes and forget about her. She’d be back then. It was a system she’d had as long as I could remember.

Let down but not surprised at the lack of Grape Crush, I closed the door on the semi-cool air drifting out. I checked the kitchen window again. Except for the streaks and cloudbursts of age, the glass was empty. He was gone. I didn’t get excited over it.

With my luck, he’d be back. That was a sure thing. I hadn’t told Nik about him yet and I wouldn’t. Nik had worries enough. Supporting us with two jobs, keeping social services away when Sophia ended up in jail, earning a 4.0 GPA to get a scholarship for college, the hours of practice in the dojos—protecting us, him and me. Always ready to protect and from worse than the man in the park. Much worse.

This time, I’d do the protecting.

Mr. Invisible would stay Mr. Invisible.



Purple Pony



He kept following me home.

He always started as I passed the park, which made sense. That was where he’d met Mel for the first time and that’s where he’d met me. That had been the second time for us both. I’d thought he hadn’t noticed me the first time, with all his attention on Melanie, but he had. Mr. Invisible with the “boogety-man’s” radar for prey and possible witnesses, too. He’d been excited at the sight of me. I’d been able to smell his adrenaline. I hadn’t wanted to be too obvious and had walked past to the gas station down the street for a candy bar and came back to meander around the weedy stretch, kicking at rocks. A half hour later, he’d finally decided I hadn’t told anyone or noticed him. After all, who ever did? But oblivious or not, I was right there, wasn’t I?

Niko said waste not, want not. He was like a seventeen-year-old grandma with his sayings. But the boogety-man definitely had believed in that one as much as my brother.