Skywatcher

Chapter One

Chapter One

Wednesday

Christopher Robin Harris leaned on the counter, stuck his chin on his fist, and stared at his face in the bathroom mirror. He'd always thought there was more of his father there than his mother. But where had the rest of it come from-the rather delicately boned cheeks, the blue eyes,the mass of blond, somewhat unruly hair? Not from either side, as far as he could see.

He straightened up, eyeballing his reflection with the same intensity his father had mastered on television twenty years before: the look that could kill at thirty paces. Much had been made of the blazing, green-eyed Evan Harris glare. Women had mobbed him over it. Women had torn out handfuls of his hair. Robin slung his knapsack over his shoulder and flicked off the bathroom light. Too bad his mother hadn't been one to share their enthusiasm.

He let himself out of the house and trudged up the steep driveway to Creekdene Road, shivering slightly in the February morning air. They'd been married fifteen years, his mother and Evan; they had produced three sons - he was the youngest; and they had managed to get themselves disconnected and unrelated, officially, neatly, and in fine California tradition, on the morning of his second birthday.

He unlocked the door to The Wreck, slid inside, and started the engine, making note of a new and rather odd-sounding noise, then drove into a cul-de-sac a hundred feet away to turn around. This high up in the British Properties, the houses clung to the hillside, anchored to the rocks like absurd engineering feats, defying the natural forces that brought down the winter landslides and intermittent bursts of creek water from the snowfields above. The view was great. The controlled slither he had to negotiate every morning to get down the mountain was the pits.

He tested The Wreck's brakes on a notoriously slippery patch of road. You never knew, with this car. Things alternately worked and didn't work, according to some obscure astrological clock. There was bubbled rust around the sills and fenders; radiator hoses mysteriously burst and brackets fell off his muffler assembly in the middle of traffic; the right rear seat belt had never advanced more than three inches out of its holder; and the parking brake warning light was permanently on, even though the brake itself had ceased to function three days after the vehicle had been presented to him on his nineteenth birthday, the September before.

And as for Christopher Robin ....Christopher Robin was going to be late for classes if he didn't step on it.

* * *

Rosie Mladenovicki struggled across the grassy square,the pointed heels of her black granny boots sinking into the soft, damp turf that sucked at her feet. Damn. Why had she worn them today? Why not sandals? Why not running shoes? Who could foresee that she would be running? Who could foresee anything?

Out of breath, she reached the concrete sidewalk that skirted the metered parking stalls, mustering her last pool of energy, turning toward the relative shelter of SUB, the Student Union Building. Telephones-where were the telephones?

A bank of them had been installed beside the ride board, across the hallway from a shop that sold gourmet cookies and steaming almond milk. The delicious odor of chocolate, baking, nuts, and espresso wafted out to envelop her, tantalizing her nostrils as she rammed her quarter into the slot and punched the numbers with hot, slippery fingers.

Heart pounding, she waited for an answer, watching beside her, behind her. Where are you?

"Me," she said into the receiver. "Rosie. He is coming to here, yes? Tell him-I give to Tigger-No. No time. You tell. I go. I am caught. I go."

She hung up, watching again as the hoards of students sauntered by her. Looking, searching. She fingered the object in the pocket of her dress, feeling the cool, hard plastic, the edges, the crannies, the bumpy bits. I give to Tigger.
Where was he? Where would she be likely to find him at this hour?