Daughter of Ogden

Chapter 2 - Found Again

I couldn't get those grey eyes out of my mind. Despite the frightening girl he was with and the creatures she had slayed, the blond's eyes terrified me the most because the pity conveyed in them portrayed a hopelessness. He had warned me to be careful, but grey eyes showed his belief that I was a lost cause. What would require such caution? What— I had to remind myself that the two strangers in the woods had been a fiction of my imagination. They told me the hallucinations were a fluke; potentially dehydration or something picked up from the trash. They told me that I had nothing to worry about and I tried to convince myself that they were right.

       After a few days, I didn't have to try so hard to convince myself. Life went back to normal. No more visual or auditory hallucinations, just my regular old mind reading. Or so I thought... I nearly walked into the wrong bus caught off guard by the attention someone fixated on me; their thoughts tugging on my awareness. Someone was watching me with a mixture of curiosity and irritation. I thought it might be my bus driver, but I wasn't even at the right door.

      I searched the parking lot, half expecting to find one of my parents waiting for me for a forgotten appointment. I wasn't so lucky. I froze in my tracks when I caught a glimpse of my blond hallucination. Staring right at me, he leaned casually against a rusty, beat-down truck. I tried to shake it off. I rubbed my eyes and palmed my forehead to once again rule out a fever, but still he remained. I was going to have to admit myself into—

      "Time to go," Shelly, my bus driver, called after me. "Either accept the ride from the handsome boy or take your seat."

      I whipped around. "You see him?"

      "Of course, I see him!" she complained. "I hit one trash can and you think I'm blind. I hope you enjoy his driving better—"

       "No!" I rushed forward, pushing my arm through the doorway before she could lock me out. "I'm getting on with you."

       Shelly barely paid me attention, yanking the stir stick in drive. I knew better than to still be standing when she took off. I blanched as I took my seat, studying my blond nightmare through the window. I thought confirmation that he wasn't a fiction of my imagination would have been reassuring... but I was beginning to realize how much of a threat this could present. He had followed me to school. He was watching, waiting for something. There was nothing reassuring about his very real presence.