Natalie's Diary

[02] Anticipation

ANTICIPATION

Watch the house.

So I did. Maybe I didn't need the instructions. There was something about the empty house next door that was hard to look away from. What other house was there to watch?

For hours, my parents fussed, asking different sets of questions than the police did.

I am alright.

I am alright.

I am alright.

The broken record of me only subsided after the ambulance left, the squad cars pulled away, leaving only the eerie quiet and sawed-off edges of the fence where Natalie fell.

The quiet soaked into everything, or maybe it was the low hanging fog. Quiet was never a thing I wanted to be unsettling. Quiet was what you need after being around people for too long, a thing that took up the night in a sleepy small town.

In bed, all the shock wore off, like it wasn't capable of numbing down dreams. I knew you weren't supposed to remember dreams, but that first night, the drip drip drip onto the sidewalk, onto the rose garden got into my head like Chinese water torture.

Drip drip drip. I imagined it dropping onto my forehead over and over, always in the same place. Pinned in place, there was nowhere to go, nowhere to look but up and—

Her face was dark, but I knew her eyes were open because I could always feel them on me.

And mine snapped open and the only thing above me was my bedroom ceiling. The Chinese were onto something. Why waste resources building elaborate wheels for breaking spines or stretchers to pull people's limbs out of their sockets?

All you needed was water.

I needed to move, to prove to myself that I could. I stumbled in the dark to the bathroom, half hoping to prove myself sane. It could be the faucet. There were several things in a house that can be responsible for dripping noises. There were lots of them.

But I stood in the bathroom with my hand under the tap long enough to figure out the faucet functioned perfectly fine, no leak, and long enough for my eyes to begin to adjust to the heavy darkness. If the shower head dripped, I would've realized that then, too.

Still, I waved my hand underneath the faucet a few more times, eyes trained on the bowl of the sink for even the tiniest glimmer of proof that maybe before I got there, a droplet or two indeed hit the porcelain.

Get a grip, Jane. I looked up into the mirror. In almost no light, I looked barely like anything but dark hair around a shadowy face. There was no angelic whiteness in my face, not under all my Filipino genes. In Boston, that didn't make me different but in our neighborhood in Cullfield, we were the only non-white family. Everyone else was a variation on the Driscolls, pale from an overcast winter, full of English and French heritage. Then there was me, much less angular, distinctly not European, and shorter than practically everyone in my classes. 

Eyes strained to try and see my features, looking for any signs I might be crazy, that's when I noticed it.

The dark shadow over my shoulder.

In the same Mrs. Driscoll's scream did it, the shadow turned my blood cold, begging my heart to stop or race, tearing it apart in indecision. The stinging in my throat threatened me with tears.

The temptation to call for my mother crept into my head, even after all the reassuring I did. I am alright.

I spun, reaching out for the light switch, my hand fumbling against the wall and in the process—