Familiar Stranger

Chapter 7

I watched her each and every night, occasionally on some days if I could manage. Originally my watching over her had been for her protection and because I had been ordered to do so, but after a month of watching her, I was hooked. Evangeline Rosalsky was an enticing and beautiful creature that I never wanted to leave my sight. I wanted - no - needed to know anything and everything about her. I knew that each and every night before she went to bed she would brush her hair, making sure that the strokes on each side of her head were even. She saw this is a good luck symbol. On most nights, she had trouble sleeping, so when it had taken her longer than twenty minutes to attempt to fall asleep, she would turn her bedside lamp on and pull her sketch book out from under her bed along with the pencil in the night stand drawer. 

I watched as she sketched and as I watched, I was shocked, completely and entirely caught off guard by the image she was so expertly drawing. It was of me, I knew it because of those eyes. It was as if I was looking into a mirror of my werewolf self. Seeing my own eyes staring up at her through the page of that sketch book and then my eyes literally looking at her, reflected in the glass of the window, that was amazing to me. Had she seen me? Did she know I was there?  I wasn’t sure of the answer to those questions, but I didn’t care either. I couldn’t and I wouldn’t stop watching her. This angel of mine. 

She captivated me without having spoken more than a total of ten words to me. “Could I borrow a pencil?” And “May I borrow yesterday’s notes?” Watching her, though, seeing how gentle she was with everyone she came across, how she kept to herself at school, yet didn’t feel the outcast part that she fit at school. Eva was a bright and beautiful girl, but much like myself and my own Bright beauty as my mom used to call it, it was shoved deep inside of her and forced into hiding by a fucked up family, or as our cases seemed, a fucked up father. One who cared more about his own image and saving his own ass to give a damn how their kids felt or what they might need.. 

I watched as Eva broke down on some nights, locked in her room, knowing that she could cry and scream as loud as she wanted to and no one would hear her. Or at least that’s how she felt, and because in a sense, I wasn’t supposed to be there, she was right. No one could hear her, other than me. I watched as she cried after reading a letter she had gotten from her dad who was already locked away. I watched as she ripped the letter to shreds, and I watched as she burned it in the trash can in her room. For a long time she stood there, staring down into the trash can, even after the flames had died down. She was so quiet, so still other than the shaking of her shoulder as she cried again. That was the moment I had decided I wanted to save her from this life. From this sadness. I wanted to make her smile, make her happy, make her feel as if this moment she was experiencing right then was a thing of the past, I wanted to take her in my arms right at that moment and hold her tight, let her cry on my shoulder. I wanted to be her hero already and it was only the month four of watching her. 

The night that Boyd and Erica disappeared, Derek sent his uncle out to look for them. I didn’t trust Peter with anything, especially not the lives of two of my closest friends. It was one of the worst disagreements we had, I’ll put it that way because we didn’t fight, we just yelled and eventually I left. I went straight to that window that always seemed to call my name so I could watch over Eva. I remember her window being open, not too far but enough so that I could hear her clearly, the glass no longer blocking her from me. Not only that, but she was singing, something I remembered her mother saying she never did anymore, not since the incident with her father, it was one of the few conversations they had when they managed to sit at the dinner table together. Mrs. Rosalsky was never around other than those few occasions. As Eva sang, her voice was soft, yet powerful, it surrounded me entirely and completely. It swallowed me up and held me captive. The song she sang, I later found out was Wild Horses, by Natasha Bedingfield. Not even the original song hit me as hard as it did when Eva sang it. The words she sang, they had a much deeper meaning to Eva. She wanted to be free, because in her house, in her life, she was trapped. I knew how that felt, both literally and figuratively. I wanted to save her and I wanted to do it right then. I was compelled to climb into her window and reveal myself right then and there, my focus was off, my mind absorbed my the enticing melody that she sang. Her mother ended up coming home early and I had to leave, she was the last person I wanted to see me watching her daughter as I was. So I left, but not before I realized I loved that beautiful creature that had captivated me so easily. She had a hold on me that no one else had ever managed to get on me and she didn’t even know more than my name. 

Now, though, that very beautiful creature was laying in my arms. Asleep, head resting on my chest. I could hear the study rhythm of her heart and her soft even breathing. She knew me, more than just my name. She knew my story. What I had been through. She accepted me for me, she knew that I had watched her, she knew that I knew things about her that others didn’t. Yet she didn’t run from me. She wasn’t frightened by what could easily have been seen as stalking. She liked the fact that I knew these things about her and she told me things I couldn’t have found out by merely watching her as I had. Eva and I, we fit, perfectly. I was her guardian wolf and she was my angel. My beautiful and exquisite Angel, now I just had to find a way to tell my angel the secret I knew about her life and the creature that had changed her life and, now by association, mine.