𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐘 𝐈𝐒 𝐒𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐘, stanley barber

xii. IS THERE SOMEBODY WHO CAN WATCH YOU.

SINCERITY IS SCARY, STANLEY BARBER
( xii. is there somebody who can watch you )

I CLAMBERED INTO THE BACKSEAT of Stan's beaten yellow car— now Syd was occupying the passenger seat— and exhaled for the first time that evening. My heart was still pounding in my chest, but I doubted that was from the stunt we had pulled off. Though, the excitable mood was killed when Stan chose to bring up the real reason for the stunt— not the 'sexcapade' Syd told Dina that had happened between me and Stan. "Okay, so now that we've helped you steal the evidence that would put you in detention for a thousand years," "Or in a psych ward." I added unhelpfully, earning a glare from both the teens sat in the front of the car. "Can you tell us what happened in the library?" Stanley asked. Nervously, Sydney looked down at her hands before shaking her head. "No, you'll think I'm crazy." Stan laughed a little, and I leant forwards so that my head was inbetween the two seats. "Come on, Syd." I chucked. "We've seen you move shit with your mind. So crazy feels like a few notches down." "You can tell me anything. You know that, right?" Stan added, and my mind was taken back to the hundreds of times the boy had said those words to me, and how the fact that I couldn't tell him anything was the whole reason I was sat in the backseat of his car, and Sydney Novak was upfront. Syd watched Stan for a while, assessing whether she could actually trust him or not before doing the same to me. Apparently she deemed us trustworthy, as she began her story. "So, the lights were flickering, but it wasn't me. I don't know, I— it just felt like someone else was in there with me." "What do you mean?" Stan asked, leaning back in his seat. "I mean, it felt like I was supposed to follow it, or maybe it was following me." I shuddered, my eyes trained on Syd and the fear pooling in her blue eyes. "I don't know. I just couldn't make it out. I turned a corner, and it was gone. But there was this feeling, Stan. I swear I wasn't alone." The girl let out a sigh, fidgeting nervously with her fingers. "So, who the hell was it?" Stanley asked. I remained quiet. Syd didn't answer, and we drove the rest of the way to Stan's house in silence.

"There! There! Freeze it there!" Sydney exclaimed. Me, Syd and Stan were all crammed on the small sofa in Stanley's bedroom, watching the camera footage of what went down in the library earlier that day. I was on edge as it was, and Syd's yelling didn't help. I didn't want to be at Stan's, and I didn't want Stan himself to be here either, considering his deadbeat father was still in town, but we needed access to his computer. Lucky for us, his dad was out, probably off getting drunk somewhere. Stan paused the video and the three of us analysed the fuzzy, black and white screen intently but saw nothing different to the dozen other few times we had watched the clip over. "You see? What is that?" Sydney questioned adamantly, but I just shook my head. "I don't see it, Syd," Stan fiddled with his Rubix cube as Syd demanded; "Well, can you zoom in? Enhance?" "Enhance?" Stan repeated sarcastically. "What kind of fucking operation do you think I'm running here?" Stanley was on edge, too, being back at home since that night on Saturday, and let out an anguished sigh. He too squinted at the computer screen before saying; "That just looks like your shadow." The boy resumed the video again, and we watched as the shelves in the library came crashing down around Syd, creating the scene me and Stanley had been dragged to earlier this evening. "That's so cool." Stan muttered, still flicking the cubes on his brightly coloured puzzle as Syd shook her head. "It's so not cool." The girl yelled. "It is massively screwed up. Can you stop doing that?" She screamed at Stan, gesturing to the Rubix cube and causing both me and Stan to flinch. With a sharp exhale, the curly haired boy dropped his puzzle on the table. "Sorry." "Jesus fucking Christ." The redhead exclaimed, exasperated. "Uh, do you wanna look at it again, or—" Stan tried, but Syd just snapped at him. "We've watched it, like, a million times." "Okay, and we're just missing this fucker. I— I know it. I mean, he's in there." "But what if he isn't?" The girl shouted, going against Stanley's best efforts to comfort her, and letting out a sharp, manic laugh. "Then I'm just completely insane, huh?" "Okay, Syd," I attempted. "If you honestly believe that someone was there, and they straight up fucking disappeared, then... we believe it, too." "But then, what if it is true?" The girl shrugged at me. "You know, that means someone's been watching me. Uh, you know, and that means... that, uh, you know, maybe..." "Someone else knows." I finished, meeting her panicked gaze.