The fish had given up on us, so me and the boys began swimming and swinging off the rope, seeing whose splash was most impressive.

The watched feeling wrapped its fingers around me again. I can’t say why, but it was different this time. I realized in the weeks since I’d talked to the Madman, the feeling had changed from one of being watched to a feeling of being watched over.

And what I was feeling now was being watched. Whoever it was, was watching loud, not so loud that anyone else noticed but loud enough that within a few moments after they found a spot from which to spy, I knew right where they were hiding.

Even though the watcher kept ducking, they’d occasionally raise their head, and their brown hat stood out amongst the forest green.

I did nothing to alert my chums. When my turn to swing on the rope came, I sailed over the pond and, instead of trying to raise as much water and splash as I could, I took a quick breath and dove deep. I swam along the bottom of the pond toward the north side, where the reeds rose out of the water in a thicket a good twelve or fifteen feet tall.

Staying half submerged, I snaked my way to the pond’s north bank and slinked into the trees. Once I was deep enough in the woods to be hidden, I looked back toward the pond.

The watcher hadn’t noticed me slip away. His head kept popping out of the bushes, spying on my friends. I grew sore disappointed that none of my friends noticed I’d slipped away either; what if I’d been tangled in the lily pads and was drowning? They wouldn’t have come looking for me until long after I’d met Saint Peter, gotten my golden slippers, and was stomping all over God’s heaven.

I circled into the woods so I could come up on the watcher from behind. Just to be safe, I picked up two baseball-sized stones and held them tight. If he was carrying a weapon, the fact that I could sneak up on him might give me the upper hand.

I silently stole toward where he was.

He was flattened to the ground, raising his head every once in a while. From his size, I could see the spy was a boy, a brown hat covering his head. And he was unarmed. I grew emboldened.

I set the stones down and crept nearer.

I was close enough to hear his breath as he drew it in.

I waited for his head to go down one more time. I was only one leap away.