That night, Karen had trouble sleeping. Everything seemed normal (well, as normal as any day could be for her), but when she went to bed and turned the lights off, her mind wouldn’t stop.
Bobby had gone to a lot of trouble to track her down today. In some ways it was flattering and fun, in other ways it was fascinating and suspenseful; but now that she lay alone in her bed and the night spooks of her mind woke up, all she felt was dread and fear.
He’ll rape me one day.
I’ll be sleeping in my bed, and I’ll wake up feeling hurt and bleeding, and I’ll know he’s found me.
But would he? She struggled to pull back the funny parts of Bobby that she liked so much, the jokes and the ability to not take anything too seriously.
Then her mind would turn back to the old man, surely dead now.
I can never let him find me.
She’d stay away from the beach and keep a closer eye on things when she walked around town, but that was no guarantee.
Karen knew that everyone left footprints wherever they went. Did he snoop on her Facebook page? Did he know her cell number? There were a lot of opportunities to follow her home from school or church.
I told him Dad’s name.
When her dad had died, she remembered talking to Bobby, telling him how lost she felt. She tried to make a joke about her dad’s name, but now that comment was haunting her. If Bobby remembered Parker Samson Richardson’s name, it’d be easy to find where she lived. Easy as slicing an old man’s neck.
She didn’t have to be sleeping when he found her, of course. If time stopped for her, and he had his freedom, it could happen anytime at all. He could attack her at dinner or in the middle of English class, and she would just feel pain hit her out of the blue.
Only she would know what had happened.
Karen tossed and turned with worry, not falling asleep until after four o’clock. When Mom woke her by jostling her arm, she cried out in fear, pulling away from the only person in the world that she could totally trust.
* * *
Two weeks later time froze in the middle of English Lit, with Mrs. Frey rambling on about the theme of Hamlet. Although Karen had enjoyed reading the play, she hated the way Mrs. Frey would dissect every little bit of it and ask the class, “What does this scene really mean?”
Karen never got it, so she was thankful for a break.
She gave a mock salute to Mrs. Frey as she walked toward the door. Her desk was at the back of the class, because the teacher liked to have all the troublemakers near the front.
Bonnie MacDonald was two desks over and one up from Karen; she went to look at her friend. She only hesitated a second before running her hand through Bonnie’s hair and touching her cheek. She thought about watching Bonnie masturbating and wished she could find a way to make that happen again.
Reluctantly, she left the class and passed through the halls to the closest exit. Cautious, she looked around but couldn’t see Bobby Jersey anywhere.
There were several houses nearby that she’d never visited so she went inside the first one.
She found Alexander Michaels sitting in his bedroom. Mr. Michaels was a forty-year-old chubby guy who worked the evening shift at Starbucks. Karen had been served by him several times and was always a bit creeped out when he handed over the proper change and grinned at her. She always felt weird.
He had his pants pulled down to his ankles. His penis was flaccid, but she suspected it wasn’t going to stay that way for long.
Karen was pretty sure he lived alone. The bed was unmade and the closet door was open. Only a few men’s shirts hung there, no dresses or women’s clothing of any kind.
“Can’t say I’m surprised at that.”
Michaels was at a desk staring at his laptop. He was in a chat room, and when Karen read through the notes on the screen she felt awful. He was talking to a fourteen-year-old girl, pretending to be a boy her age.
Beside him was a stack of printed paper. She flipped through it, shocked to see dozens of transcripts, each one with him talking to a young girl. They all seemed to end with him asking to meet her.
She took the papers, and shoved them in a manila file folder, and carried them with her as she left.
“Gonna stop you, pervert.”
She wanted to slap the guy—or worse—but she thought it would suffice to mail the printouts to the police and let them take care of things. Alexander Michaels would wonder how his precious papers disappeared, but he’d soon enough find them waved in front of his face.
When Karen was outside, she stopped, realizing that this was the first time she’d done anything while time was frozen that would significantly affect somebody’s life.
“Feels pretty good.”
She walked to the next house. A woman was in the bathroom scrubbing a toilet with a toothbrush. Presumably not her own.
Karen didn’t recognize her. She was in her twenties, skinny, dressed in floppy gray jogging pants and a matching sweater.
The bedroom was messy here, too, and a framed photo of the girl and a man, both smiling brightly at the camera, lay on the floor. The glass was cracked.
Karen left, not feeling good about things. She couldn’t do anything to help the girl.
Why would that matter? I’ve never helped anybody before.
She walked past several houses, wondering why the hell she should start caring about the people she spied on. All she’d ever wanted to do was learn what they hid and add to her Secrets Journal.
She had a lot of entries now, including her priest, who she watched reading pornography online; several people who took illegal drugs when nobody was watching; thieves; liars; adulterers; and many others. Her little town was full of the seven deadly sins … and more.
If she believed the Bible (and really, some days, she didn’t pretend to believe it, even to herself), all her friends and neighbors were doomed to rot in hell.
She sat on a bench beside a bus stop and thought about her family. She missed her dad, and her mom didn’t have any secrets that Karen had ever found. She might be the one exception to ascend to heaven one day.
Tina?
Karen’s older sister was just dumb. One day she would realize that giving blow jobs and probably screwing her boyfriend wasn’t going to help her accomplish anything. One day Jimmy Berenstein would see some other girl and dump Tina without a minute’s thought.
That morning, Tina had been getting ready for school with Karen, but there was something different. She was too happy, too perky, and Karen realized now that she hadn’t seen Tina at school after all.
She knew where Jimmy lived and walked in that direction. It wasn’t far from Karen’s home, which Tina thought convenient.
The house was a dump, a duplex, where Jimmy lived in one half with his dad. Karen had no idea where his mom was, since she was never mentioned.
Jimmy’s car was parked in front of the house, and Karen wasn’t surprised that the front door wasn’t locked. She walked in as if it were her own home and looked around. The living room stank of stale smoke, with several half-empty glasses on the coffee table. A big stain covered much of the rug. Four bottles of Miller Genuine Draft were discarded in the middle of the stain.
She looked around but didn’t see anybody on the main level, so she climbed the stairs. The master bedroom was empty, as was the bathroom, but Karen found what she was looking for in the other bedroom.
Tina sat on a bench and Jimmy sat behind her. They were both naked. He had an erection.
In his hand, he held a razor blade, and he was using it to slice lines into Tina’s back.
There were dozens of other cuts in various stages of healing, left over from previous sessions.
Tina’s face was full of tears, and she looked like she wanted to scream, but Karen imagined that that was the very last thing she would do.
She knew that Tina would do anything for Jimmy, but this was worse than Karen could have imagined.
She stared at them, anger rushing through her. Even though she wasn’t on the best of terms with Tina, she was her sister, and she wanted to protect her.
Karen didn’t hesitate.
She grabbed the razor blade from Jimmy and sliced into his penis lengthwise, like gutting a trout. Of course, nothing changed, but when time started, he’d never again hurt her sister. All he’d care about would be getting to the emergency ward and making sure they stitched him up.
* * *
That night, after time started again and Karen had listened to the last of Mrs. Frey lecturing on metaphors, she waited for Tina to come home.
Tina was quiet and declined dinner. She went to her room, claiming she was tired from not sleeping well the night before.
Karen followed Tina.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Tina frowned. “Why would you care?”
Karen kneeled in front of her sister and looked into her eyes. “It’s okay. He won’t hurt you again.”
Tina opened her mouth but nothing came out. She looked to the side, not able to meet Karen’s gaze.
“It’s okay,” Karen said. “I know what he does to you. But it’s over now, right?”
For a moment the room was silent and neither girl moved. It was almost like time stopping, but Karen could hear background noise, including her own breathing, so she knew she was in normal time.
“How do you know?”
“I saw.”
Tina didn’t ask how or when or why or any of the questions Karen expected. She just hugged Karen and started to cry.