Then looks at . . .
me.
And I know, right then and there, without a description, without a word, without a thought . . . that that is Zander Haaf.
And Zander Haaf is still looking at me.
Chapter 12
Before I get out of bed this morning in this clearly not haunted house, I would like to take a moment to picture Zander Haaf. In that moment. The moment in front of the Zipper.
He’s not tall, exactly. But he’s not short. Medium. And his hair is medium, too. Medium brown. Not dark brown. Not blond. Just medium brown. Like the color of a walnut. There’s a kind of flip to his hair, too, longer in the front. But nothing crazy. And he’s not even wearing anything special. Jeans. An olive green jacket that has lots of pockets for hiking or some other dreamy thing.
So, you see, nothing much.
Except.
Zander Haaf has sea-green eyes. Not olive green. Not gray green. Actual sea green. So, basically, his eyes are like a window into the vast depths of the ocean and the mystery of the world.
It’s the eyes. All of it.
You don’t believe me that I can see those Ocean Eyes from all the way across to the Zipper but I do. And so does Sally, and the rest of our friends. Sally exhales, a whisper.
“Oh my God. He’s looking at you. Daffodil. Oh my God, he’s still looking at you.”
And I, because I have no self-esteem and am feeling wildly self-conscious, look away. But I want to look back—I want to look back—I want to look back. . . .
“Okay, he’s still looking. Now the ticket guy is hurrying him. Okay, relax, now he’s gone,” Sally reports.
Somehow I feel like I have the wind knocked out of me.
Sally looks at me. “Daffodil. He was, like, totally checking you out. Like a stalker. Do you know what this means?!”
Sally is looking at me now like I’m Taylor Swift.
Callie comes back from the funnel cakes, empty-handed.
“No funnel cake?”
“Nope. If I’m going to make Zander Haaf fall in love with me I can never eat again,” Callie declares.
Sally glances over at me. We share a look. The international expression for never say anything about that ever again.
But in that moment, standing there at the Nebraska State Fair sans funnel cake, looking up at the Zipper lights going around and around at dizzying speed, I feel something I haven’t felt before. A kind of anticipation. A kind of fear. Like the inside of my skin has just been replaced by a jungle full of butterflies. They fly past each other and up and down and it could be that I am on the Zipper, too, flying across the sky at lightning speed.
And I wonder what will happen next year, sophomore year, and if I will ever see Zander Haaf again. And, if I do, if he’ll remember me.
The girl from across the fairgrounds.
Chapter 13
I could wait until the construction team gets here before I go outside and determine if there is anything of interest on the other side of the pantry. I could wait to discover if “the cat” left any scratches and, once it’s clear there is nothing there, I could go back to assuming that the whole episode was purely in my overly vivid imagination.
But I am curious.
Also, I don’t really want to get dressed before going out there and, if I go now, I can just pj it up. The sun is bright gold over the yard out back and before I know it I am stepping over the blades of grass, getting drops of dew all over my flip-flops. It’s not that easy to tell where the outside of the pantry would actually fall, but I’m trying to triangulate a little from the kitchen windows, to the living room windows, to just in between.
Ah, yes, here it is! The pantry doesn’t have windows so it must be here. Right here, clearly the other side of the pantry, facing out toward the field.
It really doesn’t look like there’s anything there so I turn around and happily, gladly, trot back to the kitchen steps. See? It was all just a funny little figment of my imagination. Probably too much Ancient Aliens burrowing its way into my subconscious. Mystery solved. All logic restored.
I am just about to ascend the stairs when I notice a little thing, out of the corner of my eye. Just a tiny thing, not really anything to write home about.
There, not on the outside wall of the house but underneath it, underneath the place where I was looking for scratches, is something uneven. Something bumpy in the dirt and the morning dew grass.
And now, as I get closer, I begin to make it out.
You see, there are little bits of crabgrass all over the side of the house, a pale green, some of it almost seeming gold in the morning light with the dew reflecting the sunlight. This blanket of crabgrass surrounds the house and wades off into the field where there are taller reeds and weeds and a few stray dandelions. But it’s a consistent covering, almost like a light green rug, around the outside of the house.
Except underneath the outside of the pantry—over just a bit from where I’d been looking. That seems to be the exception. And it’s not that the crabgrass had just stopped growing at that very spot. No . . .
It’s more that it’s been ripped out.
It’s more that the crabgrass that was there before was suddenly disturbed in a most cruel and unusual manner, leaving chunks of dirt and grass and roots to the side and all over the ground nearby.
And, if you look closer, it starts to appear that the reason why such damage was done to the sweet little crabgrass is that something was . . . clawing at it.
Something substantial.
Something much, much bigger than a cat.
It looks, almost, if you step away and look at it with an objective eye, as if some thing was, dare I say it, actually trying to dig its way down under the wall.
Under the wall and into the house.
And, whatever it was, it seems like it was pretty desperate, pretty adamant, about getting in. On a kind of mission.
I stand there piecing this together and trying not to let it turn into a thought that will catapult me running toward the hills.
“Morning.”
The sound makes me jump three feet into the air.
“Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.” It’s Mike. Leader of the pack. Head honcho. Construction maestro. Captain of the team.
“Oh, yeah. I . . . um. I’m fine.”
He looks at me, sizing me up. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just. I thought I . . .”
I just let this trail off. I feel like if I ask him about the crabgrass or tell him about the scratching noises he’ll just think I’m an idiot. Some paranoid girl with a wild imagination and no friends. A shut-in.
“Okay if we start work? I know it’s a little early, but you are up. . . .”
“What? Oh, yeah. Of course. Yes. That’s what I’m here for. Please do. Start work. I’m just. I was just on my way to the store.”
He looks at my pajamas.
Suddenly I realize my pajamas are kind of revealing. Like, my whole leg is right there, and the other one too. Both legs. Just out and about. Is he looking at my legs? (Of course, they’re not shaved. I’m not Beyoncé.)
And I’m not wearing a bra. Or underwear. (I’m not the queen of England, either.)
“After I change! I was going to change and then, after that, head down the road and grab a few things at the store. . . . Need anything?”