Someone Was Watching by David Patneaude

Author:David Patneaude
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Published: 1993-03-23T05:00:00+00:00

12

Chris’s parents asked him his plans for the day, but put no restrictions on him. They were surprised to see him up early again, but didn’t seem suspicious. Maybe they were just doing a good job of covering up. Or maybe Chris taking off on another adventure was the last thing on their minds. He wasn’t sure.

But at nine o’clock his mom called him from work: just checking to see how he was doing. He told her he and Pat would be going to the park soon to throw the football around. At nine-fifteen his dad called. Chris told him the same thing.

By then Chris had decided that they were suspicious, and he and Pat had made their plans for the day. By nine-thirty they were on their bikes, football and bank books in Chris’s backpack.

The excitement Chris had felt early in the morning had partly given way to nervousness and fear and doubt. He glanced at Pat, searching for some of the same emotions, as they pedalled along side by side. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Fine,” Pat said. “I’m not sick or anything.”

“No, I mean your mind. Are you nervous?”

“Of course. This ain’t exactly like our little trip to Greenwater, and that made me nervous. How about you?”

“Yeah, me, too,” Chris said. “You heard my dad’s lecture on how they’ve always trusted me. They really have. But today they probably don’t, quite as much. After this, who knows? Maybe not at all. But I mostly think we’re doing the right thing.”

“It’s something we have to do,” Pat said. “We need to keep telling ourselves that, or this is going to be a lot harder.”

They went to the bank first. At the teller’s window, they had a loud and continuous conversation with each other about the great racing bikes they were going to buy, and how the bikes were going to be worth every penny of the money they were withdrawing. But the teller didn’t seem to be particularly interested in bikes or concerned about the amount of the withdrawals. They walked out of the bank with six one-hundred-dollar bills and ten twenty-dollar bills each, surprised at how easy it had been, and headed for the mall, where the closest travel agency was.

Chris grew more nervous as they went into the travel agency. What if you did have to be a certain age to buy tickets? But they tried to be calm, matter-of-fact, even when they gave the young woman phony names that they’d decided to use only minutes before. She seemed only slightly curious, and without hesitating, sold them round-trip tickets to Tampa—for flights departing Thursday at 9:30 and returning Tuesday at 5:00—for $420 each. They figured that they still had $380 each for expenses. In the back of his mind, Chris was thinking that should leave enough to buy a return ticket for a little girl, too. But he didn’t let the thought get too far out in the open. He believed more than anything that Molly

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