Towering - By Alex Flinn Page 0,5

all the time. Probably, the first thing Mom would do now that I was gone was clean out my stuff. But Danielle’s mother hadn’t cleaned out, and that was understandable. The mess was all she had.

The notebook smelled the way old books do, like dust and unrealized potential. I opened it, expecting algebraic formulas or American history notes, and I wasn’t disappointed. Or maybe I was. On the first page, neatly copied, was the periodic table of elements.

I was about to close it and move on. I was tired again. A glance at the clock told me it was nearly two, and the cold air didn’t help. I wanted to curl under the too-thin blanket on the bed and go to sleep. But then, I noticed the second page.

It was a diary.

The handwriting was feminine but not cutesy like the girls who put hearts over their i’s. It began:

It poured all day. Of course, that’s nothing unusual. It poured all day yesterday and the day before and the day before that. What does it really matter anyway because, rain or shine, I am stuck in the house with my mother? She’s barely let me go anywhere these past few weeks, and since Emily left, I have no friends over either. But I mention the rain so you can understand the utter depths of my misery and also, how unusual it is that I saw a guy (!) outside my bedroom window.

Well, not a guy even, but a MAN. A hot-looking one, from what I could see of him. He was tall (or, at least, his chest came up to the tops of the sunflowers we’d planted) with blond hair and eyes the romance writers would call piercing. I never really knew what that meant before, but now I do. His eyes looked like, if they met yours, they’d go through you like a skewer. And, weird enough, you’d enjoy it.

Even though I didn’t know him, I wanted to go down to see him. After all, I hadn’t seen anyone except Mom and Old Lady McNeill, who sells milk and eggs out of her backyard, since school ended a month ago.

Now, a NORMAL person could just say, “Hey, Mom, there’s some weirdo in the backyard,” and then go out and ask him what he was doing there. But I was not a normal person, so I had to sneak.

Mom was sewing or something in her room, so I knew there was half a chance I might make it out if she didn’t leave, and if she didn’t hear the creaky step when I went downstairs. But the rain would help with that.

Still, Mom has the hearing of a cat, so I crept as slowly and carefully as I could downstairs, stopping every few steps to listen. Nothing. When I got to the kitchen door, I glanced outside and saw him again.

Oh, yes, he was FINE. Jeans ripped in all the right places and a tight, white T-shirt (wet, an added bonus) that made him look like Dylan on Beverly Hills 90210 (because TV is the only thing I am allowed to do). Sure, he was probably a homeless person or a perv. Or a serial killer. But, hey, a girl can’t be too picky, especially around here. I had my hand on the doorknob when I heard a voice.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Mom! Instinctively, my hand flew off the doorknob. Wrong thing to do. I took a deep breath and tried to look calm. “Oh, wow, you scared me. I was just going . . . to take a walk.” I could feel my heart ramming against my chest, almost like it might burst through.

“In this rain?” Her face was pleasant, but her voice was suspicious.

“I’m bored. It’s been raining all week. I haven’t gone anyplace all summer.”

It was true. Since school had gotten out, Mom had been weirdly overprotective, even for her. She’d always been secretive, strange, which is why I hardly had any friends, but it seemed like, one day, her tiger instincts had gone into overdrive, and now, every little request to go someplace, even the grocery store, was refused.

I don’t even know WHY Mom is being so weird. A few years ago, a teenage girl disappeared. Kelly David. Kidnapped, maybe, but they never found any evidence, so maybe she ran away. Everyone was paranoid for a while, keeping their kids inside or only letting them go out in groups, waiting beside them at the bus stop