7. Kelly
7
KELLY
J erome wouldn’t leave me alone. It didn’t matter if I was in class, eating at the cafeteria, walking to the admin building, or studying in the library. He was everywhere.
He never approached me. He didn’t make any attempt to speak to me. All he wanted to do was keep an eye on me and make sure that I knew he saw me.
I know what you did.
That was his message, and the three little dots after it loomed so large.
What did he intend by reminding me that he knew me from long ago? What was supposed to happen with his remembering what I’d done?
I was no stranger to blackmail. So many of the foster “parents” used it on the kids they took in, all for getting some money from the government.
If Jerome wasn’t interested in using my secret against me as blackmail, then I had no clue what he’d want from me. I had nothing to give him. No power, no money, no information. Nothing.
Is he just a sadist, wanting to torture me? I wouldn’t put it past him, and that was why every morning, I woke up with fear gripping me and went to bed with dread pooling in my stomach. My dreams of Rurik stopped coming, and when they didn’t, I realized how much I’d depended on his presence even in my dream state.
“Hey,” another student worker said as they came into the outer part of Jasmine’s office where I was working that afternoon.
I jerked at the sudden visit, blinking my eyes open wide.
“You’re Kelly, right?”
How would you know?
No one knew me, and that was the way I liked it. The anonymity of just being one student among so many was one big thing I liked about this college experience. I wasn’t labeled as the foster kid. I wasn’t outcast as the weirdo without a family, the loser whose parents were addicts. I was just a nobody, and that blank label fit so well.
“I remember you from last semester. You, um, you were really helpful with that one econ test, and I thought I could, uh, well, uh, repay the favor.”
I remembered him now. He was talking about a brief half hour of studying together because we’d happened to be seated next to each other when the power went out and we had to wait for the lecture to resume.
“Repay the favor of studying?” I don’t need help with that .
“No. Um.” He looked around, almost nervous but trying to look and sound casual as he came toward my desk. If he wasn’t worried about being here, he sure seemed uneasy to talk to me. He did seem shy.
“I figured you might want to see this.”
“See what?”
He shrugged, then flicked his long hair back as he gestured at the computer. “Can I log in?”
Curious, I rolled back my chair and let him have access to the school computer. He lowered to type rapidly, clearly a gamer or computer savvy nerd. “I work in the other end of the admin building. By campus operations and services.”
I nodded, watching as he logged onto his email. “Okay.”
“And when I noticed these, I thought I’d send them to you, but your school email address is wonky.” He clicked and moved the mouse, making some videos come up. The surveillance feed was of the admin building, then another one of the cafeteria. In all the views he showed me, there he was. Jerome watched me. In the darker ones, when it was nighttime, still shots were taken to show him tracking me across campus, stalking me as I walked from one place to another.
“Do you, like, know this dude?” he asked.
I couldn’t speak past the fear freezing my body. Stiff and unable to draw a full breath, I shook my head. That was a lie. I did know Jerome, but I didn’t want to. I knew Jerome from years ago, and I didn’t want to be familiar with him now.
“He’s one of the people on the ‘list’.” He faced me now, after closing out of the videos and logging out. “I shouldn’t be snooping like that, but sometimes it gets boring in the office and I look around.”
“What list?”
“They got all kinds of unofficial lists. There’s names that some politician guy, Marcus, wants to know about. And students from donor families.”
“What list is this guy on?”
“A different one. Some of the security people have students on a watchlist. Troublemakers and all.” He shrugged.
“That man is a student?” I asked, neither confirming nor denying whether I knew Jerome.
“No, he’s not a student, but he’s been hanging around campus. I got a little curious about how often he showed up and how often he seemed to be following you and a couple of other people.”
This was interesting. If Jerome was following others, he had to have something else in mind than just reappearing to taunt me about my secret from my past. “Who else is he following?”
“Just people who tend to buy a shitload of drugs.”
Drugs? That’s it? Jerome was here to bother me about what I did years ago and also sell drugs?
At the sound of someone walking down the hallway, he stood up quickly and had that nervous expression again. “Anyway. I just, um, wanted to give you a heads up. Maybe don’t walk alone at night. Ask some friends or something to go with you.”
The only friend I had was gone. Eva wasn’t on campus anymore. And I didn’t want to be a third wheel to reach out to her. She—and Lev—had already done enough for me. They’d helped me after I was drugged. They let me stay at their apartment after the dorms had been broken into. If I asked her for any more help, if I contacted anyone from the Baranov outfit for assistance, I’d be expected to compensate them somehow. I’d be obligated to them, and I didn’t want to have those kinds of obligations ever again.
“Thanks.” I nodded at him once. While I already knew Jerome was stalking me, I didn’t particularly like how this seemed to be a bigger issue than I realized. I didn’t know he’d been that close, and I hated that he could get under my radar.
But what does he want?
I wouldn’t know unless I asked, and over the next couple of days, I tried to envision how I could put him on the spot and approach him. Sometimes, the best defense was offense. I knew that, but that would mean engaging in something that I wanted to leave behind me. I was desperate to keep my past far back in my life and embrace the newness of the future, where I wouldn’t be defined by what I’d had to do before.
The student left without saying anything else, and I wondered what made him come to talk to me. He clearly was informed with his student-worker access to campus operations and security. It wasn’t common knowledge that I worked in this portion of the dean’s office, either. The dean’s niece walked by just now, a tall, gorgeous redhead named Jenny or Jessica or something, one of those overly common J-names, and she didn’t even spare me a glance, proving my point. I blended into the background here, so that student had to have known I worked here to come talk to me.
And it was sweet that he had. Perhaps he saw himself as something of a hero, a good Samaritan to step up and inform an innocent and unsuspecting young woman of a stalker.
But I wasn’t innocent. No one who’d done what I had could call themselves innocent. And I wasn’t unsuspecting or that na?ve. I’d caught on to Jerome following me.
I needed something more than a friendly heads up.
I needed a real hero. One who’d make Jerome go away and stop bothering me—for whatever reason he’d started to.
After my hours were done at the admin building, I clocked out and planned to walk a different, albeit longer, route to my apartment. It was never smart to be predictable with a routine, but changing up my way home didn’t make a difference.
Halfway across campus, I felt that telltale sensation of being watched. Someone was following, but it didn’t seem to be Jerome this time.
Now what? I paused at a bench that was lit up under a streetlamp and pretended to take a call. Staying in place didn’t seem like the best idea, but I wanted to have a chance to do two things. One, fake a call with someone so whoever was following me would think that I wasn’t actually alone and would be noticed if I went missing—all a lie. Two, I could have a solid surface behind me so no one would jump on me from behind and attack while I scoped out my surroundings. The brick wall of a maintenance building was solid, and it worked. While I took this pretend call, talking loudly enough for someone to hear me and be able to assume I was talking to my “boyfriend” who’d just gotten done with a hard workout at the gym, I prayed Jerome or whoever else it was would fear a strong man being with me.
It’s not him. Carrying on this one-sided conversation, I spotted a man further back. It wasn’t Jerome, but one of his buddies. I’d noticed him hanging around Jerome on campus, typically spotted with him.
The moment I turned my head ever so slightly to see him fully, he ran. It was like a switch had been flipped. Like he just knew he was noticed and had to react.
Giving up on my call, I shot to my feet and ran. I sprinted. With fear lacing through my veins, I pumped my arms and dashed away as fast as I could. Adrenaline fueled me to go, to flee and not fight.
Behind me, the man’s footsteps pounded louder and louder, closer and closer. Unable to breathe deep enough, unable to banish the panic consuming me, I dug in and moved as quickly as I could.
Then the instinct to fight came. Not me. It wasn’t my instinct to fight, but someone else. Over the sounds of the man’s footsteps slamming down so hard and so close, seemingly on my heels, another pair of footsteps thudded just as loudly.
Someone else. Another person was chasing me.
“No.” I gasped it, barely able to breathe, let alone speak. Turning around to gauge where this threat was coming from, I watched as someone rushed out from the side and jumped at Jerome’s friend.
It wasn’t someone else following me. It wasn’t a pair of predators hot on my trail.
This man was stopping the other one. He was intervening, almost like the nerdy computer guy had. Miraculously, someone had come to my rescue.
Staggering in my steps, I tried to keep running and shuffling to reach safety. I had to get away. My instinct to flee wouldn’t ebb away with danger so close. Yet, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the gruesome sight of these two men fighting and hitting each other under the shadows beneath a tall oak tree.
Grunts and impacts of fists sounded. Curses came from their mouths too, but all of it was too incoherent and rushed for me to understand a single syllable.
Go. Just go.
I didn’t know who that man was. I didn’t want to know whom I’d be indebted to for this good deed. While I had the opportunity to, I would run like hell and stick with what I’d always hoped to be my motto in life—mind my own business.
Facing forward again, I sprinted faster to reach my apartment, leaving the sounds of combat far behind.