Chapter 36
He’s gearing up to leave again—it’s almost eight o’clock, and he’s cold and tired, and feels foolish, too—when Charlie drives right past him and pulls into the parking garage.
He doesn’t turn his head to look but hears her singing along to the radio.
The sound of her voice gives him a jolt of pure fear.
He grasps the ski mask beside him with trembling fingers.
He looks down at his outfit, too, to make sure, again, that he’s dressed in nondescript clothes he’s never worn to class.
He wants to look like an everyday thug, and he thinks he’s managed it.
Or close enough. He pulls the ski mask on over his face, checks himself in the mirror—looking like a disturbed and disturbing stranger—and feels a spike of shame.
Disgust, even. What the hell is he doing?
It’s just a lark, he tells himself. Giving her a much-needed, much-deserved nudge, remember?
Still, he pulls off the mask but holds it as he gets out of the car.
He doesn’t pass anyone on the dark street but waits to put on the mask until he’s in the dimly lit garage, watching Charlie from a distance as she opens her car door and collects her coat and purse.
He creeps closer, ducking behind each car as he goes.
But when he gets near enough, almost, to reach out and grab the long rope of her dark, shiny hair, his nerve fails him.
He finds he can’t move from his crouch behind the long back end of an Oldsmobile, so Charlie gets away, walking languidly to the door.
Humming the song that was playing on the radio, something he doesn’t recognize.
She’s confident, unafraid—and why shouldn’t she be?
She’s the same as she always is in class, and Paul is the same, too: he folds, he fails.
When another car pulls into the garage, Paul stays put. He yanks off his ski mask and stays there, fuming, crouched on his aching legs for several minutes after the other residents have slammed their car doors and gone inside.