Stalker

         Taking the airsoft rifle was probably overkill, but he decided to do it anyway. The high-power scope occupying the top of the Tokyo Marui VSR-10 Real Shock would come in useful later on. He threw it in the back seat of his midnight-blue Pontiac G6 sedan and covered it with a sheet, for awkward questions might be asked if it were seen. But the usefulness of the rifle would come later. First, he had to acquire his target.
         On the way to school, he repeatedly questioned why he was doing this. If he liked this girl so much, than why in God and ATI didn’t he just ask her out instead of going forth with this crazy—not to mention creepy—endeavour? But there was the part of his brain that was all for testing out his Sam Fisher intel-gathering skills. And the bad thing was that that part was beating out the reason.
         A familiar face made itself known one row over and fifteen parking spaces down from him. The target! Her form, of average height and build, was straightening itself up next to a black Saturn (Didn’t she say something about a hybrid?). Perfect…he now knew the vehicle he’d need to follow once the school day had finished. A pang of worry came close enough to his thought patterns, but it was suppressed. He’d worry about that later. He had a job to do now.
         There was a small black composition pad in his pocket, as well as a similarly coloured ink pen. His left hand scribbled feverishly across the first page, taking down practically everything relating to the girl and her mode of transportation, especially the licence plate. She now moved away from her car, toward him. He safetied the pen, and returned both to his pocket as the target drew closer to his car.
         He succeeded in looking inconspicuous as he exited his car, just in time for the girl to pass. She smiled at him. She smiled at him! He narrowly remembered to grab his school things before moving off after her, keeping a cautious distance.
         The follow lasted long enough for him to discover her hangout. A microscopic branch hallway near the cafeteria. He scribbled down some mental notes and decided to indulge in some breakfast. While eating, he transferred the mental notes to the notepad. So far, so good.
          Stalking someone can be likened to the first time one gets behind the wheel to drive a car. It can start out sublimely, but there are a million chances, places, and opportunities to screw it all up…though a strong hand and a steady mind can keep that smoothness going for a long time. Depending on how one looks at it, the whole thing can either drag on for an eternity or blaze by in a heartbeat. By a simple check of the watch, he could already tell that it was going to take the former route.
         When the bell finally rang, he was reasonably close to her hangout, close enough to assume a controlled following distance once she turned onto the main hallway. It seemed essential to discover the location of as many of her classes as possible (though why couldn’t he just learn that after he asked her out?). He already knew of one: She was his fourth-hour classmate.
         More mental notes to put on paper later. Once she disappeared into her class, he continued on toward his. He had a school day of his own to deal with as well.
         As first hour drew to a close, annoyance was beginning to creep in. There wasn’t a way for him to track her to her second-hour class. Her class was at the other end of the hall. By the time he’d get out, she would already have dissolved into the crowd. He drummed impatiently on the desk with his pen—the same pen he was using in conjunction with the composition pad to take notes on this girl.
         He received an interesting little break at the end of second hour. While congregating with friends outside the gym, he caught a glimpse of a familiar profile exiting the band room and crossing the parking lot. The target! She appeared to be immersed in a friend, and didn’t pay any attention to his existence. He itched to trail her to the next class, but there was a coach standing right next to him, preventing him from doing so. A few curse words escaped his mouth, but the disguise of the Norwegian language prevented anyone else from hearing them. He watched her disappear from view.
         Another pleasant surprise. During a romp to the water fountain, he caught a glimpse of her sitting in a math classroom. Luck seemed to be on his side. Another check of that room confirmed that indeed that was her sitting in the third seat of the far row. Once in his class, he added more field notes to the growing “recon report” contained in the composition pad. His thoughts again drifted to how he would go about tailing her after school. He even considered not doing that, but that thought was immediately taken behind the outhouse and introduced to a .30-30 slug.
         The day was turning out much better than expected, though the pace of it was behaving like a BMW with a go-kart engine. It was at lunchtime at last. His stomach was growling and his mind ached. A broken version of “Hotel California” made an attempt to calm his nerves a little. It helped, though he was still going to have to endure an entire class period with her without snapping and yelling, “I love you” in every language and way he could think of.
         A test helped to divert his full attention from the girl…for a short time. When he went to turn in said test, the girl removed her shoes and propped her feet up on the nearest chair to reveal multicoloured socks…almost on cue. His mind immediately disengaged and hormones took over. It required physical strength to keep his back to the girl and her…incredible socks. He vaguely remembered muttering “I love you” to himself while keeping a clandestine watch on her.
         Her shoes in hand, she disappeared up the steps, his lusting eye paying attention to every movement the patterns on the socks traced as she walked. It was quite possible that he had gone insane…insane over this one girl, but by no means in a stereotypical fashion.
         
         He did not remember the remaining two classes of the day. His heart thrummed between his vocal chords as he ransacked the parking lot looking for that black Saturn VUE. When he at last located it—she was, luckily, nowhere to be seen—he made a mad dash for his vehicle, where he would wait at idle until she came along and made ready to depart.
         The VSR-10 was in his lap as he assumed a position three trucks behind the girl. His hands had since developed a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, despite the fact that he was not moving. In a brave attempt to steady his mind, he remembered and recorded her licence plate number. He smiled as his mind caressed a wonderful daydream involving her and those…those socks (God damn it, why couldn’t he stop thinking about those?!).
         Wait.
         Could “Kashmir,” the greatest piece of music ever made by a human being, be of some assistance? It better: He immediately adjusted the volume in respect, wondering if she was listening to the same thing.
         As it would just so happen to turn out, tailing a girl you’re going insane over in an automobile is actually quite dangerous. He had to make smoke pour from the front wheelwells in order to match a left turn the girl made rather than get flattened by a school bus. He coaxed enough power from the 2,4-liter four-banger underhood to bring the speedometer into very obtuse angles when she suddenly revealed the fast freak in herself. Sweat began to run down the back of his neck as the scenery flashed by.
         The light at Downing Pines Road suddenly flicked from green to yellow, then yellow to red. The black Saturn he was so desperately clinging to managed to squeeze past the light, but his own vehicle was stuck behind a cautious Buick, and he was forced to a stop. He etched his fingernails down the windshield as the VUE whipped around a curve and out of sight.
         “No…”
         Impatience unlike anything he’d ever felt before coursed through his body. He began to rev the engine, sometimes introducing the tachometer to its farthest extent. The steering wheel seemed to undulate under his grip, and he would be almost frustrated to find that it was still whole when he released said grip to drum on it.
         Finally!
         He floored the accelerator, nearly enclosing himself in the trunk of the Buick ahead, but the wonder of antilock brakes prevented that. With his teeth clamped together—probably with enough force to bite this Pontiac in half—he plundered the area to catch a glimpse of that so coveted SUV. That was easier said than done. He saw plenty of black SUVs…and white ones, and green ones, and blue ones, and ones jacked five feet off the ground, but no cute black Saturns with three leaf emblems on select panels. Hope began to slide down the throat of the Venus flytrap in his mind, inching ever closer to the deadly juices at the bottom with each frantic try at freeing itself.
         THERE!
         It needed three drive-bys to confirm, but that was indeed the target girl’s car, parked next to one of those trendy strip-mall coffee shops. With only attometers to spare, hope managed to tear through the walls of the flytrap, leaving the carnivorous plant in the dust to die by its own digestive juices.
         She was again within grasp…so now it was time to put the VSR-10 to work. A nearby building under construction, but still awaiting workers to continue putting it together, provided a good vantage point. The Pontiac got stashed in what could probably be the lobby of a bank about a year from now, and he went to the top floor to set up shop. He saw no reason to bring along the magazine for the rifle, but he found himself inserting the half-loaded apparatus into its proper place in the weapon anyway. It would probably help.
         The scope was a good one, and it brought the coffee shop close enough so that he could view its textures up close. A problem arose in that he could not see through the tinted windows of the place. But he didn’t really need to know what she was doing in there, only that she was there from this time to that time.
         
         His watch read 8:33 when the girl finally reappeared outside and walked toward her car. He did not see her get in her car, but he made it to the intersection just in time to catch that Saturn turning back onto Cypress Street. Perfect. There was slightly less danger now. Traffic was relatively light, so there was no need to reenact any scenes from Bullitt, or to go ninety in a twenty-five…even though Cypress was a fifty zone. He rolled down the drivers’ window and relaxed a bit, giving the bolt of the VSR-10 a good pat as he did so.
         Of course she lived in Indian Lakes. What somebody at WMHS doesn’t live in Indian Lakes?  Whilst she pulled into a home just off Arkansas, he was looking for another place to stash his car and to set up camp.
         Ah.
         The address two houses to her north was for sale, and unoccupied. All he’d have to do was pull the good-old G6 into the driveway—which he did—and he’d look like the new arrival to the neighbourhood. No one with any sense of comfort would take a gander at the roof, much less believe that a kid with a rifle was up there, sighting on a bedroom window with that rifle.
         The girl was in there, the girl with the wonderful personality, the socks he couldn’t stop thinking of, everything that he could ever dream of in a future companion. His heart drummed a beat into the unyielding structure of the home. He watched her through the Tasco scope, watched her as she periodically disappeared, and then reappeared—sometimes empty-handed, sometimes with refreshments—watched her as she completed homework, and even watched her as her phone piqued her attention. All the while, he felt as though he could explode any minute, shoot her window, and screech his true feelings for her at the top of his lungs.
         He curled his finger around the chrome trigger.
         He steadied a shot. If he could hit the window properly, she would be able to see the BB strike and probably trace its path straight toward his position.
         The girl continued to talk on the phone, completely oblivious to what was going on outside.
         He threw up. The rifle slipped, but his finger caught onto the trigger, which fired the weapon. A low thump rent the night air, spearing his heart with terror. Coughing and spluttering, he wiped his mouth and again set up a shot, adding to that itinerary a recharging of the chamber. He did so just in time.
         Did she just say, “I love you?”
         No.
         Impossible.
         She was single.
         She didn’t have a clue that he had a world-ending crush on her.
         But she said those three words. There was no doubt of that.
         In one monstrous exodus, all the love, all the hope, all the lust, and all the thoughts gushed from his mind. He dropped the rifle. It slid down the roof, through his vomit, and fell into the bushes next to the house. Without the scope, her house seemed worlds away. Then the house, and all the other surroundings, slipped into a quivering blur. His voice melted into a watery croak.
         Right there, on the roof of that house in Indian Lakes, he began to cry like he never had before. Why didn’t he realise that he had no chance in Hell with this girl? Why did he put so much effort into trying to find out as much about her as he could? Why didn’t he just ask her out in the first place?
         He did not look at the house again. As was to be expected from a non-Armalite Marui product, no damage had been done to the rifle as a result of its fall. He wiped the sick from the foregrip and threw the arm unceremoniously into the back seat, then used the same manner to remove the memo pad as far away from him as he could.
         Somewhere along the way home, the part of his mind that paid attention to the road shut down along a curve.