Page 29 of Class Clown

The air was turning chilly and I hugged my arms as I walked along. Movement to the side had me looking toward the forest, and I saw some porcupine quills sticking up over the grasses. As I walked along it appeared like the quills were following me in a parallel line. I briefly wondered if it was the same animal I’d seen from Cole’s office window during the shirt tearing yesterday, but shrugged it off with a smile. Life was full of coincidences.

Chapter 8

Ruby’s Truth: You should form a hypothesis every chance you get.

A few days later I was feeling a little less easy-breezy about porcupine coincidences, and a lot more interested in the many paranormal novels I’d read about different species imprinting on each other.

“What do you know about the scientific method?” I asked Kristy as we sat in the health center, waiting for our next bloody nose or nausea case to arrive.

Camp was in full swing and Kristy and I spent more time waiting for patients than actually treating them. I preferred to be busy, but for the most part I was avoiding going stir crazy. I wanted the kids and staff to be healthy, and I’d gotten some good brush-up time reading medical books. But it also meant I had plenty of time to go down some mental rabbit holes.

I was at the one small desk under the window, one of those medical books open, staring out the window at the tops of the pine trees. They swayed a bit in the afternoon breeze. Kristy had pulled in an extra chair and was currently using the exam table as a desk, writing in a flowery notebook. Her pen had pink ink and I thought I saw some sparkles on the page. It made me smile in spite of the seriousness of my mindset this morning.

She looked up from her writing and wrinkled her forehead, before she shook her head to get her hair out of her eyes. “Um, it’s when you form a theory and try to prove it?”

I nodded, looking out the window once more. Staring, for me, sometimes helped with processing information. “Basically, yeah. It starts with an observation, and questions, and then you form a hypothesis that you can test. Eventually you either prove it or disprove it.”

“Right.”I looked across the small room at her and took a breath. “What would you say if I told you that I think I have a stalker?”

Her eyes grew large and she shut her notebook, leaning forward with her elbows on the exam table. The tissue paper crinkled under her. “What?”

“Yeah.” Simply saying it out loud made my skin prickle and I shivered. “I’m not sure what to do about it.”

“Okay.” She bit her lip thinking. “If we apply the scientific method here, what’s the observation that led you to believe it?”

“Well, he started appearing everywhere I go. If I’m at my cabin I’ll see him out the window, if I’m here he’ll walk by, and I think I heard him following me on the path the other night when I left the main lodge late.”

Her expression grew worried. “That’s so creepy.”

“Right? At first I asked myself, is this in your head? Could there be some other explanation? The world is full of coincidences, you know? In a camp this size it’s safe to assume you’ll cross paths a lot.”

Kristy nodded. “Good points. What happened next?”

“Well, I decided to form the hypothesis that I was totally making it up and seeing things that weren’t true.” I picked up a pencil and tapped it on my lips. “I started keeping tally marks on my wrist when I saw him in the same place as me.” I flipped my wrist to show her the collection of tally marks working their way up my elbow.

“Hoy cow, Ruby. That’s a lot.”

“I know. I haven’t been able to wash this arm for four days now because he just keeps appearing.”

“That seems to disprove the theory that it’s coincidence,” she replied.

“Exactly. I moved on to a new hypothesis that he is actually stalking me.” I pointed to the tally marks again. “The data seems undoubtable to me.”

We sat in silent contemplation for a few minutes, the horror filling up the room as we both understood how freakish this was.

“Do you know his name?” Kristy asked, breaking the silence. “We need to report him.”

“I don’t know how to report him.”

“We tell Cole. Has he made any threats or actually spoken to you?” Kristy asked, tugging her long hair over her shoulder and playing with it.

I shook my head. “Not really. He did raise his quills once and I thought I was a goner, but then he moved on.”

“Wha- . . .” She sat up straighter and tilted her head in question. “Quills?”

I gave her a look. “Scary, right? I’m wondering if a ranger would be my best option for help. Maybe relocation?”

“Wait. Quills? Like, a bow and arrow, or what are we talking about here?”

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