Read Online Now You See It... by Vivian Vande Velde - Free Book Online Page A

of explanation.
    If I didn't have the glasses tomorrow, if I told Tiffanie and Julian that I'd thrown them away because they gave me a headache and made everything look blurry so I could hardly see anything, would they believe me? And leave me alone?
    On the other hand, what would they do to me if they didn't believe me?
    "I need to go for a walk," I announced.
    No one was interested.
    I went back down to the main floor and was trying to decide whether I should go into the back garden or out onto South Avenue when I saw, through the glass door, Julian coming up the front walk.

10. Escape to the Garden
    I froze like a deer startled by headlights. But I snapped out of that when I thought of what happens to deer that don't move out of the way of traffic.
    I had to do something—but what?
    I could scream for help, and—when the aides or nurses came—explain that Julian was stalking me.
    Which he would deny, of course.
    But I could always tell
why
he was stalking me. I could demand, "Look at him through these glasses."
    Except for that nagging worry that nobody else would see what I saw.
    He'd paused just on the other side of the door,
talking with—or being talked to by—the residents on the porch. With the sunlight outside glaring on the glass, I was pretty sure he hadn't seen me yet.
    I could run for the elevator, but if it had been called to a different floor, I'd be stranded there waiting in the wide open when he came in. And even if the elevator came, what then? Go upstairs to Nana's room? Did he know her name? I realized he didn't need to know it.
Two girls come here,
he could say, and either describe us or give our names.
And who do they visit?
he'd ask. Gia's fan club would assume he was in love with her, just as they were, and they would think that was sweet, and they would tell him,
Oh, that's Helen Vogt's granddaughter you're looking for, up in room five fifteen.
    There was no reason for Julian to harm Nana or Gia, so if I ran, it wasn't like I was abandoning them. But run where?
    I could zip into one of the resident's rooms on this floor to hide. And hope there was nobody in the room who was susceptible to heart attacks or who would scream at my sudden entrance.
    You're being ridiculous,
I told myself. What could Julian do to me here?
    But there was a good chance, with those pointy ears and fickle facial features, that he wasn't human.
There was, in truth, no telling
what
he could do. And if one of the residents later said,
A hysterical girl came into my room, then a young man followed her and chopped her into little pieces and flushed her down my toilet,
was anybody going to believe a nursing home patient? They'd give her an aspirin and extra Jell-O for dinner and tell her to watch
Wheel of Fortune
from now on, and not the SciFi Channel.
    Was the library any better? If, for any reason, he chose to go there, I would be trapped, for there was only the one entrance.
    Kitchen? Too far down the hallway, given that the front door was already moving as Julian pushed on it to come in.
    I turned and dashed for the side exit, the one that opened into the backyard. I knew it was enclosed, but—after all—that wall was meant to contain geriatric patients, not fleeing-for-their-lives fifteen-year-olds. At the very least, it was a half acre with trees and bushes and a little windy path that had park benches every ten feet or so, which would afford some amount of cover. And if I was really lucky, Julian would be concentrating on finding the elevator and wouldn't even see me leave the building.
    "Wendy!" I heard him call.
    So much for luck.
    I hit the door and almost bowled over an aide assisting a man with a walker. "Hey! Slow down!" she yelled after me.
    "Sorry," I called over my shoulder as I kept on running.
    Ignoring the path, I ran straight: onto the grass, into a cluster of trees. There really weren't as many as I had hoped. Which made sense if you remembered the whole purpose was to air the patients without losing