Natalie's Legacy [sequel to Natalie's Diary]

[3] Paranoia

PARANOIA

Jane

Gaze detection. That was the word given to the ability to tell when someone was watching you. 

I focused on the supposed science of the phenomenon rather than the sensation that made my skin crawl, even in the well-lit, populated library. The theory was murky at best, thoroughly debated in scholarly circles and I was just a girl who heard things that weren't there. 

I could have been imagining more than the echo of droplets on concrete, inventing things to get under my skin. Other evening library goers remained preoccupied by study groups or homework. Even the fast approach of Hallowe'en didn't put them on edge. 

Maybe it was time to go. Maybe it was time to put away my stack of books on premonitions and mediumship. How easy it could have been to blame the influence of all the pages. I could write it off as  a trick of the subject matter. 

Or, or I was just paranoid.

I gathered up my dream interpreting books, hauling them to one of the carts stationed at the end of a row of shelves for the librarians to sort back onto their shelves. One book, I held onto. I flipped through it, reconsidering whether it was really something I needed to bring home to get me more judgement from Bia. 

A flicker of movement caught my attention at the end of the aisle. 

The shiver ran down my spine before logic could stop it. It was nothing. One of many students digging for citations for papers due by Monday. Not everything was orchestrated by dead girls in their diaries. I couldn't keep trying to shape the rest of my life into that mold. 

I swallowed down my own justification, sidestepping to look down the aisle, then the next and the next. 

"Watch it!" 

I collided, dropping the one book left in my arms. The girl raised her hands, side-stepping around me. Deserved. She didn't owe me the help of gathering myself. I don't think she could. The books really were getting to me. 

I shuffled to the woman left at the check-out desk, her eyes enlarged behind her thick glasses. 

"Just the one?" she asked.

I nodded, resisting the urge to look over my shoulder as I handed her my student card. Get it together, Jane. 

"Holding a seance for Hallowe'en?" she asked, holding the book a little too long before giving me a knowing smile. "Talking with the Dead. Sounds like a good one!"

It was the right season for the subject. Every student society on campus had to have an event poster up, ranging from perfectly innocent activities like pumpkin carving to all-night, DJed Hallowe'en weekend parties.

The smell of pumpkin spice was in the air.

"Something like that." I played along, like it was our little secret. Like it was a game, trying to contact the deceased. Like I was headed off to a slumber party to sing Bloody Mary to a mirror or crack open the Ouija board.

Being scared was fun on Hallowe'en.

Could the librarian see the uneasiness on my face?

"Good luck." She handed the book back to me and before she could try any more small talk, I shoved the book into my backpack and shuffled away, hiding the cover and the title from sight in my backpack.

Without moving bodies to dampen the sound, my footsteps echoed through the Engineering building, reverberating off old brick and tall glass windows. Too quiet. I left the building through the first door I came across.