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I looked up and saw my Uncle Danny hanging up the phone. He swung his coat over his shoulders and stomped his heavy boots across the old wood floor of the station and out onto the little covered porch.
“I’ve let the Principal know. She promised to keep an eye on things. I’ve decide it’d be a good idea if we took a ride over to the Jacobs’ residence and search around the property for any signs of forced entry.” He paused and stared at our distressed faces, “I’m sure it’s not a big deal kids. I’m just taking the necessary precautions.”
Danny came close and patted me on the shoulder. His kind words did nothing to alleviate my fears and I was positive it didn’t help Jules either. We knew Jesse and Taylor and either one of them was capable of jumping the line of rationality, we’d seen it with our own eyes, but we never thought it could come to this. My money was still on Jesse though.
Jules and I jumped into my truck and followed Danny to the Jacobs’ house, again, as quiet as before. When we arrived, Danny walked us around Jules’ house and asked her where her window was. She pointed at the windows that belonged to her room and Danny moved in closely to the one at the back of the house.
“I see no signs of entry here, let’s check the other window at the side of the house,” he said.
We rounded the corner and saw one of the most painfully terrifying things I’d ever seen. Two sets of old foot prints, barely visible in the snow leading from the brush to the side of the house and back. The prints were so faded I had no idea how large they actually were and therefore unable to figure out whether it was Taylor’s or Jesse’s prints, or both. Did Jesse come to the window twice or once with an accomplice?
Against the wall laid two cinder blocks, one right next to the other, the longer sides parallel with the side of the house. When we looked closely at the window the paint had been freshly scratched where the intruder had pried open the bottom of the ancient window, probably with a crowbar from the width of the scratch. I watched Jules start to lose it a little bit so I grabbed her and held her steadily against my side.
“Strange,” said Danny.
“What is?” I asked.
“Well, I’m sort of flabbergasted as to how Julia didn’t hear the wood of the window cracking or the intruder?”
Jules blushed slightly and scrunched her nose.
“I’m an extremely heavy sleeper,” she admitted.
“Ahhh,” he said. “Well, whoever it was that actually entered couldn’t have been that tall. These windows aren’t very far from the ground. They needed cinder blocks to see or get inside.”
He pointed at the blocks against the house.
Taylor then?
“Okay,” Danny said, “I’m going to call Julia’s parents and let them know what’s going on. Maybe they can stop by a home improvement store and get some additional locking mechanisms for the windows. Be right back.”
He left us there staring at the creepiness that was the intruder’s handiwork.
“She’s insane,” Jules said, her voice shaking.
“Or they’re insane. There’s something else that’s bothering me.”
“What’s that?” Jules asked.
“Well, who would risk getting caught boldly waltzing into your room at night? They must have known that you were a heavy sleeper, but nobody but myself and your family would know something like that.........unless you’ve told someone else? Do you remember talking about it at school with anyone?”
The blood drained from her face and she nodded, keeping her eyes steady with mine.
“Don’t you remember?” She asked. “We did, with each other, in front of Jesse. When we came back to school after Tanen’s party fiasco, you were talking about the night and broke off to tease me about that fact that I could sleep through a hurricane. Later,” she trembled, “we were all hanging out at Thatcher’s. When Jesse thought you weren’t looking, he poked me in the ribs and told me that if I wasn’t careful he’d come in while I was asleep and rearrange my furniture.
“I thought he was just messing with me, trying to get a rise out of me as usual, like he got some sort of sick pleasure out of scaring me. In the past, I’d always felt you were kind of harsh on him about me and the few times I would let you in on the stupid things he’d say to me, you’d scold him and he would just take it out on me later. That’s why I kept it from you. It’s why I’ve kept a lot of weird things he’s done from you.”
“It’s okay Jules,” were all the words I could rally up.
So it was a joint effort. I gritted my teeth and tried to hold back what I was thinking, but couldn’t.
“He’s crazy! The both are!” I said.
“This whole thing is going to be squashed tomorrow and I’m going to be the one who does it!” she exclaimed, her eyebrows furrowing at the last bit.
“You can’t Jules!”
“Why?”
