That was it.
I would find out what was going on with this town.
Chapter Twelve
Atalanta
Beyond picking up my check from Dorris, I avoided the community center. Over the next two days, I kept my eyes wide open. Observing the residents of Argos both in and out of class. Instead of going to the library I really walked around the town for the first time, immersing myself with the townspeople.
I supposed, on the surface, they seemed quite normal. Huddling together and bustling about, running errands, chatting about fishing or the high school swim team. Normal people stuff.
Then there were these small instances.
A scrawny fellow moving what had to be a two-thousand-pound cement barrier. An older woman who stayed miraculously dry despite walking in the rain. Children running around near butt-naked in the snow doing perfect impersonations of dolphins. The last one might not have been supernatural, but it was weird.
Certainly not small-town stuff.
Cal thought I was crazy when I had asked if either of them had noticed anything strange at dinner the night before. My dad, on the other hand, didn't think I was crazy. In fact, he was just as suspicious about the goings on in this town as I was.
"The guys down at the docs. They aren't normal," He commented after taking a bite of salad.
"What do you mean they aren't normal?" I asked.
"Most of them have this way about them, like something is going on behind the scenes that they all know about yet are still trying to keep it secret. They will say odd stuff then get all hush-hush for a moment when someone walks up. A lot of them act like they are in these little individual gangs with their own territory and such. Abnormal is what I would call it.”
"I think that's just small-town macho mentality," Cal rolled her eyes.
"Perhaps. Or maybe there's a cult in this town.” Dad said, annoyance in his tone. Rightfully so, since he’s dealt with them a few times in the past.
A cult? It wasn’t something I had considered, yet I had doubt there was a cult. Perhaps it was wishful thinking as I had long ago learned to trust my father’s intuition. He had this way of reading people. Always knowing when they were lying or hiding something, a skill that came with all those years that he had been a federal agent before the incident. He never lost that investigator mentality.
It was Friday, and the town was a bit busier than it had been the day before. I just came out of the coffee shop owned by the man I'd seen move the cement block.
His name was Gregory, and he appeared normal despite his abnormal strength. I may have played undercover detective and pretended to be a simple awed bystander who had seen him move the block. He just laughed it off, saying his mom had always called him Hercules for looking deceptively strong, but I had been mistaken. Claimed the cement barrier I'd seen him push was propped with a board with locking wheels, making it easier for them to move around when they couldn't get a crane to move it.
I made a mental note to go back and check the barrier as I sipped my hot cocoa. While that mystery might have been cracked, it didn't explain the woman or the children I had seen the day before. My logical side told me the woman could have been holding a clear umbrella, and I just hadn't noticed, and the kids might have just been playing some sort of strange game. Then what about the water bottles? Or the weird hypnotic voices?
Dad thought something was going on as well and I had learned to trust his gut instinct. So, I couldn't give up.
Walking across the street from the coffee shop, I sat on a bench and observed the townspeople again. Causally sipping from my cocoa and pretending to play with my phone. Skimming my eyes over the little shops surrounding the town square.
I spotted a familiar face on a ladder in front of one of the shops. The burley Ajax was hanging up a sign over the hardware store that read 'Build It, Fix It, Paint It. Joe's Hardware'.
Not knowing why, I stood up from my bench and jogged over to him. He was wearing a short sleeve shirt again, this one a deep green, and had a tool belt hanging around his hips. He had to be freezing, yet he couldn’t bother with a coat?
Not wanting to startle him I called as I got closer. "Hey, Ajax, right?"
He stiffened on his ladder and slowly turned his head to look down at me. His eyes were so cool looking, I couldn't help but stare into their multi-colored depths.
“You.”
I tilted my head. “Me?”
Ajax scrambled down the ladder and came to a halt in front of me.
“Wait here,” he said, holding up his palm before jogging away.
Somewhere between confused and curious I stayed still, following his progression to a dark green truck. He opened the door and reached inside for something before shutting it and coming back over to me.
He held out what was in his hands. I looked down to see a red box wrapped in a tinted film.
“Chocolate?” I asked, the scale tipping more towards confused now.
He nodded. "For you."
“Uh, thank you? But why?”
"It always makes me feel better."
He was a very short worded person it seemed. Not that he was dumb, but just didn't say much, like speaking made him uncomfortable or something.
I gently took the box of chocolate into my hands. "And you're hoping that it will make me feel better? But I feel fine."
His brows crinkled a little as if he was trying to understand something before merely saying, "If you say so."
The silence between us was awkward. I held the box to my chest and rocked back and forth on my feet. I wasn't used to random strangers giving me gifts, let alone something that they believed would make me happier. He was a giant teddy bear, wasn't he? All huge and intimidating on the outside but sweet and cuddly in the middle.
Unable to take the silence anymore I asked, "Are you feeling better? The other day you got really sick when we met."
He nodded. "I wasn't prepared. I'm better now because I am prepared."
"Prepared for what?"
He was towering over me and I had to crane my neck to meet his eyes. I didn't really know what to think of him. His expression was blank but there was so much in his eyes that I couldn’t decipher.
“You.”
Shocked, my mouth fell open before snapping shut. “You got sick because of me?”
That didn’t make any sense.
"No, not entirely your fault,” He said, confusing me even more.
"But still somewhat my fault? How?"
A small smile cracked his lips. “Can't say. I don't know you."
"So, if you get to know me then you can tell me?"
He shrugged. "I suppose.”
We were standing close now. His body seemingly a hairs breath away from mine. My heart began to gallop in my chest as his eyes flicked down to my lips. Taking a deep breath in I caught a whiff of the forest, earthy fresh wood with the odd layer of paint on top go it. I stepped back.
"Well. Then hi, my name is Atalanta," I held out my hand for him to shake. "I like reading, going fishing with my father, and secretly adore my older sister. But I hate pineapple and don't tell my sister I adore her."
Slowly he took my hand into his own enormous one. It was warm and covered in heavy callouses. I felt so tiny as his whole hand basically engulfed mine. Everything about him, from his broad shoulders and well over six feet in height, dwarfed my small frame.