Stalker Girl

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

Published by Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

First published in 2010 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

Text copyright © Rosemary Graham, 2010 All rights reserved

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Graham, Rosemary.

Stalker girl / Rosemary Graham.

p. cm.

Summary: During a difficult time in her life, when her mother and stepfather have broken
up and her father cancels a trip she has been anticipating, Carly becomes obsessed
with her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend.

eISBN : 978-1-101-44237-1

[1. Stalking—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Emotional problems—Fiction.
4. Stepfamilies—Fiction. 5. Divorce—Fiction. 6. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G7558St 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009030178

 

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

SHE WAS
even prettier in person.

She wore her straight brown hair clipped up in a loose twist. A few stray strands fell against her long, elegant neck. Her clingy yoga clothes—a blue, low-cut, long-sleeved T-shirt over cropped black pants—showed off a tight and curvy body. When she crossed the café, people couldn’t help but check her out.

Some more obviously than others:

That hipster guy at the back table sitting in front of his laptop, rubbing his thumb back and forth over his stubbly soul patch; the skinny hipster girl with the peroxide pig-tails sitting next to the guy with the soul patch, scowling; the teenage boy busing tables; that father with the cute toddler twins and the very tired-looking wife.

And sitting on a stool by the window, an open notebook by her side, wearing an ugly brown knit hat and a bizarre pair of turquoise glasses, another girl, somewhere around the same age as the pretty brown-haired one.

If you knew Carly Finnegan and you happened to see her sitting on that stool by the window, watching the girl, you wouldn’t suspect her of any wrongdoing. Certainly not anything criminal. If you knew Carly well enough to know that she no longer lived just ten but more like a hundred blocks away, you might wonder for a second what she was doing all the way downtown. But then if you knew her well enough to know where she lived and where she used to live, you’d also know that she had a seven-year-old half sister whose father still lived on Fourteenth Street. If you knew all this, you’d probably know or guess that the task of escorting Jess downtown to see her father sometimes fell on Carly’s shoulders.

Which made it perfectly possible that she’d happen to stop in at the café where Taylor Deen, her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend, was having coffee with her mother after the Saturday Salutations class at Studio Shakti across the street.

There was only one person in the city of New York who would find it odd for Carly and Taylor to be in the same café at the same time, and he was never up this early on a Saturday morning. Carly knew—she had checked and double-checked online—that Brian’s band still played their regular Friday-night gig at Train. Which meant his head wouldn’t have hit his pillow in Brooklyn until four a.m., and no way would he be on this side of the East River this side of noon.

Even if it was true that he was “totally whacked” for this new girl.

As unlikely as it was that Brian would appear that morning, Carly had still taken precautions. She’d stuffed the long, unruly red hair Brian claimed to love so much under a scratchy wool hat she found at the bottom of a Goodwill-destined bag in her mother’s closet and bought a cheap pair of funky turquoise reading glasses in the lowest available power. She felt pretty safe hiding in plain sight, sneaking surreptitious glances at his new girlfriend, scribbling in her notebook. Her stool by the window was carefully chosen for the view it offered of the entire café and its proximity to the door. If necessary, she could slip out and disappear in seconds.

 

All she had wanted was a glimpse, a clear look at the face that belonged to the name that was now paired with Brian’s. The three measly pictures she’d found online were worthless—one too old, the next too blurry, and the third nothing more than a thumbnail showing one eye, half a nose, and all those perfect, white teeth.

Carly had gotten her glimpse earlier that morning. She’d staked out the Deen family’s brownstone until Taylor and her mother, Judith, emerged. She’d watched as the two of them walked arm in arm up the street and around the corner. But when they disappeared into the yoga studio, Carly realized that one glimpse wasn’t going to be enough. She checked the schedule posted out front and returned an hour later, when the Saturday Salutations class ended. (FOR LEVELS 3 & 4 ONLY; MUST HAVE PERMISSION FROM SHAKTI TO ATTEND!) Carly hovered across the street, pretending to talk on her cell phone while keeping an eye on the mother-daughter pair as they mingled with the other yoga elites. When they crossed the street and entered Café Joe, she followed.

 

Carly knew what people would say if they knew what she was doing.

“That’s crazy.”

“That’s creepy.”

“That’s just sad.”

While she was sure she wasn’t the only dumped person ever to track down the new love interest of an ex, she knew she was flirting with danger. Her curiosity was turning into something else. Not to mention how much time she was wasting.

And so Carly promised herself that when Taylor and her mother left the café, she would, too. Whichever way they were walking, she’d walk in the other direction.

Without looking back.

After all, she had a life. She had friends.

She would put the past behind her and walk forward into the wide-open future.

But first, as long as she was there, she’d play Harriet the Spy a little while longer. Study this mother-daughter duo in their native habitat.

She put pen to paper and entered the following data:

 

 

From her perch Carly watched as Taylor bantered with the baristas, two guys and a girl. She could tell from the way Taylor stood with her arms casually resting on the chrome countertop, laughing while they pulled espresso shots and steamed milk, that she was a regular.

When Taylor crossed the room to join her mother at their table, a tall frothy something in each hand, she seemed oblivious to the eyes that followed her.

But Carly wondered whether she was truly oblivious. Was this one of those cases where you’re so used to being looked at, you pretend not to notice?

For a while, all Taylor did was text while her mother read the
New York Times
. Carly watched her sitting there, smiling at her BlackBerry, thumbs flying over its little keyboard. She wondered if Brian was the recipient and cringed when she remembered her last conversation with him, his threat to change his number.

Eventually Taylor put the BlackBerry aside. For most of the next hour, she sat there reading the paper and talking with her mother. Once in a while one of them would share something interesting, and they’d discuss. They worked on the crossword puzzle together until they gave up, laughing. People—other café regulars—stopped by their table, and there’d be more chatter, more laughter. At one point Taylor took a call on her BlackBerry, and instead of going outside for privacy, she kept interrupting the conversation to fill her mother in.

Apparently the sort of mother-daughter chumminess Carly thought existed only in small, made-for-TV towns lived in the heart of Greenwich Village.

From across the room Carly couldn’t hear anything they were saying. But she could tell from their facial expressions and body language that this mother and daughter liked each other, enjoyed each other’s company.

When a stool closer to their table opened up, she moved over. Now she could hear bits and pieces of the conversation. Carly kept up the pretense of intense angsty journaling while writing down what words she could make out.

She made two columns and put each one’s words in the proper place.