Chapter 3

I always thought nothing much ever happened in our small town. It wasn’t that town where everyone new everybody, but it was small enough. There was drama, of course, and people losing their virginities and the town was building a new highschool. Other then that and the few juvenile delinquents our town had, there wasn’t much to talk about. Now everything is happening too fast. Our once pretty much peaceful town now has an armed prisoner on the loose, a mental patient escapee. And right across from our house, police officers are preparing to haunt him down before he can do any damage.

            My mom said as she told me he was still loose, “it was showing the police station as it prepared for the search this morning. It’s weird to watch on TV what’s happening right across the street.”

When I told Linn this she asked, ”Why didn’t she just look out the window?” I patiently explained that we couldn’t actually see the police station from our house. There was a hill and a bunch of trees in the way.

It’s weird that the first thing I did after coming home that day was lock the door behind me. I was supposed to anyway, but I usually forgot. Everyone was trying to keep it on the down low, not wanting us looking over our shoulders every step, some even joked about it. But it was starting to scare me.

Mom called me from her work that day and told me to make sure the front door was locked. I thought nothing of it; I figured that Dad had made a big deal about us never locking the front door. Mom and Dad watch a lot of crime scene investigation shows and as a result we can’t walk anywhere without a group of three or more and me and Lauren have to stay together in any store with our cellphones on. But when my sister came home from the barn, she talked about it to our parentals….and I found out. Since then we all have been taking precautions.

I heard several different versions of the story at school. In one he is an armed mental patient. In another, he is looking for his family. In One of the most fantastic ones he was in love with a girl who turned him down for this other guy, causing him to become insane and now wants to kill said guy. Only one person knows the truth and, sadly, we can not ask him because no one knows were he is. Which is the cause for all the rumors in the first place.

He was found the next day at the zoo, supposedly eating animal feed. Talk about strange. I found this out on the bus after I passed by the gas station in the center of town. I suppose that someone saw Mr. B siting there with his cigarette and had remembered the news that they had heard from who-knows-where. Every one thinks Mr. B, or “Spaceman” as he is known to the youth of our town, is homeless. I know for a fact that he isn’t because he is my neighbor. He lives in this tiny gray-blue house at the bottom of our long driveway, across from the police station. However, he is carless. My dad gives him a ride home sometimes when we pass him in town, walking or riding his bike.

And so, the worry dies down. And the little town becomes boring again. And we begin to worry about the things we used to. Like getting a boyfriend, doing our hair, and gym class. 

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[Sophie]

I love this!