Stones

 STONES

“Mom, I’m being followed.”

My mother looked up from her phone and smiled. “That’s wonderful, Marnie! Isn’t that what you wanted?” She paused, trying to remember. “For your little channel? For the dogs?”

If I wasn’t so upset I would have rolled my eyes. I have an animal rescue channel that I made for the local animal shelter, and I have followers, thank you very much. I have almost five hundred followers, and I’ve been responsible for rehoming over a hundred pets—not just dogs, but cats, rats, gerbils, rabbits, birds, a tortoise, and one comic ferret pair.  

But right now I was a little freaked out.

“Not that kind of follower, Mom,” I said. “A stalker.”

That got her attention. She put down her phone and gave me her entire focus.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

I sighed. If I had a bingo card of the things Mom would ask me, that would have been the centre spot—the free spot—because it’s what she always asks me—every time. Like I’m prone to whimsy! I am not.

“Yes, Mom, I’m sure.” I took a big breath, and sat down on the couch beside her chair, and looked around the room. In particular, checking the windows and the sliding glass doors that opened onto the backyard.  

Paranoid, much? I said to myself taking another deep breath and letting it out slowly.

“Tell me why you think you’re being stalked,” she said, seriously. “When did it start?”

“About a week ago.” I said, thinking back. “There was this woman—”

“You’re being stalked by a woman?” Mom interrupted.

“Yes, Mom, a woman.”

“And you’re sure she’s following you?”

Another big slow breath in. “Yes, I am.”  

“Alright. Continue.” She nodded to me, as if I was being cross examined. 

“I first saw her outside of school, across the street from the drop-off. She didn’t say anything, she was just standing there staring. I was with Will, and didn’t really think about it. But it was creepy.” I took a second. In hindsight, it was creepy as eff. It was like in the movies where people are walking by but the two people keep looking at each other through the crowd. “I turned to ask Will if he’d seen her, but when I turned back, she was gone.” I looked a Mom. “That was the first time, and I just thought it was weird.” I shrugged. “Will didn’t see anything, so I dropped it.”

“What did she look like?”

I knew this question was coming. What kind of lawyer would she have been if she didn’t get a description? “I dunno. She was just a woman.” I searched my memory. “I don’t know how tall she was, but I think she was average. She was older than me. But not as old as you,” I said, getting the evil eye. “I didn’t see her hair that time because she was wearing a grey hoodie, hood up. She was also wearing jeans. She was white.” I looked at my mom. “But the next time I saw her, she didn’t have a hood on. Her hair was kinda light brown, maybe with highlights. Frizzy-curly, down to her shoulders.”  

“Did you see her eyes?” she asked.

“No. We never got that close.”

“Anything else?”

“Her voice was—”

She cut me off, again. “You spoke with her?”

“No!” I said, perhaps a bit too vehemently. “She talked to me.”

“What did she say?”

I looked at my mom. I guess I was going to follow her agenda, not mine.

“She said she wanted stones.”

“Stones?” asked my mother, a bit confused.

“Yes, stones.”

Mom was silent for a minute, thinking. “When did she first talk to you?”

“The second time I saw her. At the bus stop.”

“What did she say?”

This was turning into the third degree. “We were waiting and she asked if I always take this bus. I didn’t answer her. I pretended I was listening to my music. Then she asked me where I go to school.” I looked at my mom, waiting.

I wasn’t disappointed. “Did you tell her?”

I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t help it. I was a teenager. Besides, duh—stupid question. “Of course I didn’t, Mom. Stranger Danger! Besides, she’d already seen me there.”

For my entire life my Mom had drilled into me, don’t talk to strangers—stranger danger. We even had a code phrase. We couldn’t go with anyone—ANYONE—who didn’t know the phrase, except Mom and Dad. It didn’t matter. Grandpa didn’t know it, we didn’t go with him. Mom’s best friend didn’t know it, we didn’t go with her. No exceptions. Mine was, “What’s the capital of Chad.” What can I say? I’m a nerd. And I’m not stupid.

“What did you do?” Mom asked.

“I walked away from her, towards school, then waited until she was gone, and walked home.” I paused, looking at her. “Instead of taking the really convenient bus.” I looked at her harder. “It’s a really long walk.”

She looked a bit—a tiny bit—sympathetic. “You could have called me.” I looked at her. She looked at me. We stared at each other. She broke first. “Fine. I probably wouldn’t have answered, but you could have tried. Or called your father.” I continued to stare. “Fine,” she said again. “You could have taken the next bus.”

I shrugged. “It’s a forty minute wait. I was home by then.”

“Did she follow you?”

“Geez, Mom!” I said. “This isn’t a spy novel.” I crossed my arms. “I just walked home. No one knocked on the door once I was inside, so I guess she didn’t follow me.”

She nodded, thinking. “When did she ask about the stones?”

“Today, at lunch. Will, Carla and I walked over to the pizza place for lunch, and she was just outside of the gate. We were talking about chem class, and I didn’t notice her until she stepped in front of us.” I looked at my mom. “We stopped, and she stood right in front of me. She pointed her finger towards me and said she wanted stones.” I paused. “It was weird … and scary. Will sorta grabbed my arm and said, ‘Let’s go.’ So we did. I know that she didn’t follow us, because I kept looking back. She just walked away towards the bus stop.”

Mom was silent for a while, thinking.  “I think we should go to the police.”

My heart sank. Of course she did. She was a prosecutor. The police can solve everything.  

So we went to the police. The cop, Officer Vezna, who spoke with us, was kinda nice. But I’m not sure he didn’t think that maybe I was making this up for attention. I reminded him that my two friends were there at lunch today and saw the woman. 

“Hmmm,” he said, looking at his notebook. “And how many times have you seen this woman?”

I held up my hand, and counted off on my fingers. “First time at the school drop-off. Second, at the bus stop. Third, at the library …”

“You didn’t tell me about the library,” Mom interrupted.

“You didn’t ask,” I said.

I noticed that she pressed her lips together. A sure sign that I was going to hear about my sass when I got home. I continued, “Fourth, at the math help centre in the strip mall.” Now she was squinting her eyes at me. Oops. “And today at school, with my friends.”

“And she only spoke to you twice?” he asked. I nodded. “Once to ask you what school you go to?”

“Right.”

“And second, to say that she wanted stones?”

I nodded.

“Do you know what she meant? About wanting stones?”

I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head. “I have no idea.”

“Did you ever take some rocks from someone’s yard, like a prank?”

Mom sat up straight. “We did not come here to have you accuse my daughter of theft. We came here to report a stalker.”

Good thing she doesn’t know about the gnomes, I thought.

The officer looked contrite. “Sorry. But I have to be sure that there isn’t a connection between Marnie and the woman.” He looked at me. “You didn’t take anything from anyone’s property, did you?”

Shit!  

“I didn’t take any rocks or stones or whatever from anyone’s house,” I said, fingers crossed to nil out the lie. And, really, was it a lie? I really had never taken rocks or stones from someone’s property. Just garden gnomes. Then a thought—what if she named her gnomes? And one of them was named Stones? My heart beat a bit faster. I swallowed.  

“Uh …” I started. Mom looked at me. The officer looked at me. “I, uh, may have re-homed some gnomes in the neighbourhood.”

“Marnie!” snapped my mother.

“Go on,” said the police officer.

“Well, uh, last spring we might have moved some garden gnomes around.” I looked from Mom to the cop. Mom looked slightly horrified. Officer Vezna looked slightly amused. I continued. “We just moved them.” Mom was seething. Officer Vezna was smiling, but trying to hide it.

“Like at the Cranston’s house.” I said. “We moved the gnome from the garden, and put it in the chair on the front porch. So it looked like he was watching the neighbourhood. And we laid the big gnome at the Viviak’s house down, and put sunglasses on him so that he looked like he was getting a tan.” I looked at my audience. Mom was still seething. Officer Vezna was looking at the table top. “We moved the Chen’s gnome so that it was sitting in the bucket of that wishing well thing they have in the front yard. And we put the O’Hare’s gnome on top of that fake donkey they have, so it looked like it was riding it. We never stole anything. Just moved them.” I looked at them both again. “It was funny,” I declared. “We never hurt anything, just moved things around.”

We sat in silence—well, silence if you didn’t count the fact that Mom sounded like an angry bull, snorting and breathing hard.

Officer Vezna tapped his pen on his notebook. “So, you personally know all the people whose front yards you redecorated?”

I nodded.

“And none of them were the woman you saw?”

I could have slapped myself. I’d just outed myself and admitted to a gnome-based crime spree, and my stalker had nothing to do with it. “No.” 

“Okay,” said Officer Vezna, looking hard at me. “I’m going to caution you about trespassing on other people’s property—don’t do it again. But that bit of indiscretion doesn’t seem pertinent to the case at hand.” He looked at Mom. “I know the fact that you are being stalked is unsettling. But there is nothing we can do.” He nodded at Mom.  

She knew it was true, but there was the other part. “What you’re not saying is until this woman does something illegal. To my daughter.”

“Correct,” he said, a quietly. “But there are a few things you can do.” He looked from Mom to me. “If this woman comes onto your property, call us. That’s illegal. She’s not allowed to go onto private property. She is also not allowed to harass you. She can ask you questions and talk to you, but she can’t threaten you, or prevent you from walking away. She can’t touch you. These are all police matters.” He looked at Mom again. “I know this is hard, but maybe arrange for a ride to and from school.”  

We left soon after, with my Mom’s promise to keep vigilant.  

The minute we were in the car, she turned to me. “Gnome rehoming?”

I nodded. “It almost a year ago, and we didn’t hurt anything. We were just kidding around.”

“That’s trespassing which is against the law, Marnie. You could be arrested.”

“We only did it once. Nobody got hurt. All the gnomes survived,” I snarked, a bit ticked off.

We drove in silence. As we pulled into the driveway, I looked across the street.

“It’s her!” I yelled, pointing.

Mom slammed on the brakes so hard that I was worried the airbags were going to deploy. Before I could unsnap my seatbelt Mom was running across the street, yelling, “Excuse me! Excuse me! Stop right now! Why are you harassing my daughter?”

The woman looked like a deer caught in the headlights. She just stood there.

“Marnie!” Mom yelled, “Come over here!” I walked over. “Is this the woman that has been stalking you?” she asked.

Before I could answer her, the woman spoke up. “Stalking her? I’m not stalking her. I just want Stones back.”

Mom had her phone in her hand. She was close to calling Officer Vezna. “What do you mean, you just want stones back. My daughter does not have any stones. She only moved a few gnomes.”

I cringed. The woman looked incredibly confused.

She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about gnomes, I just want Stones back.” She looked from Mom to me. “My tortoise, Stones. I saw him on your YouTube channel. I want to get him back.”

It all clicked into place. Her “Stones” was our “Speedy” (he could really book it for a tortoise).  

“Ah,” I said. “Stones, with a capital “S” not small pieces of rock.” She nodded. “Mom, can you drive us to the shelter? We’ve got to get Stones back.”