Linda hated that her place in the Watson family was defined as “the middle one,” the child between older, wise Jamie and young, sweet Benny. Jamie was the “smart one,” the one who brought home the perfect grades and the perfect boyfriends. Benny was the kid, so he got coddled and treated like gold. Linda got a softball glove and an admonition not to get into too much trouble.

But the worst day of her life was the one where she almost became the youngest child again.

Benny was eight, only three years younger than Linda, but a full decade behind 18-year-old Jamie. He’d become attached to Linda even before he could read. By then, Jamie was already going into high school, growing beyond her sister and brother, feeling like less of part of a family than a live-in babysitter – comforting to have around, fun on occasion, but not something that necessarily felt like a permanent fixture in his life. She had already gone off to college on the warm September day the man in the black coat started watching Benny as he read his books on the school playground.

He noticed the man when he looked up from Ozma of Oz. He’d just reached his favorite part – it was where Dorothy, the fabled little girl from Kansas, was wandering through the collection of the Nome King trying to locate and rescue the lost family of the Kingdom of Ev -- when he looked up and saw the man looking at him. He shivered under the odd, black glare, closed his book and wandered off to find Linda. She was with Gail Harper when Benny found her, sitting on a bench, waiting for the first bell to usher them into school, and Linda frowned as she noticed him approach.

He tugged on her sleeve. “Linda?” he whispered.

“We’re talking, B,” she said, calling him by the mini-nickname only she used.

“I know, but…”

“Well then why are you interrupting?”

“Because that man is watching me.”

Linda and Gail both gave him their attention when he said that. They were older than Benny, and while he knew that a stranger staring at him was bad, they were more aware of how such a thing could be bad.

“What man, Benny?” Gail asked. She had her raven hair pulled back under a purple band that matched her tee shirt. By the end of the day that band would be lying beneath a tree in Kane Forest, left as a marker in the hopes that someone would be trying to follow their trail.

“Him,” Benny said. “Over there.”

Linda followed his finger to the fence, where the man in the black coat stood, immobile, looking out across the playground of Timberton Elementary School. In a few minutes, when the first bell rang, Benny would be off to his second grade glass, Linda and Gail would be off to sixth. This man, who most definitely did not belong there, could be anywhere at that point. He was very tall – taller than their father, and he was the biggest man Linda knew. His hair was pitch black, blacker than Gail’s, and flowed down around his shoulders, almost melding into his coat. The black folds of the coat swirled around him all the way down to his shins, and his hands were stuffed deep in the pockets, even though it was September and the Louisiana air was still very warm. His eyes, darkest of everything against his deep, tanned skin, looked out across the playground, but there was no way to say for certain which direction he was looking in.

“Oh he’s not looking at you, B,” Linda said, ruffling his brown hair. It had always stood out in family photographs, sandwiched between the blonde shock Linda and Jamie shared. “He’s just… looking.”

“He’s looking at me,” Benny insisted. “Gail--”

“Calm down, Benny. He’s probably someone who used to go to school here and just wanted to look at the old playground.”

“Really?”

“Sure,” she said, and although none of them really believed it, Benny came closest.

                                                                    *   *   *

Linda’s class had history first thing in the morning, and it set up the rest of the day to be miserable. Why should it matter to her what a bunch of people she’d never heard of did a hundred years ago? This was Benny’s kind of class – he always had his face stuck in some book, and not all of them were the sort of crazy fairy tales that were his favorites. He was just as likely to be reading some sort of book on the Civil War or the horribly venomous pythons of Madagascar as any of his witch and wizard stories. He tried to fit in with her, but she felt so much older than him sometimes. She couldn’t wait until next year. Then she’d be in junior high school and he’d be back here in third grade. He needed to learn to take care of himself anyway.

Mrs. Swenson stood at the front of the class, her teacher’s edition of the textbook open before her. “Please open your history books to chapter six,” she said. In the desk next to Linda’s, Gail took out a book with a brown paper cover decorated by scribbles and doodles, but mostly by names of boys in the class. “Brian” had been scratched out and replaced with “Colin.” “Colin” had given way to “Jay” and “Jay” had lost out to “Kevin” in the most recent round of “Who’s Gail’s Crush?”

Linda had a baseball cap sitting at the top of her book bag, and she’d thread her yellow ponytail through the back of it as soon as she left the building. Although she and Gail had been best friends since they were in kindergarten, this was one thing they did not yet see eye-to-eye on. While Gail watched the boys playing baseball in physical education, Linda was on the diamond trying to cream them. She’d be in high school in three years, she reasoned. Time enough to worry about them then.

In the front of the classroom, Danny was reading chapter six, specifically a passage about Jean Laffite and the Battle of New Orleans. As if, just because the battlefield was only an hour away by car, Linda should care about any of that. She was busy thinking of how she could improve her swing during P.E. when a folded-up scrap of paper landed on her textbook. It came from the direction of Gail’s desk, and the handwriting on it was definitely hers. They’d developed a sort of shorthand over the years. Her message started with “who,” followed by a stick figure, then an eyeball, then the letter B. “Who was the man looking at Benny?” was what it meant.

Linda glanced over at her and shrugged. “I don’t know,” she was saying. No need to write out such a simple response. But it was good to know that Gail, like Linda herself, was certain that the strange man had been staring at Benny. She wasn’t alone in that. She hadn’t wanted to frighten her little brother by saying it, though.

Linda picked up her pencil and drew a little word bubble with a series of “Z”s in it. It was her shorthand invitation to Gail to sleep at her house that night. Her parents wouldn’t mind – tomorrow was Saturday and they’d get to stay up late, plus she had an empty bed in her room since Jamie went to college. She knew that was something that sort of bothered her mother. Caufield University was a commuter school, practically just down the road, but Jamie had insisted on staying in the dormitory her freshman year. It left the family one plate short at dinner earlier than their parents had expected, and Denise Watson was still going through what she told her children was just “separation anxiety.” In other words, she missed Jamie. Linda didn’t understand why she couldn’t just say that.

                                                                    *   *   *

Recess was after lunch, and the man in the black coat was still there.

“Who is that guy?” Gail said as she and Linda sat down on one of the many benches. Most of the younger kids were on the jungle gyms or the swings or just running around playing tag. Students in Linda’s grade, however, 11- and 12-year-olds, they were practically teenagers. They gathered, they gossiped, Linda would sometimes join the boys in a game of catch when she remembered to bring her baseball glove, but at recess, they simply never played.

“I don’t know,” Linda said. “You see how everyone just sort of walks around him?”

“What do you mean?”

“Watch those third-graders. They’re playing tag, and they’re running all over the playground, like when you kick open an anthill. But they never get near the fence where he is, they sort of curve around him.”

Gail watched the game of tag for a minute, looking for the pattern Linda described. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s like he has some sort of bubble around him or something.” She glanced around. “Is Benny out here?”

Linda shook her head. “Second-graders have first lunch. He’s already been out here. Freaky McFreakshow over there probably watched him the entire time.”

“But he’s still watching.”

Linda traced the angle of the man’s gaze, like figuring out where a baseball would land. His head was tilted so he could stare at one of the classroom buildings. Linda couldn’t be sure that was Benny’s class, but she did know it was a second-grade room.

“He’s still looking at my brother,” Linda said. “Even when he’s not outside.”

“We should tell somebody,” Gail said. “Mrs. Swenson is over there.”

“Mrs. Swenson is already watching him,” Linda said. “Look.”

She pointed to the door to the sixth-grade building, where Mrs. Swenson was speaking to the P.E. coach, both of them casting the occasional glance in the direction of the man in the black coat. It was then that Linda noticed a police car parked across the street, blue and gold trim on white, covered by the shadow of the school’s big shade trees near the fence. She hadn’t thought about it, but the car had probably been there since recess began.

“They’ve probably been watching this guy since this morning,” Linda said.

“Why don’t they arrest him or something?”

“Because it’s not against the law to look at a school playground. What would they arrest him for?”

“Giving me the heebie-jeebies.”

Linda grabbed the brim of her red baseball cap and pulled it a little further down over her eyes. “Come on, let’s get closer. I want to get a good look at him.”

“Ew. I don’t.”

“Come on.” Linda tugged on Gail’s elbow and her friend reluctantly got off the bench.

“We can’t just walk up there,” Gail said. “Look how creepy he is. What if he knows we’re watching him?”

“Hmm… that’s true,” Linda said. She looked around the playground and saw Kevin White and Gene Patin playing catch. Linda nodded towards them and Gail followed.

“Hey Kevin, hey Gene,” she said.

“Hey,” the boys said together, not taking their eyes off each other’s gloves. Linda knew both of them wanted to try out for the school baseball team next year, and they practiced almost every day.

“Can we borrow your gloves and ball for a minute?” she asked. Kevin made a sound that was half a snort and half a laugh.

“We’re practicing!”

“It’ll only be for a minute. I want to show Gail something.”

“No way!” Gene shouted. He nearly missed one of Kevin’s wild throws, but twisted in the air, caught it in his bare, dark hand, and threw it back. Gene and Kevin were an unusual pair – the tall, lanky black kid and the short, pasty white kid who were never seen apart.

“You think the guys who play for the Pumas let girls borrow their stuff?” Kevin laughed as Gene tossed the ball back to him. The Pumas were the baseball team at Timberton Junior High, where they would all be next year. Kevin’s brother was the pitcher, but he would be in high school by next September and Kevin wanted to take his spot.

“You think the guys who play for the Pumas have a Mini-Monsters lunchbox?” Linda shot back. Gene laughed and Kevin missed a pitch. He fetched it and, on the way back, turned his lunchbox on its side so the cartoon monsters wouldn’t show.

Gail smiled at Kevin as he came back. It was her turn. “Please Kevin?” she said. “It’ll only be for a minute.” When her voice went high-pitched and sweet like that, Linda could barely keep from laughing, but it almost always got Gail whatever she wanted from the boys.

“Aw, let ‘em borrow your glove,” Gene said, trotting over to Kevin. “I need a break anyway.” He took his glove off and handed it to Linda, who thanked him.

“Okay,” Kevin said, giving his glove and the ball to Gail. “But make sure you give us this stuff back before the end of recess.”

“We will, Kevin,” Linda said as the boys walked off, talking about whether they thought the Diamondbacks would make it to the World Series this year. It was funny, watching Gail toy with them that way, but every so often she felt a little jealous that she couldn’t get that sort of reaction from them herself.

“Okay,” Linda told Gail, “we’ll just toss the ball back and forth for a few seconds, then you miss me and throw it near the guy in the coat. That way I’ll get to look at him when I run over for the ball.”

Gail nodded and zapped her first pitch to Linda. It hit her glove with a surprisingly loud pop. Gail could probably be a pretty good pitcher if she ever practiced. Linda returned the pitch and angled herself so that the man in the black coat was behind her. Gail returned the pitch again, another good one. Bap! Bap! Bap! Three good ones in a row and then her next pitch went wild, way over Linda’s head even when she reached out and jumped for it. Linda turned and watched as the ball rolled right up to the fence a few feet past the strange man. She tried not to smile as she ran up to get the ball.

As she got closer, she got a better glance at him. He was even taller than she thought when she was far away, maybe six and a half feet, certainly tall enough to be on any basketball team. It was hard to tell with the coat on, but she got the impression that he was thin too, but muscular. He either had very broad shoulders or very big shoulder pads beneath that coat.

The coat was weird too. It wasn’t made from any sort of regular cloth. It hung very heavy on his enormous frame, with a thick draping fabric that almost like looked like leather, but the black surface didn’t look like any regular leather Linda had seen. There were small cracks along the surface in a wide pattern. It reminded her of a larger version of some ugly snakeskin boots her father used to wear before her mother made him promise to stop.

If he noticed Linda at all, he did not acknowledge her. He just kept staring across the playground at the second-grade building, paying no attention to her as she ran past him, picked up the ball, and ran back to Gail.

“He is so creepy,” she whispered. “You’ve got to see his coat…”

“Why did you run like that?” Gail asked.

“Like what?”

“When you got close to him, you didn’t run in a straight line. You curved around him about three feet.”

“I did?” Linda asked. Somehow, she hadn’t even noticed.

The bell clanged out across the playground. Recess was over. Linda and Gail headed back towards the sixth grade building, leaving the strange man to stand there alone. Kevin and Gene came up to them on their way in to get their gloves and ball back.

“Did you show her what you wanted?” Kevin asked Linda.

“Yeah,” Linda said. “We saw what we wanted to see."