Never Talk To Strangers

When I was 10 years old two strangers came to my small, rural town. One was a little boy named Roger and the other one wanted to kill me. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time. In fact, it wasn’t until just a few moments ago that I even remembered Roger or the odd events of that day.

I was in my third year of college studying pre-med and it was the first day of classes for the new semester. I was running a bit late finding my biochemistry lab. The hallways were a maze full of other confused and rushed students and the now familiar scent of formaldehyde and dusty, preserved things caused me to crinkle up my nose. I fingered the small jar of eucalyptus ointment I kept in my pocket. It always came in handy when we had to actually dissect things.

I slid into the last seat remaining, next to a clean cut guy who was carefully piling his text books, work books, and extra notebooks on the table in front of him. I began to do the same, not wanting to appear unprepared. I felt his eyes on me.

“Hey, I’m Roger.” The guy next to me stuck out his hand and gave me a lopsided grin. “Guess we’re gonna be lab partners.”

And that’s when it hit me. I see a little red headed boy superimposed over this dark haired guy. A sad round face, with tear streaks dried over his freckled cheeks and bright green, frightened eyes. My lab partner’s eyes are a dark brown.

“You ok man?” Roger looks around for the teacher and reaches out a hand to steady me.

“Yeah, yeah sorry. I uh, I just felt dizzy there for a minute. Probably out of breath from rushing to get here.”

My excuse seems to appease him as he withdraws his hand from my shoulder.

I manage to tell him my name is Thomas and then mumble my way through the normal pleasantries despite my brain acting like it just got an injection of deja vu on steroids.

A moment later the teaching assistant walks in and everyone’s attention moves toward her and I am left alone with my thoughts and no longer have to fake my way through a conversation.

Thankfully its the first day and we don't have to do any work together that requires me being a sentient being. The teacher gives us the syllabus and a list of rules we have to follow in lab and then lets us leave early with a lengthy reading assignment.

I plod my way through the rest of my classes, my mind half here, half back in my home town eleven years ago. That muggy summer morning when a mysterious little red headed boy showed up in my neighborhood and convinced me to skip school with him. Now that I remember it, it nags at me. As an adult looking back, something clearly did not add up. I make a plan to go to the library right after my last class, but until then my brain has decided to replay the events of that day on a loop.

***

I had just left the house on my way to school. My mom passed me in her car and blew a kiss at me. She was going to be late to work if she didn’t hurry, but she always packed my lunch and made sure I got off to school before she left for her job at the mall in the next town over.

I waved back reluctantly. Most people were still asleep or had already headed off to work themselves, but I was still worried someone might see me. I had just recently turned 10 and I didn’t want anyone calling me a momma’s boy, but I also didn’t want to upset her. It had just been me and my mom for a while now and I wanted her to be happy.

I walked to school every morning because I lived so close to main street. That was where our shops were, the church, and of course the school. We were such a small town, there was only one building for all the grades and one school bus. It only picked up the farm kids who lived too far away to walk.

When I was younger, a neighbor used to drive me to school, but they moved away when I was 8. For the last two years I walked, which was ok with me. I actually kind of liked it. It felt grown up. Responsible.

I was about four houses down when I saw a little red headed boy step out from behind a fence and stand directly in my path. He just stood there in the humid early morning mist staring right at me with bright green eyes. They kind of reminded me of a cat’s. Wide and a little wild.

He was smaller then me, maybe a few years younger. Seven if I had to guess. And as I got closer I could see that he had been crying. Dried tear streaks ran down over his freckled cheeks, partially obscured by a thin layer of grime.

“Hey, I’m Roger.” The little boy stuck out his dirty hand just as I came within reach. A lopsided grin plastered on his round face. He was missing a front tooth.

I didn’t immediately respond. I was a bit taken aback. Only some high school kids lived on this street and this was the kind of small town where everyone knew everyone else. Maybe he had just moved here? But if his parents were sending him to school like that, he was going to be teased.

“You also have red hair! Can we be friends?” his bright green eyes appeared hopeful and frightened at the same time. His skin wasn’t just filthy, his clothes were too, although they were much nicer then my own thrift store ones. His looked almost new, but real dirty like he’d spent a day playing in the woods. At least he didn’t smell bad.

“I’m Thomas.” I felt sorry for him and I took his hand to shake it. It was cool to the touch despite the heat and humidity already blossoming in the morning air. I hoped he wasn’t sick. I’d had a bad fever once and it had made my hands cold and clammy.

“Are you lost Roger?” I noticed that he wasn’t letting go of my hand. In fact, his thin little fingers had entwined in mine in a tight grasp. I also noticed he was trembling so I didn’t try to dislodge myself. Poor kid was terrified. He was probably new to the town, lost, and afraid of his first day at a new school. His parents hadn’t even sent him with a backpack!

“School is this way. I’ll show you.” I started to walk again, hand in hand with this strange little kid, already planning out in my head that I would take him first to the nurse’s office. I knew from the time I had a stomach flu and thrown up all over myself that they kept extra clothes in her office. She would get him cleaned up and could check him for a fever.

He allowed me to lead him a short distance and then stopped abruptly, planting his sneakers on the pavement.

“I don’t want to go to school.” He shook his head vigorously. Then out of the blue he asked me again. “Can we be friends?”

I smiled reassuringly at him. It was kind of like having a little brother.

“Of course we can! But we have to go to school. If we don’t hurry up we will be late and get into trouble. But don’t worry Roger, I won’t let anyone hurt you. If we hurry, we might even make it in time for breakfast!” I thought food might tempt him. Little kids were always hungry, right? And I knew the school gave free breakfast out to the poor kids, which most of us qualified for.

Roger looked down at his feet and didn’t budge. “I’m not hungry.” He paused and sighed. Then he looked back up at me, that hopeful smile back on his face, flashing his missing tooth. “But we’re friends now, so I wont let anyone hurt you either!”

I stifled a laugh. I didn’t want to hurt the little guy’s feelings but the thought of him protecting me from a bully brought up some very funny mental images.

“Let’s skip school today Thomas!” He interrupted my thoughts.

“I can’t skip school.” I shook my head. I had never skipped school before, ever. Even when I wasn’t feeling well, I went cause I knew mom couldn’t afford to take a day off. It was one of the reasons I knew the nurse’s office so well.

The kid slipped his hand out of mine. He looked completely devastated and new tears began to run down his face. “Please don’t go to school Thomas.” His words were muffled by his sobs. “I don’t want to be alone.”

Now I might have just been 10 years old but my school got the same safety assemblies the larger schools did. We’d been taught about stranger danger, saying no to drugs, and the importance of having your parents check your Halloween candy before you ate it. They had also told us about how adults shouldn’t touch you where your bathing suit covered and that if our friend was being hit or touched wrong, we should immediately tell a teacher or parent.

It had all seemed rather silly to me living in a town where everyone literally knew everyone else and people rarely locked their doors and slept at night with their windows open, even on the first floor. The worst crime I knew about was the time Jimmy stole two snickers bars from old man Jacobson's corner store. But that was before I met Roger and as I took a closer look I noticed some bruises on his wrists and more on his legs near the hemline of his shorts.

He was refusing to go to school and I couldn’t just leave him here to go inform a teacher. He might wander off and get lost or hurt. My mom was at work so I couldn’t tell her, well until she got home, which gave me an idea.

“Roger, if I hang out with you today will you come over for dinner at my house tonight?”

Roger slowly stopped sobbing and looked up at me. “You won’t make me go to school?”

“Nope. But you’re my friend now and friends have dinner at each other’s houses, right? My mom is real nice and I bet she’d even take us to get ice cream afterwards.”

Roger sniffled and sighed again. “I’m not hungry. But I want to hang out.”

Well that was a start.

I ended up taking Roger to an old tree fort in the woods behind Jimmy’s house. Yes, the same Jimmy who stole the candy bars. My mom didn’t like me hanging out with Jimmy, but Jimmy was at school, and both of Jimmy’s parents worked so no one would notice us back there for the day. I figured we could hang out there and then around the time mom got home from work we could walk in like we were just getting back from my after school program.

It seemed like the perfect plan. Mom never had to know I skipped school and I could introduce her to Roger. She would make sure he was safe. I explained my plan to Roger and he agreed to it. He thought we were like spies in a movie and kept peeping his head out of the window to ‘keep watch’ after we heard a police siren pass in the distance.

The tree house was stuffed with all manner of things to keep two kids busy. There was also a supply of warm soda and (probably stolen) candy bars. We passed the day playing board games and reading comic books. Roger had found an old stuffed rabbit somewhere in all that mess and clung to it the whole time. I tried to offer him some of my lunch around noon, but he still said he wasn’t hungry, which just made me suspect even more that he was sick. I enjoyed the egg salad and the grapes my mom had packed and then used the little baggy of mostly melted ice to start an impromptu ‘snow ball’ fight.

Roger didn’t talk much, but I made him smile and laugh.

I kept a close eye on my watch and when I told Roger it was time to start heading back for dinner, he looked a little sad. I reminded him of our plan and reassured him about how nice my mother was and that there would be ice cream. He just nodded solemnly and thanked me for being his friend today. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong, but soon we would be home and my mom would know what to do. Maybe Roger and I could even stay in touch.

Roger trailed a little behind me on the walk home. It was a good thing that he felt safe enough to not need to hold my hand anymore right? I was just congratulating myself on being a good big brother when I saw the police cars in the distance. They were parked at my house. I totally forgot about Roger and began running. Had something happened to my mother?

When I reached the house I was relieved to see my mom standing unharmed on the driveway talking to an officer. She had a panicked look on her face and was crying. When she saw me she swept me into her arms and gave me a bruising hug. She babbled something about thinking she had lost me forever. The rest was a confusing blur, the police took some more notes, asked her to come down to the station the next day, and then left. I suddenly noticed that Roger was gone.

For the next week my mom treated me extra special, making my favorite meals every night and letting me stay up late and fall asleep on the couch next to her watching tv. She even talked to her boss so she could start driving me to school every day.

I asked a couple of kids at school about Roger, but no one knew him. I felt guilty about it but I was afraid to ask my mom. What if she decided to punish me for skipping school after all? The cops must have found Roger and took care of him. That is what I told myself. And then, as time passed, I forgot all about it.

***

With my college classes finally done for the day I wait in line at my school’s library help desk. I’m not sure how to explain what I am looking for, but surprisingly as soon as I introduce myself and start talking the lady behind the desk knows exactly what I need. My suspicions were correct. My mother’s odd reaction to me skipping school, the police on my doorstep, something had been very wrong.

I learn that I wasn’t just on the local news, my story had made the national news as well. And what a story it was. I was still having difficulty digesting everything the librarian had told me. My mother must have been very careful to keep this from me in an effort to preserve my childhood.

Now I am sitting in front of an old microfiche machine in the basement of the library. The librarian pats me on the shoulder and suggests I call my mother when I am done, then leaves me to pour over the old newspaper articles.

The first one I come across is about a serial killer being caught, evidence tying him to the death of at least three children. The police had difficulty tying the cases together because he committed his crimes in different towns across multiple states. He targeted boys with red hair and he’d go to their schools, claim some sort of emergency or familial relation, and then take them out of class. He was finally caught when he said one student’s mother had been in a car wreck, but that woman happened to work in the school cafeteria. The secretary immediately knew he was lying and stalled the man until the cops arrived.

The second article I find is about me, dated a week before he was caught. It details how this guy tried the same thing at my school, but I wasn’t in school that day. When the secretary told him that I must be out sick, the man quickly left. Concerned about my mother and I, the secretary looked up my mom’s work number in my file and called it. My mother had rushed home not aware I was missing from school and the police had spent the entire afternoon searching the town for me and the mysterious stranger who had tried to pick me up.

The last article is about one of the man’s victims. It is dated just a week before my incident. Even though the photo is in black and white I recognize that round freckled face. I can imagine the ruffled hair a shiny red like mine, the eyes a bright green. An unmistakable lopsided smile with one tooth missing. It is a photo of Roger.

A chill goes down my spine and suddenly the basement with its rows of dusty bookshelves and dim lighting seems rather spooky. Above the photo reads the article’s headline “Local boy’s body found, suspect still at large”

I guess I talked to the right stranger that day.

I think I’ll go call my mom.