You know how the weather seems to always set the mood in a story or movie. Like in that horror story you just read, it was dark and cloudy; or in that picture book your mom or dad used to read to you before bed, it was always sunny and cherry. But in reality this rarely happens, take now for instance; I’m in school taking a test, a cooking test. Simple enough, right? Yeah-no, it’s the one and only thing that I can’t do -not to sound too full of myself- I burn toast, can’t cook an egg, hell I can’t even boil water; I’m just that helpless at cooking.

“It should be raining,” I mutter under my breath, “Rain would fit this mood. This is so stupid; I would rather be taking a math test, hell I would rather be in fighting for my life!”

“Your life?” Kate asked in alarmed, “It can’t be that bad?” If only you knew, if only you knew, I thought.

“Okay so maybe not my life,” I say quickly trying to cover up my slip, “But anything has got to better than this!” Like fighting for my life, I shouted in my head.

“I still don’t get why you even take this class if you hate it so much?” My target is in this class, I have to keep tabs on him, but I can’t tell her that, it would rune my cover, so I told her what I had been telling her for the last months.

“My parents make me, remember?” I told my friend; well, she’s not really a friend, more like an acquaintance, a person who has some classes with me, and who I can sit with at lunch; if my target doesn’t go out to eat.

“Yeah, but come on! You can’t let your parents control your life,” she says, but she has both of her parents, I thought. “We can’t have sleepovers, have a girl’s night out, heck we can’t even just hang out after school and do homework! What kind of parents in their right mind won’t let their daughter get together with her lab partner so they can work on their science presentation? Remember that? We got the worse grade in the class ‘cause your parents wouldn’t let us get together!”

“I remember, and my parents are the type to do that,” I tell her, stressing the “my”, hoping she would get the point and shut up.

She shook her and stared at the brownie mix that we had put together, “It doesn’t look right,” she muttered, “What’d you put in it?”

“Umm…” I turned to the recipe, “2 ¼ cups flour,” I read.

“How’d you measure the flour?”

“Well I-I used this,” I told her as I showed the coffee mug, “I couldn’t find normal classes so I figured this would work,” She shook her head and sighed.

“Paige,” God I hate that name! I thought, I can’t wait till I’m done with this mission so I can go back to being plain old Taylor, “I’ve told you a million times, a coffee cup is not a cup!” she tells me like how you would tell a two year old not to jump on the couch, “nor is a drinking cup a cup!”

“Then why is it called a cup?” Who comes up with the names of this stuff? Who ever it was, they were on drugs, drugs I tell you! DRUGS! I thought.

“‘Cause they do!” she takes a deep breath, “When baking you use a dry measuring cup, when you measure dry baking ingredients.”

“Got it,” I mutter, “dry to dry.”

“And when you measure liquid ingredient, you use a liquid measuring cup, got it?”

“Got it; dry to dry, liquid to liquid. I think I have it?”

“That’s what you said last time,” Kate tells me with a sigh.

“Well I’m getting better aren’t I?”

“If you say so,” she tells me laughing, and then she waves her hand to get Mrs. White’s attention.

“Yes, girls?” Mrs. White asks.

“Well, Paige here, measured the flour wrong,” Kate started to explain, and I tuned them out, casually turning my head to My Target, acting like I was looking out the window.

My targets name is William James Reids, age 16. William prefers to go by the common nickname Will. He is the only male in his family, father killed a year ago. He has two younger sisters: Lilly Ann Rieds, age ten, the older of the two girls; and the youngest, Zinnia Spring Reids, age seven. His mother works as a waitress, at the local café. Her name is Margaret Marie Reids, age 40.

I’ve been following Will for three months, two weeks, and 5 days; watching his every move. Sounds stalkerish, but I don’t like to look at myself as a stalker; I prefer to look at myself as a guardian angel, protector of the innocent.

“Stop staring at your boyfriend and listen to me,” Kate snaps at me.

“He’s not my boyfriend, I don’t have one, I was just looking out the window,” I hissed.

“Sure he’s not, he’s just your wanna be boyfriend,” humans we’re such weird creatures, we see something unusual and we automatically come up with why this is; like right now Kate thinks I have some obsession with Will, like I’m madly in love with him or something, instead of figuring out the truth. This crazy thing that we humans do have saved me multiple times, after letting something slip.

“Whatever, so what does White want?” So formal, I know. I just hate the Mr., and Mrs., crap we have to use in school. Now that I mention it, I hate a lot of thing; I could right a book “101 Things Taylor Hates” hmm…. I could make millions!

“Well you were making googly eyes at Will,” I rolled my eyes, “I told her about how you screwed up again, she says that if we come after school, we can redo the test and get full credit,”

“I can’t come, my parents want me home right when school gets out,” more like my target has to be home right when school gets out, I thought, he has to baby-sit his sisters, but whatever same difference.

“Oh come on Paige, your grade depends on this! That’s beside the point MY grade depends on this! You have to come!”

“I’m sorry Kate, I can’t. I have to get home,” I really do feel bad, but this is my job, my past, my present, my future, my life; I have to do it right, “I’m sure if you just come in on your own White will let you take the test and still give you credit, me here or not.”

“Sure, whatever,” she mutters, as the bell rings dismissing us for lunch. I think I might’ve finally gone too far.

~

I was at my locker, slowly putting everything in it from my morning classes. Every so often I would turn my head to the left to get a better look at my target; his locker was down the hall a little ways, and on the opposite side of mine, making it easy to see him, without seeming like I was stalking him.

Right now I was doing what I always do before lunch; see if I’ll be eating out, or in the cafeteria. Wherever Will goes, I go, but today I want him to go out, so I won’t have to face Kate. Usually I prefer him to eat in the cafeteria, it’s easier that way, I just find a table to sit at that gives me a view of him well I eat. But when he goes out to eat I have to follow his car, then I have to just happen to end up going to the same place that he ends up going; you have a higher chance of getting caught that way.

His friends were flocking around his locker; which doesn’t mean anything, he and his buds always are together, they’re like a bunch of girls. Then he reaches in his looker and pulls out his jacket, which still doesn’t help much, but it does lean towards making my day better; going out.

I quickly finish putting my stuff in my locker then head to the nearest exit. I casually jog to my car and hop in, put it in reverse and pull out, drive down the street to the next corner and park. Looking down at my watch I see that it took me 43 seconds to do that, pretty good if I say so myself. Then I reach into the back seat and grab the window covers; put them up to give the allusion that this car had been parked here all day. Turning my head back I see The Target and his buds hopping into their cars, some of them taking three or four people per vehicle, Mike is riding with The Target.

Michael Smith, age 16. He’s the middle child of a family of seven; criminal record: illegally burned music onto MP3player; but who hasn’t? I though. He’s been best-friends with Will since the 4th grade. Not a threat, I concluded and decided to let them ride in the same vehicle.

That’s my job, keep Will safe, and that means keeping track of who is with him, and when, at all times.

Their cars start to pull out the school parking lot; I duck in the car as the vehicles pass by. Then I quickly move the window covers, and follow behind them slowly, keeping as close as I dared to them. After a few minutes of driving they pulled into Pizza Hut. Perfect, I thought, that’s right across the street from the park.

I pulled over to the side of the road and parked my car, pulled out the window covers, to make the car look identical to the one they saw earlier. The idea is that the human mind will see this car and think, “Oh, I just saw that didn’t I, but I saw it somewhere else. No I must have seen it there, I’m going crazy.” Well that’s what you’re suppose to think, doesn’t always work, but it usually does.

I grab my lunch sack, put on my sunglasses, and sit on one of the picnic tables that give me a clear view of the Pizza Hut windows and The Target. The sunglasses work like binoculars; don’t ask how, it’s much to complicated to explain. The sunglasses/binoculars are just one of the many gadgets that I get as an agent.

Right now all the guys were screwing off, pushing each other around, just joking; not a threat, for now. The Target goes up to the counter and orders the pizza. The counterman looks different, I thought, more like a guy in an office then someone who works at Pizza Hut.

He turns to the back to give the cooks the order, as he does he presses a bottom on the screen, like he was ordering something else. Wait hold on, if he has a computer to put orders in he shouldn’t be going to the back to tell the cooks the order.

By now I was halfway across the street; this looked fishy, and like my brother always said, “If it looks fishy it usually is fishy,” his words, not mine.

The guys were still joking around as I opened the door and walked behind the counter, searching for the button that was pressed. I looked at my watch 48 seconds since it started to look fishy, I got to hurry, you usually only have 60 seconds when this happens.

Then I saw it, a small box with flashing numbers, a bomb.

“Shit!” I cursed, and looked frantically for The Target. He was starting to sit down in one of the tables.

The little screen started to flash more, 6, 5. I ran to Will and tackled him to the ground; there wasn’t enough time to get out, so I went with the next best thing. I used my body to shield him, I pressed my hands on his ears to hold him down and block the explosion, then I made sure I was covering as much of him as I possible could. I did all that in a second.

“What the HELL!?!?” Will yelled into the floor. Ignored him and tried to enjoy the last few seconds I would have, I knew I probably wouldn’t make it; I had no cover over me and my head wasn’t blocked. I’m coming Mum, Dad, I’m coming, I though

“Two,” I stated to mutter into Will’s back, he was struggling yelling for me to get the hell off, I barely heard him, “One,” this is it, I lived my life to the end, finishing my job, my last wish was for the boy under me to be okay, and live life to the fullest.

My lips formed the number, “Zero.”

I heard the explosion and the screams from the other guys; I bit my lip to keep from screaming with them. Pain is just a message, just a message, was my last thought before my world went black.