Two Way Mirrors – Excerpt #3 from Just Jewel’s Upcoming Novel

Taken From Chapter 9

The girls wouldn’t tell me no matter how much I begged. So I got up to go to the bathroom. On my way back from the bathroom, I glanced towards the front door and who did I see? It was the mysterious lady again. “What the fuck? How the hell is she everywhere I go?” I thought to myself. This time she wasn’t alone. She was there with a man and a young girl. The girl looked just like the lady and looked as though she could have been around fifteen or sixteen. The way the man stood close to the mystery woman told me it must’ve been her husband or boyfriend.

She hadn’t spotted me yet, meaning it must’ve actually been coincidence this time. For once, she wasn’t following me on purpose it seemed. I wasn’t letting her get away this time, though. I walked right past our booth as I heard Keisha say, “Angie where you goin’?” I was just about ten feet away before the lady spotted me. Her eyes grew wide as she whispered something to the man and nodded in my direction. Now, seeing her up close, I could get a good look. She looked a little older without the hood tied around her face, but I knew it was the same woman.

I walked right up to her and said, “Hey! Who the hell are you and why do you keep following me?” The man stood between us as she hurried to usher the young girl out of the IHOP. I could hear the girl asking who I was. The man restrained me as though he was her bodyguard. “And who the hell are you? Take your hands off me! You tell that bitch to stop fucking stalking me!”

The man spoke in a hushed voice “Look miss, we don’t know you. Please just leave us alone.”

“Leave you alone? I’m not the weirdo lurking around every corner. Tell that weirdo to leave me alone! How ‘bout that!”

Just as the man let go, shots rang out, startling us both. POP! POP! POP! POP! They sounded close by, but I couldn’t tell where they were coming from. I just knew they were coming fast. The man grabbed me and pulled me to the floor. I covered my ears and buried my head down into my chest. Panic shot through my heart as I listened to the gunfire. It was coming from two different directions now. I heard the glass shatter right above where I was laying. I peeked up for a second to see people running and screaming in different directions, but I was too scared to get up.