Spying

Wow, it has been a few days since I have talked to River. I am excited to talk to him, but I have bigger concerns right now. I am crouched on my knees with the curtains slightly open with binoculars in hand. I see River on his way to my house, but I am looking at the house directly across from mine.

The house belongs to Willa Walcott, a stunningly beautiful woman who is a teacher at my high school. I have her for government and I find her instruction to be informative. She is African American and with any subject, she tries to connect it to African American culture or events. While analyzing fiscal policy in class, she described Black Wall Street which was something I had not previously heard of.

Every night, I looked at her house to see if she had men over or a boyfriend, but I never saw any.

Shit, River just knocked and is waiting. Whatever, my mother likes to talk with him for a little bit and then I am sure he will come up.

I shifted my eyes back to her house and saw three cars park in her driveway and in front of her house. I adjusted the focus on the binoculars and saw that they were most likely various family members there for Thanksgiving. There were various suitcases and bags. She came out and seemed very happy to see them all. I love seeing a happy family celebrate together. For the past few years, the relationship between mom and dad has become steadily worse. The number of arguments, air strife with tension and the PI certainly have not helped matters.

Dad hired a PI within the past week to spy on mom. The PI has not had any luck as far as I know, but dad is convinced she is having an affair. He just doesn't know with who. I have all of the passwords to his various personal and work emails, so I keep myself apprised of the PI's updates. Currently, the PI has said mom has spent a lot of time at River's house, but that is to be expected since Patricia, River's mom, is her best friend. Dad immediately scoffed it off, but the detective in me thinks there might be more to uncover if one looks hard enough.

Suddenly, three heavy knocks occurred.

"Hey Ben, can I come in? It is River." River sounded chipper enough. I stayed crouched in my position and oriented my thoughts back to Ms. Walcott.

"Yeah, come in man. Just doing my usual thing." I said casually. River has known about my somewhat obsession with Ms. Walcott for a few months. Really, ever since school started. That's the nice thing about having a best friend, you can divulge and tell them anything.

"Up to the usual I see. How has it been going Joe Goldberg?" He laughed as he referenced You, one of our favorite shows. I cracked a smile.

"River, I am nowhere near as bad as Joe. To be Joe, I would have to find a way to receive her text messages and take copious notes of her daily routine. I would also have to be into terrible women, I mean , Beck? Come on! Get real!" He and I both started laughing hard from our own in-jokes. River has been such an amazing presence in my life, I am lucky to have him.

"Well Joe, what has she been up to today? I thought I heard some cars pulling up." He started walking towards the curtain and opening it wider.

"No! Get back, you'll ruin my whole system!" I pushed him away and crouched back into my regular position.

"I'm sorry, you have a system? That's a little excessive." River scoffed. I sneered and looked back towards him.

"River, not a stalking system. You know how much I hate light and altering the positions of the curtains affects my sleep numbnuts. And to answer your question, it is her family that is coming to her house. It is interesting to me, I wonder why her family is coming to her house. I would have thought that she would go to her parents' house. Hmmm...." I brought my hand up to my chin and pondered why. The subject of family always made me uncomfortable around River because he had no idea of my parents' marital woes.

"Well, do you want to take some time away from watching her and watch something? There are so many good shows I think we could watch: Rotten, Stateless, Hannibal or Hannah. We could also just keep watching Dexter, but it has been pretty depressing lately." My mind was far away from anything River was describing. I was imagining talking to Ms. Walcott and trying to deduce why her family was there. I was going to have to try to talk to her, which might be difficult with her family.

"Huh, let's watch that new Eco-Challenge show. The one with Bear Grylls and Fiji, it looks really good." I smiled, imagining Bear Grylls iconic voice and natural excitement.

"Sounds good, want to get it set up?" He passed all the remotes to me. The one good thing about having a rich father meant having a TV in your room. Some weekends I never came out of my room because I was spending time with River and we were watching TV. River was well off too, but his mother was an orthopedic surgeon and put in several hours. Meanwhile, my mom has been with me at home for as long as I can remember. My mom was always there for River when he needed a maternal presence.

I set it up and then became situated on my bed. River grabbed the blue bean bag in my closet and we began to watch together. I looked over at River and smiled, it was amazing to have him as my best friend.