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At no point since the "letters" had started arriving did he think that it was anything less than serious. He knew that it was dangerous. There hadn't been any notes, only the pictures, but still the fact that he was getting them meant that someone who was watching him very closely and knew where he was living now. Telling Ms. Taylor about this should have made him feel better, but the fear was finally allowed to come out. "Don't tell Kendra," he asked in a small voice, "She doesn't know, and I don't want to go back to California."

Locke usually didn't have problems talking to adults. It was easier for him to look people in their face if they weren't a peer. Right now though he couldn't look at anything but his hands that were clutching tightly onto his backpack. His knuckles had turned white. If Ms. Taylor sent him back to California it wouldn't surprise him. In her position he would probably do that. Clearly New York wasn't safe. To not send him away made no sense.

She wanted to know if he had a clue who could be sending him these pictures. He shook his head no. Most of the pictures he had never seen before. "Nobody I know, otherwise it'd be an email." That was what made everything so frightening. Someone had to have been following him his whole life if they had this many pictures. He pulled out one of the birthday card sized envelopes and handed it over to Ms. Taylor. The postal stamp was blurred, and the stamp was one of those forever stamps that could be from anywhere. Like every other envelope Locke's name was very clearly written, along with his address at the institute. No way that it could have ended up going to his home in San Francisco.

"I mean I've been getting them for a little while now." Technically almost five months. The first one came shortly after his birthday. "I'm not the kind to have a stalker. I'm not anyone famous, I don't talk to girls really, and the only guys I've really hung out with have been students here. Nobody that would have my kindergarten picture."

"Because I'm not passing two of my classes, and I've gone from getting A's and B's in my good classes to C's and D's." Ms. Taylor didn't prance around the subject, so why should Locke? It wasn't as though he hadn't seen the change in his grades coming. He knew that his work had been getting progressively worse. Locke took the seat and held onto his backpack tightly. She had remembered how uncomfortable he felt to not have his earth sense on.

"I know I can do better," Locke chewed on his lip, trying to decide if he should finally tell someone what had been going on for months. He wanted so much to have someone else handle the situation. After all, Locke was only seventeen and he didn't know how to deal with a person having a crush on him, let alone a stalker. What held him back was the fear of what would happen if he told someone about the pictures. There were pictures that had him with his dad, pictures that Locke had never seen and they were like gold to him. Locke wanted those pictures.

But he knew that it was dangerous. These recent pictures clearly indicated that his stalker knew he was in the city, and chopping off most of his hair didn't help to keep him from being found. Locke loved it here, and was afraid that telling someone the danger he was in would mean going back to San Francisco.

Locke knew full well why he had to speak with Ms. Taylor. His grades had been slipping since the start of the school year, and not just for math or science. Courses that he usually excelled in he had dropped down a full letter grade. If he had been able to play any sort of sport the two huge F's that he was pulling in his worse subjects would have kept him from touching a baseball. No doubt that once news of the bad report card would make Kendra demand he come back to California so that she could make sure he was studying and doing his homework. He had taken the SAT and did better than he had thought he would. But the scores on that test did not reflect the student standing outside Ms. Taylor's office, the one with the downwards spiraling grades.

The truth was that Locke couldn't have cared less about his grades. Yes, he was finally getting together a plan for his future, and yes, he knew how important his schoolwork was. The stressful junior year was over, and he really should be sending in more college applications, but there was something going on in his life that kept him awake at night.

His backpack often was heavy. Monday through Friday it would be weighted down with the absurd amount of textbooks, folders, and notebooks that any other senior had to have. When spending a day in the city there would be a few water bottles just in case. Right now what was making his backpack heavy was his dictionary and thesaurus. The stream of "letters" had been constant. Sometimes there might be just one photo, or maybe a newspaper clipping from his elementary school years. This last letter had held close to ten photos. What was the most disturbing thing was that there had been a change in the pictures. No longer did he get pictures of him as a toddler. There were pictures of him in New York now, both before and after his haircut.

"Hey," he croaked as he slinked into Ms. Taylor's office, slinging his backpack off. The sooner the lecture got over with the sooner he could go back to staring at the pictures and trying to figure out who was watching him. Just last year he had turned up in Ms. Taylor's office wanting her help with school. Now he didn't even want to hear her tell him to focus more on his studies.

Yes Locke thought his power was pretty awesome. He still smiled ever so slightly as he commanded Fluffy to move about. Krisz was more excited about what Locke could do than the teen expected. Nobody cared about dirt and earth. It was such a common thing that if he didn't do something extraordinary with it nobody paid it any attention. Kendra probably would have been ok with the knocked over flower pots and the dirt on his jeans. What had freaked her out was when he used knowledge of an earthquake that nobody could have predicted. "Yeah, golems. I uh... call them Fluffy," Locke admitted, embarrassed slightly by his term for his creations.

Just because Krisz knew the word golem didn't mean that he had the full understanding of it. Locke didn't experience the creatures in video games and literature like Krisz had. There was a difference in taste as far as their reading went apparently. Had Locke ever played the computer game I have no mouth and I must scream, he'd have a better sense of what Krisz's idea of a golem was. "I make them yeah, but I can't just let them run about. Dirt and rocks, they shift. Gravity still effects them. If I were to stop taking care of them they would just fall apart. And they can move. Why would I want to just have a dirt person stand around?"

Now was the bit that Locke didn't fully understand himself. How did his mind allow him to become part of the earth without actually doing anything to his body? He could, when controlling a golem, tell the difference between something affecting it and something affecting himself. When he wrestled with Fluffy he became hyper aware that he was in two places at once. "And no, they can't think for themselves. I'm their brain. Like how yours tells you to do stuff I tell Fluffy what it should do."

”Use some body glitter and girls won’t care. As long as you’re pale and sparkle you’re a vampire to them. Even if that means that you’re addicted to a computer and use the same makeup that those girls used when they were ten and wanted to look pretty,” Clearly Locke didn’t approve of the Twilight vampires. He had grown up with Nosferatu, Dracula, and now had read a few of the Vampire’s Assistant books. To the Californian, vampires were serious business.

He raised an eyebrow when Krisz asked the inevitable question. Everyone wanted to know what you did once they found out you were a mutant. Could be your best friend that you grew up with suddenly paranoid to be around you, or it could be a fellow mutant, wanting to see how good your mutation was. Nobody ever just accepts that you are a mutant, you always have to say what you do. ”Eh, just earth stuff,” he said with a shrug. Far easier to use that explanation than to try to describe Fluffy.

Just standing there was a good deal of difference in the height between Locke and Gina, but with him sitting on the counter the difference was made more profound. When Gina rested against him Locke lifted up his arms slightly, looking confused as to what he had done this time. Something right obviously. He rested one hand on Gina's head and pet her hair. His father use to do the same thing for Locke when he was sick and it always brought him comfort.

It hadn't been his intention to bring up the car accident. Thinking about it mentioning the crash might just make Gina feel worse. Clearly if he was still messed up what hope could there be for her? But she had been open and honest with him and Locke owed her something. "Six years ago, but there's nights when I feel like I'm still in that hospital," Total honesty. That's what Gina needed, he decided, even if it meant that Locke would be killed by his embaressment before he could get his movies out of the living room. "Mostly if my music stops playing, or if I can't see where things are.... but hey, you at least don't have to face the problem as much."

He was trying to get her to laugh, trying to catch her on an emotional break from one negative emotion into the next negative one. Even if he could get her to be briefly angry, just something to distract her momentarily.

There was silence as Gina tried to compose herself, giving him her best attempt at a smile. She was doing her best to be brave he realized. Problem was that he didn’t really know what to say or do. ”We could watch something else if you want,” Locke offered, playing with the sleeves of his jacket. She was shivering, was it from feeling cold or just that she was in shock? Shock most likely, but Locke still felt like he should give her his jacket. Darn it! He was warm. Still he slid it off and offered it to her.

So it had something to do with her getting hurt. Shot at if what he heard was to be trusted. You could never be sure what the truth was when you get word of mouth from teenagers. Locke nodded his head to let Gina know he had heard her. “A little bit. I try not to listen to talk about people without hearing the story straight from the person.”

It was a good thing he had stopped the movie when he did. If Gina was so panicked after the grocery store scene how would she handle Bill Murray getting shot? Slowly his brain was figuring out that it was the scene with Little Rock that had made something snap inside Gina.