Good Neighbors Read online

Sterling Park

  The Rat Pack’s laughter sagged. They watched as Shelly, fanning her linen jumper’s backside with her hands, disappeared into her house. After that, it was just the Markles still laughing, plus Lainee Hestia, who matched her titters to theirs, trying to make sure she stayed on the inside of the joke.

  “She’s hurt?” Ella Schroeder asked.

  The Markles heard that and got quiet. Lainee emitted one last, humorless shriek.

  “It’s a period. No big deal,” Dave said.

  “Does she need a doctor?” Ella whispered. She was built small like her mom, and even though she was upset, her squint expressed anger. She had resting rage face.

  “It’s okay. She’s okay. It’s normal,” Julia answered. Her throat hurting, her voice was just a sandpaper whisper.

  Ella started crying. She ran for 118 Maple Street. She didn’t shut the front door behind her after she got inside. It stayed wide, offering a full view of the Schroeder hallway. Clean wood floors, a secretary with mail neatly stacked, an indigo and orange Persian rug.

  Julia expected a grown-up or big sibling to come out. What the hell? You don’t laugh at someone’s period! they’d shout. What’s wrong with you? She felt she deserved to be yelled at. They all did, no matter what Shelly had done.

  The rest of them must have felt the same way, because the Rat Pack stood very still. Seconds passed. A full minute. No one came out of Shelly’s house. Somehow, that was worse.

  Sam Singh broke the pause. “I didn’t do anything!” he hollered, then jogged back toward 104 Maple Street, where he lived. Lainee Hestia wandered away next, slow and seemingly oblivious. By the time she was at her house, she was softly humming the Star Wars theme. The Markles climbed back on their trampoline. “She’s gonna pay for this,” Michael Ottomanelli threatened while inspecting the tiny red speck of blood that had, at some point, stained the mesh. “It’s gonna be a huge dry-cleaning bill,” Mark added.

  Julia stayed. The heat made beads of sweat along her brow. She stood on one foot, then the other, looking into that silent, open house. She’d never been in a real fight with anybody but her brother before. Never hit someone or gotten hit. Where do you go after something like that happens? Who do you become?

  Dave Harrison and Charlie Walsh were the last to go. They looked her up and down. She’d worn her dad’s Hawaiian shirt because she thought it made her look grown up. But maybe it just looked like she couldn’t afford clothes.

  “It’s head games all summer with her,” Dave Harrison said. “I can’t take it another second.”

  “We’re going to a place Shelly can’t follow,” Charlie Walsh said. “Exploratory mission. Wanna come?”

  “Me?” Julia asked.

  “You,” said Charlie Walsh, with his bowl haircut and chubby cheeks. When she first moved here, he’d told everybody that he had a crush on her. It hadn’t felt like a real crush. He hadn’t known her well enough. As girls go, she’d been the only option, given Dave liked Shelly, and Lainee was… Lainee.

  “Where?” Julia asked.

  “The sinkhole. Shelly’s mom would kill her.”

  “Is it safe? Should we go?”

  Charlie extended his hand. She took it. Held it a little longer than she needed to, because it made her feel calm. “I don’t care if it’s an asbestos mine, long as it’s away from Shelly,” he said.

  They started walking. She waved to Larry and he followed. Pretty soon, it was four astride. It felt good to get away from Shelly’s open house, so still and watching, if houses can watch. Accusing, too, if houses can accuse.

  “Don’t feel bad. She had it coming. We’re all sick of her,” Charlie said.

  “Nobody has that coming,” Julia answered.

  “She did,” Dave said. He seemed especially sad, as though he were betraying Shelly by saying this.

  They stopped at the curb. It felt momentous. Larry traversed it first. Then they were all on the grass, headed into the place they weren’t allowed, to get away from a girl who’d turned mean, and from themselves, too.

  Into Sterling Park.

  As they walked, shoulders touched. Arms swung and caught hands and let go again. Cicadas screamed and gnats swarmed. But not the birds. She hadn’t heard birds in a while. The ground got sticky the closer they got. It was strange, but she had the feeling that something out there was watching them. Listening and waiting.

  Dave stopped short at the orange traffic cone barrier.

  The hole.

  It was covered by a giant two-inch-thick wood slab with the rough dimensions of a small bedroom. Beside it was a John Deere truck-bulldozer-kind-of-thing that read COMPACT EXCAVATOR in massive yellow letters across its green side. The crane’s retracted hook had come loose from its industrial-sized clip, so that it swung in tiny arcs just over the slab.

  “My dad’s got this get-rich-quick scheme,” Dave said as he walked past the cones and touched the wood. “He thinks the oil companies’ll buy us out and frack.”

  “Bitumen’s worthless,” Charlie answered. “Even if they do want it, they’ll just declare imminent domain. No way we’re gonna get rich when some lawyer can steal it.”

  “What’s eminent domain?” Julia asked. She was holding her throat. That made it easier to talk.

  “Imminent,” Charlie corrected.

  Dave unsheathed this sly, super cute grin. “Sam Singh thinks the sinkhole ate his cat.”

  Julia chuckled.

  “Since when?” Charlie asked.

  “Fluffy!” Dave called in an old-lady voice, hands cupped to his face. “Oh, Fluffy!”

  Julia let go of a real laugh, which felt good even though her throat stung. “Sam’s so nice…”

  “He’s dumb as rocks,” Dave finished. “He said he let Fluffy out last night and she never came back. She’s probably lost with that dog—the one that belongs to the bald chemo lady.”

  “You mean Mrs. Atlas,” Julia said. “She has big eyes.”

  “Yeah.”

  They got quiet for a second, thinking about skinny, big-eyed Bethany Atlas, who came out sometimes, a scarf over her head, and walked ever-so-slowly up and down the park for exercise. She wore this brave and terrifying smile.

  “Thing is,” Dave said, “Sam’s onto something. ’Cause there’s no squirrels or birds around.”

  “You think it’s eating animals?” Julia asked. She tapped her toe against the slab’s firm edge.

  “A sinkhole can’t eat pets,” Charlie said. He looked pissed at the very notion of this, like it went against his religion. Charlie was that guy. A guy who’s already thirty years old and waiting for his shoe size to catch up. “It’s just a hole. They’re finding them all over the country, because of the heat. We’re lucky it’s just bitumen. Some of ’em are bringing up landfill garbage.”

  “Naw. It’s more than a hole,” Dave said.

  Julia didn’t look right at him, because Dave Harrison was maybe the coolest fourteen-year-old she’d ever met. He never followed. He always did exactly what he wanted. “So, what is it?” she asked.

  Dave nodded. Shook his head. Nodded. Finally shrugged.

  “Okay,” Julia croaked through her sore throat. “Here are the Maple Street sinkhole rules.”

  “You’re a clown,” Dave said.

  “Rule number one,” Julia continued as she laid her hand across the slab. It felt soft and too warm, like chemicals from below had mixed with the sun’s heat and cooked it. “This wood doesn’t look strong enough and we should stay off, especially Larry.”

  “The government does everything bad,” Charlie said. “They used cheap wood.”

  Dave stood, walked across to the center, where the whole thing bowed and smoke plumed out from the knothole there. Julia covered her nose. It had a sweet, wrong odor that burned, like candy apple coating melting and hardening in your throat. Dave stayed for a five-count, then walked slowly back.

  “That was a bad decision,” Charlie said. “You could have died.”

  �
��You talk like your moms,” Dave answered.

  “No I don’t!” Charlie answered.

  “You’re like their mouth puppet,” Dave said.

  “Well, you’re conceited,” Charlie answered.

  Dave grinned. “I’m the most popular guy in my grade. That’s not conceited.”

  “It’s like he doesn’t know what conceited means,” Julia said.

  “I’ve had three girlfriends this year. Which is more than any of you’ve had your whole lives. I know everything and you know nothing.”

  “Every girl you go out with is horrible,” Charlie said.

  “They’re hot!” Dave said. He did this—talked about girls like you could scoop them all together into a pile. That was one of the reasons Shelly had always turned him down. She hadn’t wanted to be a scoop of girlfriend. Julia thought she’d be okay with being a scoop. At least, if it was Dave Harrison, she’d be okay with it.

  “Define hot,” Charlie said.

  “Nobody cares what the girl looks like. You don’t fuck the face,” Julia said. She was trying to be funny and mature like a woman of the world, and only realized she’d gone too far after she said it.

  Charlie and Dave exchanged funny looks. “What does fuck a face mean?” Larry asked.

  “Sorry,” Julia said.

  “What’s fuck a face?” Larry repeated.

  “Nothing,” Julia said. She needed something to do with her hands, so she pulled Larry’s turtleneck over his head and handed it to him. He’d sweat it clean through, and his chest was a moth print of red heat splotches.

  Dave smirked that gorgeous smirk. “You’re sexist, Julia.”

  “Whatever, Mr. Hot Girlfriend Man. Let me write that down,” she said. “I’ll add it to the eighty million other rules for Maple Street that suck ALL THE JOY.”

  “Put it in black Sharpie. ‘Julia Wilde is sexist.’ ”

  “Rubber and glue, dude!”

  “Lamest. Comeback. Ever.”

  Julia started laughing. “No, that was.”

  Dave opened his mouth like he was going to say something mean. “Aw, you’re just so…”

  Ghetto, Julia knew he was going to say. He pretended to be laughing too hard to finish, but she knew he was afraid to hurt her feelings. He was treating her differently from Charlie, like she was fragile.

  “GHETTO!” she shouted.

  Dave locked eyes with her, totally delighted. Then, falling over, holding their guts, they were all three laughing. The sound echoed through the empty park, banishing the tension. It made them feel normal again. It made them forget how strange Shelly had acted, and how strange this hole was, too. The holes popping up all over the country, dredging buried things.

  Feeling not lonely for the first time in weeks, Julia was so bursting with cheer that she kissed Larry’s cheek. He stayed still, eyes open and looking straight ahead, which was how she knew he liked it. Or, at least, he didn’t mind it.

  “What’s fuck a face?” he asked one last time, which made everybody laugh even more.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll never be that guy,” Dave said. “You might want to be that guy, but it’ll never happen.” Then he flopped, pressing his legs straight up against the edge of the slab and sitting square into the bitumen muck. Charlie did the same. Julia tugged on Larry’s crazy green shorts and had him sit, too. The oil was more solid than she’d have guessed, and not as sticky. The closer you got to it, the less smeary the colors, and the more it looked like your own, skewed reflection in blue and black and red.

  All four lined up in a row, their feet kicking the side of the slab, digging at the sludge underneath. They felt brave, like explorers, doing what they weren’t supposed to do, proving they were stronger and smarter than the grown-ups thought.

  One day they’d run the world. They’d do a better job.

  “Rule number two for sinkhole survival,” Julia started.

  “Clown!” Dave cried out in a fake sneeze.

  “Forget rule number two. Dave ate number two. Like, literally, he ate poop. Rule number three,” Julia interrupted. “As you can see from the freaky-ass sludge, there’s our dead ancestors down there. This is their puke. Don’t believe the hype; the birds didn’t fly away and your pets aren’t hiding, they got eaten by great-grandma Loretta.”

  “It’s primordial stew, like from Star Trek,” Charlie answered, blushing. It surprised her that he was playing along. She’d thought he was too literal for that.

  “Star Trek’s for suckers!” Dave cried.

  “You guys!” Julia said. “Doesn’t a little part of you wanna rip off this wood and ride down the hole on the crane?”

  “So, go ahead,” Dave said.

  “You go!”

  Dave slapped her with some snot from a vein of bitumen running out from the hole. Charlie slapped Dave. Julia slapped them both. Larry joined in. Then they were all slapping each other.

  The playing felt good, and she reminded herself to enjoy the moment. Soon, Charlie and Dave would go inside to air-conditioning or coding lessons or tutoring. The day would get even hotter. She and Larry would wait for their dad to wake up. But he’d be tired. They wouldn’t go anyplace or do anything. They’d just sit by the fan, chewing ice.

  The kids on this block always had places to be and vacations to take. They never worried that their clothes were someone else’s hand-me-downs, bought from the thrift store on Hempstead Turnpike. Most of them were proud of their houses. They had their own rooms, and those rooms were decorated with real furniture. When you asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up, they knew the answer.

  What was it like to be pretty? To have nice things?

  “My dad’s got this friend from his old band who lives in California. Writes music for TV. I wish I lived there,” Julia said.

  “We’d miss you,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah, but in California, nobody’d be mad at me,” Julia answered. Her eyes teared up. She let them dry in the air instead of wiping them. “People wouldn’t turn on me.”

  “Is Shelly crazy?” Charlie asked. His chin and cheeks and clothes were marked with sand oil, like the rest of them. Only Larry had stayed clean. “Bleeding… Saying that stuff about your dad.”

  “I don’t know,” Julia answered. “But it’s not true about my dad. She made it up.”

  “She’s messed up,” Dave said. “Your dad’s famous. He’s probably the only dad around here who could get pussy wherever. He doesn’t need to get it on Maple Street.”

  “Gross?”

  “Shelly hit you,” Larry said. “It’s not okay.”

  Julia squeezed Larry’s hand to let him know she was okay. He squeezed back, to let her know something, too.

  “Why would she say those things?” Charlie asked.

  “Do you think it’s true?” Julia asked. “Because it’s not.”

  “No,” Charlie answered. “It’s just, I’ve known her since kindergarten. She’s been mean, but it’s usually for a reason. Have you ever been to her house? Everything’s so perfect. It’s like you can’t move inside of the perfection. Like the air’s glass, and just trying to walk around gets you cut into pieces.”

  Julia let that sink in. She’d felt uneasy in 118, but had never thought to articulate it. If you moved something, you had to put it back exactly. Junk food wasn’t allowed because you might get fat. There was this bowl of ribbon candy that matched the green couch, but you couldn’t ever eat the candy, and you couldn’t sit on the couch, just like you couldn’t use the hand towels in the bathroom. It was all too pretty to use. “What’s wrong with perfect?”

  “It’s a lie. There is no perfect,” Charlie said.

  “How is it a lie?” Julia asked.

  Dave blew a long raspberry. “Eeeeemo. Shit’s tough all around. My parents divided our house with a Sharpie because they’re too cheap to pay for a divorce. That’s way worse than pseudo-perfect. You see me going psycho killer?”

  “Why does she hate you?” Charlie asked Julia. />
  “Does she? Hate me?” Julia asked back. “Did she tell you that?” Even though it was obvious, it felt bad to say out loud.

  “What’s she got against you, is what Charlie’s asking,” Dave said, frowning at Charlie, who blushed.

  “I don’t know,” Julia answered. She’d wondered a lot about this, hadn’t been able to come up with anything that made sense. “She’s spoiled. Her mom does everything. My parents spoiled her, too. Like, my mom would always make her whatever meal she wanted even if she had to go to the Trader Joe’s for it, and my dad would always play harmonica with her. He didn’t do that when it was just me… She got whatever she wanted. People bow down because of her mom. I really liked her, but honestly, I just think she got bored. It was fun to pretend to be a nice person and be my best friend and now it’s fun to act horrible and rip me a new one. What did she tell you guys?”

  “Nothing,” Charlie said. “I didn’t mean to say anything wrong. I just wondered.”

  “… Is it true that you guys took a vote not to hang out with me anymore?” she asked.

  “Shelly did,” Dave answered. “Not us.”

  Julia looked away so they didn’t see the depth of her relief.

  “I don’t like talking about her,” Dave said, his eyes squinting. “It makes me mad. She sucks the oxygen.”

  “Fine by me,” Julia answered. Then she grinned, to let them all know she was okay. “Rule number nineteen! It’s a primordial stew apocalypse down there!”

  “Borg,” Charlie said. “Resistance is futile.”

  Julia giggled. “Sucker! Our parents are down there.”

  “Doing what?” Charlie asked.

  Julia shook her head. “Worrying about the wrong things. It’s all they know how to do.”

  Dave kicked the board. “I really do wish they were down there. I’d have the house to myself.”

  Julia pictured her Beauty Queen mother down at the bottom of that hole, pregnant and sweating and wringing her nervous hands. Square your shoulders! Smile! Go put on a bra so nobody can see your business. If a grown man ever talks to you, just scream. They got no business talking to you. Are you getting along with the neighbors? Don’t make yourself unpleasant, Julia! These people are so important!… Did you bring Larry? Don’t you know he’s your responsibility?