Good Neighbors Page 9

  “You don’t understand. I’ll have no one without her.”

  “You’ll have me. If it goes bad, we’ll run away. We won’t come back until it’s safe,” Julia said.

  “You’d do that?”

  A calm settled over Julia. A kind of steel she’d never imagined she possessed. “I’m in this. Now that you told me, I’m part of it. I can’t do nothing. I can’t let you do nothing. You said it yourself. You’ll die if you stay. I believe that. I can see it happening already. I won’t let you die.”

  Eyes welling with tears, a kind of peace settled over Shelly, and she nodded. “Okay.”

  They hugged. “I got blood on you. I’m sorry,” Julia said.

  “S’okay.” She pointed at a speck on Julia’s Hawaiian shirt. “I got blood on you, too.”

  “We’re blood sisters.”

  “Blood sisters,” Shelly echoed. She chuckled for the first time Julia could remember. The sound broke her heart and then healed it, changing it forever.

  * * *

  While the girls reconnected, the Rat Park had been doing their part. They’d run the half mile at first, but in the heat, eventually walked, except for Sam Singh, the athlete. When they arrived, they’d rushed into houses, stirred parents still sleeping or working or pouring ice into coffee for breakfast. Eventually, parents were informed. An ambulance was called. The block became lively, like morning birds. Those without tweens still heard the shouts along the houses, the panting and the warning and the general milieu of unease. They came out to see. Some came running.

  The Pontis, the Hestias, the Ottomanellis, the Walshes, and Jane Harrison all made haste, wearing house robes and flip-flops. Jane carried a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts mug that she dropped along the way. Arlo Wilde was still nursing his hangover when he heard the commotion. He didn’t stop to dress. He saw the frightened Rat Pack out his window, pointing into the park. He saw the crowd heading there. Something urgent was happening. Something bad. He scanned the faces, looking for Julia and Larry. Couldn’t find them. And then he saw what looked like his own Hawaiian shirt and a tangle of blond by the sinkhole. In tiger-striped boxer briefs and nothing else, Arlo got out and ran.

  Fifteen minutes into their talk, the girls had been so preoccupied that they hadn’t noticed the adults headed their way. Julia spotted them first. Their pace was swift. Rhea Schroeder had the lead. She looked stark and small and devastatingly normal.

  It felt like life-and-death. Like the only possible option. Because if they waited, Julia might lose courage. She might let herself be convinced that this wasn’t as serious as it seemed. She might tell her parents, who would conceal and make excuses, because underplaying was all they knew how to do when it came to the people of Maple Street. And Shelly would lose faith, too. She’d shrink into herself while the monster grew meaner and angrier. The Shelly that Julia loved would die.

  “Shelly!” Rhea Schroeder screamed.

  Shelly’s eyes widened at the sound of her mother’s voice. She grabbed at her shorn hair with an expression of pure fear.

  “Now!” Julia cried. “We can’t let them catch us!”

  Shelly lurched up and started running in the direction of the sinkhole and beyond, to the police station far away. Legs and arms fully pumping, Julia joined. They ran together in the summer heat while bewildered adults gave chase.

  Julia looked behind. Saw her dad back there. Half clad in silly boxer briefs and nothing else, he was faster than the rest, overtaking them one by one. The adults wore concerned expressions. Love and fear and disappointment blended, like it always did with them. She heard the insect heat-song, felt the sticky grass, the burn in her chest, saw the alien-seeming buildings beyond the park. It was hard to keep up with Shelly. Her face clenched tight, her eyes nearly closed, she looked possessed.

  Once they got out of the park, they’d take side roads and cut through yards to avoid detection. Julia imagined arriving at the police department, panting and sweating. They’d try to find the right person to talk to. But they’d choose wrong and Shelly’s mom and dad would wind up in jail for child abuse instead of at some nice therapist’s office. Her family would get broken apart and no one would be able to pay the mortgage on 118 Maple Street. Or maybe she and Shelly would get caught before they ever made it to the cops. Dragged into the back of some Maple Street parent’s car and afterward, Shelly would get a beating so bad it killed her spirit.

  Doubt crept: What if they needed the adults and not the police? What if this plan was dumb?

  Rhea screamed again, angrier this time. “Shelly! Come back here NOW!”

  Like a spooked horse, Shelly pulled ahead of Julia, running blind and straight for the slab—the shortest distance between the park and the road. She pounded wood. It cracked with every step and she didn’t stop. She didn’t seem to know she was running on it.

  Julia stopped short, afraid the added weight would bring them both down. In the cab of the excavator was Larry, watching out the window. He’d probably gotten scared and hidden there. Now he poked his hands out and squinted, that perspective game kids play, as if trying somehow to catch her.

  Shelly’s steps made hollow bangs! The rivets sang, loud and dissonant. The entire slab groaned toward the mouth of the hole like a board game folding in half.

  “Shelly!” Julia shouted. But she didn’t seem to hear. She was stuck in the fold the wood made, unable to climb high enough to get out. She flailed, an animal trapped in a snare.

  Cold settled over Julia. She pictured herself flying through the air and rescuing Shelly. She willed the wood to hold, as if life were wishes.

  The folded wood cradled Shelly as she struggled to stand. She didn’t look for Julia or shout for help. She didn’t seem to know where she was or what was happening. She pushed hard with her hands, unfolding the board, but it was too heavy. She let go and it all slammed back.

  Oh, God, no, Julia thought.

  CRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCK!

  The entire slab collapsed. It was there, and then it wasn’t.

  Julia looked over, just as Arlo arrived at her side, the first adult to reach them. He took her by the shoulders and pulled her back. Together, they saw.

  Shelly Schroeder fell. For a moment, it seemed as if the broken slab would hold her. A magic, midair cradle. But no. She plunged through the center, even as she reached for its muddy, useless edges. Down, down, down, into the murk.

  BRICK

  July 11–July 25

  Map of Maple Street as of July 15, 2027

  *116 Wilde Family

  *118 Schroeder Family

  INDEX OF MAPLE STREET’S PERMANENT RESIDENTS AS OF JULY 15, 2027

  100 VACANT

  102 VACANT

  104 The Singhs-Kaurs—Sai (47), Nikita (36), Pranav (16), Michelle (14), Sam (13), Sarah (9), John (7)

  106 VACANT

  108 VACANT

  110 The Hestias—Rich (51), Cat (48), Helen (17), Lainee (14)

  112 VACANT

  114 The Walshes—Sally (49), Margie (46), Charlie (13)

  116 The Wildes—Arlo (39), Gertie (31), Julia (12), Larry (8)

  118 The Schroeders—Fritz (62), Rhea (53), FJ (19), Ella (9)

  120 The Benchleys—Robert (78), Kate (74), Peter (39)

  122 The Cheons—Christina (44), Michael (42), Madison (10)

  124 The Harrisons—Timothy (46), Jane (45), Adam (16), Dave (14)

  126 The Pontis—Steven (52), Jill (48), Marco (20), Richard (16)

  128 The Ottomanellis—Dominick (44), Linda (44), Mark (12), Michael (12)

  130 The Atlases—Bethany (37), Fred (30)

  132 VACANT

  134 VACANT

  TOTAL: 42 PEOPLE

  From Newsday, July 12, 2027, page 7

  A local thirteen-year-old fell through the Sterling Park sinkhole Saturday morning. Rescue teams were immediately called to the scene. Says Kirsten Brandt, spokesperson for the Nassau County Office of Emergency Management, “We’re looking and we’re going to keep looking
. That’s all I have for you right now.”

  The Maple Street sinkhole is about 180 feet deep, penetrating Long Island’s water table. Hofstra University geology professor Tom Brymer says, “The complication with this kind of thing is that the underlying aquifers extend through the length of Long Island. If she hit her head or anything like that, it’s very possible that she traveled.”

  Authorities at the Garden City zoning office, which had the Maple Street sinkhole scheduled for sand fill beginning today, have postponed the work until the child, whose name has not yet been released, is found.

  A spokesperson at the EPA reiterated today that the air remains safe. In addition to the bitumen seen upswelling throughout the area, it is believed that the sinkhole’s high metal content is interfering with radio and satellite reception.

  From the TMZ website, December 6, 2014:

  Arlo Wilde of Fred Savage’s Revenge was taken into custody last night for attacking his manager and father, Hawshawn Wilde. He is charged with felony assault and battery. Hawshawn is in critical condition at New York–Presbyterian Hospital. The Wilde men have a notoriously rocky relationship, first reported here, when Arlo sued his father for back wages.

  It’s a fall from grace for Arlo, who won a Best New Artist Grammy last year. Sources say that as part of his plea agreement, Arlo plans to enter rehab for heroin addiction.

  Click for mug shots!

  From Believing What You See: Untangling the Maple Street Murders, by Ellis Haverick,

  Hofstra University Press, © 2043

  Investigators have researched Rhea Schroeder’s past exhaustively. We all know about the event at the Hungarian Pastry Shop. Franklin and others have tethered this incident to the subsequent Maple Street Murders. But that connection is tenuous at best.

  We’ve not looked as much at Gertie Wilde, whom we might argue arrived at Maple Street with the most troubled history of all. Gertie’s parents were drug abusers. She was shuffled through the foster system until her father’s wife, Cheerie Maupin, agreed to keep her. Cheerie was problematic. She freely admits to having loaned Gertie out to men. It’s not so surprising, then, that Gertie would have missed all the signs of sexual abuse. It’s equally possible that she did recognize them, but chose to cover for her husband. Potentially, she even participated.

  Maple Street

  July 11–21

  The search for Shelly Schroeder began at the moment of her fall, when parents and children shouted her name down the mouth of the hole: Shelly Schroeder! Shelly Schroeder! Where are you? It continued through the day, when police sectioned off the periphery and rescue workers attached to thick ropes belayed down. Oil-slick footprints tracked a reflective sheen all over the park until no grass was left. The day turned to night and into the next day without sign of life. The weekend passed. The oil and bitumen spread to the street.

  As if fed, the hole grew. A gaping, excavated wound.

  The media picked up the story, and quickly, blogs and streams unleashed news of the missing child, lost down a hole. “I can’t understand it,” Rhea told NBC’s local affiliate, and Maple Street watched on static-filled screens, her bereavement seeming worse, somehow, when pixelated in their living rooms. “She knew she wasn’t allowed out there. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Shelly Schroeder! Shelly Schroeder! Where are you?

  Two more families left the block, for a total of seven gone. Those who remained felt the burden to represent. To support this lost child and her family. They doubled down, canceling trips to the beach, forgoing summer museum nights in the city. They stayed on Maple Street like sentries, as if Shelly, and the horrible sinkhole itself, belonged to them.

  Never comfortable with uncertainty, the people of Maple Street struggled for explanations. They reviewed the events of that morning with their children, and they contrived reasons among one another, their voices respectfully soft. Why had Shelly been out there? Whose idea had it been?

  They met at their curbs when hauling garbage, or on one another’s front porches. In the shadow of that ominous and active hole, their chitchat degenerated. The things they’d been worried about, the deep-down disquiets about their parents’ health and their children’s futures and their jobs and this falling-apart world, began to erupt.

  Margie Walsh carped to Cat Hestia and Nikita Kaur about the state of things. About women’s rights and that poor girl in Buffalo who’d been beaten to death by fraternity brothers. She scratched invisible itches along her fingers when she spoke, her querulous voice uplifted. “Don’t you even care?” Margie asked a surprised Cat Hestia, then narrowed her gaze to Nikita Kaur. “I suppose you’d have us all in those ridiculous burkas if you could.”

  Nikita, whose mom had taught astrophysics at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology at Trivandrum, India, was at a loss for words. Cat Hestia changed the conversation, fast, but Nikita stayed stuck on it, her body rooted, her face flushed. “Sikhs don’t wear burkas,” she said, even as Margie kept talking, tears in her eyes, about how unfair it is for girls in college. They go out into the world expecting adventure, and the patriarchy eats them.

  Linda Ottomanelli fretted over her boys, following them from room to room as if, without her, they’d disappear. Jane Harrison wondered if she ought to educate the students at her preschool about sinkhole preparedness. Fred Atlas continued his morning jogs despite the heat. He had so much to run from. Sick Bethany watched from her shut window, looking out. To her, the hole was an especially terrifying thing.

  More than anything, the Ponti men feared impotence. And so, they had a frank discussion. They felt it was their obligation to say out loud what no one else would admit: the child was dead. There was nothing to do but help those who’d loved her most. Fritz Sr. seemed ill-equipped for the task, so they inducted Dominick Ottomanelli and Sai Singh into their club. Like heroes, these men devised all variety of scenario in which to protect the Schroeder women from having to see Shelly’s body, once it was finally raised.

  A week passed. Rescue crews descended with less urgency. Engineers inserted hydraulic pistons and shields to prevent the hole from collapsing, and their ropes stretched deeper and farther as they dove into surprisingly cold water. When they climbed back out in black wet suits like spacemen, their hands were always empty.

  Ten days missing. The heat wave continued, straining the power company past its limits. Brownouts turned to blackouts, making the people of Maple Street glisten. Trapped on that crescent, their thoughts circled and distilled into the simplest expression of worry.

  Shelly Schroeder, Shelly Schroeder. Where are you?

  They thought her name in a constant loop and it didn’t just mean Shelly. It meant hope and life and death and community. It meant the future and the steady ground beneath their feet. It meant their validation and their justification. It meant their fear and their joy. It meant everything.

  The girl became mythic and tragic, and they thought they’d found her on a Wednesday evening, drifted a quarter mile along an underwater stream. They felt the kinetic energy, heard the sirens, the calls through bullhorns. They stumbled out through front and back doors, even Peter Benchley in his wheelchair. They circled the hole’s lip just as darkness set, and they bore witness as people in a community are supposed to do.

  Shelly Schroeder, Shelly Schroeder.

  First emerged three men in wet suits. They rolled out, apparatus weighing their hinds, flashlights bleaching the dark. These handed their ropes to another set of men, who attached them to a winding crank where more men turned the wheel. The rescue crew peeled off their second skins with solemnity. The crank got stuck. The men crawled to the hole and leaned on flattened bellies. They freed a black zipped bag and hoisted it to the bitumen-rich surface.

  “Back away. It’s not her,” the lead crewman shouted. But they knew this couldn’t be true. It had to be her. The bag was too big to be anything else. They gathered, the news crews among them. Dominick Ottomanelli, Sai Singh, and the Ponti men pushed
to the front. Using their bodies as barricades, they protected the Schroeders from the sight.

  Pushed to the back, the Schroeders’ only son, FJ, found Larry Wilde alone. In his nervousness, Larry had tucked Robot Boy inside his green shorts. FJ approached with such slow, heavy steps that it seemed his body was a weeping sponge.

  “Freak. Should have been you.”

  While the Ottomanelli children and the entire Harrison family heard this cruelty, none corrected. They would later bristle at the memory, thinking they should have.

  “It’s not her,” one of the men in thick neoprene announced. “Go home.”

  But Rhea wouldn’t be stopped. What else could it be? She charged through the Ponti men to get to the body, her family following, and unzipped the bag.

  They could all see what was inside: a German shepherd. His long pelt was slick with sand oil. His paws were bloody, nails missing from trying to smash his way free. Most unnerving, the cocktail of chemicals and cold had kept him perfectly preserved. A fossil of exactly the thing he had been eleven days before, trapped in time.

  Fritz Schroeder looked away. Ella Schroeder began to cry. It was unclear whether her tears were relief or exhaustion. Then, Rhea. It wasn’t simply the corpse that unnerved her. It was its perfect preservation. She imagined Shelly, discovered this way. Her raw body exposed for all to witness. Rhea staggered, hands flapping, unable, somehow, to understand what she was seeing: the wet fur, the pink tongue, the open, rolled-back eyes.

  She faced the crowd, expression beseeching, and wailed, sonorous as an echo through a great canyon. It shuddered across the crescent and down the hole, too. Those who heard were unmoored by its upwind. Unsettled, not just in space, but in their very identities. They watched this woman, but did not come to her. There was so much space around her, unfilled.