Good Neighbors(70)

The girl’s eyes watered. “Please show me.”

Gertie opened. It took a while because it was bent at the top, the lock inside it twisted. She had to jiggle it to unclench the spring. It popped open. It was empty except for a set of blue silk hair ribbons and a phone.

“What is it?” Ella asked.

“I don’t know,” Gertie answered. “We have to charge it to find out. Do you think I can take it home with me?”

“Shelly’s my sister. Did you know that? Lots of people don’t know because we don’t look the same.”

“Yeah, honey. I know.”

“Will you show me what’s in it if I let you have it?”

“I will, sweetheart.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.” Gertie closed the box, put the phone in her pocket. Then she bent down to eye level. “Are you okay, honey? Why aren’t you at camp?”

“I need to be close for when she climbs out. I watched all the Buffys. Even season six. So we can play like she used to want. I’ll be Dawn and she can be Buffy. Because I’m her sister. Her real sister, not like Julia. Julia’s not her real sister.”

“That sounds so nice, honey. Was there anything else Shelly was keeping? Secrets?”

“There was only that. Know why she called it her Pain Box?” Ella asked. “Because she was always hurting. I hurt her by telling on her. I won’t tell on her anymore. When she climbs out.”

“No. You’ll be a wonderful sister. Are you going to tell that I was here?”

Ella shook her head. So calm. So odd. Like a miniature adult. “Shelly wouldn’t like it. Did you know she wanted to live with you?”

Gertie squeezed the lockbox to her chest, her voice rough. “That would have been nice,” she said, as a car rushed past the kitchen window. Rhea’s car.





Hempstead Turnpike


Saturday, July 31

Rhea’s vision turned spotty. Her heart pounded so hard that she could feel her pulse in her eyes. Everything flashed, just like the ending of the movie The Black Hole. She was going to faint. She pulled to the side of the road.

She’d done something. A bad thing.

She’d spit. So ugly. So base. But something else. She’d talked about her dad. Allen had no business knowing anything about her saint of a dad! She’d said that because of her dad, she had something wrong with her. That she was damaged. She wasn’t damaged! She was the perfect outcome of a perfect family!

Cars passed around her, slow, even though she’d left them plenty of room.

Why was her heart beating so hard?

Attachment disorder? It was true that she’d never been close to other people. Not after her dad, and even then, that closeness had been a kind of lie (the orange juice, the milk, the swerving car, The Black Hole). In all the years she’d been raised by him, lived in his house, she’d never once had a friend over, or laughed like the people on TV. She’d only laughed later, with Gertie. She’d always assumed the media lied. That no one was really close to anyone. And they weren’t, were they?

This myth of love was manufactured. People pretend to have things in common because they’re afraid of being alone. She wasn’t like that. She’d always been honest. Brave. It’s lonely that way, but at least she’d been true to herself.

Another car passed. Another too-wide berth with quick, polite honking. So passive-aggressive. It occurred to her that normal people don’t kick down bathroom doors. They don’t spit in rage. They don’t hit their children with brushes. They don’t frame their best friends’ husbands for rape.

… But maybe they did.

Her heart wouldn’t slow down. The weight of this was unbearable. An impossibly heavy murk, accumulated for so many years that everything behind her, every memory, was contaminated. It unfurled now, sucking her into its infinitely dense mouth, reaching into her future and dissolving her there, too. Forever unclean.

Rhea began to pant. Her heart convulsed in her chest. She’d done so many bad things. Knowing this was a physical pain. Car lights flashed all around her, disorienting. The blind spots in her vision got bigger.

Cars passed and she hated them for noticing. Hated the drivers for peering out, to see if something was wrong.

Puzzle pieces. She thought about her dad, weaving in the road. The candy apple–sweet smell of his breath and the way he always went down to his workroom at night. Went away. Just like Fritz. She thought she’d liked being alone, but maybe that was only because she didn’t know how to accept company.

She thought about Aileen, that piece of shit.

She thought about kicking down a bathroom door. The too-young face on the other side.

She thought about Shelly, goading her. Too sensitive and too needy.

She thought about cruel Gertie, who’d only pretended to care.

She thought about all the world, filled with stupid people.

She honked her horn at the next asshole who passed. Long and hard. All the blind spots came together. They smeared into a too-dense point, and became nothing. Oblivion. Erasure. The murk overtook her.

Rhea went blank. This was not new. This happened all the time.

There was nothing wrong with her. It was them. They’d forced her hand with their stupidity. Their ignorance and their incompetence. No thinking person quotes Bertrand Russell or grades on a point system. They don’t allow sinkholes to form in their neighborhoods, school lunches to be composed of grade B meat. The moronic masses were steering this country into ruin. She was the only person who could see through the lies, the social convention, the politeness. She was the only person who could will it all away, into a new and better direction.