Hiding

know their names, whereas where I live, just a few blocks away, you can meet people like Mr. Reynolds, whom I’ve done yard work for, and he’s been living in that old dump of his for his whole life. He’s sixty or something and wears a wooden leg, and his father lived his whole life there too, and the whole house is crammed floor to ceiling with boxes of junk from both their lifetimes, because Old Man Reynolds—that’s what we call him—he’s a hoarder. That’s my neighborhood. But here people come and go a lot, and renovate a lot, so things always look perfect.

I stood very still, lightly brushing my hand on the stones, when a thought occurred to me.

If I lived in this house, I’d be happier.

I couldn’t help thinking that.

Anybody would be happier in this house because it was just so great, so stately and magnificent. I looked up and saw these box windows hovering over me, about ten feet above me.

To just sit in there looking out the window.

You could never feel trapped.

You couldn’t hide in this house; it wasn’t that kind of place.

No—you were really kind of on display in this house.

You’d always feel alive inside.

I mean you could breathe.

Up here it seemed there were no rules except for the ones you make yourself, but just down the hill you always felt exhausted trying to follow everybody else’s rules, which they never even bothered to explain to you. My dad calls it the difference between the freedom of luxury and the burden of maintenance. I call it a launch pad instead of a trap.

I bet everybody in there, Laura especially, but probably also her entire family, woke every morning happy to jump out of bed, to go down to the kitchen—the kitchen that I’d never seen but knew must be amazing—to eat breakfast and talk with the family and get ready to go out for the day. And when they were out they’d know the house was always there, waiting. But not waiting in a bad way, in a foreboding way like my house was always waiting, because the people here moved on a lot like I said, to even newer houses in even better places. Yet while they were here their house was bright and clean and new and pleasant, with all these cool new things in it, in the kitchen especially, I bet, all these gewgaws that do everything for you, not like the old crap from the 1950s you see in kitchens down the hill that you get from your great-grandmother. It was a house for people who take trips to the Bahamas, I thought, like Laura had done lots of times with her mom and dad. The first night I met her she told me she’d just come from the Bahamas, and she was smoothing lotion on her peeling nose because she’d gotten too much sun. Probably everybody on her street went there as well; they probably saw one another every summer down on some sunny island in the sea, whereas people just down the hill where I live were always stuck in their houses, or at best out doing something in the yard or piling boxes of old junk in their basement or garage.

I rubbed my hand on the wall, lightly. I wanted to scrape the dirt off my fingers respectfully; I really didn’t want to mess up the stones. The truth is, I kept thinking about how perfect life must be in this house, and the silly thought came to me that it would be impossible to have problems in this house.

I know how that sounds. I mean, of course there would be problems; I’m not naive enough to think everything would just be bliss. So I suppose I meant that in this house I couldn’t possibly have my problems, the same old problems I’d always had that were never going away, like hearing my parents gripe about money or feeling stuck forever in the same place. Houses like mine were made for people who want to get morose about their problems—witness my dad back there, lying on the couch.

I’d still have problems. Sure.

But different problems. I’d probably have a whole new set of problems that I’d probably get excited about. And it occurred to me right then that the happiest people must be those who are excited about trying to solve their problems, who see them as challenges, you know, like it says on those posters guidance counselors hang up on the walls of their offices.

But some problems, I’m sure you’ll agree, are pretty hard to get excited about.

I’d never been excited about mine even in the least. So of course my problems never went away.

But here—in this house—I thought I’d like my problems. I bet I’d even take a crack at solving them.

I mean, seriously, what problems could Laura have?

True—I was her problem—but she solved that one quick enough.

I stood silently, gazing up at the shadows of the bushes on the wall. I felt so close to her, closer than I’d been for months.

She was in there.

I knew it.

It’s like I could feel her presence.

I wondered. If I listened hard enough, might I hear her breathing as she slept?

I shook my head slowly. Okay. That’s getting weird, I thought.

I took my hand off the wall. I took a deep breath of the cool breeze and grinned, looking down into the dark at my feet.

What’s funny was I had never even gone into her house.

Not even once.

She never took me in; she always made me wait outside. I haven’t known too many girls—as girlfriends, I mean—but I saw this habit of Laura’s as sort of like a trait probably shared by many very special girls. We went out for three months and all I ever saw was just part of the entrance hallway when she’d leave me standing at the front door, because she’d run inside to get something for “just a minute!” but always took, like, at least