I stood there speechless for a minute.
Then I asked, “Why?”
But neither of them answered. They just went on chucking the ball back and forth like a couple of zombies. It occurred to me to maybe yell at them or go in their yard to get their attention, but from the blank zombie looks on their faces, I just didn’t want to. I mean, it didn’t really seem to be worth it, and anyways, I figured it would probably just make things worse. So I just stood there looking at them, feeling kind of sick, until I went back in my house.
I don’t know what it was. I never found out. Maybe Mr. Miller had heard my parents arguing too loud or maybe he thought something was wrong with our house. It’s impossible to say, but from that day on, those kids acted like I wasn’t even there.
And let me tell you, it’s experiences like that—and I’ve had plenty of them—that put your imagination in a certain place, a certain sort of paranoid place, so it’s really no wonder why I went around hiding all the time.
Maybe this all sounds crazy to you and you’ve never heard of a neighborhood like mine. But I’ve been around a bit and seen lots of other neighborhoods, and I know for a fact that my neighborhood’s not the only one like that, believe me.
So when I crossed the street this night I am telling you about, I made sure to leave my yard at the farthest possible point from the streetlight on the corner, and I dashed across the street like a shadow, because you never know when somebody might be watching.
True, I didn’t see anybody at any window, and you better believe I’d paused to take a look. I didn’t even see any light at any window, so I realized it was probably a little later than I’d thought, probably almost midnight, maybe even later, because now, when I considered it, my dad had been watching one of those long sales shows on TV, one of those celebrity-hosted infomercial sales shows—I think it was about a new kind of blender—and usually they only sell cable time for that sort of junk way past prime time.
But nobody was watching me, at least as far as I could tell.
Still, it actually looked like the houses were watching, because they all had this sort of dark, shuttered look, and they all look a little similar anyway, all built on variations of the same sort of plan just like my house, with three stories and slanted roofs and brown shingles, and windows on the second level that look like lidded eyes if you factor in the shades, and porches with low roofs and fence railings that with only the barest added imagination always look like a grinning mouth with gritted teeth.
Anyways, I just stood there.
Hidden.
In the bushes.
Or rather, behind this long hedge that runs along the bottom of this concrete ramp that leads up to the entrance doors of this big red-brick building, which by the way is the only commercial building for miles around, because my neighborhood really isn’t zoned for business.
The air felt pretty cool. I hadn’t brought my windbreaker. That was a big bummer, because I own a pretty good windbreaker; my mom had bought it for me just about a week before she left. But I didn’t have it on me, and I sure wasn’t going to go back into the house to get it.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that it was a pretty dumb idea to take a walk. It was late and it was getting cold. I mean, it was probably only sixty-five degrees outside, but compared to the heat of the day that was bad enough.
I wrapped my arms around myself—I suddenly felt so cold and it seemed so late. True, tomorrow wasn’t a school day or anything. Some of the local schools had already started, especially the private ones—during the day I’d seen kids in uniforms walking home. I was still on vacation, but it was pretty late to just be roaming around.
Through the hedge I could see the street. I tried to consider my options. I could go down through the woods to the farm store; it was still open. My house is on a hill—at the bottom there’s this strip of woods with a stream, and beyond that the street rises up another pretty steep hill crowded with more houses. If I went to the farm store I could go through the woods, which would be spooky as hell, but at least I wouldn’t be seen by anybody. My friend Carol and I had done that a few times, on these nights when we’d sneak out together just for fun. The woods are maybe a mile long and there’s this open-all-night farm store I mentioned pretty much right at the end of them.
But I’d never gone through the woods alone, and to tell you the truth, it sort of spooked me, because there’s the usual empty wooden sheds and stuff along the trail, and even this old abandoned church graveyard that totally freaks me out, and freaked out Carol even more, because he used to be a Catholic school kid and was still very susceptible to those kinds of fears surrounding graveyards and stuff.
But the truth is, I didn’t have any money, and anyway, without having Carol around I wouldn’t have anybody to talk to, which was really all the fun of why we ever did it in the first place. So that option was out.
Next I thought about how if I went up the hill in the dark, I’d pass through this richer neighborhood called Oaks, or The Oaks if you want to get really technical about it. If I passed through there, I’d finally get to this business district about two miles away, with sub shops and gas stations and this whole sort of poor, rundown neighborhood
