The Girl Next Door Read Online Free Page A

Casually, but with an odd sort of sincerity about him, as though this were absolute gospel.
    “My mom says Meg’s the lucky one,” he said. “My mom says she got off easy.”

Chapter Four

    It was a week and a half before I got to see her again apart from a glimpse here and there—taking out the trash once, weeding in the garden. Now that I knew the whole story it was even harder to approach her. I’d never felt sorry. I’d rehearse what I might say to her. But nothing sounded right. What did you say to someone who’d just lost half her family? It stood there like a rock I couldn’t scale. So I avoided her.
    Then my family and I did our yearly duty trip to Sussex County to visit my father’s sister, so for four whole days I didn’t have to think about it. It was almost a relief. I say almost because my parents were less than two years from divorce by then and the trip was awful—three tense days of silence in the car going up and coming back with a lot of phony jolliness in between that was supposed to benefit my aunt and uncle but didn’t. You could see my aunt and uncle looking at one another every now and then as if to say Jesus, get these people out of here.
    They knew. Everybody knew. My parents couldn’t have hidden pennies from a blind man by then.
    But once we were home it was back to wondering about Meg again. I don’t know why it never occurred to me just to forget it, that she might not want to be reminded of her parents’ death any more than I wanted to talk about it. But it didn’t. I figured you had to say something and I couldn’t get it right. It was important to me that I not make an ass of myself over this. It was important to me that I not make an ass of myself in Meg’s eyes period.
    I wondered about Susan too. In nearly two weeks I’d never seen her. That ran contrary to everything I knew. How could you live next door to someone and never see her? I thought about her legs and Donny saying her scars were really bad to look at. Maybe she was afraid to go out. I could relate to that. I’d been spending a lot of time indoors myself these days, avoiding her sister.
    It couldn’t last though. It was the first week of June by then, time for the Kiwanis Karnival.
    To miss the Karnival was like missing summer.
     
    Directly across from us not half a block away was an old six-room schoolhouse called Central School where we all used to go as little kids, grades one through five. They held the Karnival there on the playground every year. Ever since we were old enough to be allowed to cross the street we’d go over and watch them set up.
    For that one week, being that close, we were the luckiest kids in town.
    Only the concessions were run by the Kiwanis—the food stands, the game booths, the wheels of fortune. The rides were all handled by a professional touring company and run by carnies. To us the carnies were exotic as hell. Rough-looking men and women who worked with Camels stuck between their teeth, squinting against the smoke curling into their eyes, sporting tattoos and calluses and scars and smelling of grease and old sweat. They cursed, they drank Schlitz as they worked. Like us, they were not opposed to spitting lungers in the dirt.
    We loved the Karnival and we loved the carnies. You had to. In a single summer afternoon they would take our playground and transform it from a pair of baseball diamonds, a blacktop, and a soccer field into a brand-new city of canvas and whirling steel. They did it so fast you could hardly believe your eyes. It was magic, and the magicians all had gold-tooth smiles and “I love Velma” etched into their biceps. Irresistible.
    It was still pretty early and when I walked over they were still unpacking the trucks.
    This was when you couldn’t talk to them. They were too busy. Later while they were setting up or testing the machinery you could hand them tools, maybe even get a sip of beer out of them. The local kids were their bread and butter after all.