The Girl Next Door Read Online Free Page B

They wanted you to come back that night with friends and family and they were usually friendly. But now you just had to watch and keep out of the way.
    Cheryl and Denise were already there, leaning on the backstop fence behind home plate and staring through the links.
    I stood with them.
    Things seemed tense to me. You could see why. It was only morning but the sky looked dark and threatening. Once, a few years ago, it had rained every night of the Karnival except Thursday. Everybody took a beating when that happened. The grips and carnies worked grimly now, in silence.
    Cheryl and Denise lived up the street across from one another. They were friends but I think only because of what Zelda Gilroy on The Dobie Gillis Show used to call propinquity. They didn’t have much in common. Cheryl was a tall skinny brunette who would probably be pretty a few years later but now she was all arms and legs, taller than I was and two years younger. She had two brothers—Kenny and Malcolm. Malcolm was just a little kid who sometimes played with Woofer. Kenny was almost my age but a year behind me in school.
    All three kids were very quiet and well-behaved. Their parents, the Robertsons, took no shit but I doubt that by nature they were disposed to give any.
    Denise was Eddie’s sister. Another type entirely.
    Denise was edgy, nervous, almost as reckless as her brother, with a marked propensity toward mockery. As though all the world were a bad joke and she was the only one around who knew the punchline.
    “It’s David, ” she said. And there was the mockery, just pronouncing my name. I didn’t like it but I ignored it. That was the way to handle Denise. If she got no rise she got no payoff and it made her more normal eventually.
    “Hi Cheryl. Denise. How’re they doing?”
    Denise said, “I think that’s the Tilt-a-Whirl there. Last year that’s where they put the Octopus.”
    “It could still be the Octopus,” said Cheryl.
    “Unh-unh. See those platforms?” She pointed to the wide sheets of metal. “The Tilt-a-Whirl’s got platforms. Wait till they get the cars out. You’ll see.”
    She was right. When the cars came out it was the Tilt-a-Whirl. Like her father and her brother Eddie, Denise was good at mechanical things, good with tools.
    “They’re worried about rain,” she said.
    “ They’re worried.” said Cheryl. “ I’m worried! ” She sighed in exasperation. It was very exaggerated. I smiled. There was always something sweetly serious about Cheryl. You just knew her favorite book was Alice in Wonderland . The truth was, I liked her.
    “It won’t rain,” Denise said.
    “How do you know?”
    “It just won’t.” Like she wouldn’t let it.
    “See that there?” She pointed to a huge gray and white truck rolling back to the center of the soccer field. “I bet that’s the Ferris wheel. That’s where they had it last year and the year before. Want to see?”
    “Sure,” I said.
    We skirted the Tilt-a-Whirl and some kiddie boat rides they were unloading on the macadam, walked along the cyclone fence that separated the playground from the brook, cut through a row of tents going up for the ring-toss and bottle-throw and whatever, and came out onto the field. The grips had just opened the doors to the truck. The painted grinning clown head on the doors was split down the middle. They started pulling out the girders.
    It looked like the Ferris wheel all right.
    Denise said, “My dad says somebody fell off last year in Atlantic City. They stood up. You ever stand up?”
    Cheryl frowned. “Of course not.”
    Denise turned to me.
    “I bet you never did, did you?”
    I ignored the tone. Denise always had to work so hard to be such a brat all the time.
    “No,” I said. “Why would I?”
    “Cause it’s fun! ”
    She was grinning and she should have been pretty when she grinned. She had good white teeth and a lovely, delicate mouth. But something always went wrong with Denise’s smile. There was always