The Neighbors Read Online Free

turning from the window and glancing at her husband. Red sat in an over-stuffed leather recliner, his feet wrapped in a pair of slippers despite the Kansas heat.
    “I like him,” she said. “That truck is an eyesore, but he seems like a nice young man.”
    Red looked up from his newspaper, turned the page with a rustle.
    Harlow turned back to the window, pushed the curtain aside again with a manicured nail, and watched the house next door, waiting for it to speak to her. And it did. Within seconds, the front door swung open and Andrew appeared, trudging across that corpse of a lawn to the trash can beside the driveway. He flung a trash bag into the container—those sunflower yellow gloves flashing in the sun—before marching back inside. As soon as he was out of sight, Harlow tapped a nail against the curve of her bottom lip.
    “I should invite him over,” she said, shifting her weight from one heeled shoe to another. “He’d like a home-cooked meal.”
    They all liked a home-cooked meal. Because it was true what they said: the quickest way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and Andrew looked hungry.

    It was well after four o’clock when Mickey finally set foot out of his bedroom.
    Drew had spent the entire morning scrubbing the bathroom as best he could, and thanks to his wealth of supplies, it very likely hadn’t been as clean as it was in years. Sorting throughboxes in his room, he paused, held his breath, and listened to Mick track down the hall. A door shut, followed by the distinct sound of Mickey taking a leak. When the door opened, he prepared himself for Mick’s arrival, sure that his old friend would fill the space of his bedroom door.
Holy shit,
he’d say, wide-eyed like a kid on Christmas.
You have no idea how awesome that is—how awesome
you
are. That bathroom was disgusting. A wreck. I can’t believe I ever let it get so bad.
That’s when Drew would offer him a ghost of a smile and lie: it was nothing, no problem, no big deal.
    But Mickey didn’t appear.
    His heavy footfalls made a beeline for the living room instead.
    When he heard the front door slam and the engine of the black TransAm roar to life, Drew scrambled around the boxes that filled his room and peered out the window. Mick peeled out onto the street, then slammed the muscle car into first and flew up the road.
    “You’re welcome!” Drew yelled against the glass. When the sound of his words dissipated, the silence of the house felt heavy, oppressive.
    He shoved himself away from his window and veered into the hall. He wasn’t sure why he did it, why he stopped in front of Mickey’s door, or why his hand naturally drifted toward the knob. But curiosity got the best of him. He wanted to piece together just what kind of a person Mickey had become. Drew pushed the door open just enough to stick his head inside.
    The walls were covered in posters that boasted zombie-esque band members looking like they’d just dug themselves out of their own graves, with names like Mechanical Death and Post-War Suicide. There was a desk in the corner piled high with papers and cracked CD cases. A box of incense lay amid a pile of ash. A cheap acrylic lighter and a torn paper cup filled with change sat on an upturned milk crate beside the bed. Mickey’sfloor was invisible to the naked eye; clearly, he was untrained in the fine art of closet-keeping. The only thing that looked half-organized was a makeshift shelf Mick had constructed by screwing a two-by-four into the wall. An army of medieval-looking action figures were lined up there, still in their boxes, next to an impressive water bong that presided over the room. A twelve-gauge shotgun hung proudly over the shelf. Home defense. You never could be too careful.
    Closing Mickey’s door, Drew let his gaze pause on the door across the hall from his own. This one, he assumed, led to a third bedroom. But after trying the knob, he realized it wasn’t the same kind as the others. It was the