The Neighbors Read Online Free Page A

outdoor kind, lockable from both the outside as well as in.
    A nagging seed of misgiving sprouted within his mind. Mickey was a bit weird, and he was severely lacking in the housekeeping department, but who put a lock like that on an interior door? It was like a big red button marked
Do Not Push
.
    A moment ago Drew hadn’t cared what was behind door number three, yet suddenly he had to know. He rattled the knob—locked—then gave the door a shove with his shoulder, but it didn’t budge. He shot a glance down the hall, two thoughts simultaneously bumping against each other: first, that the key to the third hallway door was almost certainly somewhere on Mickey’s desk; second, that Drew had forgotten to buy a replacement lightbulb for the burned-out one in the hallway.
    He found himself staring into Mickey’s room again, peering at the desk in the corner, carefully considering whether breaching the perimeter of Mick’s bedroom was justified, or whether it just made him a nosy asshole.
    Mickey’s engine rumbled past the front window, and Drew froze. He had the urge to bolt back to his room, to pretend he’d never left his little space—as though standing in the hallway were some sort of crime. He pulled Mick’s door closed and cleared his throat, trying to act casual as he started toward the living room.Then Mickey filled the front doorway, and Drew immediately felt guilty—cradling a bag of McDonald’s in one arm like a baby, Mickey offered his new roommate a crooked grin.
    “Hey,” he said, “thanks for cleaning the bathroom, man. It looks great. I really don’t know how it got that bad.”
    Drew blinked.
    “I got burgers,” Mickey said. “Figured you’d want to eat.”
    “Um, yeah...totally.”
    “Cool,” Mickey said, stepping across the living room and sinking into the couch. “You still game?”
    A smile crept into the corners of Drew’s mouth. As the two started into a round of Madden NFL he started to relax. This was the same Mickey Fitch whom Andrew had idolized in the past. Butterflies sprang to life inside his stomach when Mickey muttered a familiar battle cry: “Game on.”
    And suddenly, blissfully, Andrew was a kid again.

    The day Andrew’s dad didn’t come home was the day Julianne Morrison stopped being his mom.
    Julie was born and raised in Creekside, and while most people ran from the little Kansas town dead-center in the middle of the state, she had always loved it like a kid loved Disneyland—unconditionally; the happiest place on earth. She had grown up in the same house Andrew was raised in: a two-story ranch-style home with a charming wraparound porch and a bench swing that hung just beyond the back door. His grandfather, PopPop, had painted that porch a pretty pastel blue—Gamma’s favorite color—and had built the swing out of bits of scrap wood when Julie was a little girl. He and Gamma would sit on it for hours during the summer, watching the sun dip beneath an ocean of farmland, lighting up the wheat like reeds of gold.
    After both Gamma and PopPop passed, six-year-old Drew moved into that beautiful house with his parents. He hadn’t wanted to at first, convinced it would be haunted. But they were happy there. The three of them would have movie nights every weekend; one Fourth of July, they played hide-and-seek in the wheat behind the house. Andrew had squatted between the tall reeds, waiting to be found. When he heard his parents getting close, he peeked between the flag-like leaves. He caught them kissing beneath a starry sky, the pop of distant fireworks echoing across the landscape.
    But then things started to change. Rather than watching Saturday-morning cartoons with him the way they used to, his mom and dad drifted through rooms of the house like ghosts. They avoided one another, and when they did run into each other—usually around dinnertime—Drew would listen to them gnaw at each other while he silently ate his food. He wasn’t sure what had