The Neighbors Are Watching Read Online Free Page A

open as if by cartoon matchsticks, had stopped leaking tears. No need to worry about waking him now. She pulled her underwear up and slid out of bed. She took a last look at him; his arms sprawled in postcoital surrender as if he’d been shot down where he lay.
    In a hurry and unwilling to root around in the dark for a T-shirt or pajama bottoms, Allison grabbed a bathrobe off a hook on the back of their bedroom door. She pulled it tight across her naked breasts and cinched the belt hard.
    Never mentioned he had a child. Not once. Not even when she was carrying one herself
.
    Allison padded barefoot down the beige-carpeted stairs in the dark, making a beeline for the kitchen and the cold oblivion that waited for her in the freezer. She had to stop thinking, had to turn off her brain, if only for a few hours. She visualized the bottle of Absolut Citron and her handexcavating it from behind the bags of frozen vegetables. She didn’t turn on the kitchen light. No need. A tumbler sat out on the faux granite countertop. Perfect. Allison yanked open the freezer handle, bathing herself in a frosty mist of light. She reached and rustled inside, searching. And stopped. There was a noise so faint it took a second for her to realize she’d heard it. Sounded like a sigh. Allison felt cold tension gather between her shoulder blades.
    “I couldn’t sleep.”
    Allison jumped back, her throat closing and choking off a scream as she turned her head in the direction of the voice. “Jesus!” Her hands were already shaking. “Jesus, you—you—”
    Diana was sitting on a rattan chair in the breakfast nook, barely visible between the pale light of the still-open freezer and the moon coming through the window behind her. Allison could make out the round outline of the white T-shirt stretched impossibly taut over Diana’s pregnant belly and the dark tendrils of her curly hair falling down her shoulders.
    “I didn’t mean to scare you,” Diana said. “I thought you saw me when you came in.”
    “I—” Allison had to catch her breath. She closed the freezer door and flicked on the kitchen light, causing them both to cringe in the sudden glare. “Of course you scared me,” Allison said finally. “Why would I have seen you sitting here in the dark?”
    Diana drew up her shoulders, her hands moving to her belly as if to protect it, but Allison could see that her eyes sparked with anger. Sulky teenage anger. Because that’s what she was—a sulky, pissed-off, pregnant teenager. Allison wanted that drink more than ever.
    “I couldn’t sleep,” Diana said again—more defiant now. “Too much
noise.
”
    Allison took the tumbler, still clutched so tightly in her hand she was surprised it hadn’t shattered, filled it with water straight from the tap, and drank as much of it as she could before the chemical chlorine taste madeher gag. Normally, Allison would never even consider drinking San Diego tap water, which was so hard it was almost crunchy, but she didn’t care—the watercooler was beyond Diana on the other side of the table and Allison just didn’t want to have to maneuver around the girl to get to it.
    “It’s summer,” Allison said. “Everyone has their windows open and the houses are close together. Sometimes it gets a little noisy at night.”
    “Not that kind of noise,” Diana said. “You know where I’m sleeping? It’s right below your bedroom.” Diana waited a beat for it to sink in. “I can hear everything, you know?” Diana made a sound, some kind of guttural grunt, and Allison felt her breath catch in her throat. “You two were—”
    “Stop it!” Allison gripped the side of the sink. Shame spread through her in a thick red flush, heating her thighs, her neck, her face. She was hot now and felt sick—filthy. Whatever happened next—tomorrow, next month, next year—wouldn’t matter at all because Allison knew her relationship with this girl would forever be defined by this horrible, horrible