My Life Next Door (5 page)

“Reasonable,” Jase tells her. “We need to change George’s sheets, though.” He takes a few of the plastic bags, setting them down on the floor by the fridge.

She narrows her eyes at him. They’re green like Jase’s. She’s pretty, for a mom, with this open, friendly face, crinkles at the corners of her eyes as though she smiles a lot, the family olive skin, curly brown hair. “What naptime story did you read him?”

“
Mom
. Curious George. I edited it too. There was a little hot-air balloon incident I thought might be problematic.” Then he turns to me. “Oh, sorry. Samantha, this is my mom. Mom, Samantha Reed. From next door.”

She gives me a big smile. “I didn’t even see you standing there. How I overlooked such a pretty girl, I don’t know. I do like the shimmery lip gloss.”

“Mom.” Jase sounds a little embarrassed.

She turns back to him. “This is just the first wave. Can you get the other bags?”

While Jase brings in a seemingly endless series of groceries, Mrs. Garrett chats away to me as though we’ve always known each other. It’s so weird sitting there in the kitchen with this
woman I’ve seen from a distance for ten years. Like finding yourself in an elevator with a celebrity. I repress the urge to say “I’m a huge fan.”

I help her put away the groceries, which she manages to do while breast-feeding. My mother would die. I try to pretend I’m used to viewing this kind of thing all the time.

An hour at the Garretts’ and I’ve already seen one of them half-naked, and quite a lot of Mrs. Garrett’s breast. All I need now is for Jase to take off his shirt.

Fortunately for my equilibrium, he doesn’t, although he does announce, after carrying in all the bags, that he needs a shower, beckons me to follow, and marches upstairs.

I do follow. This is the crazy part. I don’t even know him. I don’t know what kind of person he is at all. Though I figure that if his normal-looking mother lets him take a girl up to his room, he’s not going to be a mad rapist. Still, what would Mom think now?

Walking into Jase’s room is like walking into…well, I’m not sure…A forest? A bird sanctuary? One of those tropical habitats they have at zoos? It’s filled with plants, really tall ones and hanging ones and succulents and cacti. There are three parakeets in a cage and a huge, hostile-looking cockatoo in another. Everywhere I look, there are other creatures. A tortoise in an enclosure beside the bureau. A bunch of gerbils in another cage. A terrarium with some sort of lizardy-looking thing. A ferret in a little hammock in another cage. A gray-and-black furry indistinguishable rodent-like beast. And finally, on Jase’s neatly made bed, an enormous white cat so fat it looks like a balloon with tiny furry appendages.

“Mazda.” Jase beckons me to sit in a chair by the bed. When I do, Mazda jumps into my lap and commences shedding madly, trying to nurse on my shorts, and making low rumbling sounds.

“Friendly.”

“Understatement. Weaned too early,” Jase says. “I’m going to take that shower. Make yourself at home.”

Right. In his room. No problem
.

I did on occasion visit Michael’s room, but usually in the dark, where he recited gloomy poetry he’d memorized. And it took a lot longer than two conversations to get me there. I briefly dated this guy Charley Tyler last fall too, until we realized that my liking his dimples and him liking my blond hair, or, let’s face it, my boobs, wasn’t enough basis for a relationship. He never got me into his room. Maybe Jase Garrett is some sort of snake charmer. That would explain the animals. I look around again. Oh God, there
is
a snake. One of those orange, white, and black scary-looking ones that I know are harmless but completely freak me out anyway.

The door opens, but it’s not Jase. It’s George, now wearing boxer shorts but no shirt. He comes over and plunks down on the bed, looking at me somberly. “Did you know that the space shuttle
Challenger
blew up?”

I nod. “A long time ago. They have perfected things much more now.”

“I’d be ground crew at NASA. Not on the shuttle. I don’t want to die ever.”

I find myself wanting to hug him. “Me neither, George.”

“Is Jase already going to marry you?”

I start coughing again. “Uh. No. No, George. I’m only seventeen.” As if that’s the only reason we aren’t engaged.

“I’m this many,” George holds up four slightly grubby fingers. “But Jase is seventeen and a half. You could. Then you could live in here with him. And have a big family.”

Jase strides back into the room, of course, midway through this proposition. “George. Beat it. Discovery Channel is on.”

George backs out of the room, but not before saying, “His bed’s really comfortable. And he never pees in it.”

The door closes and we both start laughing.

“Oh Jesus.” Jase, now clad in a different green T-shirt and pair of navy running shorts, sits down on the bed. His hair is wavier when wet, and little drops of water drip onto his shoulders.

“It’s okay. I love him,” I say. “I think I
will
marry him.”

“You might want to think about that. Or at least be really careful about the bedtime reading.”

He smiles lazily at me.

I need to get out of this guy’s room. Fast. I stand up, start to cross the room, then notice a picture of a girl stuck on the mirror over the bureau. I walk closer to take a look. She has curly black hair in a ponytail and a serious expression. She’s also quite pretty. “Who’s this?”

“My ex-girlfriend. Lindy. She had the sticker made at the mall. Now I can’t get it off.”

“Why ex?” Why am I asking this?

“She got to be too dangerous,” Jase says. “You know, now that I think of it, I guess I could put another sticker on top of it.”

“You could.” I lean closer to the mirror, examining her perfect features. “Define
dangerous
.”

“She shoplifted. A lot. And she only ever wanted to go to the mall on dates. Hard not to look like an accomplice. Not my favorite way to spend an evening, doing time, waiting to get bailed out.”

“My sister shoplifted too,” I say, as though this is some nifty thing we have in common.

“Ever take you along?”

“No, thank God. I’d die if I got in trouble.”

Jase looks at me intently, as though what I’ve said is profound. “No, you wouldn’t, Samantha. You wouldn’t die. You’d just be in trouble and then you’d move on.”

He’s standing behind me, too close again. He smells like minty shampoo and clean, clean skin. Apparently any distance at all is too close.

“Yeah, well, I do have to move on. Home. I have stuff to do.”

“You sure?”

I nod vigorously. Just as we get to the kitchen, the screen door slams and Mr. Garrett comes in, followed by a small boy. Small, but bigger than George. Duff? Harry?

Like everyone else in the family up till now, I’ve only seen Jase’s father from a distance. Close up, he looks younger, taller, with the kind of charisma that makes the room feel full just because he’s in it. His hair’s the same wavy deep brown as Jase’s, but shot with gray rather than blond streaks. George runs over and attaches himself to his dad’s leg. Mrs. Garrett steps back from the sink to smile at him. She lights up the
way I’ve seen girls at school do, sighting their crushes across crowded rooms.

“Jack! You’re home early.”

“We hit the three-hour mark at the store with no one coming in.” Mr. Garrett brushes a strand of her hair away from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “I decided my time would be better spent getting in some more training with Jase, so I scooped up Harry from his playdate and came on home.”

“I get to run the stopwatch! I get to run the stopwatch!” Harry shouts.

“My turn! Daddy! It’s
my
turn!” George’s face crumples.

“You can’t even read the numbers,” Harry says. “No matter how fast or slow he runs, you always say it’s been eleventeen minutes. It’s
my
turn.”

“I brought home an extra stopwatch from the store,” Mr. Garrett says. “You up for it, Jason?”

“He has Samantha over—” Mrs. Garrett begins, but I interrupt.

“I was just leaving.”

Mr. Garrett turns to me. “Well, hello, Samantha.” His big hand envelops mine and he looks at me intently, then grins. “So you’re the mysterious girl next door.”

I glance quickly at Jase, but his face is inscrutable. “I am from next door. But no real mystery going on there.”

“Well, it’s good to catch a closer look. I didn’t know Jase had—”

“I’m going to walk her out, Dad. Then I’ll get ready to lift—that’s what I’m doing first today, right?”

As we head out the kitchen door, Mrs. Garrett urges me to visit anytime.

“I’m glad you came over,” Jase says when we reach the end of the driveway. “Sorry again about George.”

“I like George. What are you training for?”

“Oh, uh, football season. I’m cornerback this year. Maybe a shot at a scholarship, which, gotta say, would be a good thing.”

I stand there in the heat, squinting into the sun, wondering what to say next, how to make a good exit, or any exit, and why I’m bothering to make one when Mom won’t be home for hours. I take a step backward, land on a plastic shovel, stumble.

Jase’s hand shoots out. “Easy there.”

“Uh. Right. Oopsie. Well. Good-bye.” After giving a quick, agitated wave, I hurry home.

Oopsie?

God, Samantha.

Chapter Six

Flip and Tracy come home, sunburned and rumpled, with fried clams and Birch beer and foot-long hot dogs from the Clam Shack. They lay it all out on the kitchen island, stopping to grab each other around the waist, pinch each other’s asses, kiss each other’s ears.

I wish I’d stayed longer at the Garretts’.
Why didn’t I?

Tim must still have custody of Nan’s cell, because this is what I get when I call:

“Listen, Heidi, it’s really not a good idea to for us to hang out together again.”

“It’s Samantha. Where’s Nan?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake. You do know we’re not
Siamese
twins, right? Why do you keep asking
me
this shit?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you keep answering her cell. Is she home?”

“I think so. Probably. Or not,” Tim says.

I hang up. The landline is busy and the Masons don’t have call waiting (“Just an electronic way to be rude,” according to Mrs. Mason), so I decide to bike to Nan’s house.

Tracy and Flip have moved to the living room couch, and there’s much giggling and murmuring. As I get to the hallway,
I hear Flip whisper, all urgent, “Oh baby, what you do to me.”
Gag
.

“You make me feel so good
insiiiiide,
” I sing back.

“Beat it,” calls Tracy.

It’s high tide, and hot, which means the salty smell of the sound is especially strong, nearly overcoming the marshy scent of the river. The two sides of town. I love them both. I love how you can tell the season and the time of day just by closing your eyes and taking a deep breath. I shut my eyes now, inhaling the thick warm air, then hear a startled screech and look just in time to swerve around a woman wearing a pink visor and socks under her sandals. Stony Bay’s on a little peninsula at the mouth of the Connecticut River. We have a wide harbor, so tourists like our town. It’s three times as crowded in the summer, so I guess I should know better than to bike with my eyes closed.

Nan opens the door when I knock, house phone to her ear. She smiles, then puts her index finger to her lips, jerking her chin toward the living room as she says into the phone, “Well, you
are
my first choice, so I really want to get a jump on the application.”

I always have the same feeling when I walk through the Masons’ front door. There are happy-faced Hummel figurines all over the place, and little wall plaques with Irish blessings on them, and doilies sprinkled on top of all the armchairs and even the television. When you go to the bathroom, the toilet paper is hidden underneath the puffy pink crocheted hoopskirt of a blank-eyed doll.

No books in the bookshelves, just more figurines and
photographs of Nan and Tim, very twinnish, in their early years. I study them for the millionth time as Nan spells out her address. Baby Nan and Tim dressed as Santa and Mrs. Claus. Toddler Nan and Tim, fluffy-haired and round-eyed, as chicks for Easter. Preschool Nan and Tim in a dirndl and lederhosen. The pictures stop abruptly when they turn about eight. If I remember correctly, they were dressed as Uncle Sam and Betsy Ross for the Fourth of July that year, and Tim bit the photographer.

In the pictures they look much more alike than they do now. They’re both redheaded and freckled. But, because life is unfair, Nan’s hair is a pale, washed-out strawberry blond, and she has freckles everywhere and blond eyelashes. Tim’s got only a few stipples of freckles across his nose, and his brows and lashes are dark, while his hair is a deep russet. He’d be a knockout, if he weren’t always so out of it.

“I’m on hold with Columbia—getting my application,” Nan whispers. “I’m glad you came by. I’ve been totally sidetracked.”

“I called your cell but got Tim, and he wouldn’t look for you.”

“That’s where it is! God. He’s used up all his minutes and now he’s after mine. I’m going to kill him.”

“Couldn’t you just go to Columbia’s website and order the application?” I whisper, even though I know the answer. Nan’s hopeless with her computer—she keeps so many windows open at the same time and never shuts them—her laptop’s constantly crashing.

“My laptop’s in surgery with Macho Mitch again.” Mitch is the incredibly good-looking, if vaguely sinister, computer repair guy who makes house calls on Nan’s PC. Nan thinks he looks like Steve McQueen, her idol. I think he looks sulky
and annoyed because he’s constantly fixing the same problems.

“Thanks—yes, and when will this be sent out?” Nan says into the phone just as Tim wanders into the room, hair sticking up in all directions, wearing a ratty pair of tartan flannel pj bottoms and an Ellery Prep Lacrosse T-shirt. He doesn’t look at us, just roams over to the Hummel Noah’s Ark display on the window seat and rearranges the figures in obscene combinations.