Chapter 4
AVERY
Moving into my new house was amazing. It was only a small place, and it wouldn’t feature in any of those house flipper shows as anything except the “before” house, but it was all mine.
Well, mine and the bank’s. Well, the bank’s.
But on a teacher’s salary and with the economy the way it was, this little house was my best opportunity to get a start on the property ladder.
I wasn’t sure it counted as a property ladder if you basically intended to live on one rung for the rest of your life, but at least in my own place I’d never have to deal with landlords again.
No, Mrs. Finnester, that black mold was not caused by me taking too long in the shower.
It didn’t take long to unpack, mostly because I’d been living out of a couple of suitcases for the past few weeks, and I’d gotten rid of all my furniture before moving here.
My TV, which had been living in the trunk of my car, had surprisingly survived, so I set it up on the floor of the living room and then unrolled my air mattress in the main bedroom.
My old bed frame, which had seen me through childhood, had been getting wobbly as hell because I’d moved a bunch of times and it had never really recovered from being taken apart and put back together again, and I had a new one on order.
It was due to arrive next week, along with a dining table and chairs, a couch, some bookshelves, and a desk.
My first real adult furniture that I’d bought with my real adult paycheck and that hadn’t been purchased by my parents when I was on my way to college or scavenged from the curb outside the dorms after the graduating seniors dumped it there. Things would actually match.
My parents were coming to visit next week with a bunch of my stuff, like the boxes of books I’d had stored in their garage forever, so I hoped my new furniture would be here by then.
My air mattress and the TV on the floor wouldn’t exactly give off the adult, professional, and homeowner vibe that I was going for.
I was the youngest of seven kids, and I thought it was a little hard for them to let the last one go, you know? I wanted to show them that I had this.
It was the middle of the night when I realized I didn’t have this.
So, the thing about growing up in a house with six older siblings was that it was never quiet.
Never. You couldn’t even use the bathroom for more than thirty seconds without someone banging on the door.
Mealtimes were barely controlled chaos. Holidays?
Insane. And I’d moved from home straight to a college dorm, which hadn’t been much of an adjustment at all.
I was still sharing a room, still lining up for food, and still yelling at someone to turn their music down, I was trying to study.
After college I’d lived back at home again for a bit and then with roommates, but now, for the first time in my life, I was alone.
The motel hadn’t counted. The walls there had been thin and someone was usually talking right outside in the parking lot, and people were coming and going at all hours. It wasn’t as shady as I was making it sound, probably. Just, it hadn’t been quiet like this.
Quiet like, was that creaking sound the house settling or was it the footsteps of the knife-wielding killer encroaching on my bedroom? Or worse, what if it was a raccoon?
Okay, so maybe that wouldn’t be worse, but at least if I was going to be murdered, I wouldn’t have to worry about how to trap a raccoon.
Because that seemed like one of those things that other homeowners seemed to know, and they’d laugh at me because I didn’t.
Like replacing a washer, or fixing a lawnmower, or draining a water heater, or the million other things I’d never had to learn before.
The more I thought about it, the more it felt like maybe that knife-wielding killer was actually the best scenario here.
I wished I could say that I tossed and turned until morning, but I was too conscious that any movement might give away my position to the killer, so instead I lay there and stared at the door until the first rays of morning light filtered through the window.
A truck crunched its gears as it drove down the street, and a couple of birds squawked brightly.
I rolled off the air mattress onto the floor, climbed to my feet, and started the day feeling tired, itchy-eyed, and kind of stupid.
Nothing about my new house seemed threatening in the golden morning light.
I shuffled my way toward the kitchen and, after a bit of trial and error, found where I’d put the toaster yesterday.
For some reason it had seemed important that it had space in the cabinet, which was dumb because in practice I knew it’d be living on the counter with my coffee machine since I’d be using both of them every day.
My days of shitty gas station coffee were finally behind me, and that alone made buying a house worth it.
Yes, the coffee at Goose Run Gas was that bad.
I started the coffee machine and made some toast with peanut butter, eating it while I stood at the counter.
I looked out the kitchen window at the house next door as I ate.
I hadn’t paid too much attention to it when I was buying my place.
Maybe I should have. There were two trucks and a dirt bike crammed into the driveway, which tracked for a town like Goose Run.
I didn’t like the assumptions I made about the state of those vehicles or the family that owned them, but the sagging old couch on the front porch didn’t inspire any confidence that I was wrong.
But there weren’t any politically hostile flags flying, so maybe it would be fine.
And how much interaction was I likely to have with my neighbors anyway?
I poured my coffee into a travel mug—the only one I could find—and sipped silently, waiting for the caffeine to work its magic. With my body sufficiently fueled, I could start to tackle today’s jobs. Which meant going to buy some groceries so that I had more options than peanut butter and toast.
There was no grocery store in Goose Run.
As far as I could tell, the gas station was the only place to buy basics like bread and milk if you ran out.
To do a proper grocery run, I’d have to drive to South Hill, which had both a Food Lion and a Walmart.
Unless I wanted to stop at both, today would probably be a Walmart trip.
I wanted to get some more craft supplies for school.
My kids had already used up most of my popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners when we’d made masks.
And was there such a thing as too much construction paper?
I had a quick shower and got dressed, then headed for South Hill.
I was more excited to get craft supplies than I was to get groceries.
My first two weeks teaching had been exhausting but also exhilarating.
There was nothing better in the world than seeing kids who were excited to see me, and it was an absolute privilege to be able to teach them.
Even in two weeks, I’d seen them coming along by leaps and bounds as their confidence grew and they got to know me better.
There were a few shy kids who tried not to be noticed, but that was okay.
I wasn’t going to be the asshole teacher who forced them to the front of the class or anything.
I just made sure I took time to sit beside each one of them when everyone was coloring and asked about what they were doing, slowly bringing them out of their shell.
Of course there were total extroverts too.
Tyrell, who was going to be an astronaut and a movie star, loved the chance to stand up in front of everyone and read.
He couldn’t, not really, but he made up stories that more or less matched the illustrations in the picture books, and he was both clever and hilarious.
Mia started every day by telling the class what her puppy had done overnight—including eating Mommy’s underwear and then pooping it out again on the floor.
Her mom might be horrified to learn that Mia was an oversharer, but the kids thought it was fantastic.
And Gracie was a little warrior. She was fiercely protective of the shy kids, leaving a couple of them quietly bewildered but grateful when she insisted that she sit next to them for story time.
Gracie was one of nature’s organizers—something she obviously got from her mother because her father couldn’t organize his way out of a paper bag.
He could shimmy out of a pair of assless chaps just fine, though—and why was I even thinking about that?
Time to pay attention to the road, Avery.
It would be embarrassing to get in a crash because I couldn’t get John Wilder’s ass out of my mind.
The drive to South Hill wasn’t a long one, and I was able to park pretty close to the entrance to Walmart.
I went inside and grabbed a cart and headed for the craft supplies section.
Buying craft stuff was my happy place, and it would give me the energy for the less fun task of picking up the things I needed for the house, like a bath mat and a shower curtain and getting groceries.
I meandered up and down the craft aisle, adding construction paper and a giant pack of googly eyes to my cart.
The googly eyes weren’t for school. They were for my brother, Camden, whose favorite practical joke was putting googly eyes on everything.
It had honestly stopped being funny at least fifteen years ago and was now more of a weird family tradition.
You knew where Camden had been by following the number of household items that were now staring at you.
Camden was supposed to be coming up next week with my parents.
I’d give them to him when he left so he couldn’t use them in my place.