5. Chapter Five #2
I lift my hood over my head and smirk at the poor fella who has no idea what I’m dragging him into. Benson –– done for. Blue –– a goner. Percy doesn’t talk enough. So, Rowan is my new favorite man.
I shove my hands into the pockets of my hoodie and stare up ahead.
“Are we just going for a walk? What are we doing?”
I turn and give him a wide grin. Then I put an arm around his shoulder and pull him in. He’s two inches shorter than me, so he’s perfect to manhandle. This poor guy can’t tell the difference between an inconvenience and an opportunity.
Rowan says, “You can’t handle the fact that they’re breaking the house rules, and you wanted to come out here to cry?”
I point ahead at the stop sign. “Do you know what this street is called?”
He pauses, looking ahead.
“Come on, say it,” I encourage him.
“Hawthorne Street,” he mumbles.
I smack his chest. “No, Row. This is the place where dreams come true, yeah? Yes! And do you know why those rules were made?”
Rowan rubs his chin, trying to push me off. “Your dad would kill you if you got distracted.”
I shrug. “You didn’t need to go that deep there, buddy.” I release him and walk backward. “Do you know why dreams come true?” I point at him. “Because of the rules.”
“So, you’re making me walk around the block because you needed air? Are you going to start crying like that one time because I ––”
I stop in my tracks. “Row, where is the location of my bedroom?”
“Upstairs,” he deadpans.
“No, it’s between Benson’s and Blue’s.”
It takes him a moment to register what I’m implying, but once he catches on, he raises his eyebrows and says, “Oh.”
“Yeah.” I wave my hand towards my mouth. “All I hear is oh, Benson baby from one wall and then oh, Blue oh my god on the other. I need the fucking fresh air with an equal.”
“An equal?”
“Yeah,” I say, looking at the house three doors down from us. “You, me, and Percy need to stick together.”
“Weren’t you just saying that Blue is your new favorite guy?”
I wave that off. “That was last week, and now he has a girlfriend.”
I stop and smile at him because it’s showtime.
“Where the fuck are you going?” Rowan whisper-yells at me as I dart off into our neighbor’s yard.
I wave my hand over for him to follow, and he only does so with an eye roll.
“We’re gonna get arrested for trespassing!”
Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes.
“If we get caught ––”
“We’re not getting caught.” I shove a branch out of my face, and it snaps back into his. “You should be honored I let you tag along, honestly. People would pay for this.”
“It’s eleven o’clock. We’re walking into a bush.”
“It’s a hydrangea, Row. Show some respect.”
We stand for a second, and he’s right that it’s cold as fuck out here.
“Here’s the thing about Hawthorne Street,” I tell Rowan. “This is sacred ground, man. This is the last good street in America.”
“It’s a cul-de-sac.”
“It’s a brotherhood.” I gesture at the dark houses, the porch lights, the whole sleeping block.
“You know what we had? At the start of the year? Five of us. Five. The house rules in full effect. No girls, no distractions, no falling in love, ride it out together to the bitter end.” I count them off on my fingers and run out of grievances at three.
“And what do we have now? Benson — gone. Blue — gone. You and Percy are the only soldiers I’ve got left, and Percy doesn’t even talk. ”
“You and me and Percy,” Rowan says, flat.
“You and me and Percy. The last men standing.” I clap him on the back. “When the dust settles, brother, it’s gonna be the three of us in that house, eighty years old, no women, no rules broken, just—” I glance back over my shoulder at the house.
I’m thinking about how fleeting this all is.
“—just dignity,” I finish.
“You’re going to wake somebody up,” Rowan says.
“I’m being quiet.”
“We’re going through our neighbor’s hydrangeas.” Rowan pauses. “What exactly are we doing?”
“Getting dirt.”
“Dirt?” he whispers, looking down. “What?”
“Just keep up.” I creep along the hedge toward the side of the house, where Aspen’s window throws a square of light onto the grass. I know it’s hers. I’ve lived three doors down for three years, and a man notices things.
“Okay. Listen.” I pull Rowan down into a crouch. “Here’s the mission. That woman in there is spoiled. She’s mean. She’s got skeletons, Rowan, I can feel it, a girl that put-together is hiding something, and we are simply here, as concerned citizens, to count them.”
“This is a felony.”
“It’s a fact-finding mission.”
“Stanley—”
“Reconnaissance. Say it with me.”
He does not say it with me. He’s got his hood up like that’ll make him less of an accomplice.
I duck-walk across the side yard toward the window with the light still on, the one I clocked from my own kitchen at two in the morning two nights ago.
I get to the glass, and I cup my hands around my eyes, and I look in.
There it is.
My heart starts pumping.
“Mother fucker.”
My stick.
Leaning against her bedroom wall in the dark, by the window, like it lives there.
Not shoved in a closet. Not buried in a garage.
Not snapped over a knee, which, frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
Set out. Leaned up. Placed. In the room where she sleeps and gets dressed and sits at that desk and writes her cold little reports on me — my stick, standing in the corner like it pays rent.
And I’m speechless.
That’s twice tonight. The empty slot in the rack, and now this, and both times my brain just malfunctions and stops.
No material in the chamber. Something shifts under my ribs that I don’t have a punchline ready for, so I do the only thing I know how, which is bury it fast, before it grows legs and starts walking around in me.
I stare at my stick. She didn’t hide it. She kept it where she could see it.
“Rowan.” I wave a hand behind me without looking away from the glass. “Rowan, come here, you have to see—”
Headlights swing across the yard.
A car drives by, but Rowan doesn’t do threat assessment.
Rowan just hears his own thoughts, which I’m assuming is witness and felony all at once.
When I turn around, he’s already halfway across the lawn doing the highest-knee tiptoe retreat I’ve ever seen a grown man attempt, a cartoon burglar fleeing the scene of a crime he didn’t want to be at in the first place.
He never sees the stick, which means nobody knows but me.
“You’re on your own, Stan,” Rowan says as he darts off onto the sidewalk. So much for my wingman.
I’m still crouched at the window, grinning, when the porch light snaps on three feet to my left and the side door opens.
It’s Linwood. She’s in fuzzy socks and an enormous sweater, arms crossed, looking down at me like I’m something the cat brought up.
“Are you fucking serious, Ermington?”
“Linwood!” I straighten up and brush hydrangea off my shirt. “Funny seeing you here.”
“You’re in my yard.” She looks at the side of the house. “At my window.”
“I live three doors down, princess. Technically, we’re neighbors. This is a neighborly visit.”
“Don’t call me that.” She keeps the same face on. “Go home.”
“Did you have a productive evening, Linwood?”
Her face does the smallest thing in the world — a flicker, a freeze, a recalculation — does he know, he can’t know, there’s no way he knows — and then I watch her decide that there’s no way I could possibly know and lock it all back down behind the thermostat.
She steps back inside and shuts the door without another word.
I stand in her yard and grin at the closed door, because at the end of the day, grinning at things is the only sport I’ve never lost at.
She thinks she got away with it.
She thinks the stick is hers now.
I walk up to the side door and knock.