Page 1 of The Neighbor

PROLOGUE

Fifteen yearsago

The vivid greenof the trees is what I’ll remember about that day. The rain that had drenched the area for three days had finally come to an end, and when the sun came out after all those hours without it, I looked up and saw the truest green leaves on the tree outside my bedroom that I’d ever seen.

That was yesterday. The day I decided to do it. The sun was out, the leaves on the trees were green, and I decided to finally do what I’d thought about.

Kill Amanda Michaels.

That actually sounds far more definitive than how it happened. The thought first came to me that day in late June when she and I were walking through the woods at the end of my street. They sit there like some throwback to before people decided houses and roads were more important than enjoying nature. I’ve strolled through those woods, up and down the paths by myself for years, but one day she appeared, and I wasn’t alone anymore.

I’ll never forget the first words she said to me. “Hey, what’s up? I’m Amanda.” Her voice was what I imagined angels might sound like. Well, that might be an exaggeration, but she sounded sweet and kind. Then she smiled, and all I could think of was what it would be like to kiss her.

She told me she was sixteen and had been visiting the woods since she was around twelve. I think that must have been a lie since I’d never seen her there, but I didn’t question her on that. She liked to talk, and as she did and we walked along the worn paths together, every so often I’d turn to look at her mouth. She had what my mother calls a Cupid’s Bow mouth. The peaks of her upper lip fascinated me. My lips looked like every other mouth I’d ever seen, but hers was different.

Kissable. The kind you wanted to taste.

She never asked me how old I was. She probably assumed I was close to her age since I looked so young. I’ve always looked much younger than I actually am. My mother used to say it was because I’m a Capricorn. She loves all that new age astrology shit. According to her, somehow my being born in January makes my face appear younger than my true age.

One day as we walked along the path we always took, I stopped and kissed Amanda. To my surprise, she didn’t protest or run away. Girls tend to do that when you don’t ask and just steal a kiss, but not her. She kissed me back with that Cupid’s Bow mouth that felt soft and tasted like peppermint because of the lip gloss she used. I’ll never forget the smell of that lip gloss either. It was like how my house always smelled around the holidays.

After we finished kissing, she smiled at me and poked her finger into my chest. “That was nice. I was wondering when you would finally kiss me. What took you so long?”

I don’t remember my answer to her question. I didn’t think a couple weeks was that long to wait before kissing a girl,especially one you didn’t ask first. Whatever I said, she just chuckled and started walking again. I followed her, watching her long blond hair sway left and right behind her as she talked about some vacation her family had planned for later that summer.

She usually did most of the talking, which was fine with me. I didn’t like to talk that much, and girls always made me feel foolish, so her handling most of the conversation worked out in my favor. Not that she ever complained. I had the sense she liked to talk, so things seemed right.

Day after day, we met up in the woods and walked and talked. I never made the effort to go to her house, which I guess would have been polite of me. I knew where she lived, though. Across the street and four houses down from my house. I’d look out my bedroom window at what I imagined was her bedroom every night.

And then those three days of rain came, and all I could think was I couldn’t see Amanda because of the damn weather. Not that a few days of downpours were that out of the ordinary in western Maryland. We got those a lot in the spring and summer.

There was something about those three days being stuck inside and not being able to see her that made me go a little crazy. I sat in my bedroom staring out the window at her house and the window I imagined was hers and wished she’d wave her hand out the window so I could see her.

She never did, though.

I saw her father’s truck come and go from the house with her sisters and her mother but never Amanda. What was she doing that she didn’t have to go to eat or to church with them? Was she spending time with someone else?

As the minutes and hours ticked by, I created an entire scenario about what she was up to. Each time I thought about it, I added another detail. At first, I decided she must have afriend over. Girls love to hang out at one another’s houses and do whatever girls do. Makeup. Their hair. She did sometimes wear braids, so she and a friend were probably hanging out and braiding each other’s hair.

Then it occurred to me that maybe her friend wasn’t a girl like her. Maybe it was a boy. I dismissed that idea at first. What kind of mother and father would let their sixteen-year-old daughter stay at home with a boy while they were gone out to eat or to church? Parents don’t usually approve of that kind of thing.

But she spent hours in the woods every day and no one ever came looking for her. So maybe they didn’t watch over her like a hawk as other parents did.

The thought of another boy with her made me feel like I wanted to throw up. She kissed me. Weren’t we together? No, we’d never been out on a date, but some people might call what we did in the woods dating. It had never progressed further than kissing, but was that a bad thing? Was there something wrong with not moving faster?

I watched that window I was sure was hers for hours on end. I never saw a light come on when it got dark, but the reasons why didn’t make me feel any better. She was in that room in the dark with someone. He was tasting her lips, those lips named for a cherub’s weapon. The lips of the girl I thought of as an angel.

Whatever else he was doing I couldn’t let myself imagine. I didn’t want to think about Amanda being that kind of girl.

By the third day, I was sure I’d never see her again in the woods. She’d stop coming to walk with me because she had someone new in her life. Someone she liked enough to spend day and night with. Someone her parents thought was good enough to let him stay with her while they went out.

Someone not me.

Then I woke up that next day and the rain was gone. The sun shone down on everything, making the grass and the treesso green. Finally, I’d be able to go back to the woods, but would Amanda be there too?

It turned out she didn’t come back to the woods that first sunny day after all the rain. I walked those paths alone as I had all those other times before she appeared that one day. After the storm, everything smelled so fresh and alive.

And I hated all of it.