Page 47 of The Neighbor

Today’s movie is a surprise. Well, not to my mother. She’s insisted on keeping the movie choice for this week a secret. I bet it’s something gushy with romance. Those are her favorites. I like action movies more, but since it’s her pick this week, lovey-dovey will probably be how I spend two hours this afternoon.

I thought maybe it would still be raining this weekend, but thankfully, the clouds disappeared, and the sun finally returned yesterday. Not that I mind sitting in a theater when it’s raining out, but I’m tired of being cooped up inside. Three days of rain is depressing.

If I said anything about the weather to my mother, she’d probably say we should skip movie day so I could go outside to play. “Blow the dust off yourself,” is how she likes to put it. As if being inside for a few days made me turn all dusty.

After I finish straightening up my room like I have to every Saturday, I bound downstairs to find her on the phone with one of her friends. I swear my mother walks around with that thing attached to her ear ninety percent of the time. Whoever she’s on with, they’re doing most of the talking because all she says whenever she passes me in the living room is “Oh,” or “Is that right?”

Those are her phrases she always says when she paces and talks while the other person chatters on about whatever it isthey called about. My mother’s friends are all like her—they have kids, they live in our neighborhood, and they love to talk on the phone.

My father used to joke that on my mother’s final day on earth they’d find her dead on the floor with the phone up to her ear. Whenever he’d say that, she’d give him a nasty look intended to let him know he needed to cut it out.

But he didn’t.

Not until that one day I heard them having a huge fight down here while I was upstairs supposed to be asleep. She told him to never say that again to her. That talking about her death was the cruelest thing he could ever do. She was so angry that day that I thought she might burst into tears because that’s what happens whenever she’s that upset. She starts crying while she’s still yelling.

But she didn’t cry that day. She simply put her foot down and told him to never say that again or he wouldn’t like what happened next. I didn’t hear what he said back to her that night. I was too afraid to listen because I didn’t want to hear her say she was leaving. The thing is, though, my father has never said that again.

My mother smiles as she walks by me on her way into the kitchen and motions for me to get something from the refrigerator before we leave. I’ve gotten pretty good at lip reading, at least with her. I’m not sure I can do it with anyone else, but she says basically the same things all the time when she’s on the phone, so even if I’m not sure what exactly she’s telling me to do, I can take an educated guess.

That’s what my teacher says a hypothesis is. An educated guess. I like science class and Mr. Masters, who always tells us to use our brains and figure things out instead of having other people do it for us. He told me after class last week when he asked me to stay behind that I have a great mind and he thinksI could be a detective when I grow up. He only thinks that because I figured out who was stealing Sandi Mercer’s lunch for a whole week.

It wasn’t that hard a case to solve. Sandi likes to leave her lunch in her cubby at the back of the class every morning, and I kept seeing Carl walking back there right before lunchtime. Then he’d disappear to the boy’s bathroom with his backpack. Mr. Masters thought my detection of the thief was ingenious. All I could think was how gross it was to eat an egg salad sandwich in the boy’s bathroom.

Carl got in trouble and swears he’s going to get back at me for it. I told Mr. Masters I was afraid what he would do, but he promised nothing will happen. He says most people never follow through on their threats.

I do, though. My father always says that if I say I’m going to do something, I do it. He never has to worry. I’m like that when people hurt me or my friends too. I never forget.

And I never fail to follow through.

Finally, my mother finishes her call and sits down across from me at the kitchen table. “Are you ready for our Saturday movie time?” she asks with a big smile that makes her eyes look like they sparkle.

“I am! I’m betting it’s something about love, though. Isn’t it?”

Her smile doesn’t fade even a tiny bit as she shakes her head. “Not telling. We’ll leave in a couple minutes, so go upstairs and brush your teeth.”

Every part of me sags against the chair at her order. “Mom, why? I’m going to be eating popcorn in like half an hour. The first ten handfuls will taste like peppermint. Yuck.”

She points down the hallway toward the stairs and gives me a fake angry face. “Right now. You don’t leave this house without brushing your teeth, and as for eating popcorn, that’sexactly the reason why you have to brush those teeth. I swear you kids are going to be the death of me about this issue.”

That seems a little extreme, but I don’t say anything because I know she’s not going to change her mind. Nobody’s going to die because I don’t have clean teeth, though. That I know for sure.

I trudge up the stairs—that’s what she calls it when I don’t want to do what she says but I do it anyway. Trudge. My father calls it stomping. Whatever it is, I end up in the bathroom doing exactly as she ordered and hating every minute of it, especially since I already brushed my teeth right after breakfast this morning.

After I rinse and wipe my mouth, I look at myself in the mirror and think the same thing I always do when I look at my reflection lately.

When am I going to start looking like my sister?

She’s gorgeous, and I swear it’s like I’m never going to blossom, as my mother calls it. She was beautiful by the time she was my age, but here I am at eleven years old, nearly twelve, and I still look like the same person I always have.

No long straight hair like her. Just frizzy hair like I always have.

No pretty face with big blue eyes. Yes, my eyes are blue, but not like hers. I don’t know what makes her eyes different, but they are. When people see hers, they say she’s stunning. When they see mine, they say it’s good that I’m smart.

I look out the window and see my sister walking up the street toward the woods. That’s what you get to do when you’re sixteen. You get to go hang out in the woods on a beautiful, sunny day with a boy.

She’s never said his name, but I know he’s the boy from across the street. The weird one who always frowns when hesees me. Unlike the other boys she spends time with, he never has anyone around from school.

I asked her about him the other day when it was raining and she was sitting by her window staring out across the street, but she brushed me off. She likes him more than she likes the other boys who call on the phone for her. I know it. She acts differently about him than she does with the others.