The Neighbors (14 page)

“You may think you do because we don’t know each other too well just yet,” Red told him. “But that’ll change. You’ll learn things about us, and we’ll learn things about you. For example, did you grow up in Creekside?”

Drew nodded. “My grandparents bought a house on Cedar before my mother was born. She inherited the house, and I grew up in it just like she did.”

“Your mother lives in town?” Red asked, sounding surprised. He shot a glance at his wife.

Again, Drew nodded, his eyes fixed on his hands, suddenly more uncomfortable with the topic than with his own wanton thoughts.

“What does she think of your new place?” he asked, dubious. “A bit of a hole, wouldn’t you say?”

“
Red
.” Drew looked up to catch Harlow batting her lashes at her husband. “Don’t be rude.”

“No, it’s OK,” Drew replied. “It’s true. It’s crap.”

It was pathetic in comparison to where he sat now—like a rich man asking a bum how he was enjoying his cardboard box on the corner of a busy street.

“She hasn’t seen it,” he confessed. “We didn’t part on the best of terms.” Another shrug, another pause. “But if she did, she probably wouldn’t see much wrong with it. Our house on Cedar is just as bad.”

Harlow joined them at the table with a frown. She reached for Drew’s hand—he tensed, and she removed it, a flicker of hurt punctuating the blue of her eyes.

“She doesn’t take care of the place so, you know, it isn’t like she’d raise hell over a dead lawn or a dirty kitchen.”

“Dead lawn,” Red mumbled, distaste obvious in his tone. “I have to tell you, I’ve never liked that house.” He glanced at Harlow and scoffed. “Lowers property values, just like I said.”

“And what do you propose we do, sweetheart? Burn the place to the ground? A burnt corpse of a house next door instead; would that be better?”

“It would be more satisfying. And maybe that Mickey fellow would move.”

Harlow cleared her throat, rose from the table, and went back to her chopping, leaving Andrew to assume that Mickey was a touchy subject. But after a moment, she picked up the conversation again.

“He used to be a drug dealer,” she said, tight-lipped, placing the knife down on the cutting board. “I didn’t want to bring this up, Andy, but I really don’t know if living in that house is the best idea. You know how those drug people are—they try to drag you into that seedy world right along with them. I wouldn’t be surprised if that house was full of whatever it is he’s selling.”

Drew’s mind immediately spiraled to the locked hallway door.

“And you know what will happen if the police show up?” she asked.

Of course he did. They wouldn’t just bust Mickey. Drew would be escorted away in steel bracelets as well.

“Let’s not get overexcited,” Red interjected. “First off, we don’t know how long ago that was. He may have been clean for years.”

But Mickey didn’t seem clean. Drew
wanted
to believe that Mick was a slob by nature, but the truth of it was, he was probably too busy getting high to give a shit about the way the place looked. Drew’s stomach tightened at the thought of it, remembering the early morning when Mickey had left the house. Maybe he had left to meet his supplier. Maybe that was why he had gone through his wallet while Andrew was asleep; he was looking for money. But none of it had been missing. Maybe Mick was struggling with his own set of scruples, because they used to be buddies—almost best friends.

Drew suddenly felt sick.

“Once a pothead, always a pothead,” Harlow insisted.

Had Drew not been mentally freaking out, he would have laughed at Harlow’s comment. He was reminded of
Reefer Madness
:
Women cry for it; men die for it!
Dope addicts—what a nightmare! He pictured Harlow peering through the window at Mickey’s house, her eyes wide with horror while Mick smoked a joint in the driveway, waiting for him to keel over and die of a cannabis overdose.

“Andy?” Red leaned in to catch the kid’s attention.

“Yeah?”

“What do you think?” he asked. “Is there something funny going on that we should know about?”

Sure there was. Mickey was weird. He lived in filth. He slept all day. He didn’t have a job. That was what made Drew uncomfortable:
because people without jobs couldn’t afford houses, and they couldn’t afford to buy piles of video games or to pay for the Internet, whether they knew their password or not. There were plenty of red flags—certainly enough for him to make assumptions.

Yet despite it all, Drew held back. He knew that the Wards didn’t like Mickey, and he was sure that Mick had his own bone to pick with the Wards—but Mickey was his friend. If he ratted him out, there was no telling what Red might do. Mickey would probably get arrested; the house would go into foreclosure. Hell, Drew definitely wouldn’t be able to stay there anymore, and where would that leave him? Back home?

“I don’t think so,” Drew lied. “I mean, I haven’t really been paying attention.” He shrugged. “He sleeps a lot.”

“Of course he does,” Harlow quipped, her face twisting with distaste.

“Well, if you do see something strange, you let us know,” Red told him. “We need to stick together.”

“Like good neighbors should,” Harlow added.

Drew pressed his lips together in a tight line as he looked from Harlow to Red and back again. He wanted to protect Mickey, and yet he couldn’t help but wonder how it would benefit him if he told the Wards the truth. If Mick’s house ended up repossessed, that would leave Andrew homeless. It would be the perfect excuse to ask Harlow and Red for a place to stay, at least temporarily. But the thought of tricking them into more hospitality, the thought of using Mickey for Drew’s own gain—he wasn’t
that
desperate for acceptance; he wasn’t
that
dazzled by life behind the white picket fence.

“Yeah,” Drew finally replied, “absolutely.” He swallowed against the lump in his throat. If it came down to it, it was either Mickey or the Wards—and unfortunately, for his roommate, Mick didn’t quite have the charm.

Harlow’s mother, Bridget Beaumont, had been dead for nearly forty years. She’d caught a flat along Highway 64 on her way to Little Rock to visit a friend. The man who stopped to help looked nice enough—a cowboy wearing shiny new boots and a Stetson. He tipped his hat, gave her a polite
ma’am
, and bashed her knees in with the tire iron he found in her trunk. The police found her along the side of the road, her skirt a dozen yards from her bloodied body.

Reggie Beaumont lied to his daughter that night, explaining that her mother had gotten into a car accident—a slip of the foot rocketed her into a tree, a freak accident—it meant that Jesus wanted her in heaven. But Harlow knew he was lying; that was, after all, what Reggie Beaumont did.

She read about it in the paper a few days later: Oklahoma City socialite, wife to the illustrious Pastor Beaumont, dead at thirty-three. Raped. Murdered. Found just outside Plumerville, Arkansas, God rest her soul.

Fifteen-year-old Harlow had her first date three months later. Reggie blamed it on Bridget’s death, the way Harlow had suddenly gone wild. The pretty tulle dresses were replaced by mini-skirts and platform shoes; glitter and curls were traded in for lipstick and a teasing comb. Reggie took a step away from his angel, his hands held in front of him in defeat. She was a girl, and there was only so much a father could do. He would pray for her. Jesus would show her the way.

Danny Wilson took Harlow to see
The Exorcist
after buying her a cheeseburger and vanilla shake, then brought her back to his apartment to show off his baseball trophies, proud of the ugly resin statues that lined the shelf above his desk. She listened to him rattle on about how great the district game had been in ’72, how he had been the one to throw the winning pitch. The crowd had held its breath, bursting into a cheer as the umpire roared,
You’re out!
Danny talked and talked, and she listened like a good date was supposed to, staring at one of his trophies, trying
to decipher the tiny pitcher’s expressionless face. She glanced back at Danny, four years her elder, as he put on a Johnny Cash record and slithered up next to her, a slick smile pulled across his mouth. She felt her calves brush the edge of his mattress as Johnny strummed his guitar, her heart pattering beneath her blouse.

Harlow knew Danny was this kind of boy. He was smiles and sunshine on the outside, but something dark lurked beneath his grin. It was why she’d gone out with him in the first place. She wanted to see what it was like for a boy to want her, to see what it felt like to tease him and walk away. When Danny pushed her down onto the mattress, Harlow imagined that he was a lot like the man who killed her momma: wooing younger girls with smooth talk, with food and scary flicks. And finally there was the trip back to the guy’s place, the rock and roll and dirty thoughts, the carnal need to take advantage, to possess and destroy.

Harlow’s chest heaved as he worked the buttons of her blouse free. Dizzy with a sudden bout of anxiety, she tried to catch her breath when he pushed her skirt up around her hips.

With Johnny jiving over Harlow’s protests, Danny pushed her wrists into the sheets when she tried to push him away. She saw the glint in his eye—a look that confirmed Danny meant to go through with it; after all, he hadn’t spent money on dinner and a movie to get nothing in return. She closed her eyes, picturing her mother fighting the guy who had killed her, kicking and screaming until he had to shut her up forever. Her father’s sweaty, lascivious face flashed across the thin veil of her eyelids; his hair plastered across his forehead, the tip of his vulgar tongue dragging across his bottom lip.

Vertigo bloomed behind her eyelids. Her wrists hurt beneath Danny’s grip. She was suddenly in her mother’s shoes, knowing that the worst was yet to come.

Lying on Danny’s bed, Harlow forced herself to relax, just as she had been taught.

“Atta girl,” Danny mumbled against her ear, his mouth sloppy with spit. He released one of her hands and reached beneath her skirt, hooking his fingers along the waistband of her underwear. That was the moment—during Danny’s blink of preoccupation—that Harlow’s mistake became too much to bear. She should have never gone out with him. She should have never come back to his apartment. She had been stupid,
so stupid
. Her arm shot outward. She grabbed a baseball trophy from the shelf beside his bed.

A dry yelp fluttered past Danny’s lips. He rolled off her, his hands pressed to his forehead, blood pouring over his face like a fast-leaking faucet. Harlow watched him blink furiously as she scrambled to her feet, the statue still held fast in her grip. He sat up, staring wide-eyed at his gore-smeared palms. As soon as he looked up to give her an incredulous look, she reeled back and hit him again. Danny howled, throwing himself at her, but she sidestepped him without much trouble. His eyes were squeezed shut against the sting of blood. She lifted the figure above her head, ready to hit him again, pausing only to consider how red the blood looked in the light of his room—almost movie-magic scarlet, as if this were nothing but a scene in a film. Danny’s cry shattered that illusion as the statue cracked against his ear. His blood-sticky hands flew away from his face, holding them out in self-defense. He was trying to say something—trying to plead for his life—but no words would come out. She hit him again.

Hit him a fourth time.

Hit him in the same spot just above his ear over and over until he started shaking like he’d stuck his finger in an electrical socket. His seizure caught her off guard and she jumped back, giving him room to thrash, not wanting to bloody her new shoes despite backsplatter covering her blouse and skirt. He whipped around for nearly a minute before going still, a lake of gore blooming around his head like a Japanese sun.

She stood over him for what could have been hours, Johnny Cash dwelling on the misery that had swallowed his life, singing Danny Wilson a eulogy before his own mother knew he was dead.

Realizing what she had done, she pressed a hand over her mouth; she smeared the fine red mist that had settled along the girlish curves of her face. Her eyes were wide with denial. She hadn’t killed him, couldn’t have possibly...he was so much bigger than her; that statue had been so small; she was just a girl, just a silly stupid girl.

But a small spark of vindication burned within the storm of Harlow’s shock. The longer she stared at him, the more her fear bent toward satisfaction. Danny Wilson was going to rape her, just like the man along the highway had raped her mother—just like her saint of a father had raped
her
for all those years. For all she knew, after Danny was through taking advantage of her, he would have bashed her head in with the very same trophy himself, if only to keep her mouth shut. She was the pastor’s daughter, after all. If news of what he’d done had gotten out...she was
sure
he would have killed her. He wouldn’t have had a choice. It had been self-defense. It wasn’t her fault she was three steps ahead of him.

Squaring her shoulders, Harlow grimaced at the body at her feet. She didn’t know much about Danny, but she knew enough to be sure that he was a rotten, dirty sinner. She had done God’s work here.