Jesse

2: New Neighbor

     2: New Neighbor

     The feeling of not belonging. Loneliness. I wouldn’t admit it to anyone that I knew them, but I did. Better than anybody. In fact, I knew both of them for as long as he had lived in the little, rundown subdivision near Edmundson Road. But there was a time—cut too short—when I did have a best friend. He was seven then. It was late spring, eleven years ago. A nice family of three moved into the faded yellow house next to our two-story brick house. One of the three also happened to be a seven-year-old boy named Shane.

     I remembered him; he was about my height back then. A mess of brown hair and bright green eyes. I had first met him when my family went over to greet Shane’s after they had settled in the house. We went to school together, what little of it was left, were even in the same class, and so we became friends.

     One day, when I was with Shane in their front yard, we began to throw a baseball to one another; and soon, after school, everyday that was what we would do together.

     That all changed three months after Shane’s family moved in—after the Terrible Accident. I vowed to myself then, I would never have another best friend. It hurt too much. He couldn’t take it. He remembered very vividly that he had stayed silent for an entire week. Then it was only one word answers. I had lost more than his best friend that day, much, much more. A part of myself. The self I would never, ever give away again. 

     Not long after the Terrible Accident, Shane’s parents moved out—for obvious enough reasons. They couldn’t handle it anymore. And then they were gone. They did say goodbye to me before they left; I could barely remember their faces now, like the soft traces of the edges of a photograph. A photograph lost in time.

     It was hard not to think about that time, the time before the Terrible Accident, when looking at the two-story yellow house; the yellow, even more faded. It had been on sale for all eleven years since then. My Dad had said once:

     “It’s as good as abandoned.”

      knew that wasn’t true. That would never be true. Part of me still lived in that house, as his once best friend did. Occasionally, when I walked passed that house, I would see Shane in his memory, sitting on the front porch, and hear his voice:

     “Come on Jesse! Come throw the baseball with me!”

      I wanted to shut my eyes when I was stepping around the corner toward my neighborhood, where that house would be in plain sight. But I didn’t. 

     My eyes widened, and my mouth dropped open. Outside the house, sat an orange and white U-haul and beside it a blue van with a black truck. I just stood there dumbly, mouth agape, wondering what the hell was going on…I couldn’t believe it! There were actually people, standing and looking at the house together!

     I blinked feeling as if I was lost in a strange, hallucinating haze. And I definitely was clean. This wasn’t an illusion. The old, weathered FOR SALE sign that stuck awkwardly in the ground had been over-taped with the bold lettering of now SOLD. Well…damn.

 For so long it had been FOR SALE. And now, so suddenly, so unexpectedly: it wasn’t. It had changed. I saw the new family; it was like an awful, twisted sense of déjà vu.

     Three people. All of them turned away from me. One mother. She was dressed in a purple, sleeveless shirt and dark slacks. A father. He wore a white collared shirt with jean shorts. And then there was the son. He stood taller than his father, wearing a red baseball shirt and loose black gym shorts. Figured. From the distance, he looked about the same age, or around the same age as me.