The Girl Next Door Read Online Free PDF

was impossible. She was a lousy shot for one.
    Denise never won at Commando.
    She was twelve years old. She had curly brown-red hair and her skin was lightly freckled all over.
    She had the small beginnings of breasts, and thick pale prominent nipples.
     
    I thought of all that now and fixed my eyes on the truck, on the workers and the girders.
    But Denise wouldn’t leave it alone.
    “It’s summer,” she said. “So how come we don’t play?”
    She knew damn well why we didn’t play but she was right too in a way—what had stopped The Game was nothing more than that the weather had gotten too cold. That and the guilt of course.
    “We’re a little old for that now,” I lied.
    She shrugged. “Uh-huh. Maybe. And maybe you guys are chicken.”
    “Could be. I’ve got an idea, though. Why don’t you ask your brother if he’s chicken.”
    She laughed. “Yeah. Sure. Right.”
    The sky was growing darker.
    “It’s going to rain,” said Cheryl.
    The men certainly thought so. Along with the girders they were hauling out canvas tarps, spreading them out in the grass just in case. They were working fast, trying to get the big wheel assembled before the downpour. I recognized one of them from last summer, a wiry blond southerner named Billy Bob or Jimmy Bob something who had handed Eddie a cigarette he asked for. That alone made him memorable. Now he was hammering pieces of the wheel together with a large ball-peen hammer, laughing at something the fat man said beside him. The laugh was high and sharp, almost feminine.
    You could hear the ping of the hammer and the trucks’ gears groaning behind us, you could hear generators running and the grinding of machinery—and then a sudden staccato pop, rain falling hard into the field’s dry hard-packed dirt. “Here it comes!”
    I took my shirt out of my jeans and pulled it up over my head. Cheryl and Denise were already running for the trees.
    My house was closer than theirs. I didn’t really mind the rain. But it was a good excuse to get out of there for a while. Away from Denise.
    I just couldn’t believe she wanted to talk about The Game.
    You could see the rain wouldn’t last. It was coming down too fast, too heavily. Maybe by the time it was over some of the other kids would be hanging around. I could lose her.
    I ran past them huddled beneath the trees.
    “Going home!” I said. Denise’s hair was plastered down over her cheeks and forehead. She was smiling again. Her shirt was soaked clear through.
    I saw Cheryl reach out to me. That long bony wet arm dangling.
    “Can we come?” she yelled. I pretended I didn’t hear. The rain was pretty loud over there in the leaves. I figured Cheryl would get over it. I kept running.
    Denise and Eddie, I thought. Boy. What a pair.
    If anybody is ever gonna get me into trouble it’ll be them. One or the other or both of them. It’s got to be.
    Ruth was on the landing taking in the mail from her mailbox as I ran past her house. She turned in the doorway and smiled and waved to me, as water cascaded down the eaves.

Chapter Five

    I never learned what bad feeling had come between Ruth and my mother but something had when I was eight or nine.
    Before that, long before Meg and Susan came along, I used to sleep over nights with Donny and Willie and Woofer in the double set of bunk beds they had in their room. Willie had a habit of leaping into bed at night so he’d destroyed a few bunks over the years. Willie was always flinging himself on something. When he was two or three, Ruth said, he’d destroyed his crib completely. The kitchen chairs were all unhinged from his sprawling. But the bunks they had in the bedroom now were tough. They’d survived.
    Since whatever happened between Ruth and my mother I was allowed to stay there only infrequently.
    But I remember those earlier nights when we were kids. We’d cut up laughing in the dark for an hour or two whispering, giggling, spitting over the sides at whoever was on the