I was too far away to notice anything minuscule about her but I could’ve sworn, the way she was staring up at the sky, she had just sighed. And smiled.
A second later, she sat down on the slanting roof and reached behind her to get at something. That’s when I noticed she had a small backpack slung across her back. One by one, she fished out a notebook, a flashlight, and a giant pair of headphones, along with a lollipop.
Popping that lollipop in her mouth and putting those headphones on, she lit up the flashlight and began writing.
It was clear by then that it wasn’t a break-in. She wasn’t an intruder.
She was the girl next door who was probably a little crazy and in some serious need of parental guidance.
The following day I saw her again.
After coming back from a late run, I was in the kitchen, trying to find our coffee machine in one of the unopened boxes.
And there she was.
Out in her backyard, sitting at the edge of the pool, her arms behind her propping her up and her feet dangling in the water. Again, she had those headphones on and a lollipop in her mouth and her eyes were closed.
Her hair appeared dark but had streaks of gold in it or something similar. Something I’d never seen before.
Just then a blonde came rushing out the door and started shouting at her, gesturing wildly with her hands. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but I could hear her high-pitched, whiny voice. The golden-haired girl opened her eyes, squinted at her and in the midst of all the obnoxious wild gesturing, she pointed at something behind the blonde’s shoulder.
The blonde looked and I knew what a mistake it was as soon as she’d done it. Because now, the blonde was going to end up being thrown in the water.
In a flash, I was proven correct.
The girl from last night grabbed hold of the blonde’s ankle and pushed her in. I would’ve done the same thing just to make her shut up.
Only the blonde’s shouts turned into shrieks and the other girl began laughing. Loud and fresh, and I wondered if there was something wrong with their parents that they weren’t immediately out there, putting out the fight.
The golden-haired girl tugged on her ears, probably saying sorry to the blonde, before she jumped into the pool too.
It was a shock to me, her antics. I’d never seen anyone act so… brazenly and crazily. But then, in the coming days, I saw her dancing in her backyard, singing by the pool, running out of the house, sticking her tongue out just to feel the snow.
So I realized that this was the norm for her: doing her own thing when no one was watching or at least, she thought no one was watching. When people were around, she’d keep her head down and cover her face by those brown/blonde hair of hers.
Maybe because those people back in Connecticut looked at her like there was something wrong with her.
Stupid fuckers.
There was something wrong with them. They were all dead and dull and boring and she was a burst of life in their world.
Two days after the pool incident, I found out her name from Brian – Violet.
Two years after that she told me herself when I caught her stealing my roses.
I’m Violet. Violet Moore. I live next door…
I wanted to laugh and tell her: I know.
I fucking know.
I wish I didn’t. I wish I didn’t know the name of the teenage girl next door, the girl half my age, but I did. I wish I didn’t know that she liked to climb up to the roof at night or that her skin shines when the light of the moon falls on her.
That night I could’ve stopped her from unnecessarily introducing herself. I could’ve stopped a lot of things. But I didn’t want to, for some reason.
If I had, then none of this would’ve happened.
The scandal at school, that article.
Fight with Brian. I wouldn’t have hurt him the way I did.
We had a great summer together.
He’d just graduated and he was going away for college in the fall. In fact, he was going to leave early so he could start his new campus job. So we spent as much time together as we could.
But then just before he was set to leave, everything blew up.
Everything went to fucking hell.
I came here, to this isolated, abandoned cabin I grew up in because I wanted to get away, be alone or maybe to punish myself for everything. Because it is punishment, isn’t it, to live in a place that never held any good memories for me.
And Brian went to go live with one of his friends in the city before he could move into his dorm room. Again, unlike me, Brian had a lot of friends in school.