The House Next Door

by Delilah Brennan

  Jenna and Alyssa merely squeezed in beside her and nodded.

  The man below was very tall and dressed in dark jeans and a black jacket and hat. He carried a shovel and Keira was right-he was methodically digging little holes all over the yard.

  "Oh yeah," Keira whispered, "he's definitely looking for something."

  What happened next was a little confusing; at roughly the same instant, Jenna heard a noise in the hallway and said "What's that?"

  Keira’s head whipped around toward the door at the exact moment that a silvery gleam from below caught Alyssa’s eye.

  One second she was leaning forward, pressing her thin frame against the ancient second story window screen and the next, the brittle tabs on the screen gave way and she plunged head first out the window.

  Alyssa screamed. Jenna caught the flash of movement from the corner of her eye and she spun around to try and catch the girl, only to find her right hand grasping at thin air; her left hand closed around Alyssa’s ankle and the force of the child’s weight wrenched Jenna’s arm. The pain was excruciating and Jenna’s muscles quivered. She screamed right along with Alyssa, terrified that at any moment she would drop the girl. Keira was there a split second later.

  "Don't drop her!"

  "I'm trying!" Jenna closed her eyes and felt her stomach heave. She knew she couldn't hold Alyssa for much longer. Already the ankle she clasped in both hands was succumbing to the force of gravity. It was a long way down...

  It took the girls all of two seconds to figure out that if Keira squeezed in next to Jenna at the window to try and hold onto the still screaming Alyssa, she would nudge her sister toward the frame and Alyssa was likely to fall. There simply wasn't room for both Jones girls to safely lean out the window. So Keira hugged Jenna securely around the waist and planted her feet firmly on either side of her sisters.

  "You worry about holding her and I'll hold onto you! Mom! Dad!" She proceeded to scream for all she was worth.

  A mans voice shouted over the trio of screams. "Let her go-I've got her!"

  Jenna stared down in horror at the black clad man on the ground below. He wasn't digging holes any longer. Keira stood on the tips of her toes and peered over Jenna’s left shoulder.

  Jenna seemed to take in the scene in a glance. The intruder had tossed aside his shovel and now stood directly under the window, braced to catch a struggling Alyssa.

  "Don't let her go!" Keira screamed.

  "I won't! Alyssa please!" She pleaded, on the verge of tears now. "You have to hold still!"

  "What's going on in here-oh sweet Lord! Troy!" Mama's shriek echoed through the house and she rushed across the floor ahead of Mr. Jones. Together they grabbed their panicked children and hauled Alyssa up and over the window sill. She fell to the floor in a sobbing heap before Mr. Jones swiftly picked her up and checked her for injuries.

  "I'm okay." She hiccupped.

  Everyone seemed to talk at once, each voice blending with the one beside it.

  "What on earth?"

  "What were you girls doing?"

  "Mom the man came back-"

  "Oh girls-"

  "No, really-"

  "Don't you know it's dangerous to lean out a second story window?"

  "Troy, don't yell. What were you girls thinking?" Mama shouted. "Well? Answer me."

  All three girls gulped and became silent under the heavy weight of Carla Jones stare.

  "Ah," Keira began when no one else made a move. "The man who broke in came back and-"

  "We already talked with Jenna about this." Mr. Jones began.

  "Dad, I'm serious. He was here-in the back yard."

  "Yeah." Jenna spoke up.

  "He was digging holes all over." Alyssa added.

  "We, ah, stole your phone Mom and called the police and then we sort of opened the window to get a better look at him." Keira lowered her gaze to the floor. "That's when Alyssa fell out the window."

  "It was my fault. You're not going to send me away are you?"

  "Send you away?" Jenna frowned. "What for?"

  "Because I'm too much trouble." The girls lower lip began to tremble again.

  "No, no, it was my fault. I should have been watching you. You're just a little kid." Keira told her.

  "I am not!" Alyssa cried.

  "Girls!" Mr. Jones held up his hand for silence. "No one is getting sent away."

  "Yes, not unless it's me." Mama muttered, crossing her arms.

  "First things first. Who called the police?"

  "I did."

  "Okay, Jenna. Now, did anyone see where the man went? Did you girls get a good look at his face?"

  "I did." Jenna said again, automatically raising her hand. "He put down his shovel and told me to let Alyssa go. I…think he was going to try and catch her."

  "He tried to help?" Troy Jones frowned.

  "Yes."

  "Well that's strange. Is he still out there?" Mrs. Jones strode to the open window and leaned over the edge. "He's gone." She announced a moment later. "But I hear sirens. Come on, we'd better go downstairs and wait for the police."

  "Jenna you're going to need to describe the man for the officers."

  ***

  Four hours later the police were gone and all three girls had been made to sit solemnly beside one another on the single piece of furniture in the drafty old house-an aging, cracked leather sofa that at one time or another had probably been a deep chocolate brown. It had faded to tan and was continually losing its stuffing.

  Jenna plucked another fluffy clump from between the cracks and twisted it around her fingers as she listened to the end of a twenty minute lecture on the recklessness of their actions that night.

  "Jenna stop picking at the couch."

  "Okay." She sighed.

  "Okay," her father finally said. "go upstairs and try to get a few hours of sleep."

  "And next time," her mother reminded the girls, "Wake. Us. Up."

  Her order was met with a mumbled chorus of 'yes ma'am's and then Keira, Jenna, and Alyssa were trudging up the stairs and back to their own rooms. Keira went to her room and shut the door without another word to anyone. Alyssa retrieved her pallet of blankets and single pillow from her room and carried them into Jenna’s room, where she would spend the rest of the night.

  "Pretty crazy about the map the police found in the back yard, huh?" Jenna asked her as they arranged their bedding side by side in the middle of the room. "I didn't get a good look at it, but don't you think it looked like a treasure map? A little?" The map had been on her mind all evening, or at least most of it, ever since the police plucked it from beneath the window and dropped it into a see-through plastic evidence collection bag. That's where Jenna and the rest of the family had seen it. There wasn't a big black x on it or anything, just a wide area that someone had taken the time to circle with a black marker. It looked like a map of their yard...ER, the Jamison's yard, Jenna corrected herself.

  "I guess." Alyssa shrugged and dropped down to the makeshift bed.

  "I wonder what he was looking for. Maybe gold or jewels? I bet it's some kind of treasure." She whispered, not that anyone could hear them.

  Though she hardly noticed it, sometime over the night she had lost her fear of the intruder; her thoughts kept coming back to the mysterious map and thoughts of buried treasure and Heaven only knew what else.

  A muffled sob had her looking up, all thoughts of mystery and intrigue driven from her mind when she saw that Alyssa had wrapped her thin little arms around herself and had begun to cry.

  "Hey...are you okay?" She leaned closer to the girl and reached out to touch her shoulder but she stopped before her hand actually made contact with the girl, not wanting to startle her.

  "I want my Mom." Alyssa's voice broke and the words sounded like they'd been ripped from her.

  Jenna felt tears begin to form in her own eyes. "I'm sorry...um. Do you want to talk about it?"

  The girl shook her head and continued to sob.

&nbs
p; "Alyssa...why did the people from the state take you away from your family?"

  The girl didn't answer for so long that Jenna had just about given up hope on getting an answer, but finally she raised her tear stained little face and said. "Nobody took me away. She gave me up."

  "What?" Jenna was too shocked to be tactful. "Why would she do a thing like that?"

  "My mom's sick real bad. She has cancer and she's trying to get better. She said when she gets well again that she's going to come get me. But now I'm here and she won't know where to find me. What if she cant find that state lady's phone number?"

  "Huh?" Jenna tried to follow the conversation.

  "I was at another home first but they said I was too much trouble because all I did was cry and well, I yelled a little, too." She admitted, wiping at her wet, pink cheeks.

  "Oh, that's why you thought you'd get sent away tonight? That's what you meant by too much trouble?"

  "Uh huh."

  And, Jenna thought sadly, that explained her prickly attitude when she first arrived.

  "Don't worry, your Mom will know how to find you." She assured the girl. "But didn’t you have any other family to take you in?"

  "No, it's just me and my Mom." She admitted and promptly began to cry again.

  Jenna did wrap her arms around the thin little shoulders then and she huddled on the floor and cried with the little girl who had no family.

  "Alyssa?" She asked several minutes later.

  "Yeah?" The girl wiped her eyes with the corner of a blanket and looked up at her unlikely friend.

  "I want you to come tell my Mom and Dad what you just told me...about your Mom and all."

  "No, I can't." She insisted. "I don't want to talk about it again. If I cry they might send me away too."

  "They won't send you away. My parents would never do something like that. And if they ever even tried, I wouldn't let them." She boldly promised.

  "You really promise?" Alyssa didn't seem at all sure of this.

  "Yep, promise. Trust me. Sometimes you just have to have faith and believe in a person. Do you think you can do that?"

  "I think so."

  "Come here." Jenna turned and crossed her legs so that she sat facing Alyssa and she cupped the girls hands between her own. "Will you pray with me?"

  "I'll try." She promised, hoping that she was making the right decision.

  ***

  Three Weeks Later

  It looked like rain. Storm clouds gathered in a pearl gray sky. Still the temperature was unseasonably warm for the end of October and tonight was special. Jenna sat on the cracked front porch steps between Keira and Alyssa and sucked in a breath of fresh air. She could smell the scent of charcoal in the air, even clear from the back yard where her father was busy warming up their new barbeque grill. She continued to wait on the stoop and like the other two girls, every time a car turned down their street, she half way rose to stand, only to realize it was a blue car, or a white car, or a black car. It always seemed to be the wrong car. The car they waited for was silver and it was late, though not horribly so.

  Finally, a silver sedan turned at the end of the block. All three girls were up and running, crowding the car as it turned into the driveway, shouting excitedly.

  "Dad!" Jenna shouted. "They're here!"

  Mrs. Jones climbed from the car on the passenger side, and the social worker exited from the drivers side. Both women turned to help a thin, tired looking but smiling woman from the backseat of the car.

  "Mom!" Alyssa rushed forward and flung herself at her mother.

  "Lissa!" Mrs. LaRue clung to her daughter and squeezed her eyes shut before opening them to get a look at the small gathering around her. "I don't even know what to say right now..." She pressed a hand to her mouth and addressed Carla Jones. "This is too much..."

  "No," Jenna's mother told her kindly. "It's not. You and Alyssa will stay with us until you're feeling better. It's no trouble."

  No trouble..." Mrs. LaRue murmured, hugging her daughter close to her breast.

  "Mom, you'll have your own room right next to mine and Jenna and Keira’s Mom's going to take you to the doctor and I stared school here already. It's really great and this girl from my class wants me to join Girl Scouts but I told her I had to wait and see. But I won't Mom, now that you're here. I'll come straight home from school so I can take care of you and you know, bring you stuff."

  "Oh Alyssa." She cried, dropping down to one knee and gathering her daughter to her. "I missed you so much darling girl. It's going to be okay now, though. We're going to be okay."

  "Yep," Alyssa nodded and wrapped her arms around her mothers neck. "Sometimes you just have to believe in a person."