by Lauren Salem
Everyone who lived on Hillsdale Court had a mysterious, but secret, life that only I could see. Before I decided to end my life at sixteen, I was the unofficial neighborhood watchman, recording every interaction between neighbors in my journal. The entire street was rigged with Nightvision Outdoor Wi-Fi IP cameras hidden in trees and connected to street lights. The wireless cameras fed back to my computer in my room where I watched everything on a divided screen. As I observed the neighbors meet up for parties, make shady exchanges, leave, and come home from work, I made a timeline of events for each character. The only problem was that there were gaps in all the characters’ timelines, because I couldn’t see everything that went on inside their homes. I quickly found out that only having cameras on the outside wasn’t good enough; I needed to put them inside, too.
When my parents campaigned around the neighborhood, they each made me walk with them separately as they went door to door, passing out flyers, and persuading the neighbors to vote. This was a tedious, repetitive process that they had made me do right before every election, but it had its advantages. For assisting my parents with their campaigns and being such a good sport, they gave me a credit card with no limit.
Before I got the credit card, I used to watch the neighbors through my window with binoculars, but I couldn’t see very much. After doing some research on spy cameras, I decided to buy ten Nightvision Outdoor Wi-Fi IP cameras for $239 a pop. When my parents saw the credit card bill that month, they asked me why I spent so much money on cameras. I told them I wanted to do something with my reward that mattered, instead of blowing it on something that would eventually collect dust. I lied and said I bought the cameras to donate to the neighborhood watch, so Hillsdale Court could be safer for children. My parents were very proud of me because they didn’t know I was using the cameras for my personal use.
Usually, I found that when Mom or Dad made the rounds of the neighborhood, the neighbors were really friendly. After a neighbor answered the door, Mom or Dad would give a speech and a flyer, and the neighbor would invite us in to talk over coffee.
One year, determined to fill the gaps in my characters’ stories, I brought a backpack full of nanny cameras to plant in each neighbor’s house. While they were distracted by my mom or dad’s conversation, I snuck around the house, planting the cameras, and surprisingly, I never got caught. When the next bill came, I told my parents that I was donating nanny cameras to the neighborhood watch because parents were becoming increasingly concerned about what the nannies were doing when left alone in the house. Again, my parents were very proud of my community service.
After several weeks of watching each neighbor through both types of cameras, I realized most of the straight husbands were cheating on their wives with the same two women. One of them was fifty-year-old Elda, a dentist who prostituted in her spare time. Hillsdale Court was her territory before Laura, a kinky teenager, started stealing her customers. According to their customers, many of them switched to Laura because she cost less, had no wrinkles, and had no limitations. The conflict between these two characters quickly became one of my favorite stories to follow. The men would come home at random times during the day, and I’d watch as each of them was seduced by Laura or Elda.
As Elda lost customers, she became increasingly angry, so she began threatening Laura by vandalizing her house in the middle of the night. One night Elda threw a bucket of blood on Laura’s white front door, another night she broke her parents’ car windows, and on a different night she egged Laura’s house. I was curious as to how Elda collected that much blood. Was it human blood? I always imagined it was blood collected from her dental work patients, but I never knew for sure. Laura’s parents had no idea who was doing this or why, but Laura was not concerned. As far as I knew, Laura’s parents didn’t even know Laura was a prostitute.
It didn’t take long for Laura’s family to expose Elda. Her parents were so afraid that they bought a top-notch security system that caught Elda in her next act and had her sent to jail. Right before the police took Elda away, she told Laura’s parents that Laura was prostituting, but they didn’t believe her.
Laura owned Hillsdale Court for two years before she was caught in the act with Tom Burks, the husband of Linda Burks. When Linda told Laura’s parents about Laura’s little business, they believed it. Laura was sent away, and I never saw her again until one day at lunchtime in Sonoran Correctional High School.