by Alyssa Cole
The shrill, rapid-fire bark of a dog losing its shit pulls me from my thoughts.
“Goddammit, somebody put him in his cage before the guests arrive! Terry!” a woman yells, followed by a man shouting, “Christ, calm down, Josie! Arwin! Did you let Toby out of his cage?”
Terry and Josie and Arwin and Toby are Miss Wanda’s replacements. They’ve never properly introduced themselves, but with all the yelling they do, I figured out their names quickly.
Toby barks incessantly while they’re at work and school and whenever he damn well pleases because he needs more exercise and better training. Terry wears ill-fitting suits to work, leers at the teenage girls in the neighborhood, and doesn’t pick up Toby’s shit when he thinks no one is watching. Josie wears tailored suits to work, spends her weekends dividing her backyard garden into exactly sized plots, and obsessively posts in the Columbus-ly titled OurHood app about people who don’t pick up dog waste.
Claude, my first post-divorce friend with benefits, used to call my new neighbors “Becky and Becky’s Husband.” We laughed at how they’d peek suspiciously at him through the curtains when he waited for me in his car out front, or how they’d hurry past when he stood at my front door in sagged jeans and Timbs instead of his tailored work suits and loafers.
Claude is gone now, too. He texted right before Valentine’s Day:
Not feelin’ this anymore.
Maybe there’d been another woman. Maybe I’d spent too much time stressing over my mother. Maybe he’d just sensed what I’d tried to hide: that my life was a spinout on a slick road and the smart thing to do was pump the brakes while he could.
When Drea had opened her apartment door and found me sniffling as I clutched a pint of Talenti, she’d hugged me, then given my shoulder a little shake. “Girl. Sydney. I’m sorry you’re sad, but how many times do I have to tell you? You won’t find gold panning in Fuckboy Creek.”
She was right.
It’s better this way; a warm body in bed is nice in the winter but it’s too damn hot for cuddling in the summer unless you want to run the AC nonstop, and I don’t have AC-nonstop money at the moment.
I notice a group of people approaching from the far end of the block, down by the garden, and scratch at my neck, at the patch of skin where a few months ago three itchy bites had arisen all in a row. BEDBUGS had been the first result of a frantic “what the fuck are these bites” internet search. Plastic-wrapped mattresses on the curb are a common sight now, the bedbugs apparently hitching rides on the unwashed legs steadily marching into the neighborhood. Even after weeks of steaming and bleaching and boiling my clothes and bedding, I can’t shake the tainted feeling. I wake up in the middle of the night with the sensation of something I can’t see feasting on me—I have to file my nails down to keep from scratching myself raw.
Maybe it’s too late; maybe I’m already sucked dry.
Sure as hell feels that way.
I drop my head and let the morning sun heat my scalp as I sit hunched and hopeless.
The group I’d spotted, apparently this week’s batch of brunch guests, clusters a few feet away from me on the sidewalk in front of Terry and Josie’s outer stairs, and I stop slouching: shoulders back, chin up. I pose as the picture of unbothered—languorously sipping my bodega coffee and pretending sweat isn’t beading at my hairline as I blatantly watch them. None of them even glance at me.
Terry and Josie come outside—her rocking an angular I’d like to speak to the manager platinum-dyed bob and him with a tight fake smile. They keep their heads rigidly straight and their gazes fixed on their friends as they greet them, like I’m a junkyard dog who might growl if they make eye contact.
I don’t think they even know my name is Sydney.
I don’t want to know what “funny” nickname they have for me.
“The place looks great,” one of their friends says as they start up the stairs.
“We used the same company as Sal and Sylvie on Flip Yo’ Crib,” Josie replies as she stops just in front of the doorway so they can admire the newly installed vintage door and stained glass in the transom window above it.
Their contractors had started their early-morning repairs right after the new year, waking Mommy up each time she finally managed to get comfortable enough to rest. In the spring, I’d been jolted awake a full hour early before I had to head to the school office and smile at annoying children and their annoying parents all day—everyone was annoying when you just wanted to sleep and not wake up for years.
Or ever.
“You just would not believe how these people don’t appreciate the historic value of the neighborhood,” Josie says. “We had to completely renovate. It was like there’d been a zoo here before!”
I glance at her out of the corner of my eye. Miss Wanda had been of the “bleach fumes so strong they burned her neighbors’ lungs” school of cleaning. Josie’s a damn liar, and I have the near-death experience with accidental mustard gas to prove it.
“The other houses look nice to me, especially this one,” says the last person in their line of friends, a woman of East Asian descent with a baby strapped to her chest. “It looks like a tiny castle!”
I smile, thinking about the days when I’d sit at the window set in the whimsical brick demi-turret, a captured princess, while my friends scrambled on the sidewalk out front, vying for the chance to rescue me from the evil witch holding me captive. It’s cool to say the princess should save herself nowadays, but I don’t think I’ve experienced that sensation outside of children’s games—of having someone willing to risk life and limb, everything, to save me.
Mommy protected me, of course, but being protected was different from being saved.
Josie whirls on the top step and frowns down at her friend for apparently not being disdainful enough. “The houses look nice in spite of. No amount of ugly Home Depot plants can hide the neglect, either.”
Oooh, this bitch.
“Right,” her friend says, anxiously stroking the baby’s back.
“All I’m saying is that I can trace my ancestors back to New Amsterdam. I appreciate history,” Josie says, turning to continue into the house.
“Well, family trees have a lot of missing leaves around here, if you know what I mean,” Terry adds as he follows her inside. “Of course they don’t appreciate that kind of thing.”
Maybe I should hop over the banister of my stoop and give them a lesson on the history of curb stomping if they like history so damn much.
The chastised woman’s gaze flits over to mine and she gives me an apologetic wave of acknowledgment as she files into the house. The door closes firmly behind her.
I was already tired, but tears of anger sting my eyes now, though I should be immune to this bullshit. It isn’t fair. I can’t sit on my stoop and enjoy my neighborhood like old times. Even if I retreat to my apartment, it won’t feel like home because Mommy won’t be waiting upstairs. I sit trapped at the edge of the disorienting panic that strikes too often lately, the ground under my ass and the soles of my flip-flops the only things connecting me to this place.
I just want everything to stop.
“Hey, Sydney!”
I glance across the street and the relief of seeing a familiar face helps me get it together. Mr. Perkins, my other next-door neighbor, and his pittiehound, Count Bassie, stroll by on one of their countless daily rounds of the neighborhood. Mommy had gone to the ASPCA with Mr. Perkins after his wife had passed a few years back, and he’s been inseparable from the brown-and-white dog ever since then.
“Morning, Sydney honey!” Mr. Perkins calls out in that scratchy voice of his, his arm rising slowly above his bald head as he waves at me. Count lets out one loud, ridiculously low-toned bark, a doggie hey girl; he loves me because I give him cheese and other delicious human food when he sits close to me.
“Morning!” I call out, feeling a little burst of energy just from seeing him. He’s always been here, looking out for me and my mom—for every
one in the neighborhood.
He’s usually up and making his daily rounds by six, stopping by various stoops, making house calls, keeping an ear to the ground and a smile on his face. It’s why we call him the Mayor of Gifford Place.
Right now, he’s likely on his way to Saturday services, judging from his khakis and pressed shirt. Count usually sits at his feet, and Mr. Perkins jokes that when he howls along with the choir, he hits the right note more often than half the humans singing.
“You gonna have that tour ready for the block party next week? Candace is on my behind about it since you put it on the official schedule.”
I want to say no, it’s not ready, even though I’ve been working on it bit by bit for months. It would be so easy to, since I have no idea if anyone will take this tour, even for free, much less pay for it, but . . . when I’d angrily told Mommy what Zephyr had said to me about starting my own tour, her face had lit up for the first time in weeks.
“You always did have the History Channel on, turning to Secrets of World War II or some mess while I was trying to watch my stories. Why shouldn’t you do it?”
It became a game for us, finding topics that I could work into the tour—it was something we could do while she was in bed, and it kept both of us occupied.
“This is the first time I’ve seen that old fire in your eyes since you got home. I’m glad you’re coming back to yourself, Syd. I can’t wait to take your tour.”
“How’s your mama doing?” Mr. Perkins calls out, the question causing a ripple of pain so real that I draw my knees up to my chest.
“She’s doing good,” I say, hating the lie and ashamed of the resentment that wells up in me every time I have to tell it. “Hates being away from home, but that’s no surprise.”
He nods. “Not at all. Yolanda loved this neighborhood. Tell her I’m praying for her when you see her.”
“I will.”
Count lunges after a pizza crust left on the sidewalk, suddenly spry, and Mr. Perkins gives chase, bringing the painful conversation to a blessed end.
“Come to the planning meeting on Monday,” he calls out with a wave as he walks on. “I’ve got some papers for you.”
He could just hand them to me, but I think he’s making sure I show up. He knows me well.
I nod and wave. The window of Josie and Terry’s living room slams shut, punctuating our conversation.
I take a sip of my coffee and hear the slapping of two sets of feet against the sidewalk.
“Good morning!” Jenn and Jen say. They’re holding hands as they stride down the street in sync, matching smiles on their faces. Even their flourishing plots in the garden complement each other: Jen’s bursting with flowers and Jenn’s with vegetables.
“Morning! Have a good day, you two,” I say as they march past, sounding like an auntie even though they’re probably only a few years younger than me.
I’m not faking my pleasantness. I want them to know that if their presence bothers me, it’s not because they’re holding hands. It’s because of everything else. I wish I didn’t have to think about everything else, but . . . Miss Wanda is gone. The Hancocks. Mr. Joe.
Sometimes it feels like everything rock-solid about my world is slipping away, like the sand sucked through my fingers when I’d sit in the breaking waves at Coney Island.
I suddenly remember one of our mother-daughter beach days, when I was four or five. Mommy had treated me to Nathan’s, and a seagull swooped down and snatched a crinkle-cut french fry out of my hand right before I bit into it. The biggest fry. I’d saved it for last. The sudden shock of the fry theft, the unfairness of it, had made me start wailing. Mommy shook her head and laughed as she wiped my cheeks with thumbs gritty from sand and smelling of ketchup. “Baby, if you wanna keep what’s yours, you gotta hold on to it better than that. Someone is always waiting to snatch what you got, even these damn birds.”
I’m trying, Mommy. And I hate it.
A shiver runs down my spine despite the heat, and when I look up, I see Bill Bil coming. His name is William Bilford, real estate agent, but I call him Bill Bil because it annoys him and why should I be the only one suffering? I’m alone, my new neighbors are assholes, and this con artist is roaming the neighborhood, trying to bring in more of them.
I grimace in his direction. He’s wearing jeans that are too thick and too tight for the heat index and the amount of walking he’s doing. There are sweat stains around the armpits of his tight gray T-shirt, hinting at the swamp-ass horror show that must be playing below. His face sports carefully contoured stubble and eyes that are red-rimmed from too much booze or coke or both. His light brown hair is carefully styled, though, so he’s not entirely a mess.
“Hey, Ms. Green,” he says with a wink and a grin that probably goes over well in a dive bar in Williamsburg but has no effect on me at all.
“Hey, Bill Bil,” I chirp. His shark’s smile doesn’t falter but the brightness in his eyes dims. I pick up the loosie and lighter I bought from the bodega and make a big production of holding the flame to the tip of the cigarette. The smoke that floods my mouth is disgusting—I can taste the cancer, and hey, maybe that’s what makes it enjoyable—but I’ve been smoking one with my morning coffee every now and again anyway.
“That’s bad for your health,” he says.
I exhale a cloud of smoke toward where he’s standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Nothing has changed from the last ten times you walked by here. We’re still not selling the house. Have a blessed day.”
His shark smile widens. “Come on. I’m just being friendly.”
“You’re just trying to create a false sense of camaraderie because you think it’ll make me trust you. Then you can convince me to sell so you can pocket that sweet, sweet commission.”
“You really think that?” He shakes his head. “I’m out here trying to help. A lot of people don’t even know that they could earn more than they’ve ever had in their entire life, just by moving.”
“Moving where? Where are people supposed to go if even this neighborhood becomes too expensive?”
I suck at my cigarette, hard.
He sighs. “The struggle is real; I feel that. Why do you think I’m out here hustling? I have bills to pay, too, but I don’t have a house to sell for a huge profit. If I did, I could pay off school loans, medical bills.” He shrugs, like he couldn’t help but point out those two specific things.
“Well, there are plenty of vultures circling, so if I do give up on the neighborhood, I have lots of realtors to choose from.” My hand shakes as I lift the cigarette to my lips again, and I try not to fumble it.
He drops his affable shark mask.
“You act like I’m some scumbag, but you just proved my point. There are lots of realtors interested in this area, especially with the VerenTech deal as good as done. It’s the hottest emerging community in Brooklyn right now.”
“Emerging community?” I tilt my head. “Emerging from where? The primordial ooze?”
His brows lift a bit, and I know it’s not because he’s registered my question but because the motherfucker is surprised I can use primordial in a sentence.
“Look.” He runs a hand over his hair backward and then forward, not messing up his look. “I’m not some villain twirling my mustache and trying to push people out onto the street. I’m not even one of the buyers carrying around bags of cash and blank checks to tempt people into taking bad deals. I’m just a normal guy doing a normal job.”
Just doing my job. How many times have I heard that while arguing with people over my mother’s health, money, and future? Everyone is just doing their job, especially when that job is lucrative and screws people over.
“And I’m just a homeowner who’s told you repeatedly that I don’t want to sell,” I say.
“You don’t have to sell,” he says, walking off in search of someone more receptive to his bullshit. “But you can’t stop change, you know.”
I don’t think he’s even tryin
g to be threatening, but I mash out the cigarette against the bottom of my flip-flop and stand, suddenly full of nervous energy. After stepping into the hallway to grab my gardening bag and slip on sneakers, I lock the door and make my way to Mommy’s community garden. I could never manage to keep even a Chia Pet alive, but I’m doing my best. I go every day; I put in work, even if I don’t have much to show for it.
It keeps me close to her, and that dulls away the sharp edges of the guilt that’s always poking at me. I sigh deeply, then pull out my phone and call her—it goes to voicemail. And when I hear her voice say, “You’ve reached Yolanda Green. I’m away from my cell phone or otherwise indisposed. Leave a message, unless you’re asking for money, because lord knows I don’t have any,” my throat goes rough as usual.
“Hi, Mommy,” I say after the beep, even though I usually don’t leave messages. “Things are hard, but I’m holding steady. Just wanted to hear your voice, but I’ll see you soon. Love you.”
About the Author
ALYSSA COLE is an award-winning author of historical, contemporary, and sci-fi romance. Her contemporary rom-com A Princess in Theory was one of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2018, and her books have received critical acclaim from Library Journal, BuzzFeed, Kirkus, Booklist, Jezebel, Vulture, Book Riot, Entertainment Weekly, and various other outlets. When she’s not working, she can usually be found watching anime or wrangling her many pets.
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Also by Alyssa Cole
Runaway Royals
HOW TO CATCH A QUEEN
Reluctant Royals
A PRINCESS IN THEORY
ONCE GHOSTED, TWICE SHY (novella)
A DUKE BY DEFAULT
CAN’T ESCAPE LOVE (novella)
A PRINCE ON PAPER
Loyal League