by Nicola Yoon
The house trembles and my books vibrate on the shelves. A steady beeping joins the rumbling and I know what it is. A truck. Probably just lost, I tell myself, to stave off disappointment. Probably just made a wrong turn on their way to someplace else.
But then the engine cuts off. Doors open and close. A moment passes, and then another, and then a woman’s voice sings out, “Welcome to our new home, everybody!”
Carla stares at me hard for a few seconds. I know what she’s thinking.
It’s happening again.
MADELINE’S DIARY
THE WELCOME COMMITTEE
“CARLA,” I SAY, “it won’t be like last time.” I’m not eight years old anymore.
“I want you to promise—” she begins, but I’m already at the window, sweeping the curtains aside.
I am not prepared for the bright California sun. I’m not prepared for the sight of it, high and blazing hot and white against the washed-out white sky. I am blind. But then the white haze over my vision begins to clear. Everything is haloed.
I see the truck and the silhouette of an older woman twirling—the mother. I see an older man at the back of the truck—the father. I see a girl maybe a little younger than me—the daughter.
Then I see him. He’s tall, lean, and wearing all black: black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He’s white with a pale honey tan and his face is starkly angular. He jumps down from his perch at the back of the truck and glides across the driveway, moving as if gravity affects him differently than it does the rest of us. He stops, cocks his head to one side, and stares up at his new house as if it were a puzzle.
After a few seconds he begins bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. Suddenly he takes off at a sprint and runs literally six feet up the front wall. He grabs a windowsill and dangles from it for a second or two and then drops back down into a crouch.
“Nice, Olly,” says his mother.
“Didn’t I tell you to quit doing that stuff?” his father growls.
He ignores them both and remains in his crouch.
I press my open palm against the glass, breathless as if I’d done that crazy stunt myself. I look from him to the wall to the windowsill and back to him again. He’s no longer crouched. He’s staring up at me. Our eyes meet. Vaguely I wonder what he sees in my window—strange girl in white with wide staring eyes. He grins at me and his face is no longer stark, no longer severe. I try to smile back, but I’m so flustered that I frown at him instead.
MY WHITE BALLOON
THAT NIGHT, I dream that the house breathes with me. I exhale and the walls contract like a pinpricked balloon, crushing me as it deflates. I inhale and the walls expand. A single breath more and my life will finally, finally explode.
NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH
HIS MOM’S SCHEDULE
6:35 AM - Arrives on porch with a steaming cup of something hot. Coffee?
6:36 AM - Stares off into empty lot across the way while sipping her drink. Tea?
7:00 AM - Reenters the house.
7:15 AM - Back on porch. Kisses husband good-bye. Watches as his car drives away.
9:30 AM - Gardens. Looks for, finds, and discards cigarette butts.
1:00 PM - Leaves house in car. Errands?
5:00 PM - Pleads with Kara and Olly to begin chores “before your father gets home.”
KARA’S (SISTER) SCHEDULE
10:00 AM - Stomps outside wearing black boots and a fuzzy brown bathrobe.
10:01 AM - Checks cell phone messages. She gets a lot of messages.
10:06 AM - Smokes three cigarettes in the garden between our two houses.
10:20 AM - Digs a hole with the toe of her boots and buries cigarette carcasses.
10:25 AM–5:00 PM - Texts or talks on the phone.
5:25 PM - Chores.
HIS DAD’S SCHEDULE
7:15 AM - Leaves for work.
6:00 PM - Arrives home from work.
6:20 PM - Sits on porch with drink #1.
6:30 PM - Reenters the house for dinner.
7:00 PM - Back on porch with drink #2.
7:25 PM - Drink #3.
7:45 PM - Yelling at family begins.
10:35 PM - Yelling at family subsides.
OLLY’S SCHEDULE
Unpredictable.
I SPY
HIS FAMILY CALLS him Olly. Well, his sister and his mom call him Olly. His dad calls him Oliver. He’s the one I watch the most. His bedroom is on the second floor and almost directly across from mine and his blinds are almost always open.
Some mornings he sleeps in until noon. Others, he’s gone from his room before I wake to begin my surveillance. Most mornings, though, he wakes at 9 A.M., climbs out of his bedroom, and makes his way, Spider-Man-style, to the roof using the siding. He stays up there for about an hour before swinging, legs first, back into his room. No matter how much I try, I haven’t been able to see what he does when he’s up there.
His room is empty but for a bed and a chest of drawers. A few boxes from the move remain unpacked and stacked by the doorway. There are no decorations except for a single poster for a movie called Jump London. I looked it up and it’s about parkour, which is a kind of street gymnastics, which explains how he’s able to do all the crazy stuff that he does. The more I watch, the more I want to know.
MENTEUSE
I’VE JUST SAT down at the dining table for dinner. My mom places a cloth napkin in my lap and fills my water glass and then Carla’s. Friday night dinners are special in my house. Carla even stays late to eat with us instead of with her own family.
Everything at Friday Night Dinner is French. The napkins are white cloth embroidered with fleur-de-lis at the edges. The cutlery is antique French and ornate. We even have miniature silver la tour Eiffel salt and pepper shakers. Of course, we have to be careful with the menu because of my allergies, but my mom always makes her version of a cassoulet—a French stew with chicken, sausage, duck, and white beans. It was my dad’s favorite dish before he died. The version that my mom cooks for me contains only white beans cooked in chicken broth.
“Madeline,” my mom says, “Mr. Waterman tells me that you’re late on your architecture assignment. Is everything all right, baby girl?”
I’m surprised by her question. I know I’m late, but since I’ve never been late before I guess I didn’t realize that she was keeping track.
“Is the assignment too hard?” She frowns as she ladles cassoulet into my bowl. “Do you want me to find you a new tutor?”
“Oui, non, et non,” I say in response to each question. “Everything’s fine. I’ll turn it in tomorrow, I promise. I just lost track of time.”
She nods and begins slicing and buttering pieces of crusty French bread for me. I know she wants to ask something else. I even know what she wants to ask, but she’s afraid of the answer.
“Is it the new neighbors?”
Carla gives me a sharp look. I’ve never lied to my mom. I’ve never had a reason and I don’t think I know how to. But something tells me what I need to do.
“I’ve just been reading too much. You know how I get with a good book.” I make my voice as reassuring as possible. I don’t want her to worry. She has enough to worry about with me as it is.
How do you say “liar” in French?
“Not hungry?” my mom asks a few minutes later. She presses the back of her hand against my forehead.
“You don’t have a fever.” She lets her hand linger a moment longer.
I’m about to reassure her when the doorbell rings. This happens so infrequently that I don’t know what to make of it.
The bell rings again.
My mom half rises from her chair.
Carla stands all the way up.
The bell sounds for a third time. I smile for no reason.
“Want me to get it, ma’am?” Carla asks.
My mom waves her off. “Stay here,” she says to me.
Carla moves to stand
behind me, her hands pressing down lightly on my shoulder. I know I should stay here. I know I’m expected to. Certainly I expect me to, but somehow, today, I just can’t. I need to know who it is, even if it’s just a wayward traveler.
Carla touches my upper arm. “Your mother said to stay here.”
“But why? She’s just being extra cautious. Besides, she won’t let anyone past the air lock.”
She relents, and I’m off down the hallway with her right behind me.
The air lock is a small sealed room surrounding the front door. It’s airtight so that no potential hazards can leak into the main house when the front door is open. I press my ear against it. At first I can’t hear anything over the air filters, but then I hear a voice.
“My mom sent a Bundt.” The voice is deep and smooth and definitely amused. My brain is processing the word Bundt, trying to get an image of what it looks like before it dawns on me just who is at the door. Olly.
“The thing about my mom’s Bundts is that they are not very good. Terrible. Actually inedible, very nearly indestructible. Between you and me.”
A new voice now. A girl’s. His sister? “Every time we move she makes us bring one to the neighbor.”
“Oh. Well. This is a surprise, isn’t it? That’s very nice. Please tell her thank you very much for me.”
There’s no chance that this Bundt cake has passed the proper inspections, and I can feel my mom trying to figure out how to tell them she can’t take the cake without revealing the truth about me.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t accept this.”
There’s a moment of shocked silence.
“So you want us to take it back?” Olly asks disbelievingly.
“Well, that’s rude,” Kara says. She sounds angry and resigned, as though she’d expected disappointment.
“I’m so sorry,” my mom says again. “It’s complicated. I’m really very sorry because this is so sweet of you and your mom. Please thank her for me.”
“Is your daughter home?” Olly asks quite loudly, before she can close the door. “We’re hoping she could show us around.”
My heart speeds up and I can feel the pulse of it against my ribs. Did he just ask about me? No stranger has just dropped by to visit me before. Aside from my mom, Carla, and my tutors, the world barely knows I exist. I mean, I exist online. I have online friends and my Tumblr book reviews, but that’s not the same as being a real person who can be visited by strange boys bearing Bundt cakes.
“I’m so sorry, but she can’t. Welcome to the neighborhood, and thank you again.”
The front door closes and I step back to wait for my mom. She has to remain in the air lock until the filters have a chance to purify the foreign air. A minute later she steps back into the house. She doesn’t notice me right away. Instead she stands still, eyes closed with her head slightly bowed.
“I’m sorry,” she says, without looking up.
“I’m OK, Mom. Don’t worry.”
For the thousandth time I realize anew how hard my disease is on her. It’s the only world I’ve known, but before me she had my brother and my dad. She traveled and played soccer. She had a normal life that did not include being cloistered in a bubble for fourteen hours a day with her sick teenage daughter.
I hold her and let her hold me for a few more minutes. She’s taking this disappointment much harder than I am.
“I’ll make it up to you,” she says.
“There’s nothing to make up for.”
“I love you, sweetie.”
We drift back into the dining room and finish dinner quickly and, for the most part, silently. Carla leaves and my mom asks if I want to beat her at a game of Honor Pictionary, but I ask for a rain check. I’m not really in the mood.
Instead, I head upstairs imagining what a Bundt cake tastes like.
PIÈCE DE REJECTION
BACK IN MY room, I go immediately to my bedroom window. His dad is home from work and something’s wrong because he’s angry and getting angrier by the second. He grabs the Bundt cake from Kara and throws it hard at Olly, but Olly’s too fast, too graceful. He dodges, and the cake falls to the ground.
Remarkably the Bundt seems unharmed, but the plate shatters against the driveway. This only makes his dad angrier.
“You clean that up. You clean that up right now.” He slams into the house. His mom goes after him. Kara shakes her head at Olly and says something to him that makes his shoulders slump. Olly stands there looking at the cake for a few minutes. He disappears into the house and returns with a broom and dustpan. He takes his time, way longer than necessary, sweeping up the broken plate.
When he’s done he climbs to the roof, taking the Bundt with him, and it’s another hour before he swings back into his room.
I’m hiding in my usual spot behind the curtain when I suddenly no longer want to hide. I turn on the lights and go back to the window. I don’t even bother to take a deep breath. It’s not going to help. I pull the curtain aside to find that he’s already there in his window, staring right at me. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t wave. Instead, he reaches his arm overhead and pulls the blind closed.
SURVIVAL
“HOW LONG ARE you going to mope around the house?” Carla asks. “You’ve been like this all week.”
“I’m not moping,” I say, though I’ve been moping a little. Olly’s rejection has made me feel like a little girl again. It reminded me why I stopped paying attention to the world before.
But trying to get back to my normal routine is hard when I can hear all the sounds of the outside world. I notice things that I paid very little attention to before. I hear the wind disturbing the trees. I hear birds gossiping in the mornings. I see the rectangles of sunlight that slip through my blinds and work their way across the room throughout the day. You can mark time by them. As much as I’m trying to keep the world out, it seems determined to come in.
“You’ve been reading the same five pages in that book for days now.” She nods at my copy of Lord of the Flies.
“Well, it’s a terrible book.”
“I thought it was a classic.”
“It’s terrible. Most of the boys are awful and all they talk about is hunting and killing pigs. I’ve never been so hungry for bacon in my life.”
She laughs, but it’s halfhearted at best. She sits on the couch next to me and moves my legs into her lap. “Tell me,” she says.
I put the book down and close my eyes. “I just want them to go away,” I confess. “It was easier before.”
“What was easier?”
“I don’t know. Being me. Being sick.”
She squeezes my leg. “You listen to me now. You’re the strongest, bravest person I know. You better believe that.”
“Carla, you don’t have to—”
“Shush, listen to me. I’ve been thinking this over. I could see this new thing was weighing down on you, but I know you’re going to be all right.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“That’s OK. I can be sure for both of us. We’ve been together in this house for fifteen years, so I know what I’m talking about. When I first started with you I thought it was only a matter of time before depression would take you over. And there was that one summer when it came close, but it didn’t happen. Every day you get up and learn something new. Every day you find something to be happy about. Every single day you have a smile for me. You worry more about your mother than you do about yourself.”
I don’t think Carla has ever said this many words all at once.
“My own Rosa,” she continues, but then stops. She leans back and closes her eyes in the grip of some emotion I don’t understand. “My Rosa could learn a thing or two from you. She has everything I could give her, but she thinks she has nothing.”
I smile. Carla complains about her daughter, but I can tell she spoils her as much as she can.
She opens her eyes, and whatever was bothering her passes. “You see, there’s that smile again.” She pats
my leg. “Life is hard, honey. Everyone finds a way.”
LIFE IS SHORT™
SPOILER REVIEWS BY MADELINE
LORD OF THE FLIES BY WILLIAM GOLDING
Spoiler alert: Boys are savages.
FIRST CONTACT
TWO DAYS PASS and I’ve stopped moping. I’m getting better at ignoring the neighbors when I hear a ping coming from outside. I’m on my couch, still mired in Lord of the Flies. Mercifully, I’m close to finishing. Ralph is on the beach awaiting a violent death. I’m so eager for the book to end so that I can read something else, something happier, that I ignore the sound. A few minutes later there’s another ping, louder this time. I put the book down and listen. Pings three, four, and five come in rapid succession. Something’s hitting my window. Hail? I’m up and at my window before I can think better of it. I push the curtains aside.
Olly’s window is wide open, the blinds are up, and the lights are off in his room. The indestructible Bundt is sitting on his windowsill wearing googly eyes that are staring right at me. The cake trembles and then tilts forward, as if contemplating the distance to the ground. It retreats and trembles some more. I’m trying to see Olly in his darkened room when the Bundt leaps from the sill and plunges to the ground.
I gasp. Did the cake just commit suicide? I crane my neck to see what’s become of it, but it’s too dark out.
Just then a spotlight illuminates the cake. Unbelievably, it’s still intact. What is that thing made of? It’s probably best that we didn’t try to eat it.
The light goes out and I look up just in time to catch Olly’s black-clad hand and flashlight retreat into the window. I stay for a few minutes, watching and waiting for him to come back, but he doesn’t.
NIGHT TWO
I’M JUST SETTLING in to bed when the pings begin again. I am determined to ignore him, and I do. Whatever he wants I can’t do. It’s easier not to know.