The Summer of Our Foreclosure

by Sean Boling

  Chapter Nineteen

  As we rehashed events throughout the rest of that afternoon, my friends and I weren’t sure what was more frightening about our parents: the way they turned into animals when attacking the bus, or that they still thought Soren was cool.

  My folks were as baffling as any of the rest. We ate dinner together that evening, “in case we forget to eat at the barbeque,” according to Dad, who was feeling really jolly about everything, and I tried to stay quiet as they went on about Soren, figuring they would stop eventually. But they proceeded to credit him with “saving us from ourselves” and “re-establishing law and order” and “reminding us of a higher power.”

  “Oh, please,” I couldn’t take it anymore. “He loved having an excuse to shoot his gun. That’s all.”

  They seemed surprised that a boy my age wasn’t enamored of a lone gunman.

  “You don’t know what we were capable of,” Dad said.

  “I was there,” I reminded him.

  “So you saw,” he pleaded his case.

  “Yeah, you were in danger of breaking a hand or a foot from banging them on the side of the bus.”

  Mom tried to diffuse an argument while still hyping Soren. “It’s not us I’m relieved about,” she said. “I’m glad he stopped us before we got our hands on anyone in that bus.”

  “Thank God someone kept their cool,” Dad seconded her.

  “The bus driver seemed pretty cool,” I muttered.

  “What do you mean?” Dad asked.

  “He didn’t seem to feel like he was in any danger.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I could see his face,” I explained. “He was annoyed. And so was everyone else in the bus, I’ll bet. They weren’t scared. They weren’t thinking ‘Oh my God, somebody save us.’ They were thinking ‘I wish these idiots would shut up and get out of the way so we can get out of this dump.’”

  They glared at me like a couple of kids who had just been admonished.

  “What?” I said. “Can’t I have an opinion on the situation?”

  “Sure,” Dad answered, still sounding child-like. “It’s wrong, but you’re welcome to it.”

  Mom slid in again. “I just don’t think you understand the gravity of what happened today, Nick.”

  “Yeah, what would a teenage boy know about rage?” I scoffed.

  “Exactly,” Dad pounced on the chance to make a point. “Now imagine that rage in a whole group of adults.”

  “It would have passed,” I sighed. I could tell I was sounding more condescending and on the verge of losing their attention, but couldn’t stop myself.

  “Maybe not before we did some serious damage,” Mom said. “To ourselves or others.”

  “Maybe, maybe, maybe,” I held up my arms and let them drop onto the table. “Soren’s got you charmed, all right. Yeah, maybe you would have, and maybe someone will break into our house tonight and rape us all, and maybe zombies will storm our gate.”

  “Nobody wants bad things to happen,” Mom said. “But they do.”

  “Of course they do,” I fired back. “But bad things shouldn’t get you off.”

  And that was it. We were done for the evening. I didn’t feel that bad for saying it, though, because it gave them a chance to act like parents again. They grounded me for the night, insisting that I stay in my room and was not allowed at the block party. I did my best to act like it was punishment while gladly complying. I had few friends remaining at this point, anyway, which was something I meditated on as I otherwise enjoyed being cloistered for the night.

  My dwindling number of friends and growing appreciation of solitude pointed me back in time. I was becoming the same person I was before we moved here. It was as if I had been granted a couple years’ worth of experimenting with being a more excessive and wild sort, and now the phase was coming to a close. It hadn’t really been me this whole time, just a response to a situation. The default setting remained.

  I alternated between sitting at my desk watching online episodes of an anime series I wanted to catch up on, and lying on my bed reading Animal Farm, another book I pretended to read in school but only now decided to explore. I didn’t notice how late it had become until I saw some headlights weaving through the blinds in my window. I found it odd that anyone would be driving through the block party. The last time that happened it heralded the arrival of Soren and his family, so I got up to see what was going on.

  I was surprised to find the party long since ended, the garages closed and the street drained of people, providing a clean getaway for the vehicle I was trying to make out. It looked like the latest lease deal driven by Blaine’s Dad, but I wasn’t sure until I saw his Mom’s SUV following several seconds behind. And right behind her was a trailer she was towing filled with items covered in a tarp.

  They were sneaking away.

  More of my Ranch period was passing by my window and pushing me closer to whatever the next period was going to be.

  They left the boat in the driveway. Some men came for it a few days later. Nub and I asked them where they were taking it. “Back to the dealership,” they said. Soon after that a truck came for the furniture left behind. We asked the movers where that was going. “Auction,” they said. And finally the foreclosure sign went up.

  Soren served as their unofficial spokesman, and even he didn’t know where they went. All he knew is that it had to be someplace where it would be easier for Blaine’s Dad to do business; that he needed a state, or a country, that provided him with more freedom. And Soren hoped that he would find it. He claimed that Steve (who evidently never told Soren his real name was Yuri) had a lot to offer, and any system that stifled someone as gifted as him was a broken one.

  He also claimed that the foreclosure was a mistake by the bank, the result of miscommunication, or missing paperwork; the story tended to change whenever I overheard him talking about it. I started to wonder if Soren had even spoken to them before they left, if he even knew they were going to leave, or if he had just decided to appoint himself as their apologist after the fact.

  Because of the alleged mortgage snafu, he had agreed to keep an eye on their house for them. This usually amounted to Soren circling the property every morning with a momentous expression as he looked it up and down, though he occasionally made a show of going inside with the key Blaine had given him during his apprenticeship, being sure to jingle the other keys on his loop as he did. I was certain that Blaine had simply forgotten to get it back from him, and that Soren made no effort to give it back so that he could use it as a prop to prove what faith people had in him.

  One such morning he passed by our front yard after making his rounds as I emptied out some coolers from the previous night in front of our garage while Mom and Dad nursed hangovers up in their room. Soren had given up trying to recruit me, but was still pleasant enough, perhaps as a hedge. He nodded in my direction as he stepped over the trails of water that trickled down our driveway and into the gutter from the melted ice I was draining.

  “I’m surprised you don’t wear a shoulder holster and a gun when you do that,” I tried to keep it light. He stopped and faced me.

  “I may have to start,” he said, oblivious to my attempt.

  “I know you like guns and all,” I sighed. “But you can still joke about them. The gun gods won’t think any less of you.”

  “Maybe you need to get more serious,” he said.

  “Oh, why? Because I need to face reality?” I was hoping to get him moving again. “Come on. Who usually ends up being the crazy person, Soren? The one who jokes around too much, or the one who takes things way too seriously?”

  But he stood there and tried to look like a disapproving adult. “Please don’t think of something to say,” I asked him.

  “I don’t have to say anything, Nick. I can show you something.”

  “Really?” I was genuinely intrigued.

  “Really.” He gestured for me to join him.

&nb
sp; I couldn’t help but pause at the idea of going anywhere with Soren. But I figured at the very least it would provide an opportunity to call him out on more ridiculousness.

  “Lead the way,” I said.

  I assumed he was going to retrace his footsteps to Blaine’s house, but before we got there, he crossed the street and headed for Shay’s. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure I was still following, and pushed through the side gate into the backyard. He led me to the sliding glass door and waited there as if expecting a crowd to gather before starting his presentation.

  “I discovered this unlocked after the family moved out,” he announced, sliding the door open and close to prove his point.

  “I thought you were just keeping an eye on Blaine’s old house.”

  “When Blaine and his father asked me to watch over their property, it occurred to me I should watch over the whole development.”

  “The banks will be very grateful.”

  “Some of us are still hoping to sell our property,” he shot back. “And with so many residents leaving, and a non-existent police presence, it would be very easy for things to get out of control. Have you heard of the Broken Windows Theory?”

  “No,”

  “Criminal Justice authorities have conducted studies that show when a neighborhood appears to be looked after and in order, crimes are less likely to be committed. But if a neighborhood looks shoddy, like nobody cares, then crime goes up.”

  I felt as though I should raise my hand before speaking. “Interesting. But who would be committing crimes in an empty house? There’s nothing to steal.”

  “Fair question. But you need to think beyond theft. Consider vandalism, or trespassing.”

  And with that he opened the door and beckoned me to follow him.

  I pondered whether Shay had left the door unlocked on purpose; if she thought perhaps I would want to search for traces of her after she had gone. I hoped that whatever Soren was going to show me, it wasn’t something personal of hers intended for me. Not that I was pining for her or hoping for such a tribute, but she was still a friend, and I didn’t want anything between us violated by Soren.

  We went upstairs and my nerves were firing on all ends as he led me to Shay’s bedroom door. I wondered if he had seen the two of us together and was taunting me. I tried to cover my jitters with the calmest expression I could manage.

  He opened the door and my mask almost cracked when I saw a sleeping bag and a half-melted candle on the floor, as I thought it may have been a shrine in honor of our farewell dry hump. But before I could betray my own privacy, I threw together an assessment of the situation: the candle was embossed with the logo of a popular teen vampire series, and the sleeping bag was a faded Disney princess model. Shay’s room was serving as a love shack for Chris and Dulce. I went from my heart in my throat to a laugh in my belly. If Shay really had left the door open deliberately, it wasn’t so those two could take their school bus groping to a higher level.

  Soren had a very different perception of the layout. “What’s so funny about trespassing?” he snapped.

  “Nothing,” I settled down. “It’s wrong. I know. But if you knew who these people were…”

  “And you do?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The dude is really into vampires. He’s more into vampires than you’re into zombies. He even looks like one. Well, a really dorky one. You must have seen him by now: Long, stringy hair? Dark trench coat? Bad skin?”

  Soren kept his focus on his version and tried to make it right. “Souvenirs from that series are everywhere. And if he loves it so much, why burn the candle? Why not keep it in good condition? And what about the sleeping bag?”

  I looked down at it and felt a tremendous amount of empathy for Dulce through this ragged childhood relic, imprinted with beautiful cartoon princesses that she could never hope to emulate.

  “It belongs to his girlfriend,” I said.

  “What is he, a pedophile?”

  I started laughing again, thinking Soren had finally allowed himself to joke about one of his dogged pursuits. But no, he was serious. My laugh gave ground to a sigh.

  “He’s not a pedophile,” I clarified. “He’s a lot of other things, but not that.”

  “So what’s with the sleeping bag?”

  “She’s poor,” I explained. “They don’t just throw something out when they outgrow it, or give it to the Goodwill. She probably got it from the Goodwill.”

  “They?” Soren emphasized.

  “She’s from over the wall.”

  “Ha!” he exulted. “Just as I thought.”

  “What exactly did you think?”

  “Squatters,” he said. “From over the wall, like you said. Or under it, as the case may be. I should really fill in that tunnel.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I groaned. “They’re not squatters. He’s from this side.”

  “But she’s not.”

  “They just want a place to screw around.”

  “What’s wrong with their own homes?”

  “Their parents probably don’t approve.”

  “And why would that be?” Soren asked in a provocatively smug tone.

  If I was older or bigger I may have punched him. “I know what you’re getting at, and it’s not like that. Didn’t you hear my description of Chris? Haven’t you seen him? He’s the good-looking one of the two. And their personalities are even uglier. They’re both hideous, Soren. The Mexican one, and the white one. Either one would horrify any parent.”

  “As a parent, I’m horrified alright.”

  “And you haven’t even met them,” I went for the light touch.

  “I’m not talking about them specifically,” he once again rejected my latest effort. “I’m talking about this,” he gestured toward the sleeping bag. “What they’re doing.”

  “Well, hopefully they’re being careful. You’re so good at gun safety lectures, maybe you can give them a talk on safe sex.”

  “The squatting,” he growled. “The invasion.”

  “We’re back to that?” I couldn’t believe it. “Did you hear anything I said?”

  “Why are they in this neighborhood?”

  “Because half the houses are empty.”

  “Nice houses,” he said. “Way nicer than anything on the other side of the wall.”

  “They…are…not…living…here…Soren,” I annunciated. “They…are…fucking.”

  “They’re not living here yet,” he maintained. “This is just the first step. Blaine’s girlfriend, now this one. How long before families start following their kids? This may not be my house, but it’s my neighborhood, my daughter’s neighborhood, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it turn into the outskirts of Tijuana. If I want to raise my child in squalor, I’ll move there. But don’t bring it to me.”

  I was too frustrated to even register frustration. I felt resigned. I had tried to make him see my point of view, but it was beyond my capacity. I was about to say good-bye, but that would be extending him more courtesy than he deserved. So I just left. He insisted on getting a last word in:

  “Think about it,” I heard him say as I descended the stairs.

  I walked back to my house but didn’t feel like stopping. I wanted to keep walking. I took several laps around The Ranch, tapping the red and white signs hanging from the crosses as I passed them by, as though giving them high fives, leaving them swinging in my wake. I still felt like walking, so I walked out the front gate, pausing at the camera to stare into it. I stared at whomever was on the other end for quite some time. I fell into a trance. Instead of being compelled to walk, all I wanted to do was stare into that camera, expressionless. I wondered what was happening on the other end; if someone was monitoring it live, or if they just reviewed recordings later. If someone was live, I imagined him calling people over to “Check out this kid;” if it was a recording, I imagined him later that day bringing the recording ove
r to someone to “Check out this kid.” I started to speculate that maybe there was no one on the other end, that the camera was a decoy, like an empty police car on the side of the highway to trick people into slowing down. Once that thought took root, I started walking again.

  I walked past The Barrio, as I didn’t yet feel like talking to anyone. I walked across the quiet intersection, and through the skinny forest to the fence surrounding the factory. I still didn’t know what it did, what it made. I didn’t know anything. Even when I knew what people did, I didn’t know why they did it.

  I reached out to see if the electric fence was turned on. It was. I jerked my hand away. Then I touched it again, to see if I could keep it up longer. I started grabbing it with one hand, then two hands. I wanted to see how much of my flesh I could press against the throbbing metal and for how long. With both hands clutching the diamond-shaped patterns of chain link, I rattled it to see if that allowed me to withstand more of the pain. Then I tried bellowing while I clutched it. Then simultaneously rattling and bellowing. Every method I tried, every attempt to extend my time, resulted in about the same length, and it was short. I kicked it and felt no shock through the rubber sole of my shoe. So I kicked it several more times. I kicked it so hard and so often that I started to pant. I thought someone may come out of the building and start to yell at me to stop. But no one did.

  “Hey!” I shouted at the building. “Hey! Anybody in there?”

  My voice echoed off its walls and scattered across the mottled pavement. When my echo faded away, I could hear the hum of machinery.

  “Hey!”

  I shouted several more times, but never heard anything other than my own voice bouncing back at me, and the sound of machines I could not see.