“Micha, get in here,” my dad calls out from the garage and he sounds really mad. “I need your help.”
Ella instantly steps back, her eyes widening. “Bye, Micha.”
“You should come over,” I call out and hold my toy car through the hole in the fence. “This is my favorite one, but I’ll let you play with it.”
She eyes the car and then glances back at her house. “I think my mom might get mad at me if I do.”
“You can just come over for a little bit,” I suggest. “Then when your mom comes out looking for you, you can climb back over the fence. Besides it’s really fun watching my dad work on the car.”
She glances back and forth between the house and the car in my hand and finally she hurries back toward her house. I think she’s going back inside, but instead she grabs a plastic box that looks like the thing I keep all of my toy cars in. She drags it over to the fence and steps up on it. She takes a gulp of her juice box and then she hands it to me and I step back as she climbs over the fence. She falls down on her knees as she lands and cuts one of her knees a little.
“Are you okay?” I ask her.
She nods, looking like it doesn’t hurt at all as she wipes the dirt off and stands back up. She grabs the juice box and toy car from me and I smile as I walk back toward the garage with her, happy I finally got her to climb over the fence.
Ella
Six years old…
I like my next door neighbor Micha a lot. At first he was kind of scary because he was so nice and no one’s ever been that nice to me before. But now he’s not too scary. He always shares his juice and cookies with me at school and when Davey Straford pulled my hair and told me I was icky because I had holes in my clothes, Micha shoved him down and told him he smelled like rotten eggs.
The teacher got mad at him and then his dad got mad at him when we got home from school. He couldn’t play with me for three days ’cause his mom and dad said he was grounded, but it’s been three days and now I can go over again.
It’s a really hot day, so I get two Popsicles out of the freezer before I head over. My shoes have got holes in the bottom of them again so I don’t even bother putting them on. My mom yells at me to take out the trash as I walk out so I have to go back and haul it out of the trash can. She’s always yelling at me to take out the trash and do the dishes. It makes me sad sometimes because I get tired, but my dad says she’s sick and my brother and I have to be nice to her and help her out because he has to go out at night to “clear his head and take a break.”
The garbage bag’s really heavy and leaves this gross slimy stuff on the kitchen floor as I drag it out, slide it off the steps and toss it into the bigger trash can. I put the lid on and skip down the sidewalk and then climb over the fence.
The sprinklers are on and the grass is all wet and kind of muddy, but I splash in it anyway, getting the bottom of my jeans wet and some mud gets stuck in my toes. I skip up the sidewalk, making footprints on the cement all the way to the side door of Micha’s house
I’m about to knock on the door when I hear someone crying from inside the garage. The door is open and Micha’s dad’s Challenger isn’t inside and it’s always parked in there, so it’s weird. Micha’s dad is always working on it and getting mad at it. When I get inside the garage, I find Micha sitting where the car used to be parked, with his back turned to me. It sounds like he’s the one crying, which makes no sense. Usually I’m the one crying and Micha is the one smiling.
“Micha,” I say and the crying stops.
“I can’t play today, Ella,” he says quietly and it looks like he’s trying to wipe tears away.
I walk around in front of him, but he won’t look up at me, so I sit down on the floor. He tucks his arms onto his lap and I can only see the top of his head, because he’s looking down at the ground.
“Micha, what happened?” I ask, the Popsicles cold in my hand.
He shakes his head and then his shoulders begin to shake as he starts crying again. “My dad took the car and left.”
“I’m sure he’ll be back soon,” I tell him, not understanding why that’s making him cry. My dad leaves in his car all the time.
He shakes his head and looks up at me. Micha’s eyes are this really pretty blue color that I saw on these beads once that I used to make a bracelet in school. His eyes are really wide and shiny right now like the beads and he looks so sad. It kinda makes me feel like crying, too.
“No, he’s not coming back,” he tells me and tears roll down his cheeks and fall onto the ground. “Ever. My mom said he ran away and he’s never coming home.”
I don’t know what to say to him. My dad ran away once, too, at least that’s what my mom told me, but then he came home that night and my mom said it must have been because he couldn’t find anywhere else to go. But sometimes she tells stories that I don’t think are true.
I scoot closer to Micha, not sure what to say to him, so instead I hold out a Popsicle. He keeps crying as he looks at it and then he finally takes it from my hand. He peels the wrapper off and I peel mine off and then I sit there with him while he cries because it always makes me feel better when he sits with me when I’m upset. Eventually his tears stop, long after the Popsicles are melted in our bellies and Micha finally gets up and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. I get to my feet, too, and I search for something to say.
“Do you want to do something?” I ask.
He glances at me, still sad, but then he nods. “Yeah, what do you want to do?”
I smile and take his hand. “Whatever you want to do,” I say. He’s usually doing stuff for me, but today it should be about making him happy.
He considers something and then there’s the slightest sparkle in his eyes. “How about hide-and-go seek?”
I nod and then we play until the sun goes down, turning a sad day into a decent one because we’re together.
Chapter 6
Micha
Later that day, I rap my hand on the doorway as I walk into my bedroom. Ella is lying on the bed on her stomach with the journal opened in front of her. I really wish she’d stop reading that thing. As much as I know it’s good for her to have something that belonged to her mom, I can see in her eyes that whatever’s in there is bringing her down. She hasn’t been on her medication for a while and hasn’t talked to a therapist in a few months, at least that I know of. She’s been doing fine and I want her to stay that way, but I also don’t want to be the asshole who tells her to quit reading her dead mother’s journal.
So I keep my mouth shut and instead check her out. She’s beautiful, her auburn hair pinned behind her head, wavy curls framing her face, and she’s wearing a black-and-red dress that hugs her body and black stilettos on her feet.
“God, you’re so fucking hot,” I say, adjusting myself as the urge to slam the door and take her from behind tries to overpower me. But people have started to arrive at my house for the party, so I control myself.
Ethan is letting everyone in but he wasn’t too happy about the party to begin with, although I have no idea why because he used to enjoy parties back when we were younger. It was our thing and we probably threw more at my house then we actually went out to, since my mother never cared just as long as we cleaned up afterward. I had to laugh at Ethan when we were driving and chatting about what’s been going on in our lives for the last six months or so. I guess when he and Lila go back to Vegas they’re packing their stuff and hitting the road to try and live out his dream of being a mountain man. It’s strange because Lila doesn’t seem like the type, at least when I first met her, but now she seems different. She seems less preppy and I hate to say it but at first I thought she came off as a spoiled rich brat. But she’s not though. She’s actually really nice.