The Dating Game

Chapter One

Juliet

Coming back home from my exceptionally odd school day, I was bouncing down the streets until I got to the house at the very end where the road stopped.

This was a little estate where I lived so it was quite peaceful. Although, I didn't know many people who lived here so I kept to myself in my room mainly.

My house was the only one that had conifers and a gate. All the other houses just had a path from the sidewalk (maybe a little brick fence) but nothing extravagant like what we had. Sometimes I'd rush just to get home so people wouldn't see me entering the house.

I made my way up to the Victorian England black gate that was between emerald green conifers. They ruffled slightly in the light breeze as I opened them, pushing them shut after and locking it. The house was two stories high but it did include some extra rooms. The bricks were a light russet colour, exceptionally unimpeachable – the same with the windows, too. There was a garage in the corner and a garden shed next to that. There was even a fancy, curving path that led up to the double front doors of the house.

"Hello, Muriel," I said cheerfully. "What are you planting today?"

Muriel was actually the next door neighbour who lived across from my dad and I. She's been living alone for a few years now since her husband passed away from a stroke (he was very ill beforehand). To keep myself busy instead of wallowing in the grief and turmoil of her husband's death, Muriel turned to gardening.

At first, Muriel reinvented her garden and since her husband has passed, it has been voted best garden in the neighbourhood every single year running. Now, when Muriel has finished with her garden in the day, she simply opens up the gates to our house and gardens here, too.

"You can't mess with our garden," her dad had said, shocked and amused by this woman. He had come home to see her planting some roses in the corner where the soil encased the grass at the front of the house. My dad was standing on the pathway that led from the gate to the doors. You couldn't even see the garden precisely anyway because of the conifers that acted like a fence on either side of the gates.

"Fun... takes mind off... death... gardening," muttered the old woman. She was dishevelled and her grey hair was sticking out in places.

"Dad, let her," I piped up, emerging into the property. I closed the gate behind me and paced up to my dad who was rubbing his forehead. "She's happy doing this."

"But what about payment? Is she doing this for free? How did she even get in? Does she have a key?"

We had a garden shed just in the corner next to the garage. The garden shed was only small but somehow Muriel had managed to get into it and use our gardening tools to garden. It was always my mom who used to do the gardening so since she died, too, the garden was left dishevelled.

"We could leave money in the garden shed in places she'll find it when she's looking for things. Not much money, I'm sure she wouldn't want loads, but like five dollars every week or something."

Since then, it became a tradition to leave the dollars in the shed in the morning. The next morning, it would be gone by the time I checked it after coming back from school. From then, my dad left the poor woman to garden.

"Girl has come home..." she muttered, digging harder into the soil. She often talked to herself, too. "Lilies..."

Muriel doesn't often talk back directly and typically it's in the evening when she sneaks off back home after putting everything away back in the garden shed. Most people avoided her because they thought she was crazy but she was just lonely. That was the problem.