The Nothing War

Chapter One

        On the day that the house next door took down its long-standing "FOR SALE" sign and the moving trucks rolled into the driveway depositing the handsome and instantly-popular David Callahan and his family, I thought life was about to get a whole lot better. I was wrong, so very wrong.
        It was the end of sophomore year of high school in 1981, and summer was just a week away. Exams were over, and I'd made my usual scores, high enough for me to pass flawlessly, but not high enough to be considered for any special programs. I didn't want to, anyways. The couple kids in that program at our school were cold, unfriendly, and condescending. I preferred my little gang of friends that I'd known all my life.
        The house next door had been on the market for some time now, after the last family moved away when I started high school. When word came around that someone had bought it, I was praying it would be someone cool. I lived on a small street in the outskirts of the small downtown area that wasn't much more than a couple streets of buildings, diners, and gas stations with a couple parks and vacant lots strewn about. My street was full of small 1910s and 1920s bungalows with a couple abandoned ones that the different groups of kids had claimed. And the main gang of the neighborhood was a group of several guys that went to my school, hung out with each other, played football, raced bikes, all of that. 
        I've always been more of a tomboy. There's a lot of girls in my neighborhood, but I never really enjoyed sitting around reading teen magazines and listening to music. My hair was never a big part of me. All the girls at my school got perms as soon as their parents let them, but I kept my natural hair. Wavy but not curly, not quite brown but not quite red either. Makeup and fashion didn't interest me. I wanted to play football with the guys, ride bikes, climb trees. Even at sixteen.
        I'd known the group of guys since I was little. Everyone called them the Bikers because they rode everywhere on their bikes, even though some of them had cars. I'd always tried to play with them when I was little, and for a while, they let me. Then we hit middle school and they went from nice but abrasive to rude and abrasive. They told me girls couldn't play football. They stopped helping me work on my bike whenever it broke. My mom didn't know anything about bikes, and my dad ran out on us when my sister was born, two years after me, so I didn't have anyone else to go to when it broke, at least until I met Ray. But nevertheless, I'd refused to give up on being friends with them. I still hung out around their football practices, even though they never let me play. I was decently good at it and a fast runner, but they didn't care. I hung out around them all through middle school, tagging along whenever they went anywhere. When they hung out at their signature place, the abandoned house at the end of the cul-de-sac, I went with them. When they stole beers and had parties in that house, I joined them and tried to impress them by drinking, even though it made me sick. When they went hunting in the woods, I went with them even though I could never shoot an animal. The only thing they ever managed to shoot was a bird, and they tried to cook it over a makeshift fire, but couldn't figure it out. They'd tossed me the bird to bury and left. I buried it in the sand by the creek and put out the fire before running back to join them. I sucked up to them more than my sister sucked up to our mom every Christmas. It's embarrassing to think about now. I was practically their servant.
        By the time we got to high school, I hadn't given up. I practiced football with my sister every day. I lifted the weights I'd gotten for Christmas. I rode my bike for hours at a time. By the time sophomore year was at its end, I'd almost given up on them accepting me. Then David moved in.

        It was about sunset on a Tuesday night. The day had been warm and sunny, and I'd just gotten back from hanging out at the diner with my friend Heather. She was a year older than me with the biggest perm I'd ever seen and the best I-don't-give-a-damn personality I'd ever seen. She was the oldest of our little friend group and the only one of us that had a car. The only reason she had it was because her grandfather died and left it to her dad. She couldn't have afforded one otherwise. None of us could. It was an old, beat-up Ford truck from the 60s, and she went everywhere in it. 
        She'd just driven us all back from the diner and dropped us all off at our houses in time for school-night curfew. It was around eight o'clock, and the sun was just starting to set. I'd just hopped down from the bench and slammed the truck door when I looked over and saw the moving truck in the driveway next to ours. Heather saw me looking at it and turned to look as well, before whistling.
        "Someone finally bought that house," she said unimpressed, before turning back to me. "I'm ditching tomorrow," she said, which meant I'd be taking the bus to school. Heather ditched school a lot to either work at the auto shop or hang out somewhere downtown. Whenever I asked her why she hated school, she just replied, "School don't teach you real survival skills. School's only for if you can afford college, and otherwise, it's a waste of time." When she was at school, she usually skipped class to hang out and smoke in our little corner behind the bushes of the courtyard. The only class she attended regularly was auto mechanics.
        "You could at least drive us and then bail," I replied. She shot me a look. "Get your own car if you hate the bus so much. Or walk. Or bike. You don't always gotta rely on me," she replied, driving away. I watched her go, then turned around to asses the situation in front of me. As I watched the movers unload things, two cars came driving down the road towards me: a newer station wagon and a blue Chevelle that looked around ten years old. Heather would know. Both cars pulled into the driveway. I watched them from mine. A woman, a man, a middle-schooler, and two dogs got out of the station wagon. A boy my age got out of the Chevelle, and the first thing I noticed was how attractive he was. He had blonde hair and I couldn't see his eyes because of his aviator sunglasses. Heather and I had similar pairs. The lenses of his were blue, ours were red. 
        I watched him get out of the car and walk into the house, hoping he didn't notice me staring at him. I stood leaning against the side of my house for a while, watching the family bring all their things inside. When it started getting dark, I went inside.
        The first thing I noticed was that mom wasn't home yet. But to my surprise, neither was my sister Leah, who was always home by dark. I went back outside and sure enough, her bike wasn't in its usual spot by the garbage cans. Which meant she was out somewhere. I went inside and didn't worry about it.