Anonymous

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Debra kept secrets from the time she was nine, pretending to have a normal life. Having been an only child, she longed for someone her age or older or younger, a friend to share her secrets with. She made friends easily, but her mother condemned them. Fakes, she would say, nobody smiles at you unless they want something. They lie to get what they want from you. Debra and her mother moved often, sometimes driving for days, running from evil people who do evil things - people who didn't exist. Debra didn't want a doll or toys when she was little, not as much as she wanted a friend.

Painting from the top of a ladder, Debra heard a fistful of knocks at the front door. She could see the top of someone's head through the door's high diamond-shaped window. Whoever it was, they must have been standing on their toes to see inside by the way their eyes disappeared and appeared.

I've got company now? It had almost been a month since Debra first came there. The house wasn't ready for guests. There were bare light bulbs overhead - no light fixtures yet. The yellowed floor had been scrubbed clean - no new carpeting either. No working windows. No electricity upstairs. For every 'no this' or 'no that,' her only comfort was that 'no one' had actually been upstairs when the floorboards creaked. As far as she could tell.

Debra towel-dried her painted fingers, close enough to the door to hear them talking.

"I can't wait to see the suckers who bought this dinosaur," a man's voice said. "They should have just torn it down."

"Be nice," a woman's voice said.

She was angry, hurt - him looking down on them, on her. Who were these people? Her neighbors? There were only two other houses on the gravel road. Beyond that, freshly tilled farmland as far as the eye could see.

Debra opened the door politely. "Can I help you?"

The man held a plate of cookies. The woman held a casserole, her face awash in smiles. "Hi. I'm Julie. We heard someone bought this place. Been meaning to stop by. This is my husband, Kyle."

Kyle nodded in agreement without so much as a smile. His serious manner and his perfectly groomed hair reminded Debra of a banker, except for his jeans and a flannel shirt. He was tall and thin, sunburned crow's feet around his eyes. He shook Debra's hand so loosely, she wondered why he even bothered. His hands felt rough and callused; then she noticed that he was babying a scabbed-over cut between his thumb and forefinger.

"I'm Debra. Nice to meet you," she said to the man, feigning a smile. Julie handed Debra the casserole. "I've been dying to see what you're doing in here."

Debra took the meal, and noticed calluses on Julie's small freckled hands. Then she noticed the same freckles around the laugh lines of her Irish-like face. "This is really nice of you," Debra said. "Thank you."

"The cookies are from Sam and Marie. They live right over there." Julie pointed to a house that Debra couldn't see. "They wanted to come and meet you but he has a touch of Alzheimer's; it's acting up today. You'll like them." Julie had a friendly way about her, like she'd known you all your life. Her dark hair curled in spirals to her shoulders in hues of red, so different from Debra's long straight hair, a pecan kind of brown. Debra liked her, the lilt in her voice; it was the sort of voice you'd heard at Girl Scout camp in the middle of the night when your bunk-mate giggle-whispered.

"I have to thank them for myself. Just a couple of days till we move in. Tell me. Are there any stories going on about this place?" she said half-kidding.

"Don't all old houses come with old stories? Believe me, I've heard them. Don't pay them any mind. Just kids trying to scare each other." Julie stepped inside, glancing around. "You've really been working here. I'd love to have a big house like this. How many rooms does it have?" Kyle came in behind her, set cookies down on a sawhorse, and just stood there rattling his pocket change, an unnerving thing about him.