Pinky Promise

Chapter One
The majority of the kids in my neighborhood, growing up, all knew one another, all played together. Were all friends with one another. This was due mostly to the fact that their parents were friends, had been since childhood, and now their parents were making a game of setting up play dates, birthday parties, and neighborhood cookouts, any and every opportunity  for their children to play together. All so that one day when they grow up and have their own kids, those kids will make friends with their parents friends kids. It really isn’t as complicated and confusing as it may sound; especially not in a town as small as ours. In fact, when you consider the size of our town, the creepy fact that your grandmother’s best friend was your best friend’s grandmother doesn’t really surprise you, or even really matter. If anything it’s understandable. It’s sort of an unmarked tradition here in Greenville, Arizona, for families to have friendships with other families that last through generations. I’m really the only person who seems to notice it at all, although, this is probably due to the fact that my parents had me 13 years too late, at which point all of their friends had already had all of their children, several years before me. This left me with no friends, because in Greenville, you only talk to the people you know, the friends you made while you were in diapers. My mother didn’t know anyone with a kid the same age as me. And no child my age had ever asked me to play. My sister was thirteen years older than me, which I think is much too big a gap as far as siblings go, because we were as distant as a brother and sister could be. Consequently, as a child, I virtually had way too much time on my hands. Which, ultimately, is how I came to discover the weird tradition that we have here in Greenville. Most of my time was spent alone, spying on the group of kids a few houses down from me and wishing they would ask me to play.
My sister, Lizzie, was born at exactly the right time: all my parents’ friends had their babies in 1980 and 1981. Perfect timing, Lizzie. Lizzie always had several friends to play with; she always had something to do. I would never admit it, because the brief contact I had had with my sister as a kid was hardly ever pleasant, but I was insanely jealous of her. If I had even just been born a couple years after Lizzie, I could have tagged along after the older children. I wouldn’t have been their favorite person, sure, but at least I’d have somebody. I suppose it’s possible, if I wanted to, to hold it against my folks for waiting so long to have me, but it isn’t their fault. I wasn’t a planned baby. When my sister was a year old, my parents decided to try for another baby, a boy this time(my mother wanted a boy; my father claims he didn’t much care.) After years of trying with no luck, my parents went to a special doctor to see what the problem was. The “special doctor” didn’t beat around the bush. He informed my mother that her ovaries weren’t working properly, that the fact that she had gotten pregnant with Lizzie so fast the first time was a mystery, and that the chances of her getting pregnant again where one in one million. Five years after that doctors visit, I came along.
For five years, my parents never did anything to prevent pregnancy, because, well, the doctor had told her the chances were one in a million. You can imagine the shock they must have felt when my mother rushed to her doctor’s office, convinced it was a stomach bug making her so sick, only to find out she was 11 weeks pregnant. When I think about it, I wish I could have been there to see the look on both of their faces when the doctor relayed the news.
My mother was 23 when she had Lizzie, who was hardly over seven pounds. Lizzie took after my mother physically; she was a tiny, petite baby. It was an easy, breezy pregnancy and a quick, simple delivery. My mother’s OBG warned her that I would most likely come too early, and if I didn’t, circumstances would bring them to have to induce labor prematurely, due to her age and my size. My mother is a small, petite woman: barley five foot one and just a little over one hundred pounds. We proved the doctors wrong yet again. Not only did my mom carry me to full term, but she didn’t go into labor until five days after her due date. I’ve often heard that the day I was born was the longest day of either of my parents’ lives, because my mother was in labor for seven hours. She had me completely naturally, while the doctors had been saying all along they would have to do a C-section, and without any pain medicine, something everyone in the delivery room applauded her for. Especially after they saw me. I was born on January 1, 1993, at 3:28am, in Greenville, Arizona. Ten pounds four ounces twenty two inches long. My mom named me first for her brother, who had died years ago, and my father named me after his father, who had died just the previous year. Jayce Anthony Baker.
I’ve heard the story countless times. I was their miracle baby, the last missing piece to the puzzle, the answer to their prayers. I was just a little late, was all. My mother was 36 when I was born, and my father was 39. Having older parents isn’t bad, either, because, in all honesty, the older people get the less they care about silly petty things, and the older parents get the less interested they are in things about you that you don’t want them to be interested in. Having older parents in my neighborhood, though, meant not being invited when all the other families with kids my age had cookouts and birthday parties. I won’t lie, it was hard, sometimes, growing up playing by yourself. And then finally starting school with the hopes to make friends with other students, only to find out that everyone else already knew each other and already had friends. It was tough, because inside, I was outgoing, funny, clever, and optimistic. No one except my parents ever saw it. Even after I did, however reluctantly, start school. I hated school. School was terrible. Nothing awful had happened to me there:  I wasn’t being picked on or bullied or failing or anything of that sort. I was just invisible to all my classmates. No one ever so much as asked me for a pencil. If you mentioned a boy named Jayce to any one of the students at Greenville Elementary, none of them would have a clue as to who you were referring to. The world is a very lonely place to be without a friend.
But the older I got, every time I felt that loneliness or sadness, I felt something else too.  A feeling I can’t exactly describe. A tug at my navel, a butterfly in my tummy, a frog in my throat, and my heart skipping a beat, all at once. Anticipation? Eh, no, not really. Almost more like excitement or nervousness, but not quite. A definite forewarning of something, though. As if my body knew something was coming, something major, and something big, but my brain hadn’t quite caught up yet. Looking back, I’m amazed that my body knew before I did, that somehow, all those years of loneliness would seem worth it, soon.  That one day in the near future, I would suddenly understand that the reason I was born thirteen years “too late” wasn’t because God had sick sense of humor and wanted to pick on me, or because I was being punished for something I had done in a previous life. And soon I would realize that my reason for being so lonely all this time would suddenly become clear; that sometimes in life it’s only fair that you suffer for a while, simply to balance out the good and the happiness that’s coming your way one day. No one should be as happy as I am going to be without earning it first.  No, it was meant to be that way. I had to be thirteen years after Lizzie in order to get to where I needed to be, when I needed to be there. I just didn’t know it yet.
In 1979, the year before my sister was born; my parents bought their first house in a little suburban neighborhood called Lakeview in Greenville, Arizona. Lakeview was a quiet little neighborhood, with about 50 average, sturdy little one story houses. Front yards were small, backyards were spacious, the weather was hot and the gossip was usually pretty juicy; Even if you didn’t associate with most of its people, everyone in the small town of Greenville knew everyone else, and deny it all we want to, everybody always knew everyone else’s business; the favorite past time of the Lakeview housewives just happened to be trading stories and swapping rumors about everyone else in town, which they did often. Arizona’s infamous desert-like soil made it difficult to grow much of anything besides cactuses and the occasional weed, so where other people in the US might’ve planted a flower garden, an Arizonian would’ve planted a cactus garden. Most people in Lakeview lived average middle-working- class lives. There were a few houses with expensive, tacky gargoyles on either side of the driveway, a Cadillac, BMW or two, and a couple houses with in ground pools in the backyard, but nothing too fancy. There really weren’t too many wealthy or poor people in Greenville; mostly everybody just did as best they could and made just enough to be okay.
In the middle of Lakeview, a plot of land about the size of a soccer field, surrounded by a tall chain-link fence, was the place that all the teenagers of Lakeview would meet up after dark. Where all the gossiping housewives would flock together every day, squabbling over which latest rumors were true and which weren’t, discussing different ways to prepare casserole and episodes of Oprah between juicy stories. Where all the dog walkers of the neighborhood would all mysteriously “miss” the enormous dump their animal had left behind, leaving it to melt in the sweltering Arizona heat and stink up the whole street. Some called it the park. I guess you could call it that, because it had picnic tables and swings. Others called it the dump. I suppose you could call it that, too, because everyone seemed to throw their trash there and no one except the Greenville Sanitation workers picked up the dog droppings, and that was only once a month, if we were lucky. My parents called it Drug Alley, mostly as a joke, because when Lizzie was seventeen and going through her rebellious stage, my parents found out she had snuck out, went canvassing the neighborhood for her. Less than ten minutes of searching later, and they found her up there, swinging on the swings, drinking cheap beer and smoking a joint with a couple other kids. Lizzie was grounded for months after that fiasco. I’m kind of glad I had an older sister who got into trouble so much, because no matter what I did, my parents would always view her as the problem child, because she did it first. This is also another area that having older parents could be a good thing; they’d been through just about everything with my sister, and now I have a feeling that so long as I’m not getting into serious trouble, or even just sneaky enough to get past them, they’re too wore out from Lizzie to worry me too much.    That first house that my parents bought together in 1979, in Lakeview, was the house they raised their kids in and the one they were growing old in. My parents’ first house would be their only house.
I asked my Dad, once, why they chose Lakeview. Not that there was anything wrong with it, I was just curious as to what had made them decide this house, the house my sister and I were both born and raised in. I watched his face, his eyes looking past me, focused on something I couldn’t see, because he could only remember it. He smiled.
“Well, son. This happened to be the very first house your mom and I looked at. It was okay, but I wanted to see what else was out there. I was pretty sure it wasn’t the one. You know, not the one we would buy, and live in. But your Momma was hell-bent on it. Said she fell in love with the house when she first saw it. Said she had to have that porch. I talked her into looking at a few other ones, found a real nice two story house in Desert’s Edge, I really liked it, but she wouldn’t really look. Too stubborn. She wanted this one. She loved this house. So, here we are.” After hearing that, I thought about it, and realized my Dad was absolutely right about that. My mother did a lot of complaining about the house. She complained about everything; everything from how well or terrible the toilet flushing sounds, to how useful the walls are at keeping in hot or cold air, and even to how the sun shines in through the window in the kitchen. She complained A LOT. But there was something in her voice- fondness, maybe? I don’t know-that I could hear even when she was doing her complaining, that told me how much she loved our family home. She wasn’t alone, either, because I loved that house too. It was cozy, familiar, and heavily decorated with family photos, dozens of wilting house plants, and a handful of home-made and hand-painted clay vases and bowls(my mother gets an urge every now and again to suddenly show her artistic ability). The kitchen faucet drips consistently, no matter how many times you try to fix it. The front porch ceiling leaks in two places every time it rains(which, since we live in the desert, isn’t too often.) Every floor board in the house creaks, no matter how lightly you step on it. The screen door slams too hard. The railing on the front steps is wobbly. And my bedroom window became stuck several years back halfway through putting it up or pulling it shut, and won’t budge.  It isn’t much, but it’s home.
Most of the houses in Lakeview are about the same size, with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a living room and a few have dining rooms. My family likes to joke that the construction workers who built Lakeview were drunk the day they built our house and the house next door, on the right side. All the other houses of Lakeview are about the same amount of space apart, except for us and the house to the right of us. For some reason, these two houses, the same space away from each house on the opposite side of them as they should be, are just a little over ten feet apart. Both houses are almost identical, because their floor plans mirror each other. Our next door neighbor’s house stands out from the other houses in Lakeview in two other ways, as well; for one, it’s painted bright pink, whereas most of the houses around here are light brown, sand, white, or off-white, mostly to keep them cool from the hot desert sun. Second, the yard is decorated with dozens of different colored gnome lawn ornaments. No property in Lakeview is quite as bright or as bizarre as that house. The couple who lived in this house was Mr. and Mrs. Jackson. They had lived in Lakeview for as long as my parents had. They were older than my own mother and father, had two middle aged children who lived on the east coast, and three young grandchildren that they rarely ever saw. They had been married for 52 years. Before I started elementary school, my mom would take me to work with her every day. After school started, I couldn’t go with her anymore, so she arranged for me to take the school bus home and stay next door with the Jacksons every day from the time school got out until she got home.
Mrs. Jackson was my favorite. She was from Georgia, and she spoke with a thick southern accent, told the most extraordinary tall tales, made the best chocolate chip cookies I had ever tasted, and taught me to play black jack and poker when I was six. She had the biggest heart of anyone I had ever met, and she was always in the middle of doing someone a really huge favor, or making something nice for someone who she thought might need a little pick me up. Mr. Jackson was nice, too. He never talked much, just sat in his recliner smoking cigars and watching black and white TV, but when he did talk, he was always saying something that didn’t pertain to anything, really. Just talking out of his head, I guess. From the time I was five to the time I was eight, I spent the afternoons after school days using chocolate chip cookies as poker chips, practicing my poker face and talking with Mrs. Jackson. We talked about everything. She told me all about her kids, and she told me as much as she could about her grandkids. She told me that one day her and Mr. Jackson would like to move closer to their kids, so they could get to know their grand children. I told her that what I wanted more than anything else in the world was a dog. I told her all about school. I told her all about my parents. When I turned nine, my mother told me I didn’t have to go over there every day anymore, because I was old enough not to need a babysitter after school. It didn’t change anything. I was lonely and desperate for a friend, and Mrs. Jackson and my mother were close, and even when my mom stopped paying her to babysit me, she still allowed me to come over every day, and still continued to do all kinds of nice things for me.  It was a little pathetic, but the old woman had become almost like a grandmother to me. I never had a grandmother, because they both died before I was born, so that was as close as I would ever get.
The summer after I turned ten, Mr. and Mrs. Jackson’s youngest daughter Macy suddenly called them one day with good news. They had been looking for a house or condo near her house for a couple months now. They weren’t getting any younger, as Mrs. Jackson put it, and had better their get things together and spend as much time with their family as they could, while they could. Macy called to tell them that a cute little condo just a few doors down from her own had just gone on the market and that she had the landlord holding it for them for a week. Macy lived in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. They had one week to pack up everything they owned and drive cross country to the east coast, where they would stay. They started that afternoon. On the second day, I went over and helped Mrs. Jackson pack all of their knick knacks and picture frames into boxes full of packing peanuts. On the third day, I helped her wrap all of their dinnerware in bubble wrap and put into Styrofoam boxes. On the fourth day, Mr. Jackson and I moved all their clothes from the closet, wrapped them in plastic, and put them into the U-Haul truck they had rented. On the fifth day, my father and Mr. Jackson carried all of their furniture out of the house and into the truck. When they finished, we all went back to our house for my mother’s “goodbye Jacksons” dinner. I was quiet all through dinner. My heart was broken. My only friend in the whole world was this old woman, and now she was moving to the other side of the country. Mrs. Jackson knew how I was feeling, because she kept catching my eye and trying to make me smile. It didn’t work.
After dinner, Mr. Jackson excused himself, said he’d be just a second, and walked back next door. Mrs. Jackson, my mother, Dad and I sat in the living room. Mom and Mrs. Jackson discussed Myrtle Beach, the traffic, the food, and the shops there. I had never been. Not just to Myrtle Beach, but to any ocean, anywhere. I tried to imagine what my first beach trip would be like when I eventually got to visit one. I wondered if I would even like the ocean. Everyone else I know likes it, but lately I’ve been realizing that the things most people my age enjoy, I find boring or stupid, and what I enjoy, not many others enjoy. How disappointing would that be, to put time and energy into a beach trip, and drive all the way to an ocean somewhere, just for me to realize that I really hate the beach, and the ocean, and then have to come all the way home, wishing I had never left. That would be just like me to do. I mentally shook my head clear and told myself not to ever try to go to the beach, and that I may as well go ahead and say that I don’t like it, so that I won’t forget someday and accidentally try to vacation on the coast somewhere.
The sound of Mr. Jackson reentering my house brought me back out of my head, but something was off. I heard something else, too. The sound of claws frantically scratching and clamoring across the hardwood floor in my mother’s front hall. I sat up from my spot on the couch to see Mr. Jackson walking into the living room, holding a leash in his hand with a bouncing, hyper, and excited black and gray puppy attached to the other end of it, struggling to be free. I ran up to them and got onto the floor with the dog. Mr. Jackson unhooked his leash and stood looking down at me. I looked up at him.
“He’s awesome. Who’s is he?”
Mr. Jackson smiled. “He’s yours, son.”
“What?”
I turned and looked at my parents. They were smiling. I looked at Mrs. Jackson. She was beaming.
“But, what? How? Mine?”
I was confused.
Mrs. Jackson stood up from the couch. “George and I figured you’d be mighty lonely after we’d gone, once we left. We want to go to South Carolina, you know, our babies are there, so we figured maybe if you had a little distraction after we got going, you’d have less of a hard time.” She smiled. She gestured to the dog. “He’s a full blooded great Dane. He’s going to be pretty big. I figured a bigger dog would keep you busiest.”
I stood up and walked to her. Her kind old face, so familiar to me now, was lit up from the smile that stretched from one ear to another, her brilliantly white dentures sparkling. Only a woman like Mrs. Jackson could get so happy by genuinely surprising someone with a gift like the one she and her husband were giving to me.  Mr. Jackson had moved over to stand next to his wife.
“I…I…” I didn’t know what to say. So I just hugged her. She had made the last few years of my life not only bearable, but she had also made them fun. She had taught me how to play cards. Told me so many countless stories about people I had never heard of, of the adventures they had, some so far-fetched that I was sure there was no way any part of that story could be based on truth, but a small part of me still believed it, because that’s how she told it. In such a way that you couldn’t help but believe every word. Told me so many bad jokes, most of which I couldn’t remember now, but all of which I know we both laughed at. This woman, this wonderful woman, had kept a very grateful, very thoughtful, and very lonely little boy company for three years, just because that’s the type of person she was. I was so glad that she had lived in the funny pink house next to mine, and that I had had the chance to get to know her. I was going to miss her so terribly. I tried to put everything I was thinking into that hug, and I think she understood, because she squeezed me understandingly. She always understood.
I felt a lump in my throat as I thought the very sad thought that the only friend I’ve ever had in the world and my next door neighbor, was leaving her house tonight for good. Someone else would move into that empty house soon and we would have new neighbors, eventually.
Exactly as I thought these things, the strangest thing happened. Mrs. Jackson and I broke apart, and she turned to hug my mother, and Mr. Jackson stepped over to shake my father’s hand, and my new puppy started chasing his tail frantically, and my heart started racing, and I got that feeling in my tummy again, like something was about to fall into place, except more intense, and stronger than I had ever felt it before. My head spun and I felt dizzy as I tried to think of all the possible things that I could subconsciously be expecting to happen, and I came up short. Butterflies filled my stomach. Another feeling, one I could definitely place and describe, filled every inch of my being, overflowing up and over my head; excitement, anticipation. The feeling stayed with me as Mr. and Mrs. Jackson said their final goodbyes, and I was angry at myself for being unable to feel sadness at the loss of my friend, for only feeling this feeling of growing excitement, even at a time like this. As the Jackson’s left, I plopped myself down on the living room floor next to my new puppy.
“Jayce, you know that dog is going to need a lot of commitment and attention, right? You should probably go ahead and take him outside to use the bathroom, just in case.” My mother eyed the puppy suspiciously. She didn’t like dogs. I smiled as I realized that and that regardless of how she felt about them, she was willing to let me have one.
“Alright Mom. What should I name him?”
“I don’t know, baby. Whatever you want.” She reached out and kissed the top of my head as she walked past me into the kitchen.
“He looks like a Pepper.” My Dad stood up from the couch and stretched, yawning. His fingertips brushed the ceiling.
“Yeah. Pepper.”
**********

The months slipped by after that, one after another, each one seeming longer than the one before. All that summer, all that fall, and the better part of that winter, I was waiting. For what, I didn’t know. I had no idea what I was so subconsciously excited about. Christmas came and went, and on the days leading up to my birthday, the feeling seemed to fade a bit, until January 1, my eleventh birthday, when I woke up with the feeling completely gone. I took this as a sign that maybe my excitement had just been for my upcoming birthday, even though I knew deep down that that wasn’t the case.
I always expected every birthday to feel different, growing up, especially when I was much younger. But, every birthday, I awoke feeling exactly the same as I had the morning before when I woke up. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized the birthday-feeling everyone expects when they wake up on the anniversary of the day they were born isn’t something you wake up to. Only the people who go out of their way to try to make everything perfect for you on your special day (like moms) can give you that birthday-feeling, but even then, it’s hard to come by after you reach a certain age.
I had a very nice, but very normal, eleventh birthday that year. Everything about that day was nice, normal, predictable and relaxed. The only thing separating this birthday from any of my previous ones, besides my age, was the presence of Pepper, who was growing very fast and would soon reach his full adult size; standing on his hind legs, he was now much taller than me, and starting to catch up with my father. As Pepper and I climbed into bed that night, it never even crossed my mind that that day, my eleventh birthday, was the very last day of my life that I would ever describe as normal again.





Chapter Two



Living in a desert is exactly what you would expect it to be. Dry, parched, and hot. Very hot. I usually found myself, especially in the hottest days of summer, looking up at the sky, waiting for  rain.

The morning after my birthday, I awoke to the sounds of a diesel truck, very close to my house. Half asleep, I peeked out through the blinds of my partially opened window. A U-Haul truck was backing its way into the driveway of the pink house next door, which had remained empty since Mr. and Mrs. Jackson left several months ago. Beep, beep, beep. The truck stop, the movers jumped out, and immediately started to bring stuff into the house. Curious, I waited to see what the first piece of furniture would be. After watching them carry a few boxes inside, the first piece of furniture they unloaded was a large couch, big enough to fit five people, bright yellow in color with a bright blue skirt around the legs. I laughed out loud. There must be a clown convention moving in next door. I was amazed at the next piece of furniture they brought. A giant aquarium. Big enough, I knew, because I could still picture the Jackson’s living room, to cover one whole wall of the room, and almost touching the ceiling. It took several men to lift it. And then they all stood there holding it and sweating for several minutes, shouting at each other the best way to get it into the house. I watched them struggle with it for nearly fifteen minutes, before Pepper jumped awake and barked to be taken outside.
Coming back inside from our walk, I poured myself a bowl of cereal in the kitchen and sat at the window, watching the movers (who had somehow gotten that aquarium into the house.) and every odd piece of furniture they unloaded. My mother came into the kitchen.
“Morning, Jayce. Morning, Pepper.”
“We have our new neighbors.”
“Oh?”
My mother walked over to the window to have a look.
“What the…”
One of the movers had chosen that exact moment to bring out a clothing rack on wheels. Well, I assumed it was a clothing rack, although they didn’t look like any clothes I had ever seen. Sequins, glitter, and feathers was what really appeared to be hanging on the rack. I heard my mother suck in air.
“What?” I wanted to know what those feathers and things were for.
“Nothing, baby. Your cereal good?”
“Why did you gasp like that?”
“I just yawned, is all.”
“Do you think the new neighbors have a little boy my age?”
“I don’t know, baby. We’ll find out later. Go brush your teeth.”
“I hope so.”
“Well, what if it’s a girl?” My mother teased.
“I can be friends with a girl, too.” I said quietly.
My mother sighed sympathetically, reaching out and pulling me into a quick hug.
“Jayce, sweetheart, go get dressed and brush your teeth, ok? Maybe later we can walk over and introduce ourselves.”


Several hours later, I was whining and carrying on for my mother to hurry up.
“Mooommmmm, can we go now?”
“Jayce. I told you. In a minute.”
Silence.
“MOM. Please?”
“Jayce Anthony Baker. What has gotten into you? You aren’t usually this annoying.”
My mother ruffled my hair affectionately.
“Come on.” I grabbed her arm and pulled her outside.
Funny. The moment I stepped foot en route to that all too familiar funny pink house, my heart began to race, and suddenly I was anxious, so anxious, without a clue why. I immediately hung back and stepped behind my mother, much more aware of what we were doing. We approached the front door to find it wide open. A bright blue car sat in the driveway, and pop music came floating out of the open door at us. My mother stepped forward and knocked on the already opened door.
“Come in!” The voice was perky, bubbly, and hoarse, like whoever it belonged to had been screaming all night.
My mother and I looked at one another. And walked into the stranger’s house.
Everything was so different. The walls that used to hold the Jackson’s knick knacks now contained a very large black and white picture or Marilyn Monroe. The spot where Mr. Jackson’s tiny black and white TV once sat now housed a giant flat screen, complete with three foot tall speakers on either side and an entire entertainment system. All the furniture was different colors, but somehow went together. It smelled of vanilla cupcake candles, incense, and cigarettes in the living room. We waited.
A very young woman came from the hall and into the living room, a huge smile on her face and her hand already extended towards my mother.
“Hey there! Well y’all must be our new neighbors. I’m Candi. How are ya?”
She shook my mother’s hand and then mine.
“I’m Margaret, and this is my son, Jayce.”
“Jayce. I really like that name.”
I wondered over to the sofa and sat down as they began small talk.
Candi was tall, taller than my mom anyway, with spray-tanned skin and shoulder length platinum blonde hair. She was skinny, and although it wasn’t TOO obvious, she was that unhealthy kind of skinny, the kind that makes you want to force feed her a hamburger or two. She wore a lot of makeup, and she was smoking a cigarette. Her clothes were skin tight. And she wore running shoes. I was disappointed. Candi was far too young to have any kids near my age. That’s what I get for getting my hopes up. After a minute, another woman entered the room. She wasn’t too much older, but she was five times as skinny, with no makeup, long brown hair, and quick darting brown eyes. Candi introduced her sister, Misty.
“Wheres, uh, where’s Rayne?” Misty asked Candi. “Has she introduced herself yet?” she smiled warmly at me. “I have a daughter about your age. Her name’s Rayne. Just a sec.”
“RAYNNNEEEE.” She called hoarsely through the house.
“Yes?” A voice answered.
“Come meet our new neighbors, baby.”
“K.”
Misty smiled at me again. “You go to Greenville Elementary?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Fifth grade?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Rayne starts tomorrow. She’s in fifth too.”