Page 3 of The Chad Next Door
“Good!”
“What?”
Her laugh sounds like sunshine. Like someone took the warmth of a summer day and condensed it into a single sound. I don’t have a favorite sibling, but Micah is my favorite for moments like this, when I feel like I’m drowning in the sludge of ugly, unwanted truths brought to light.
“Chad,” she says, putting a lot of emphasis into my name. “When was the last time you took a vacation?” She doesn’t wait for an answer because she knows I don’t have one to give. “You deserve to have some fun! Go travel the world or something!”
That sounds like a nightmare. In order to get anywhere I might want to see, I would have to face public transportation. There are too many people in airports. Too many problems on display.
I once flew to California to see one of Houston’s games when he was playing college baseball, and I was ready to pull my hair out by the time the plane landed. My seatmate spent the flight confronting her boyfriend over text, who was clearly cheating on her despite repeatedly telling her he wasn’t. The kid behind me kept kicking my seat while his parents actively ignored him and each other because the husband hadn’t wanted to go to Disneyland in the first place and resented the fact that her parents paid for the trip because he couldn’t afford it. (People really need to learn to whisper quieter when surrounded by strangers in the security line.) And the couple across the aisle from me were clearly pining over each other despite convincing each other that they were only friends.
I stepped in on that one, bumping into the girl as we deplaned and knocking her into her friend’s arms so he would have to catch her. I found them making out as they waited for their luggage at the carousel, so it must have worked.
That’s beside the point. I’m not a fan of crowds, or people in general, so I will not be traveling the world despite Micah’s excitement over the idea.
“I was thinking Laketown,” I say, already smiling because I know how she’ll react to that.
“Laketown? Seriously? That town is so tiny!”
Exactly. Micah’s dad, Lloyd, always brings his whole family up to the little mountain town in Colorado each summer for a massive family reunion. Massive because he’s been married six times and had kids with almost all of his past wives. The twins and I aren’t technically related to him anymore since our mom died, but he still considers us his family. Plus, I think Micah would throw a fit if we didn’t come, and she has her dad wrapped around her little finger.
Laketown is small, yes, but that also means it’s quiet. That’s exactly what I need right now.
“I need some time away, Mic,” I say. “Think you’ll be okay?”
“I’m twenty-five years old, Chad. I think I can handle myself.”
She can, but she also tends to keep herself vulnerable. I make a note to ask Brooklyn to keep an eye on her while I’m gone since Houston is deep into the World Series with his MLB team and won’t be home for a week or two. Micah is full of endless positivity, but that also makes her susceptible to disappointment bringing her down, no matter how much she pretends otherwise. I don’t like leaving her alone if I can help it, and I know her dad feels the same way. The only reason he let her stay in Sun City instead of making her move with him to Diamond Springs a couple hours away is because he knows I’m here to keep an eye on her.
“You can always call me,” I remind her, glad when she doesn’t complain about me being overbearing. It’s the problem with being eleven years older than her; I feel like I have to take care of her, no matter how capable she might be.
“What are you going to do in Laketown?” she asks. “There won’t be any mysteries to solve.”
That’s the point. That town is as unproblematic as they get. “I’m sure I’ll find something,” I say with a chuckle. Hopefully that something involves a whole lot of silence. “I’ll see you when I get back.”
“Have fun! Be sure not to fall in love with some bright-eyed beauty and never come home!” I can practically hear her winking.
I’m sure she would love that. No one loves love like Micah. But unfortunately for her, I have no intention of opening my heart to anyone. I tried that once, and it fell apart in my hands when my girlfriend of six years, a woman I was fully planning to marry, dumped me out of the blue and disappeared from my life without a trace. Not that I tried hard to find her. Mercedes made it clear that I was not what she wanted, and I’m not one to force something that isn’t working.
No, love isn’t in the cards for me, and that’s fine by me. It wouldn’t last anyway.
Nothing good ever does.
Chapter Two
Hope
October 8
Maybe moving across the countrywas a bad idea. I thought it would be like in those movies when the struggling family packs up their car and leaves their sad life and all its memories behind, and everything is sunny and bright and new (new to them, at least, because they’re always struggling for money in those movies). The move is about new beginnings, fixing what is broken, turning lemons into lemonade. It turns out that it only works when it’sactuallysunny, when the mom has anactualplan, when the kids areactuallywilling to make the change.
I should have factored in the idea that it’s the middle of October in a small Colorado town and these kids aren’t exactly on my side because they’re not mine in the first place.
“Can we go home now?” Zelda has a look of utter revulsion on her face, and I’m starting to think it’s her new default expression. She’s only seven, but she has the spirit of a teenager hell-bent on overthrowing a dystopian government.
I mean, I don’t blame her. She hasn’t exactly had it easy in her short little life; I’d want to rebel too.
She stares at the rundown house that is going to be ours for the foreseeable future, and I’m pretty sure she is thinking it’s probably haunted. (I’m thinking that too, sis.) But hopefully it’s a cheerful little ghost. A Casper protégé to help us settle in and find a place here.
