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Sam shifts her weight and the mattress shakes. Done with her snack, she sets the bowl on the floor and claps away the crumbs from her hands. She slides up the bed and rests her head just like I am, and together with our foreheads pressed to the window, we wait for something big to happen at the house down the street.
One truck leaves as another one arrives, like they’re making multiple trips to save money. Mattresses come out of the new truck along with dressers and headboards and things that look like they match my parents’ bedroom set. When one of the movers pauses with a heavy black box on wheels at the edge of the truck ramp, Sam and I both notice and hold our breath, careful to keep the glass clear of fog from our hot breath.
“What’s that?”
I don’t answer my friend, too curious because so far everything about this arrival has been mundane. The mover whistles loud enough that I hear it faintly through my glass, and two guys jump up on the truck’s back end to help him maneuver whatever it is down a ramp. A second box follows, and they slide them both to the side in the garage. The movers stop after that, one of them sitting on the top of the mystery item while another paces down the driveway and lights a cigarette.
“Must be breaktime,” Sam sighs, sitting up and yawning as she wriggles into the fuzzy blanket she’s been sleeping in. I’m about to give up with her and give in to the heavy sleep weighing down my eyes when a minivan slowly passes my house.
“Wait,” I breathe out, lightly slapping the back of my hand against my friend’s arm. She jerks back to attention and is beside me again in a blink.
“Think that’s going to the house?” she asks.
“Where else would it go?” I whisper, as if the people in the van can actually hear me.
We both sit in near silence. I’m holding my breath, and I kinda think my friend is, too. When the van passes the only other driveways it could pull into, we press closer. I force my eyes wide, not wanting to blink and miss something.
The van stops behind the moving trucks, and when the door slides open, a little boy rushes out, running into the garage and disappearing while the driver, a woman, gets out of the van and walks quickly inside behind him. She looks stressed…maybe tired. And a little angry that the first thing she’s doing is chasing her kid inside. The passenger door opens, but it’s impossible to see around the van and through the glass. A young girl, maybe in sixth or seventh grade, pushes out from the side door the boy jetted from, and she comes out feet first, reaching back in when her toes hit the ground. She grabs headphones and a small, pink backpack, then begins to walk slowly up the driveway, her chin raised while she stares at the house—her new house.
The red tile is dusty from the dry summer, and the windows aren’t covered yet. The inside of that house is laid out just like mine, though. I know it because Sam and I broke in last year and wrote our names, the short versions Sam and Ari, on the baseboard inside one of the closets. I hope they can find a way to make it feel homier than it did then. It’s always felt cold in there.
The person on the other side of the van closes the passenger door but walks the other way around the moving truck, so we don’t get a good view right away.
“She looks really depressed about her house. We should say hi to her sometime or something,” my friend mumbles, sleep grabbing a hold of her again.
I nod in agreement as she begins to fade, but keep my mouth shut, still waiting for the last person to come into view. I see the drum set get handed out of the truck first, the movers on break stomping out cigarettes and coming to take pieces from the back of the truck one at a time. A few black guitar cases come out next, and I get a strange patter in my chest as if maybe…just maybe I’m about to see someone famous. Eventually, I rationalize that it’s not likely given our middle-class neighborhood and the crappy condition of the guitar cases.
Even so, though, there were drums. That set gets used by someone.
Someone…like me.
A giant green bin gets slid to the edge of the truck next, and I wait for one of the movers to grab it so they can move on to the next thing in the truck, only no one comes to grab it. One of the guys turns to face the truck, obviously talking to whoever is in the back, and then finally, the mystery family member leaps to the ground. He’s a dizzying image of slim-fit jeans, a white T-shirt and a red-and-blue plaid flannel tied around his waist. His black hat is backward, but I can see the curled ends of his hair sticking out under the bill by his ears and neck. He’s thin, but his arms are big enough to fill the sleeves of his shirt—big like a football player or one of those guys at our school that takes weightlifting like twice a day.
“Oh, Arizona. Jackpot!” My friend is suddenly wide awake, and she nails the exact sentiment suffocating my chest, even if it’s in her overly excited tone.
He’s our age, maybe a year older. He has to be. And he’s a musician! You don’t handle a kit like that if you don’t know it intimately. One of the movers hops in the truck they just emptied and pulls away, giving us a clear view of the entire garage. Everyone else has gone inside, so it’s just him—mystery neighbor—moving boxes around until he’s cleared enough space to set up the drum set and unwind a cord from what I now recognize as an amp.
“We should meet him,” my friend says, leaping from the bed and grabbing the brush on my dresser. She whips it through her hair and tosses off her enormous pajama shirt before smelling at her sides. I laugh at how
crazy she’s being but then realize that she’s really doing this…and yeah, we haven’t showered in a full day. Maybe more.
“Sam…wait. No!” I sit up and fidget with myself, tugging at my wrinkled shirt and pulling up the legs of my sweatpants so they look like joggers.
“I’m going,” she announces, leaving my room for the bathroom where she pours a swig of mouthwash between her lips and begins to swish. She wanders into the hallway and stares at me. “Mmmmm?” She lifts her brows and points her thumb over her shoulder, wondering if I’m coming.
I look back to my window, where the new guy is now lying on the ground, connecting something on his drum set, then I look back at my friend who looks pretty decent with her long, straight, brown hair and pink tank top over her sports bra.
“Shit,” I mutter, half to myself and half to my friend. I rush around my room looking for a better shirt than the one I have on, finally swapping out the enormous sleep shirt for the free Vista High tee I got during senior orientation. My curly hair never cooperates, so I twist the sandy-colored corkscrews up in one hand and flatten it all underneath my Angels hat.
“Move your ass,” Sam teases, already four or five steps down into our living room.
“I need shoes!” I bend over and look under my bed, settling on the Adidas slides that I’ve worn every day for the last month. They match my tan at least. Winter in this part of California isn’t normal winter. It’s more like most other people’s summer.
I nearly trip down the steps and manage to catch the front door before it closes behind my friend. We don’t even know his name or what he looks like other than a few key triggers that mark both of our type, yet I feel this strange and overwhelming sense of competition for him. If that’s the case, I’m screwed, and not just because all I could pull together in seconds was a second-rate workout ensemble covering up zero makeup and sticky skin from the warm morning sun. It’s not just because Sam’s almost five-foot-nine and all leg, which she’s shown off with her barely-ass-covering running shorts. It’s because whenever there’s a guy around, I’m the person that gets asked the questions about my friend—“you know, the hot one? With the long hair and blue eyes.”
My shorter legs (by only two inches, I might add!) finally catch up to Sam about two houses away from my new neighbors. Our target rolls to his side and lets go of a wrench as he props his head on his elbow to get a look at the two ridiculous girls marching his way. I start to pray for him to have some massive flaw that will instantly make him unappealing to at least one of us, but it’s not possible. I can tell when he sits up and rests his elbows on his bent knees in that cool way older guys do. He’s wearing fucking Vans, and his jeans are midnight blue but ragged on the bottoms and the knees. He’s straight out of the Sam and Arizona pick-your-dream-boy catalogue.
His mouth lifts on one side, and the smile that spreads only makes it halfway. It’s cocky as hell, but it still wrinkles into a perfect set of dimples that show off the dusting of freckles that stretch from one cheek to the other. His hair is the same color as mine, maybe a little darker, and it’s literally the only physical thing I have in common with him that gives me some sort of edge on my imaginary scorecard with my best friend. His eyes are blue, but muddied. He’s tall. And his confidence literally produces a sweet scent that I am drunk on the second we’re close enough to speak.
