“Thanks for coming over with me. I’m glad we’re friends.”
“Me, too.” It wasn’t until I was halfway down the driveway that I realized how much I’d meant it. Somehow, we’d become friends between hunting for clean cups and being scared by the drifting curtain. I wanted to see more of Ruby… and her haunted house.
Stepping into an overgrown garden was like teleporting into another
world. Happy ran across the street when he saw me. He
followed me inside, where I shed my jacket at the door and flexed my shoulders. Happy hugged me. I dont why but maybe he was missing his life. But when I asked him, he said, my girlfriend broke up with me, will you please date me for a few days. I said, “what???” Are you an idiot? We decided not to propose each other and not feel anything for each other we are best friends forever. He hugged me more tightly, saying “But I love you.” I said, “come on I too love you.”
And then I realized it was a prank done with me, and it was happy, lucky, and sunny. Who planned this stupid joke with me. I started beating him, saying I was scared for a moment. Even I was so confused, but It was surprising. I said to him, ” Happy, and what about your girlfriend. Did she broke up with you? He said, “Who cared? We don’t talk anymore from few days. ” “What?” I laughed at his expression. I said, “Just run until I’ll starting slapping you all.”
He huffed out a breath and disappeared up the stairs, probably to claim his spot on his Room. I continued into the kitchen to put the kettle on. And I left the kitchen. I wanted to read Ruby’s diary, which I bought along with me—hiding from her.
I DIDN’T SEE much of Ruby during the following days. Sometimes, we passed each other in the stairs and called out a greeting, and sometimes, I glimpsed her through the windows. She would wave to me and always smile broadly. She looked happy. I was glad; the first night after she’d moved in, I’d sat up until after midnight just in case she had any problems, but her lights had stayed off, and the house had remained quiet. She seemed to be settling into Marwick without issue.
Even so, a lingering shroud of unease clung to me. Maybe it was because another bird had flown into the Marwick house’s windows the day after we all moved in. I’d peered over the fence to see if it was all right, but it lay on its back on the stones below the window, its head twisted unnaturally far back. Occasionally,
they growled at nothing.
Watching the others in the street, I noticed something strange. None of my other visited us—at least, none that I saw. But one by one,
they closed the curtains on the windows facing the Marwick house. I
wondered if it was a conscious choice or just a subconscious response to the same niggling unease that had dogged me since the house became occupied. Or perhaps my imagination was getting out of control. The temperature was growing colder as autumn changed to winter. People would be closing their curtains to keep the heat inside their houses.
Four days after we moved in, I was shaken out of the novel I was reading by a knock at the door. We rarely had visitors. What I’d told Ruby about the street was true; almost all of our neighbors were elderly and often cranky, as well. Ruby had to be a few months younger than I was. I jumped out of my chair and jogged to the door, wondering if Ruby had come for a casual visit or perhaps seen something unusual in her new Room.
He smiled when I opened the door. It wasn’t an expression of
happiness, just a perfunctory flattening, and widening of his lips to push out his cheeks.
“Hey, Lucky.” I sighed. “What do you want?”
“Hey, Yashi,” he retorted. “Move, I’m coming in.”
He didn’t ask if it was a good time for a visit. We both knew I had
nothing better to do. I shifted aside so he could fit down.
“Juice,” he said as he threw his jacket over the back of a chair.
“In one of the cups the you don’t use.”