Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,43

of their gigantic home, raking and laughing and being very happy. There is a smell of wood smoke in the air and, not for the first time, I feel like an intruder, like somebody staking something out.

Lindsay’s house is near Trevor’s in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Pells. In high school everyone knows a few facts about almost everyone else, even if you’ve never spoken to them. Sometimes these are stories that follow a person for years, from eighth grade, from fifth: the kid who peed himself in gym class, the girl who cried when she got a B+. About me people probably say, He’s poor and his mom is sick and crazy. No one’s ever seen his house which probably means it’s a dump. He’s the best baseball player in school or in the state. He’s stupid. I don’t know. Before Lindsay and I started hanging out, these were the things I knew about her: her family, like most families in Pells, comes from money; her father is the superintendent of schools; her mother is a lawyer in the city and has a job defending large corporations; she used to have an older brother but he died when Lindsay was in middle school, which lends her an extra air of mystery and desirability.

Her house, when I first saw it, was a shock: the size of it. It is tan with brown beams all over it like an old-fashioned English house, and old. Two huge trees frame it. It has a big porch and a porch swing on it. As I pull into her driveway I look up at all the windows on the top floor and wonder which one is Lindsay’s. I get out of my car, but before I have a chance to walk to the house, the front door flies open and two little blond girls come running toward me. They are sock-footed and skinny.

Are you Lindsay’s friend? says one of them. They look about five and seven.

Yes, I say.

Could you please park over there, says the other, very polite, and gestures to a little space off the side of the driveway.

There? I ask, dumbly, and turn to follow their orders.

Lindsay appears in the doorway then and says What are they telling you!

To park over there, I say.

You guys. He’s fine where he is, says Lindsay, and her sisters begin to complain.

We want to play soccer, says the littler one. On the driveway.

Play on the grass, says Lindsay, and then tells me to come inside.

Sorry, she says.

Her house is even nicer inside than I’d imagined. It has this kind of lobby with a ceiling so high our voices echo.

I start to follow her across it and then she turns and says Um—I’m so sorry—could you take your shoes off? My mom . . .

I am wearing two different socks and I am so embarrassed I almost leave.

Instead I make a joke about it, a stupid one, and Lindsay laughs.

There are red patterned carpets on the hardwood floor. All of the furniture is delicate and breakable. She introduces me to her two big dogs, Angelo and Maxie. Through eight glass doors at the other end of the living room I can see the Harpers’ backyard: there is a pool, covered for winter, landscaped to look like a mountain lake, with low bushes and trees all around it. In one hallway there are seven or eight photographs of their family from the time Lindsay was very small. I glance at them quickly as we walk past. I see Lindsay as a baby and Lindsay at five, pigtails and pierced ears. In all of them but the last one there is a boy. By the second-to-last he is almost a man. And in the last one he is not there. In the photos I recognize her father, a short bald-headed man, from the school board meeting I went to. I say a prayer that he will not be here to remember me.

You want something? asks Lindsay, as we enter the kitchen, filled with sharp-looking silver appliances and an island in the middle the size of my car. Soda? Are you hungry?

Smoothies! says a voice off to the side, and Lindsay’s mother emerges from a nook that I didn’t notice, wearing a red sweatsuit with a zipper up the front of it. It is meant for someone younger than she is and it shows the top of her freckled breasts. Her hair is dyed yellow. Her eyelashes are spidery.

Who’s this!