expensive.” And he had looked right through her, as most young people did. For weeks she watched as they filled in the framing, then plastered the walls. They’d installed the wide window that would look out at the flowered backyard a few days ago. But then it was almost finished; any day now, the workers would pack up their things for the final time. Juno wanted to have a closer look before that happened, so around lunchtime she went to sit on the little wall across the street, the low brick one. She had a ham and cheese sandwich and an orange soda, and she swung her legs as she ate, kicking the backs of her heels against the wall and watching the last of the men leave for lunch. She noticed with satisfaction that none had stayed behind today as they sometimes did, probably on account of the good weather. She left her trash on the wall and gingerly crossed the street that ran parallel to the house. The addition was being put on the south side of the house, a compact limb jutting from the body. Juno gazed around. There was an old-fashioned lunch pail sitting in the corner, and someone had left a waterlogged John Grisham novel on the windowsill. She looked for more human touches but found none. Then her eyes found the double doors at the back of the room.
The doors were white, they opened inward toward the interior of the house, and where the doorknobs were supposed to be were two holes. Lying on the ground next to the door was the hardware for the doors waiting to be installed—probably after lunch. Juno reached out one sun-spotted, gnarled hand toward the doors and pushed.
The door swung inward, and Juno stepped inside. She was in a den area. To the left of the doors and slightly behind them was a recess with a brick fireplace. It looked to be old, probably part of the original house; a few empty cans of Coke sat on the mantle next to a staple gun. Juno turned away from the fireplace and walked through the den. A large television box sat in the corner unopened; she glanced at it briefly, musing at how careless the workers were to leave the door open. Anyone could just walk in and rob the Crouches blind. The den led to the family room, and then a sunroom facing the back garden.
The house was bright. Juno blinked around the room, taking in the color with wide eyes. How long had it been since she was inside of a home? She looked behind her then, past the den and through the addition. The birds chirped incessantly. No one was coming—not yet. The workers were all safely napping in the park. They wouldn’t be back for another thirty minutes.
She could turn back now. Juno very clearly knew that what she was doing was wrong, and yet she took six more steps until she was standing in the middle of their family room. From where she was, she could see a hallway that led to the kitchen, and past that the front door. No one notices when you’re around anyway, she thought—so she walked through it.
She wandered the Crouches’ home, almost floating through rooms.
Juno hadn’t meant to linger. She’d gone through the downstairs quickly, stopping briefly to look in the pantry when curiosity got the best of her. A house of fiber, a family of champion shitters. No plastic water bottles, no refined sugar, no fun whatsoever. Juno helped herself to an apple from a bowl on the counter. She ended up at the stairs. The staircase was a double wide—her mama had called them that if they were fancy, and this one was as fancy as they came. It was the same rich mahogany as the floors, polished to an elegant sheen. Juno laid a hand on the nearest bannister and began to climb the Crouches’ double wide, and hot damn if she didn’t feel like Scarlett O’Hara.
The stairs bent once like an elbow; there was a massive, gilded mirror hanging on the landing as tall as she was and as gold as it was gaudy. As soon as her reflection appeared, Juno averted her eyes. She knew what she’d see if she looked closely and—no, thank you very much. The stairs came to an end and opened into a wide hallway. On one end of the hallway was a bay window that looked out at