Free Don't You Cry by Mary Kubica

hands are a good benchmark for me of how much he’s had to drink. It’s never worth asking how much he’s had to drink; he’s either too drunk to remember, otherwise he’ll lie. Tonight, not enough.
    He stands up again quickly to chastise the coach who decides to run it up the middle instead of a sweep play. And then back down. And then up again when the ball gets knocked out of the running back’s hands and there’s an interception—this time managing to overturn his chair as he does. He watches in dismay as the Giants trot down the field with the ball. I don’t even have to turn my head to see the TV. He narrates it for me before tossing the other half of his dinner roll at the screen. And then he gets up to get another beer, damning to hell every Lions player on the field.
    So it’s really no wonder then that when he says, “Squatters,” I don’t pay much attention. He’s talking about the TV. It’s someone’s last name, or some epithet he’s come up with for one of the coaches or players. Fucking Squatters.
    â€œDid you hear me?” he asks, and that’s when I realize he is talking to me. His shirt is wet; at some point or other he managed to spill his beer. There’s a piece of green bean stuck to his chin. Classy.
    I notice that Pops isn’t looking at me, and I turn in my chair, my eyes copying his line of vision, out the front window of our home and across the street.
    And there I see it again, that light: on, off .
    Like an involuntary muscle contraction. A charley horse. A twitch, a tic.
    On, off.
    And Pops says, “Damn squatters are living over there again,” about the school-bus-yellow home on the opposite side of the street from ours. The one with the story to tell, the kind of story no one ever talks about but everybody knows. It isn’t the first time squatters have lived over there before. All sorts of vermin have inhabited the place at one time or another. The occasional drifter has been known to move into that house and live there for a while, scot-free. They usually leave on their own without any need to call the cops or anything, but it’s unsettling nonetheless, knowing there’s some bum in a vacant house right across the street from yours.
    In the backyard hangs an abandoned tire swing from a fated oak tree, forgotten along with the home. Curtains hang from the window still, dated gossamer curtains, which were once white. They’re yellowish now and sheared at odd angles as if someone took a pair of scissors to their ends. Instead, it’s likely the mice eating their way through the lace. The concrete crumbles from around the house like cookie crumbs, breaking off in bits and littering the lawn. There are posted signs, which no one pays attention to, anyway: No Trespassing and Not Approved for Occupancy. They’re black signs with a bright orange font. Hard to miss. And yet people do. They ignore the signs and go right in.
    A bum is living over there or maybe... No. I shake my head. That’s not it. I said it already. I don’t believe in ghosts.
    But that’s just me. The rest of the people in town, they do.
    Every single town in all of America has its own haunted house.
    Ours just so happens to be right across the street from mine.
    I never knew the family that lived inside that home. All it’s ever referred to anymore is that house . It’s been empty for years, since before I was born. I guess I never cared enough to ask who used to live there. In my mind, they’re long gone, leaving behind trace memories of a once-happy family and a derelict home. The only inhabitant people speak of is the dead Genevieve, though she is only ever referred to as her ,or sometimes the even less humane it . There are claims that people see her, the ghost, moving throughout the home, her soul trapped inside for all of eternity.
    But I know better than to believe those things. It’s just a