Free The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum

having a bad day. But nobody else got mad. Willie and Woofer and Donny didn’t get mad.”
    She shook her head. “You don’t understand. Willie and Woofer and Donny never get mad. It’s not that. Not with them. It’s just that they never seem to see me here, either. Like I don’t exist. Like I don’t matter. I talk to them and they grunt and walk away. Or else when they do notice there’s something ... not right about it. The way they look at me. And Ruth ...”
    She’d started now and there was no stopping her.
    “... Ruth hates me! Me and Susan both. You don’t see it. You think this was just one thing just this one time but it’s not. It’s all the time. I work all day for her some days and I just can’t please her, nothing’s right, nothing’s ever the way she’d do it. I know she thinks I’m stupid, lazy, ugly ...”
    “Ugly?” That, at least, was obviously ridiculous.
    She nodded. “I never thought I was before but now I don’t even know. David, you’ve known these people all your life practically, right?”
    “Yeah I have.”
    “So why? What did I do? I go to bed at night and it’s all I can think about. We were both real happy before. You know, before we came here I used to paint. Nothing very much, just a watercolor now and then. I don’t suppose I was ever too great at it. But my mother used to like them. And Susan used to like them, and my teachers. I’ve still got the paints and brushes but I just can’t start to do one anymore. You know why? Because I know what Ruth would do, I know what she’d think. I know what she’d say . She’d just look at me and I’d know I was stupid and wasting my time to even try.”
    I shook my head. That wasn’t the Ruth I knew. You could see Willie and Woofer and Donny acting strange around her—she was a girl, after all. But Ruth had always been good to us. Unlike the rest of the mothers on the block she always had plenty of time for us. Her door was always open. She handed us Cokes, sandwiches, cookies, the occasional beer. It didn’t make sense and I told her so.
    “Come on. Ruth wouldn’t do that. Try it. Make her one. Make her a watercolor. I bet she’d love it. Maybe she’s just not used to having girls around, you know? Maybe it just takes time. Do it. Try one for her.”
    She thought about it.
    “I couldn’t,” she said. “Honest.”
    For a moment we just stood there. She was shaking. I knew that whatever this was all about, she wasn’t kidding.
    I had an idea.
    “How about me, then? You could make one for me.”
    Without the idea in mind, without the plan, I’d never have had the nerve to ask her. But this was different.
    She brightened a little.
    “Would you really want one?”
    “Sure I would. I’d like it a lot.”
    She looked at me steadily until I had to turn away. Then she smiled. “Okay. I will, David.”
    She seemed almost her usual self again. God! I liked it when she smiled. Then I heard the back door open.
    “Meg?”
    It was Ruth.
    “I’d better go,” she said.
    She took my hand and squeezed it. I could feel the stones in her mother’s wedding band. My face reddened.
    “I’ll do it,” she said, and fled around the corner.

Chapter Twelve

    She must have got right on it too because the next day it rained all day into the evening and I sat in my room reading The Search for Bridey Murphy and listening to the radio until I thought I’d probably kill somebody if I heard that fucking Domenico Modugno sing “Volare” one more time. And then after dinner my mother and I were sitting in the living room watching television when Meg knocked at the back door.
    My mother got up. I followed her and got myself a Pepsi out of the refrigerator.
    Meg was smiling, wearing a yellow slicker, her hair dripping wet.
    “I can’t come in,” she said.
    “Nonsense,” said my mother.
    “No, really,” she said. “I just came over to give you this from Mrs. Chandler.”
    She handed my mother a wet brown bag with a container