Free The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum Page A

of milk inside. Ruth and my mother didn’t exactly socialize but they were still next door neighbors and neighbors borrowed.
    My mother accepted the bag and nodded. “Tell Mrs. Chandler thank you for me,” she said.
    “I will.”
    Then she dug down underneath the slicker and looked at me, and now she was really smiling.
    “And this is for you,” she said.
    And handed me my painting.
    It was wrapped with sheets of heavy opaque tracing paper taped together on both sides. You could see some of the lines and colors through it but not the shapes of things.
    Before I could even say thanks or anything she said, “Bye,” and waved and stepped back out into the rain and closed the door behind her.
    “Well,” said my mother, and she was smiling too now. “What have we here?”
    “I think it’s a picture,” I said.
    I stood there, Pepsi in one hand and Meg’s painting in the other. I knew what my mother was thinking.
    What my mother was thinking had the word cute in it.
    “Aren’t you going to open it?”
    “Yeah, sure. Okay”
    I put down the Pepsi and turned my back to her and began working on the tape. Then I lifted off the tracing paper.
    I could feel my mother looking over my shoulder but I really didn’t care all of a sudden.
    “That’s really good,” my mother said, surprised. “That’s really very good. She’s really quite something, isn’t she.”
    And it was good. I was no art critic but you didn’t have to be. She’d done the drawing in ink, and some of the lines were wide and bold and some were very delicate. The colors were pale washes-only the subtle suggestions of colors but very true and lifelike with a lot of the paper showing so it gave you the impression of a bright, sunny day.
    It was a picture of a boy by a flowing brook, lying on his belly across a big flat rock and looking down into the water, with trees and sky all around.

Chapter Thirteen

    I took it up to The Dog House to have it framed. The Dog House was a pet shop turned hobby shop. They had beagle pups in the front window and bows and arrows, Wham-O hula hoops, model kits and a frame shop in the back, with the fish, turtles, snakes and canaries in between. The guy took a look and said, “Not bad.”
    “Can I have it tomorrow?”
    “You see us going crazy here?” he said. The place was empty. The 2-Guys From Harrison chain store up on Route 10 was killing him. “You can have it tonight. Come back ’round four-thirty”
    I was there by a quarter after four, fifteen minutes early, but it was ready, a nice pine frame stained mahogany. He wrapped it in brown paper.
    It fit perfectly into one of the two rear baskets on my bike.
    By the time I got home it was almost dinnertime so I had to wait through the pot roast and green beans and mashed potatoes with gravy. Then I had to take the garbage out.
    Then I went over.
    The television was blaring the theme from Father Knows Best, my least favorite TV show, and down the stairs for the billionth time came Kathy and Bud and Betty, beaming. I could smell the franks and beans and sauerkraut. Ruth was in her chair with her feet up on the hassock. Donny and Willie sprawled together on the couch. Woofer lay on his belly so close to the TV set you had to wonder about his hearing. Susan sat watching from a straight-back chair in the dining room and Meg was out doing the dishes.
    Susan smiled at me. Donny just waved and turned back to watch TV
    “Jeez,” I said. “Don’t anybody get up or nothing.”
    “Watcha got there, sport?” said Donny.
    I held up the painting wrapped in brown paper.
    “Those Mario Lanza records you wanted.”
    He laughed. “Creep.”
    And now Ruth was looking at me.
    I decided to jump right in.
    I heard the water shut off in the kitchen. I turned and Meg was watching me, wiping her hands on her apron. I gave her a smile and my guess is she knew right away what I was doing.
    “Ruth?”
    “Yeah? Ralphie, turn the TV down. That’s it. What’s up, Davy?”
    I