Tales from the Intermediate (gxg)

Chapter 2

The neighborhood was full of towering homes with varying modern aesthetics that could only denote wealth, except for Charlie's. Charlie's house sat on the very end of Elizabeth Street, about half the size of its siblings and twice as old. While all the other houses had been renovated in the recent years, Charlie's was the same as when it was built in the 70's. In fact, it seemed that those 70's architects, with their mutton chops and flares, got a little too lazy when they were designing and overseeing the construction of Charlie's house. It was like they had started off bright and bold on the very other end of the street, keeping their endurance until they came to hers on the very end. Maybe they'd squeezed out their entire budget but had just enough to build a little lodge for the help. Either way, there it still stood 50 years later, a stark contrast to the rest of the neighborhood. The only way Molly and James Reed were able to pay for the house was because its foundation was rotten. What Charlie thought had been ghosts swinging her doors slowly open all these years, was just the imbalance of the home.

There, in the front yard of that house, was Charlie and her mother, Molly, digging up the dirt to put new flowers in the flowerbeds. The bleary end of summer had killed the pink flowers that had bloomed since May, when Charlie had just come home from failing college and busied herself with the flowerbeds (more like Molly busied her with it). Since a pretty lawn was about all the Reeds had to show for themselves to the Homeowner's Association (which they were not part of since they couldn't pay their dues), Molly was quick to put Charlie to use in putting in bright orange flowers to match the autumn season. Charlie wasn't sure if they were fit to survive the chilly weather for very long, but what else was she going to do?

So, Charlie stabbed the moist soil with her sharp, miniature shovel. It was satisfying, honestly, with how loose their soil was, to see how easily the shovel dug into the dirt with a crisp sound. Charlie wondered if it would be that easy to take a little shovel and scoop out all the dirt inside herself—extract all those bad parts that had been living inside her and growing weeds and thorns, and just stuff herself with pretty flowers. Charlie reprimanded herself with a mental note that her mind was most probably uninhabitable for anything alive to grow.

The late September day had started off chilly in the morning, but now that it was afternoon, it had warmed up a bit. It was sunny, and Charlie could feel herself accidentally getting dirt across her wet forehead every time she tried to wipe her sweat away. Her mom only had one pair of gardening gloves, so Charlie was forced to bear-hand the dirt in her rolled-up blue flannel.

While Charlie was sweating and her mother mumbling about how the soil is extra damp this year, Charlie heard a car door from down the street. Glancing upwards, she had to shield her brow from the drop of sweat rolling over the hairs there so she could get a good look at who it was. Being bored and cooped up in the house, Charlie had spent much time observing all their rich neighbors like her own live reality show. She had kept track of who was having an affair with their neighbor down the street, who was close to getting a divorce, and whose teens would sneak out at night. The only household she didn't have dirt on was the exceptionally large house standing diagonal from her own. Mr. Chase was such a recluse that Charlie hadn't even seen him the entire summer. Of course, she knew who Mr. Chase was. She knew whom she had shared that neighborhood with throughout her life. She remembered all the times she would be late for the bus because she would hang back so as to not have to walk near that person to the bus stop. She remembered breaking her arm when that person had launched a rock towards Charlie from across the street, and the rock had hit the spokes of her bicycle wheel just perfectly so that little Charlie went flying towards the concrete sidewalk.

Although she could never forget these things, she had been so busy mourning her failure this summer that she hadn't realized the gravity of being across that house again. She didn't realize it until she looked up, knuckle-deep in dirt, and saw Farren Chase exiting her Mercedes.