Mailbox: A Scattershot Novel of Racing, Dares and Danger, Occasional Nakedness, and Faith. Chapter 1.

Mailbox: Chapter 5, The Perfect Hot Dog Hole

MAILBOX: A Scattershot Novel of Racing, Dares and Danger, Occasional Nakedness, and Faith by Nancy Freund, Gobreau Press, 2015, Chapter 5: The Perfect Hot Dog Hole 

I better come clean. People mostly think I'm a nice girl. Mostly, I am. But what a person is mostly is not what a person is always, and you better know I'm not always nice. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes and does a mean thing by accident, but sometimes I am kind of mean even on purpose. You could ask Neal Berkley about it if you could find him. He could tell you about the other side of mostly and tell you what I did to him. Maybe he forgot by now, which would be good – for him and for me. I don't think anyone likes to remember the mean things they did to a kid in the neighborhood or in school or anywhere. Even if it was a really long time ago, like even more than a year. Let's see. I guess I was nine.

I'm the one who tricked Neal Berkley into the sewer and put the lid on, and I made my brother stand on top to keep him in. We were going to take turns keeping him locked in. That was my plan. Maybe no one needed to stand on the lid at night if Neal fell asleep in there, and anyway, I didn't know how we'd get out of the house without our parents knowing, for the night shift. And one other thing was what to do if it rained because then a sewer's dangerous. It's one thing to keep a kid down in the sewer when it's just a little mucky and dark and smells like metal. That's just mean. But making him stay down there in the rain is something else. Even just a little rain can turn into a flood that can kill people really fast. It seems weird, a "flash flood," like a flash bulb when you take a picture – that fast. Snap! Now the flash bar is hot, and the plastic's swollen like a hard blister and it stinks like burnt plastic because that's what it is. Less than one second, and it's over till you develop your film. Twenty-three people died in the Brush Creek flash flood. I can't explain how a flash flood happens, but I know you shouldn't go in the sewer when there's rain.

I planned to make him hot dogs. You just boil them in water – and we would poke them through the hole in the center of the sewer lid, so he wouldn't starve to death. My brother helped me get him in there, but I'm the one who planned it, and the person with the plan is always the worst person when people join together to do something mean. I was sorry Neal turned out to be so strong, after he finished whimpering like a baby, he just pushed the lid off, even with my brother on it, and scrambled out.

The problem with mean stuff is it can get out of hand. You might end up doing a lot more mean stuff than you really meant to. Especially if your friends are joining in and egging you on. Some people love to see their friends go past the boundaries and do awful stuff. But with Neal, it was really my idea, the whole thing. I think it's important I start with that confession, so you know I'm telling the truth. The first part of the truth is I'm not always nice.

When Neal poked a stick in the yellow jacket hole and they all flew out of the nest and he got stung seven times, mostly on his inner thigh, it wasn't me who'd dared him. I wasn't even there. I was inside reading Are You There God, It's Me Margaret? which is my favorite book of all times, even though the title seems too long, and approximately one-third of my friends aren't even allowed to read it because it's "controversial." Of course, that just makes me want to read it more... same for all my friends. My mom says it's good to read everything and be informed. I'm lucky to have the mom I do.

But that's how I know I wasn't there – because I was in my clubhouse reading. No one dared Neal to poke the yellow jackets. He did it on his own. Chris even warned him what that hole was.

The funny thing is his mom still let him play with us after the sewer, but after the yellow jackets, he wasn't allowed to play at our house anymore. Maybe he didn't tell her about the sewer until the yellow jackets, and that was the end of him playing with us. And then he moved away, and we never saw him again.

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Thank you for reading. ~ your Freund, Nancy

P.S. I've never mentioned this in any interviews, but this was the first piece I wrote when I decided to create the jigsaw puzzle of this novel.  I wanted Sandy's "confession" to stand early in the novel to establish her honesty with the reader.  That's why even as the plot evolved, this part stayed so close to the beginning.  A little writerly trivia for you.