Natalie's Diary

[03] Naïveté

"It was in my mailbox," I shut my locker door, "I don't know what else I'm supposed to do with it. It's your name."

I walked away before he opened it, before he could ask more questions I didn't have the answers for. The quicker I got rid of all the envelopes, the sooner I wouldn't have to worry about them, the sooner I wouldn't have to wait.

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The walk from school back to my house was a short one, passing by blocks of Cullfield's old architecture. All those buildings, the looming church steeples, the pillars on the front of aged federal style houses holding up the weight of existing through years and years. Not as regal as the monuments of Boston, but practically as longstanding. Homesickness panged in me, longing for a place where I never had problems so dark.  

Leaves crunched under my feet, but halfway home, the wind whips the sidewalk clear, but I swear I can still hear the crunchcrunch crunchcrunch of leaves crushed underfoot.

It was the middle of the afternoon, not a stroll alone in the dark.

I still didn't look over my shoulder, as if ignoring paranoia would help it go away.

The leaves whipped around me when a van zipped by, turning ahead of me into the Driscoll's driveway.

I stopped for a second on the sidewalk, watching the woman in a blazer throw open her door, talking on her phone. In the same motion, she slams the door shut behind her, walking up to the front door the house.

  "Kate, honey, can you grab the sign, please?" she said over her shoulder before disappearing inside.

The rear door slid open, sign emerging first, then Kate.

The sign might've been about the same size as petite and unassuming Kate. Her mother was the opposite, her face prominent next to her name and the realtor company logo.

Two days before, the Driscolls lived there and already, Kate Haumann hauled the sign out of her mother's van to sell the place. She only made it a step or two out of the Grand Caravan. 

"Do you need a hand?" I asked, without thinking, because Kate's face paled compared to usual.

She looked up, blinking. "I'm sorry?" 

It was the stain. She was looking at the dark stain on the sidewalk lined up with the ground-off edges of the fence. 

"Do you want some help?" I repeated, regretting offering it in the first place. Kate looked either bewildered or disgusted, her brow clouded, her lipsticked mouth turned down.

"Okay," she said finally, on the breath of a sigh.

The two of us silently position her mother's face on the fence, close to the gate.

"Did you know Natalie?" I asked, fastening the plastic to the iron of the fence.

"What?"

"Natalie? Did you know her?"

Kate's face twisted. "Of course I knew her. We went to the same school. Why are you asking?"

"I—" I gritted my teeth, but there wasn't a real explanation without the physical evidence. My side of the sign firmly attached, I fished her envelope out of my backpack.

"This was in my mailbox. That's all." I held it out to her while she hesitated, waiting for the reveal of some kind of trick. It took her a long moment of silent deliberation and a quick glance at the stained sidewalk before she took it.

"Kate, honey," her mom called from the house, giving us both an excuse to abandon each other without being impolite. 

All I really wanted was to get home.