Crashed (Mason Brothers 2)

“Yes, Mom.”

“I’ll call you later, asshole,” he said, and I heard the door close behind him.

I tried not to feel the hollowness in my chest, the tightness in my throat at the sound. I just sat there and took one breath, and then another. That was how I got through a lot of the harder things. One breath after another. If you can take one breath, then you can take another and another after that. If that’s all you can do, then you do it.

I looked out the window again. Nick’s car pulled out of the driveway and drove off. The Civic was still across the street.

As I watched, the driver’s door opened and a woman got out. She had blonde hair cut just below her chin. She was wearing jeans, a tight black T-shirt, and flip-flops. when she closed the door and turned, I saw a long sweep of bangs falling over her forehead to her cheekbones and big, dark sunglasses that took up half her face, movie-star style. Below the sunglasses, her nose was perfect and her lips were full and glossy. The T-shirt said Get the fuck out of my business in bold white letters.

She hitched a purse up on her shoulder and slammed the car door like she owned the whole block. She glanced up and down the street and then tilted her head back in a kill me now dramatic gesture. Then she rounded the car, walked to the door of Mrs. Welland’s house, opened it with a key from her purse, and was gone.

I watched for a while longer, but she didn’t come out again.

Had she bought the house? It hadn’t been listed for sale; it was too soon. Or was she an inside buyer?

If she wasn’t, then who the hell was she?

Two

Andrew

* * *

It was none of my business. And it didn’t even matter. I didn’t know any of my neighbors because I never left my house. I wouldn’t know this one either.

I moved my hands to wheel away from the window and realized I still had the sketch pad in my lap. It had the unfinished drawing of Lightning Man on the beach, grinning in his lounge chair with his hands locked behind his head. I’d started the outline of a woman standing next to him—I’d planned to draw Judy Gravity, the heroine of the comics, who was brainy and wore dark-framed glasses. Judy was a bit uptight, so from time to time I’d draw her naked or scantily clad just to amuse myself. It always got a rise out of Nick when I did it. I’d planned to draw Judy standing next to Lightning Man’s chaise, about to take her bikini top off, as a goodbye present to Nick, but I’d gotten distracted and he’d left before I could finish it.

Now I looked at the drawing and pictured a different woman instead. A real one instead of the made-up Judy. One with bobbed blonde hair, sunglasses, pouting lips, and attitude.

Desperate much, Mason?

I put the sketch pad aside and wheeled to the bank of computer monitors I had set up in my living room. Even though Nick and I were independently wealthy—our parents’ trust funds saw to that—I’d worked for years as a freelance computer programmer. I was good at it, it was something I could do from home, and it kept me busy.

Lately I’d been turning down programming work to draw the Lightning Man comics more and more. Nick and I had a Lightning Man website now, where we sold downloads of all the issues as well as print copies. It had started small, but every month we saw more and more downloads. It was pretty fucking awesome, seeing readers enjoy something you made. It was much better than spending my days dry-eyed, staring at PHP.

Nick had left a bunch of potential stories in our shared online file, and while he was away I may as well start drawing. But first I switched on one of the side monitors to show the feed from one of my front-of-house cameras. This was the one I’d originally set up so I could keep an eye on the house across the street, just in case Mrs. Welland fell down her front steps or her mail started ominously piling up. After Mrs. Welland died, there was no need to monitor that feed anymore—until now.

I started drawing, and half an hour later the blonde came out of the house again. She opened the Civic’s hatchback, leaned all the way in—her ass was perfect in those jeans—and came out with two duffel bags, then some boxes, and finally a couple of black garbage bags. So she was moving in, then, at least for a while. But she didn’t have much stuff—no furniture, no moving van. Just her little car.

Who moved all the way from California with only a few bags and boxes?

Who was she?

None of your business.

I turned off the camera feed and went back to work.

I lasted until midnight. Lying in bed, in the dark and the quiet, my work done and my meds taken, I finally gave in.

I sat up and pulled out my laptop, woke it up. Most people would have difficulty finding out who their new neighbor was. Not me. I logged into a few different sites I knew, typed in a few lines of code, ran some queries.

You could just introduce yourself and ask her name, like a normal person.

I snorted to myself. It wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t do small talk. I didn’t do polite introductions, especially to gorgeous women. Hell, I didn’t even do anything that required me to wheel out the front door, even though the doorway and the front ramp were modified so that I could. This was what I did: learn things I wasn’t supposed to know, late at night so I could avoid lying alone in the dark.

I hated the dark.

That wasn’t a fact I shared with anyone. Not even my therapist. But I had my worst anxiety attacks in the dark, my deepest depressions. The dark was when the things I fought every day came out and won.