The Stranger Next Door

by Peg Kehret

  Mrs. Bolen directed Rocky to sit in the third row, in the empty seat beside Alex.

  Alex whispered, “Hi. I live next door to you.”

  Rocky nodded but said nothing.

  I’ll talk to him at lunch, Alex thought. I’ll invite him to sit with me while we eat. Maybe he won’t be so shy when he finds out that I’m new here, too.

  Lunch was a disaster. Alex saw Rocky in line ahead of him and watched as Rocky selected an unoccupied table. Alex carried his tray there and sat down across from Rocky, but before he had even said hi, Duke and his sidekick, Henry, approached.

  “Where do you live?” Duke asked. “We didn’t see anybody move to town recently.”

  Rocky put a forkful of spaghetti in his mouth and began to chew.

  Duke tapped Rocky’s shoulder. “I’m talking to you,” he said. “Which house did you move into?”

  Rocky shrugged. “It’s a white house,” he said. “I don’t remember the address.”

  “You moved to Valley View Estates, didn’t you?” Duke said. “The same as your friend Alex here did.”

  “What difference does it make to you where I live?” Rocky said.

  “We don’t like spoiled rich kids,” Duke said.

  Rocky just looked at him.

  “That means we don’t like you, Mr. Big Bucks.”

  “Leave him alone,” Alex said.

  Duke’s hand shot out and grabbed the chocolate chip cookie from Rocky’s tray. Instantly, Henry reached for Alex’s cookie. Alex, who was holding an open half-pint carton of milk, tipped the carton and poured milk on Henry’s arm, soaking his shirtsleeve.

  “Hey!” yelled Henry.

  “Oh, excuse me,” Alex said. “I didn’t know your hand was in my food.” He looked to see if the teacher who monitored the cafeteria was watching, but she was helping a girl who was on crutches.

  Duke and Henry stood there, each clutching a cookie. They glared at Rocky and Alex as milk dripped from Henry’s sleeve.

  “You did that on purpose,” Henry said.

  “I’d like my cookie back, please,” Rocky said.

  “So would I,” Alex said.

  Duke snapped Rocky’s cookie in half, threw both halves on the floor, and stepped on them. Henry quickly did the same with Alex’s cookie.

  Alex clenched his teeth as his cookie was ground into crumbs under Henry’s heel. He wanted to jump up and punch Henry, but he also didn’t want to get in trouble at school, so he did nothing.

  Duke and Henry turned to leave. As they did, Rocky stood, picked up his plate, and dumped the spaghetti on Duke’s head.

  Duke spun around, grabbed strands of spaghetti from his head, and threw them at Rocky and Alex. Henry tried to snatch Alex’s plate of spaghetti, but it slipped out of his hands and smashed to the floor, breaking the plate and spewing spaghetti and tomato sauce in all directions.

  Pandemonium broke out. Someone yelled, “Food fight!” Two girls shrieked. The monitor rushed to that area to restore order.

  In the end, all four boys were sent to see Mr. Page, the principal. The teacher accompanied them to the office, where Rocky and Alex were instructed to wait while Mr. Page spoke with Duke and Henry.

  Rocky fidgeted, waiting for Duke and Henry to come out. He glanced at Alex, who appeared just as nervous as he was.

  Rocky’s mind skated from one possibility to the next. Would the principal call Mother and Blake? Would he be expelled from school on his first day?

  He had threatened to get into trouble—but that was before he knew the reason why he had to move and change his name. Now that he understood the situation, he had no desire to be Rocky Morris, bad kid. Yet here he was, on his first day in his new school, waiting to see the principal.

  He didn’t regret dumping the spaghetti on Duke’s head—Duke deserved it—but he wished he could have stood up to Duke without making such a scene. He did not want to call attention to himself. He had intended to be Mr. Anonymous, a kid who blended into the background and wasn’t noticed.

  So much for that plan, Rocky thought. It’s only my first day and already the whole school knows who I am.

  Duke and Henry came out of Mr. Page’s office. They glared at Alex and Rocky as they passed but said nothing.

  Alex and Rocky went into Mr. Page’s office next. Mr. Page asked Alex what had happened. Alex didn’t know what Duke and Henry claimed had happened, but the principal seemed to believe Alex’s version of the events.

  “Try to avoid Duke,” Mr. Page advised. “He’ll make life unpleasant for you.”

  “He already has,” Alex said.

  “If he goes too far,” Mr. Page said, “talk to Mrs. Bolen or me about it, but don’t let him goad you into a fight. Fighting won’t solve the problem; it will only get you in trouble for something that isn’t your fault.”

  Alex nodded. What a mess, he thought. He knew he would not tattle to his teacher or the principal if Duke picked on him again; that would only make Duke more determined than ever. His best hope was to stay completely away from Duke and Henry. If they approached him in the cafeteria, he would carry his tray to a different table, maybe one that was close to the teacher.

  After the boys left the principal’s office, Alex spent ten minutes in the bathroom, washing spaghetti sauce out of his hair and trying to get the stains out of his shirt. When he got back to class, he saw that Duke and Henry were not there. Alex wondered if they had been sent home.

  Rocky did not say anything and he didn’t ride the school bus home. Since Valley View Estates was the next-to-last stop on the bus route, Alex knew that if Rocky’s parents had driven him home, he would be there before Alex arrived. Alex looked hopefully toward the neighbors’ house as he went up his own drive, but he saw nobody.

  Despite the new boy’s standoffish attitude, Alex liked it that Rocky had not let Henry and Duke get away with being bullies. Every time he remembered that plate of spaghetti on top of Duke’s head, he smiled. Duke had it coming, he thought, just as Henry deserved getting milk poured on his sleeve.

  Duke clearly had not expected any retaliation for crushing the cookies. Alex had never seen such a surprised look. Maybe Duke and Henry would let up on their hassling now that they knew Alex and Rocky were not wimps. He certainly hoped so.

  Alex decided not to tell his parents what had happened. He would explain his messy shirt by saying, “Some kid dropped a plate of spaghetti and it went all over.” That was true, even though it wasn’t the whole story. Mom and Dad would be upset if they knew what had really happened, and since there wasn’t anything they could do about Duke and Henry, Alex felt it best not to worry them.

  Besides, he hoped more than ever that he and Rocky would become friends, and he didn’t want Mom and Dad to think Rocky was a troublemaker.

  Pete smelled Alex the second he walked in. “What have you been eating?” he said, and went to investigate.

  Alex poured a glass of apple juice, opened a package of cookies, and turned on the computer.

  Pete jumped on the desk, then sniffed Alex’s shirt. Alex always smelled good to Pete, but today he smelled exceptionally wonderful. Pete licked Alex’s shirt, getting a definite taste of spaghetti.

  “Knock it off, Pete,” Alex said, giving the cat a gentle shove.

  Pete waited until Alex was drinking the juice before he shoved his face against Alex’s chest and licked some more.

  “You are delicious,” Pete said. “You are delectable. You are what every cat dreams of—a person who tastes like spaghetti.”

  “Go eat your cat food,” Alex said as he set Pete on the floor.

  “Would you eat dry cat food if you could have spaghetti instead?”

  Alex checked to see if Randy or John had sent him an E-mail. They hadn’t. He finished his snack, put on a clean shirt, and tossed the one he’d worn to school in the dirty clothes hamper.

  Pete jumped into the hamper, settled happily on the soiled shirt, and kneaded his front claws in and out. He would have purred except
he was too busy licking.

  Usually Alex did his homework as soon as he got home from school so that he could watch TV after dinner, but that day he put if off. He went outside, hoping his new neighbor might choose to get better acquainted.

  Although Alex shot baskets in the driveway for almost an hour, Rocky didn’t join him.

  5

  Look!” Benjie yelped. “Our street sign blew over.”

  The Kendrills were on their way home from their weekly Thursday shopping trip. Bags of groceries, school supplies, and new shoes for both boys filled the trunk of their car.

  Mrs. Kendrill stepped on the brake, then backed the car up so they could get a closer look.

  A few inches of the post stuck up out of the grass. The rest of the post lay in the ditch, but the rectangular green sign that said VALLEY VIEW DRIVE was missing.

  “It didn’t blow over,” Alex said. “Someone sawed the post in two and stole the sign.”

  “Who would cut off a street sign?” Mrs. Kendrill asked.

  “The polka-dotted beavers from Brazil,” Benjie said. “They have the sharpest teeth in the universe. They can cut through giant trees in seconds.”

  “It was vandals,” Mr. Kendrill said. “Hoodlums who think it’s funny to destroy property and cause trouble.”

  “I’ll bet it was Rocky,” Benjie said.

  “Who?” said Mr. Kendrill.

  “Rocky. Our new neighbor. He’s bad. He’s even worse than the polka-dotted beavers from Brazil.”

  “You barely know him,” Mr. Kendrill said. “There’s no reason to suspect he did this.”

  “I barely know him because he won’t talk to me,” Benjie said. “He won’t talk to anyone, not even Alex, and they’re in the same class.”

  “Is that true, Alex?” Mrs. Kendrill asked. She shifted into “drive” and continued toward their house.

  “He isn’t exactly, friendly,” Alex said. “He goes out of his way to avoid talking to anyone.”

  “Maybe he’s shy,” Mrs. Kendrill said. “He is new in town, after all, and it isn’t easy to start in a new school.”

  Tell me about it, Alex thought. Duke and his pal, Henry, had followed him to the bus stop yesterday afternoon, whispering, “Get out of here, get out of here.”

  Alex, as usual, ignored them, but it wasn’t much fun to always be looking over his shoulder to see what they were up to.

  “That sign’s cut off, too,” Benjie said. He pointed at the corner where Maple Street intersected Valley View Drive.

  Alex brought his thoughts back to the present. Sure enough, where the street sign used to be, there was only a sawed-off stump. The rest of the post, minus the sign, lay in the ditch.

  Instead of turning down Elm Lane, where they lived, Mrs. Kendrill drove around the rest of Valley View Estates. Two more street signs were down.

  “We lived here all summer in the trailer and nobody cut off the street signs,” Benjie said. “Now, just five days after Rocky comes: Timber! The signs are down.”

  “I’m going to report this to the police,” Mr. Kendrill said.

  “When they come, tell them to go next door and question Rocky,” Benjie said.

  “I’ll do no such thing,” Mr. Kendrill said, “and don’t you suggest it, either. There is not one scrap of evidence that the Morris boy had anything to do with this, and the last thing we want to do is start trouble with the neighbors by accusing them of something they didn’t do. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” Benjie said, but Alex noticed that the minute they got home, Benjie grabbed his binoculars and headed for the front porch, where he had a good view of the Morrises’ house.

  Alex thought Benjie’s opinion of Rocky grew out of his brother’s imagination rather than fact. True, Rocky was unfriendly. Rocky’s dad still drove him to and from school each day, and they never offered to give Alex a ride. Rocky only nodded politely whenever Alex said hi, and twice, when Alex had said, “Come over after school if you want to shoot baskets or go for a bike ride,” Rocky had replied, “Thanks,” but he didn’t come. Still, unfriendliness was not the same as being a hoodlum.

  A police officer arrived an hour later. Benjie followed him inside.

  Pete sat on top of the piano while Mr. and Mrs. Kendrill told about the street signs.

  “The signs have been up only a couple of months,” Mr. Kendrill said.

  The officer shook his head and sighed. “It’s a problem everywhere,” he said. “It costs the county thousands of dollars every year to replace road signs. We have a full-time crew that does nothing except go out and replace signs that have been stolen or cut down.”

  “That’s terrible,” Mrs. Kendrill said. “What a waste of money.”

  “What’s really terrible is that we’re the ones who have to pay for all of it because we’re the taxpayers,” Mr. Kendrill said.

  “You got that right,” the officer said. “The people who think it’s funny to do this hurt themselves in the end because there’s that much less money available for road repair, parks, and other services.”

  “If I ever see those vandals cutting down a sign,” Pete said, “they’ll have scratches on both hands.”

  “In most cases of vandalism to public property, the cost is spread through the entire community,” the officer said. “In this case, it will be up to those of you who live here to replace the signs because the streets in this development have not yet been turned over to the county. They’re still private streets, owned by the developer of the property and the individual home owners.”

  Alex saw the worried glance that his parents exchanged. He wondered how much new signs and posts would cost.

  “I don’t suppose you have any idea who might be responsible?” the officer asked.

  “No,” Mr. Kendrill said.

  Mrs. Kendrill gave Benjie a warning look.

  “It isn’t uncommon to have vandalism problems in a new housing development,” the officer said. “Folks who have lived in an area all their lives sometimes resent having new homes built on land that’s always been vacant.”

  Alex thought of Duke and Henry.

  “A fine way to welcome people, if you ask me,” Mr. Kendrill said.

  “Most likely,” the officer said, “it was just kids looking for a cheap thrill.”

  “I’ll climb the vandals’ legs,” said Pete. “I’ll leave teeth marks where they sit down.”

  “Your cat has a lot to say,” the officer remarked. “I have two cats, but they never make a peep.”

  “Of course not. Chickens peep. Cats carry on intelligent conversations.”

  “Alex, feed that animal before he drives us all crazy,” Mr. Kendrill said.

  Alex lifted Pete down from the piano, carried him to the kitchen, and put him in front of his dish.

  “You already have food,” Alex said.

  “I knew that. I didn’t ask for food, but since I’m here, I may as well eat.”

  “I wish I could hold out hope that we’ll find the people who took the signs,” the officer said, “but to be honest, there isn’t much chance of that unless they return and someone catches them in the act or we find the missing signs in their possession.”

  “I’ll watch for the vandals,” Benjie said.

  “You do that. If you see anyone acting suspicious, get a full description, including a license-plate number if possible.”

  “I’ll use my spy kit,” Benjie said. “I have a notebook, a pencil, my binoculars, a camera, and thirty-five cents.”

  “Thirty-five cents?”

  “In case I need to make a phone call.”

  “Just don’t confront anyone,” the officer said. “Vandals are like any other criminals. They can be dangerous when they think they’re about to be apprehended.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Benjie said. “If it turns out to be the polka-dotted beavers from Brazil, I’ll call you even before I take a picture of them.”

  “Here’s your case number,” the officer said, handing Mr. Kendril
l a piece of paper. “If you need to call again, refer to that.”

  “I certainly hope we won’t have to call again.”

  * * *

  All that evening, Alex thought about Duke and Henry. They were so angry over their former dirt-bike trails and so unwilling to see Alex’s side of the situation. Were they furious enough to come to Valley View Estates and cut down the street signs?

  He wondered if he should have mentioned Duke and Henry to the police officer, but just as Benjie couldn’t prove that Rocky had anything to do with the signs, Alex had no evidence that his hostile classmates were involved. If he sent the cops after them and they were innocent, he could only imagine the trouble they would cause him at school from then on. It was bad enough now.

  The incident made him edgy. Until then, Duke and Henry’s resentment had seemed petty, something that they would get over if Alex waited it out. Alex could tolerate name-calling and teasing, if he had to, but ruined signposts were more serious. Whoever had stolen the street signs had no concern for anyone driving in the area. Lots of vehicles came through Valley View Estates, even though the drivers didn’t live there. With several new houses under construction, there were many contractor vehicles, county inspectors, phone and power company trucks, plumbers, and others who depended on street signs to find their destinations. How could delivery trucks tell where to go without the street signs?

  Pete interrupted Alex’s thoughts by planting himself next to the front door and yelling, “Open this door! I want to go out!”

  Pete’s yowling made Alex think of a joke.

  “Hey, Dad,” Alex said. “Did you know I’ve trained Pete to speak English?”

  Mr. Kendrill’s eyes twinkled at Alex. “Oh?” he said. “What have you taught him to say?”

  “When he wants to go out, he sits by the door and says, ‘Me-out. Me-out.’ Listen.”

  “Let me loose,” Pete cried. “I wasn’t meant to be locked up.”

  “It sounds to me like plain old meow, meow,” said Benjie.

  “It’s me-out, plain as day,” said Alex. “I could probably take Pete on television and make a bundle.”