holding hands. “Goodnight,” he called after them in a tone that clearly meant Good Riddance, too.
“G’night, kids,” a waving reply over his father’s shoulder, “TV says there’s a storm coming in don’t stay out here too long.”
“You’re parents are so cute,” Tammy teased as she moved over to the stump next to Jeff and grabbed a marshmallow from a stick he had been roasting. She picked it apart with her brightly painted fingernails and popped the gooiness into her mouth. Today her nails were lime green to match her shorts. Brady always wondered what she did first, pick out her clothes or her nail color, they always seemed to match. “Nothing like my parents,” she continued, “they hardly speak to each other.”
The last thing a teenage boy wants to hear is how cute his parents are. To Brady, his parents were just mom and dad. He had been around enough of his friends’ parents to understand his weren’t much different than most, only in the small and embarrassing ways.
“Trust me,” Brady responded as he raised a can of Coke to his lips. “My parents aren’t so cute when I forget to clean my room or take the garbage out.” He took a long drink and then added, “That reminds me, what’s with the trash bag, Jeff? I saw you shove it behind the bushes when your mom dropped you off. You don’t have severed heads or something in there, do you?”
“Gross,” April groaned and raised herself off the stump and stretched. She was tall, taller than Brady anyway. Not by much, but just enough to have bragging rights. She had insisted once that they stand back to back just to prove it. Brady watched her turn and look out over the lake. “It’s so quiet,’" she noted, turning to look at Brady through the dancing flames of the fire. “These crickets and frogs would drive me nuts,” she declared over the usual sounds of a northern Michigan shoreline. “I thought the reason people choose to live out in the middle of nowhere was for the peace and quiet. Besides, don’t you miss having neighbors?”
April lived in a trailer park with her parents and younger sister. Brady could understand how not having neighbors would seem so foreign to her. In a trailer park you couldn’t sneeze in your kitchen without having your neighbor’s next door say bless you from theirs.
“I guess you get used to it after a while,” Brady shrugged. “Besides, I get enough noise and people in Grand Rapids,” he added, referring to his family’s house in the city. “It’s nice to have quiet for a change.”
“You’ve got neighbors here,” Jeff said as he retrieved the trash bag from its hiding place in the bushes. And then gesturing to the lake, “That old nut house across the lake isn’t as empty as people think. You know it’s haunted, right?”
“What are you talking about? You mean that old hospital?” Brady remembered asking his father about it once as they sat on the float enjoying the morning sun.
“It’s just an empty building, Brady,” his father had replied casting a nervous glance at the hospital. “Just promise me you’ll stay away from it,” he continued, his gaze returning to Brady. “I’m not saying that the place is dangerous.” His father paused, “But old buildings are like teeth, Brady. They rot from the inside out when they're not cared for.”
His father had hesitated before reaching over and playfully wrapping his arm around Brady’s shoulder. “Which reminds me, did you brush this morning?” Without warning, his dad wrestled Brady off the edge of the float into the water. “Race you back,” he shouted and began swimming for shore. “Loser has to mow the lawn.”
Brady pulled his attention from the darkened hospital to Tammy as she added, “Yeah, the hospital. You do know what happened there, right? Why it closed and everything?” She finished the marshmallow and wiped her sticky fingers on her shorts as she, too, stood. Brady shrugged in ignorance. “He really
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