A Crime in the Neighborhood by Suzanne Berne Read Free Book Online Page A

wearing a pair of dark sunglasses and a yellow sweater with white appliquéd sunflowers around the collar, which matched her big white plastic sunflower earrings. The frames of her sunglasses were white plastic, too, and almost square, which made her face look like a house with dark windows.
    â€œHey,” she said again softly as I came up to the car. When she saw me looking at her earrings, she said, “Aren’t these cute?” She unclipped one and handed it to me. “Keep it. When we meet again, we’ll recognize each other because we’ll bethe ones wearing only one earring.” Her square sunglasses were impenetrable and she smelled strongly of drugstore lily-of-the-valley perfume.
    Then suddenly she laughed. “Oh come on, kiddo. It’s just me. It’s just Ada. I mean, I’m not
that
bad.” She did look just like Ada, with her silver bangle bracelets and her auburn hair the same color as mine, so familiar that I had to smile.
    She smiled back, then lifted up a piece of sketch paper that had been lying on the seat beside her. “I drew a picture. I came all the way over here to show it off.”
    In charcoal pencil, she’d drawn a woman looking through a telescope. Far in the distance, a tiny figure was walking away over a hill. That was what the woman was seeing through the telescope.
    â€œThat’s me.” Ada angled one finger through the window to point to the woman. Her fingernail was dirty; most of the pink polish had chipped off. “And that’s your mom.”
    I backed away again, gripping my bookbag against my chest.
    â€œOh honey. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Ada pulled the picture back into her car, then sighed and leaned her head against her seat. Her throat looked long and pale. Now that she wasn’t looking at me I could see her eyes behind her sunglasses and they looked smaller than before; the upper fold of her eyelid drooped. Her hair was shorter too, and darker. Altogether she did look different, not so much altered as sunk into some part of herself that I’d never noticed before. She closed her eyes,her chest slowly rising and falling. Her head lolled to the side. I thought she might be falling asleep.
    Across the street, Mrs. Morris came outside and stood on her front steps, but after I waved to her she turned around and went back inside. Finally, Ada opened her eyes.
    â€œCan I ask you a favor, Marsha?” She paused, looking down at her hands on the steering wheel. After a moment she said: “Don’t tell your mom that I came by here this afternoon. Please? I guess I’ve decided that what I was going to tell her wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
    â€œWhat were you going to tell her?” I put one foot exactly ahead of the other, toe to heel. Then I took two steps back, heel, toe, heel. I wished she would go away. My mother could come home at any moment. While I didn’t understand the full extent of their estrangement, I knew enough to recognize that Ada didn’t belong in our driveway.
    As if she understood, Ada suddenly started the car. It took a minute to get revved up, choking into action like an old lawn mower. She made a face, leaning against the wheel, her cheeks flushed now and damp-looking. Then she said something that I couldn’t hear over the noise of the engine.
    Her face looked unbalanced without both earrings; although if you had walked past her, it might have taken you a minute to figure out what was wrong, like one of those trick pictures where it turns out that the girl has only four fingers or a button-up shoe on one foot and a laced shoe on the other. I thought about running after her with the other earring, butbefore I could make up my mind, she had driven halfway down the street and was too far gone for me to catch up with her. So I went inside and hid the earring in my underwear drawer.
    A couple nights after Ada’s visit, Uncle Roger came to our house