The New Neighbor by Ray Garton Read Free Book Online

greetings in the hall and the occasional lunch, but little more.
    So Jen was left with the twins and a good deal more undisturbed time in which to do her homework. But for Jen, that homework – like making friends – was miserably hard. Sometimes she could break a sweat hunched over her books, especially if there was a test the next day. She was not lacking intelligence or study skills, but she suffered from what she had decided was some kind of phobia. Just as some people panicked or became hysterical when they saw spiders or snakes or looked down from high places, Jen froze up at an open schoolbook, a blank notebook page or the beginning of a test. She could write a letter comfortably and with no problem because she knew it didn't have to be perfect, but numbers made her gut clench with fear and the prospect of stringing words together into a coherent sentence – and spelling them correctly – when writing a paper numbed her into a cold paralysis. She fought it diligently and managed to get fair grades, but it took a couple of hours or so to do an assignment that would take up only thirty minutes for other students – a student like Robby.  
    Jen envied the ease with which her brother got so many A's. And he spent less time than most on his assignments, breezed through homework, never had a nervous moment before a test. He had lots of free time on his hands to give Jen a little help with her homework. But he never did. There were a lot of things he didn't do.
    When her mom married George – Jen had been calling him Dad since he'd adopted her right after the marriage – Jen liked the idea of having a big brother. She looked forward to the two of them getting to know one another and growing up together, being close the way Jen always thought brothers and sisters were supposed to be. But it didn't work out that way.
    Jen knew a lot of girls whose brothers were relentlessly cruel to them and she was glad Robby wasn't one of those . But she also knew girls whose brothers were their friends and confidants and she wished Robby was one of those. Unfortunately, he was somewhere in between.  
    Sometimes she felt like she wasn't growing up with Robby, but rather growing up next door to him. She'd been trying since they'd first met to get to know him, really know him, the way the kids at school and the teachers and neighbors never could. But she was beginning to think it was impossible.  
    He wasn't exactly cold, just preoccupied or – no, it was indifference . His distance did not seem intentional, it was just ... Robby. Jen kept trying to bridge that distance. She'd talked about it with Tara – one of the twins – but all she said was, "You've got a crush on him."
    "I do not !" Jen always replied.  
    "Sounds like it to me."  
    Both Tara and her brother Dana taunted her about it, but of course it wasn't true .  
    Not ... exactly.  
    Maybe she'd had a small crush on him when she was little, but she'd outgrown that. Well ... mostly.
    Completely , she thought, her pen poised over an unfinished sentence in Diana's letter.
    Back when Jen had a little crush on him, she had managed once to get a peek at the Robby no one else ever saw. It was by accident, and she'd never forgotten it.  
    It was on a summer afternoon six years ago when Jen had sneaked up on Robby's bedroom window. Robby had been putting together a model at his desk facing the half-open window. She'd intended to jump up with a shout and give Robby a scare, but as she crept through the bushes and hunkered below his window, she heard his bedsprings squeaking slightly and decided to listen a moment before popping up. When she heard him breathing heavily, she knew he wasn't working on his model anymore. Instead of jumping, she peered carefully over the edge of his window and her eyes grew twice their size because –
    – Robby was lying on his bed with his legs hanging over the edge, knees spread, pants bunched around his ankles, and his ... his thing – at