“It’s a lie. There is no perfect,” Charlie said.
“How is it a lie?” Julia asked.
Dave blew a long raspberry. “Eeeeemo. Shit’s tough all around. My parents divided our house with a Sharpie because they’re too cheap to pay for a divorce. That’s way worse than pseudo-perfect. You see me going psycho killer?”
“Why does she hate you?” Charlie asked Julia.
“Does she? Hate me?” Julia asked back. “Did she tell you that?” Even though it was obvious, it felt bad to say out loud.
“What’s she got against you, is what Charlie’s asking,” Dave said, frowning at Charlie, who blushed.
“I don’t know,” Julia answered. She’d wondered a lot about this, hadn’t been able to come up with anything that made sense. “She’s spoiled. Her mom does everything. My parents spoiled her, too. Like, my mom would always make her whatever meal she wanted even if she had to go to the Trader Joe’s for it, and my dad would always play harmonica with her. He didn’t do that when it was just me… She got whatever she wanted. People bow down because of her mom. I really liked her, but honestly, I just think she got bored. It was fun to pretend to be a nice person and be my best friend and now it’s fun to act horrible and rip me a new one. What did she tell you guys?”
“Nothing,” Charlie said. “I didn’t mean to say anything wrong. I just wondered.”
“… Is it true that you guys took a vote not to hang out with me anymore?” she asked.
“Shelly did,” Dave answered. “Not us.”
Julia looked away so they didn’t see the depth of her relief.
“I don’t like talking about her,” Dave said, his eyes squinting. “It makes me mad. She sucks the oxygen.”
“Fine by me,” Julia answered. Then she grinned, to let them all know she was okay. “Rule number nineteen! It’s a primordial stew apocalypse down there!”
“Borg,” Charlie said. “Resistance is futile.”
Julia giggled. “Sucker! Our parents are down there.”
“Doing what?” Charlie asked.
Julia shook her head. “Worrying about the wrong things. It’s all they know how to do.”
Dave kicked the board. “I really do wish they were down there. I’d have the house to myself.”
Julia pictured her Beauty Queen mother down at the bottom of that hole, pregnant and sweating and wringing her nervous hands. Square your shoulders! Smile! Go put on a bra so nobody can see your business. If a grown man ever talks to you, just scream. They got no business talking to you. Are you getting along with the neighbors? Don’t make yourself unpleasant, Julia! These people are so important!… Did you bring Larry? Don’t you know he’s your responsibility?
She pictured her dad down there, too. Playing sad songs and walking slow and sad like every day he woke up as Julia and Larry’s father instead of as a rock star was a disappointment.
“Let’s throw ’em down. Then we’ll take over. We’ll run the world.”
“I like my parents!” Charlie cried.
“I like mine, too,” Julia answered. “But they still suck.”
That was when the only tranquility they’d forged that summer broke.
Shelly and the rest of the Rat Pack came howling back.
116 Maple Street
Arlo Wilde’s phone chimed a wake-up. The tune was Bernard Herrmann’s shower scene music from Psycho, and it seeped into his dream, in which Gertie gave birth to a kitten. The kitten had these huge, cute eyes, so Gertie and the kids were ecstatic. He’d known something was wrong, but he hadn’t wanted to upset them.
Then the Psycho music, and he was like: Seriously, guys, that baby is a cat.
He slapped off his phone and got up. The room was dark, all shades drawn. The sluggish window air conditioner whined loud and sad. It was no competition for this heat wave: his skin was wet with sweat. He stepped over and also on the humidity-damp towels and assorted feminine garbage like lipstick and Spanx that Gertie had tossed on their floor. She had many good qualities, but cleanliness was not one of them.
“Julia? Larry?” he called a couple of times after splashing some of the swell from his booze-puffed face.
Wearing just tiger-striped boxer briefs Gertie had gotten for him as a joke, he checked the kids’ rooms first. Julia’s: like mother, like daughter, it was a clothing bomb, peppered with plates whose unrecognizable crumbs had congealed. Larry’s room: perfectly organized, and without a personal item on display, save a Robot Boy doll, which he was still trying to convince them was not actually a doll, but a tool. Like superheroes have utility belts and Iron Man has a vibranium heart, Larry had his Robot Boy. What Larry didn’t know was that they all preferred he had a doll; it made him more like a normal kid.