Good Neighbours E-Book

Sarah Langan

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Praised by Sarah Jessica Parker and described as "wildly entertaining" by Gillian Flynn, a dark and sharp-as-a-knife suburban thriller for readers of Liane Moriarty, Celeste Ng, Sarah Pinborough and Christos Tsiolkas "Insanely creepy, wildly entertaining and razor-sharp" Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl "I loved [Good Neighbours] so much, every word, every page, every painful surprise. I've been screaming the title to all who will listen." - Sarah Jessica Parker A sudden tragedy pits neighbour against neighbour and puts one family in terrible danger. Welcome to Maple Street, a picture-perfect slice of suburban Long Island, its residents bound by their children, their work, and their illusion of safety in a rapidly changing world. But when the Wilde family moves in, they trigger their neighbours' worst fears. Arlo and Gertie and their weird kids don't fit with the way Maple Street sees itself. As tensions mount, a sinkhole opens in a nearby park, and neighbourhood Queen Bee Rhea's daughter Shelly falls inside. The search for Shelly brings a shocking accusation against the Wildes. Suddenly, it is one mother's word against the other's in a court of public opinion that can end only in blood. A riveting and ruthless portrayal of suburbia, Good Neighbours excavates the perils and betrayals of motherhood and friendships and the dangerous clash between social hierarchy, childhood trauma, and fear.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a review

Copyright

Dedication

The Strangers July 4, 2027

116 Maple Street

Slip ’N Slide July 5–9

118 Maple Street

This Accident July 10

116 Maple Street

Sterling Park

Sterling Park

Sterling Park

Brick July 11–July 25

Maple Street

Thursday, July 22

Saturday, July 24

Sunday, July 25

Monday, July 26

Snitches July 26–31

120 Maple Street

Maple Street

118 Maple Street

Obstetrics, NYU Winthrop Hospital, Mineola, New York

Creedmoor Psychiatric Center

Tuesday, July 27

Tuesday, July 27

118 Maple Street

Starbucks

Creedmoor Psychiatric Center

118 Maple Street

116 Maple Street

124 Maple Street

116 Maple Street

Friday, July 30

Saturday, July 31

Nassau Community College

118 Maple Street

Hempstead Turnpike

118 Maple Street

118 Maple Street

116 Maple Street

The Monsters Arrive on Maple Street August 1–2

116 Maple Street

Garden City Police Department

116 Maple Street

116 Maple Street

NYU Winthrop Hospital

Hempstead Motor Inn

118 Maple Street

116 Maple Street

Sterling Park

118 Maple Street

Sterling Park

Sterling Park

118 Maple Street

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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Good Neighbours

Print edition ISBN: 9781789098211

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789098228

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: July 2021

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Sarah Langan 2021. All Rights Reserved.

Sarah Langan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Clem

From Believing What You See: Untanglingthe Maple Street Murders,

by Ellis Haverick,Hofstra University Press, © 2043

Fifteen years after the fact, our preoccupation with Maple Street seems quaint. The details aren’t especially gory. The number of casualties holds no candle to the Wall Street Blood Bath, or the Amazon Bombings in Seattle. What happened was horrific, but no worse than any calamity we now hear about five days a week.

Why, then, is it a national obsession? Why do people dress like its key players on Halloween? The Broadway show, The Wildes vs. Maple Street, has run for more than a decade. During this immersive theater experience, the audience is asked to choose sides in a reenactment, arguing to the literal death* over who was at fault, and who was innocent. Every year, another media outlet reinvents the facts of what happened on that hot August day; the murderous fever that spread across an American neighborhood. Some blame the heat wave, the first of its kind. Some blame the sinkhole in the collapsed park nearby. Still others blame suburbia itself.

My theory is this: Maple Street has stuck with us because no one has adequately resolved the mystery. It’s a nightmare in plain sight. We ask ourselves how an upstanding community could conspire toward the murder of an entire family, and we can make no sense of it.

But what if we’ve overlooked the most obvious explanation? What if the accusations lodged against the Wilde family were true? In other words, what if they had it coming?

* It’s role-play theater, the outcomes dependent upon how the game is played.

The Strangers

July 4, 2027

Map of Maple Street as of July 4, 2027*116 Wilde Family*118 Schroeder Family

INDEX OF MAPLE STREET’S PERMANENT RESIDENTSAS OF JULY 4, 2027

100

The Gradys—Lenora (47), Mike (45), Kipp (11), Larry (10)

102

The Mullers—John (39), Hazel (36), Madeline (4), Emily (6 months)

104

The Singhs-Kaurs—Sai (47), Nikita (36), Pranav (16), Michelle (14), Sam (13), Sarah (9), John (7)

106

The Pulleyns—Brenda (38), Dan (37), Wallace (8), Roger (6)

108

The Lombards—Hank (38), Lucille (38), Mary (2), Whitman (1)

110

The Hestias—Rich (51), Cat (48), Helen (17), Lainee (14)

112

The Gluskins—Evan (38), Anna (38), Natalie (6), Judd (4)

114

The Walshes—Sally (49), Margie (46), Charlie (13)

116

The Wildes—Arlo (39), Gertie (31), Julia (12), Larry (8)

118

The Schroeders—Fritz (62), Rhea (53), FJ (19), Shelly (13), Ella (9)

120

The Benchleys—Robert (78), Kate (74), Peter (39)

122

The Cheons—Christina (44), Michael (42), Madison (10)

124

The Harrisons—Timothy (46), Jane (45), Adam (16), Dave (14)

126

The Pontis—Steven (52), Jill (48), Marco (20), Richard (16)

128

The Ottomanellis—Dominick (44), Linda (44), Mark (12), Michael (12)

130

The Atlases—Bethany (37), Fred (30)

132

The Simpsons—Daniel (33), Ellis (33), Kaylee (2), Michelle (2), Lauren (2)

134

The Caliers—Louis (49), Eva (42), Hugo (24), Anais (22)

TOTAL: 72 PEOPLE

116 Maple Street

Sunday, July 4

“Is it a party? Are we invited?” Larry Wilde asked.

They weren’t invited. Gertie Wilde knew this, but she didn’t want to admit it. So she watched the crowd out her window, counted all the people there.

Gertie and her family had moved to 116 Maple Street about a year before. They’d bought the place, a fixer-upper, for cheap. They’d meant to renovate. To reshingle the roof and put in new gutters, tear up the deep-pile carpet and nail down bamboo. At the very least, they’d planned to seed grass across the patchwork lawn. But stuff happens. Or doesn’t happen.

The inside of 116 Maple Street was haphazard, too. As a kid, you might have visited this sort of home on a playdate and intuited the mess as happy, but also chaotic. You had a great time when you slept over. You never worried about the stuff you had to bother with at home: making your bed, hanging your wet towel, carrying your dishes to the sink. Still, you wanted to go home pretty soon after, because even with the laughter, all that mess started to make you nervous. You got the feeling that the management was in over its head.

Maple Street was a tight-knit, crescent-shaped block that bordered a six-acre park. The people there dressed for work in business casual. They drove practical cars to practical jobs. They were always in a rush, even if it was just to the grocery store or church. They didn’t seem to worry as much about their mortgages. If their parents were sick, or their marriages weren’t happy, they didn’t mention it. They channeled those unsettled feelings, like everything else, into their kids.

They talked about extracurriculars and sports; which teachers at the local, blue-ribbon public school were brilliant miracle workers, and which ones lacked training via the social-emotional connection. They were obsessed with college. Harvard, in particular.

The Wildes were different. With their finances out of sorts, Gertie and Arlo didn’t have the bandwidth to obsess over their kids, and even if they’d had the time and mental space, no one had ever taught them about creative learning and emotional intelligence, healthy discipline and consistent boundaries. They wouldn’t have known where to begin.

The kids, Julia and Larry, made fart sounds in public, and also farted in public. Julia was fast. Their first month on the block, she stole her dad’s cigarettes and taught the neighborhood Rat Pack how to French exhale. Larry was quirky. He didn’t make eye contact and had a flat affect. When he thought the other kids weren’t looking, he stuck his hands down his pants.

The Wildes knew that they’d been breaking tacit rules ever since arriving on Maple Street. But they didn’t know which rules. For instance, Arlo was a former rocker who smoked late-night Parliaments off his front porch. He didn’t know that in the suburbs, you only smoke in your backyard, especially if you have tattoos and no childhood friends to vouch for you. Otherwise, you look angry, puffing all alone and on display. You vibe violent.

Then there was Gertie. Before she met Arlo at the Atlantic City Convention Center, where he’d played lead guitar for the in-house band, she’d won thirty-two regional beauty pageants. Like a living Barbie doll, she still conducted herself with that same pageant training: phony smiles, over-bright eyes, stock answers to questions that begged for honesty. The neighbors who’d tried to befriend her had mostly given up, under the misapprehension that there wasn’t anybody home under all that blond. Worse, nobody’d ever told Gertie that mom cleavage isn’t cool. She didn’t know that when she wore her halter tops, painted gold chain-necklaces dangling between her breasts, she might as well have been waving a great banner to the other wives that read: INSECURE FLOOZY WHO WANTS TO STEAL YOUR HUSBAND AND MAK E YOUR KIDS ASHAMED YOU’RE NOT A 5'10", BLOND VIKING WITH PERFECT SKIN.

That summer of the sinkhole was the hottest on record. Because the center of Long Island was as concave as a red blood cell, there wasn’t any mitigating wind. Just mosquitoes and crickets and living, singing things. The smell was saltwater sifted through too-ripe begonias.

The Wilde family had just finished dinner (cheese toast washed down with fizzy water; Trader Joe’s frozen cherries for dessert). They’d heard the sounds of people, but hadn’t noticed anything special until the notes of a Nirvana song carried through their windows.

I’m not like them, but I can pretend.

“Is it a party? Are we invited?” eight-year-old Larry asked. He lifted Robot Boy from his lap. Nobody was allowed to call it a doll or he got embarrassed.

Gertie hoisted herself to the window and pulled back the thin curtains. She was twenty-four weeks pregnant, so everything she did took a few seconds extra, especially in this heat.

It was seven o’clock exactly, and everybody out there seemed to have gotten the same memo, because they were carrying quinoa salad in Tupperware, or chips and salsa, or a sixer of artisanal beer. Gertie quick-counted: the Caliers-Lombards-Simpsons-Gradys-Gluskins-Mullers-Cheons-Harrisons-Singhs–Kaurs-Pulleyns-Walshes-Hestias-Schroeders-Benchleys-Ottomanellis-Atlases-and-Pontis. Every house on Maple Street was accounted for, except for 116. The Wilde house.

“If it was a party, Rhea Schroeder would have told me,” Gertie muttered.

Twelve-year-old Julia Wilde lifted a single blond eyebrow. She wasn’t pretty like her mom, and had decided early to contrast this by being funny. “Loooooks like a party. Smellllls like a party …”

Arlo poked his head next to Gertie’s and together they leaned. He was wearing just a Hanes T-shirt and cutoff Levi’s, his sleeve-inked arms exposed. On the left: Frankenstein’s Monster and Bride. On the right: the Wolf Man and the Mummy.

Gertie was bad at reaching out. At asking. But he was a warm person who’d always intuited when she needed to be reassured. He kissed the top of her head. “Fun,” he said. “Should we go?”

“I’m game for a second dinner,” she answered. “Guppy’s growing bones today, I think.”

“I don’t understand. How is this not a party?” Larry called from behind.

“Sounnnnds like a party,” Julia said.

It was a party, Gertie finally admitted. So why hadn’t anybody posted about it on the Maple Street web group? Was Rhea Schroeder mad at her? It was true they’d fallen out of contact lately, but that was because Gertie was exhausted most nights. This third baby was heck on her body. And Rhea’s summer course load was full, plus she had those four kids. It had to be an accident that she hadn’t been invited! Rhea would never intentionally do her wrong.

She should have expected a Fourth of July party! She should have asked around. For all she knew, the neighbors had come up with the idea only this morning. There hadn’t been time to post about it. Besides, you don’t need a written invitation to a block party …

Do you?

Just then, Queen Bee Rhea Schroeder passed by their window. She was overdressed in a fancy Eileen Fisher linen pantsuit; white and stainless.

“Rhea!” Gertie called through the open window, her voice stage-loud, reverberating all through the street and into the giant park. “Hi, sweetie! How are you?” Then she waved. Big and pageant-winning.

Rhea looked straight into Gertie’s window—into Gertie’s eyes. The attachment between them felt wrong. Like a plug connected to a faulty socket, sparks flying. For just a moment, Gertie was terrified.

Rhea turned. “Dom? Steve? Did someone bring chicken or do I need to make a Whole Foods run?” Her voice faded as she walked deeper into the park.

“That was weird,” Arlo said.

“She’s spacey. Smart people are like that. She probably didn’t see me,” Gertie answered.

“Needs to get her eyes checked,” Arlo joked.

“She sucks chocolate balls. So does her whole family. They’re ball suckers,” Julia said.

Gertie turned, hands resting on her full belly like a shelf. “That’s terrible to say, Julia. We’re lucky that people like the Schroeders even talk to us. Rhea’s a college professor! You’re not giving little Shelly a hard time, are you? She’s too sensitive for that.”

“Sensitive? She’s a crazy bitch!” Julia cried.

“Don’t say that!” Gertie cried back. “The window’s open. They’ll hear!”

Julia hung her head, revealing strong shoulders mottled with pubescent acne eruptions. “Sorry.”

“That’s better,” Arlo said. “We can’t be fighting with the All-Americans. You gotta be nice to these people. Make it work. For your own good.”

“Totally,” Gertie said. “Should we see what the fuss is all about?”

“No. It’s too hot. Larry and I’d rather sit in the basement and eat paint like sad, neglected babies,” Julia answered. Her normally curly-wild ponytail had gone limp.

“Lead paint tastes sweet! That’s why babies eat it!” Larry announced.

“Paint’s not really your option two here,” Arlo answered as Gertie started for the kitchen, where she grabbed a half-eaten bag of Ruffles potato chips to offer the crowd. Then he leaned over the table, his voice soft. It wasn’t threatening, but it wasn’t not threatening. “There’s no option two. Get the fuck up and slap on some smiles.”

“So, should we go?” Gertie asked.

“’Course!” Arlo answered, his voice soft and nice now that Gertie was back. He opened the front door. The Wilde parents took the lead, then the kids, who followed closely. Maybe it was coincidence, and maybe it wasn’t. But a few feet out, someone switched the music to a song in a minor key. It was “Kennedys in the River,” Arlo’s number-eighteen Billboard hit single from 2012.

Don’t know what love is.

Don’t think it matters.

I got sixty dollars.

And a dream that won’t shatter.

Arlo blushed. Hearing his own music was a complicated thing. His family knew this. As a result, Larry and Julia walked slower, like their feet had short shackles between them. Gertie held a smile tight as a zipper. One step after the other, they arrived at Sterling Park.

Sai Singh and Nikita Kaur glanced up from the barbeque. OxyContin-addled Iraq War veteran Peter Benchley ran his fingers along the tender edges of his residual limbs. The gang of kids, self-named the Rat Pack, stopped jumping on the big trampoline someone had wheeled to the center of the park. Shouting something too distant to hear, Shelly Schroeder pointed straight at Julia.

The vibe wasn’t hostile. After all her pageant training, Gertie was good at reading a room and she knew that. But something had changed since the last barbeque, on Memorial Day, because the vibe wasn’t welcoming, either.

She tried to catch Rhea’s eye but Rhea was busy talking to Linda Ottomanelli. There were people everywhere, any of whom she could have approached, but during her time on Maple Street, Gertie’d only ever felt comfortable with Rhea.

You’re heavy under me

and above.

Crying in cemeteries

like it’s love.

Arlo’s song kept going. Shoulders hunched, the Wildes played captive to a low-class history they couldn’t hide from:

I see my dad in you

all sweat and junk.

Baby, run away with me.

We’ll shake these blues.

At last, Fred Atlas and his sickly wife, Bethany, picked their slow way through the crowd to greet them. “Dude! You made it!” Fred called as he clapped Arlo on the back. Then they went in for the bro hug. Bethany offered Gertie a winsome smile, her body brittle as a straw man’s. The Atlases’ dog, a rescue German shepherd named Ralph, nudged the whole group of them, trying to keep them safe and in the pack.

“You’re the fijizzle, Fred. You, too, Bethany,” Arlo answered. Then he and Fred took orders and went to the drinks table.

Over by the kids, Dave Harrison disconnected from the Rat Pack. He slid off the trampoline and jogged to Julia and Larry, handing each a sparkler. They lit them and Julia wrote shart in the air while Larry made circles.

“Can I have a burger?” Gertie asked Linda Ottomanelli. On the table were mini American flags on toothpicks, which people had stabbed into their sesame seed buns.

Linda took a second, eyes focused on the burgers, even though it was clear she’d heard. Gertie waited, still and tall. Wondered if she should have worn a shawl over her low-cut dress. But pregnancy was the only time her boobs got to be D cups. It was fun to show them off.

“Cheese or plain?” Linda asked at last.

“Plain? You’re such a trooper to cook in this heat.”

“I can’t help it. I love making people happy. I’m just that kind of person. It could be a hundred and fifty degrees and I’d still do this. It’s my nature. I’m too nice.”

“I noticed that about you,” Gertie offered, which wasn’t true. She’d never noticed much of anything about Linda Ottomanelli, except that she was the kind of woman who wore a fanny pack to the grocery store and who got her politics from the social network. She got the rest of her opinions from Rhea Schroeder, whose word she treated like gospel.

Linda sighed like a martyr. “You must be hungry. I was always hungry when I was pregnant. I mean, I was carrying twins! But maybe you’re not hungry, because you’re so skinny. I hate you for being so skinny! How are you so skinny? You’re like an alien!”

Gertie bit into the burger. Juice ran down her chin and then her cleavage. “I’m just medium skinny if you don’t count the baby. I used to be really skinny, but it’s too hard. You can’t eat bread.”

Linda’s grin flickered.

“One time, I cut out carbs and dairy together, plus I did high-intensity interval training. You could do that if you wanted. I still have some of the books.”

“Thanks,” Linda said.

Over by the trampoline, Julia and Larry started jumping with the rest of the Rat Pack kids, and at the drinks table, Arlo was telling a story to a whole bunch of guys. Something about the clerk at the 7-Eleven who made everybody late for their trains because he was so bad at making change. “I just gave up. I said, ‘Take it, ya rich bastard!’” Arlo drawled, then popped his Parliament Light into the corner of his mouth and made an air fist. His voice was louder than everybody else’s, and they were standing back to get away from the smoke, even Fred.

Pretty soon, everybody was laughing from that first beer or wine, and clapping, and retelling some story from work, or what cute and mischievous thing their kids had done in their kindergarten class that had left the teacher flabbergasted. The Gradys, Mullers, Pulleyns, and Gluskins were planning a trip to Montauk. Margie and Sally Walsh were explaining how Subarus aren’t really lesbian cars; they’re just practical. The Ponti men compared biceps size. They were in ripping spirits, having come straight from the town baseball league’s end-of-year keg party.

Food and second rounds began. The heat stayed thick. At last, Gertie summoned her courage. She found Rhea Schroeder by her famous German potato salad. The secret ingredient came by way of her mother-in-law from Munich: Miracle Whip.

“Hi,” Gertie said. “I saw you before but I don’t think you saw me. So, hi again!”

Rhea frowned. She’d been doing that a lot lately. Probably, she was stressed out. Between the four kids and the full-time job, who wouldn’t be?

“Has it really been since the spring? I miss our talks.” Gertie willed her eyes to meet Rhea’s. “Want to come over next week? Arlo’ll make his pesto chicken. I know how you like that.”

Rhea seemed to consider, but then: “I’m so busy at work. They can’t spare me. I’m practically holding up the entire English Department. Plus, I’ve been planning things like this. Barbeques. I really don’t have a second.”

Gertie stepped closer, which wasn’t her nature—she liked a wide swath of personal space. But for the sake of this new life she and Arlo were trying so hard to make work, for the sake of her friendship with this smart, funny woman, she pushed past her comfort zone. Her voice quivered. “Did I do something? I know you plan these things. I’m sure it was an accident, that you didn’t invite us?”

Rhea affected surprise. “Accident? No accident at all!” Then she walked, white linen swishing over heels just high enough to keep the grass from staining.

With rod-straight posture and a cement smile, Gertie watched her disappear into the crowd. The party continued. And it was stupid. Pregnancy hormones. But she had to trace her index fingers along her under-eyes to keep the mascara from running.

That’s when it happened.

The music cut to static. The earth rocked. Linda’s red-checked picnic table with all those burgers started to shake. Gertie felt the vibrations from her feet to her teeth.

Early fireworks? … Earthquake? … Shooter?

There wasn’t time to find out. Gertie did a quick take of the park; met Arlo’s eyes. They fast-walked to the kids from opposite directions. Like magnets, the four snapped together.

“Street?” Gertie asked.

“Home!” Arlo shouted.

They hoofed it, running along the thick clovers and dandelions, past the trampoline and hem of pudding stone that bordered the park. With her pregnancy and bad feet, Gertie brought up the rear.

She didn’t see the sinkhole as it opened. Only watched later, from the footage people captured with their phones. What she noticed most was how hungry it seemed. The picnic table and all those burgers fell inside. The barbeque followed. Ralph the German shepherd got away from Fred and Bethany, banking the sinkhole’s lips as they swelled.

A surprised yelp, and Ralph was gone.

By the time Gertie looked back, the hole had reached an uneasy peace with Maple Street. It had stopped growing, leaving just the people. Some had run, some had stayed frozen. Some had even hastened toward that widening gyre, their instincts all messed up.

And then there was Rhea Schroeder. In the stillness, she didn’t turn to her family, whom she’d deftly rescued and corralled to the far side of the sinkhole. She didn’t pet their hair or check in with her spouse like so many others did. She didn’t cry or gawk or take out her phone. No.

She looked straight at Gertie, and bared her teeth.

Between them, a gritty smoke rose up. It carried with it the chemical scent of something unearthed.

Slip ’N Slide

July 5–9

Map of Maple Street as of July 5, 2027*116 Wilde Family*118 Schroeder Family

INDEX OF MAPLE STREET’S PERMANENT RESIDENTSAS OF JULY 5, 2027

100

The Gradys—Lenora (47), Mike (45), Kipp (11), Larry (10)

102

VACANT

104

The Singhs-Kaurs—Sai (47), Nikita (36), Pranav (16), Michelle (14), Sam (13), Sarah (9), John (7)

106

The Pulleyns—Brenda (38), Dan (37), Wallace (8), Roger (6)

108

VACANT

110

The Hestias—Rich (51), Cat (48), Helen (17), Lainee (14)

112

VACANT

114

The Walshes—Sally (49), Margie (46), Charlie (13)

116

The Wildes—Arlo (39), Gertie (31), Julia (12), Larry (8)

118

The Schroeders—Fritz (62), Rhea (53), FJ (19), Shelly (13), Ella (9)

120

The Benchleys—Robert (78), Kate (74), Peter (39)

122

The Cheons—Christina (44), Michael (42), Madison (10)

124

The Harrisons—Timothy (46), Jane (45), Adam (16), Dave (14)

126

The Pontis—Steven (52), Jill (48), Marco (20), Richard (16)

128

The Ottomanellis—Dominick (44), Linda (44), Mark (12), Michael (12)

130

The Atlases—Bethany (37), Fred (30)

132

The Simpsons—Daniel (33), Ellis (33), Kaylee (2), Michelle (2), Lauren (2)

134

The Caliers—Louis (49), Eva (42), Hugo (24), Anais (22)

TOTAL: 60 PEOPLE

From Newsday, July 5, 2027, here

MAPLE STREET SINKHOLE

LONG ISLAND’S DEEPEST spontaneous sinkhole appeared yesterday, this time in Garden City’s Sterling Park during holiday festivities. A German shepherd plummeted inside the 180-foot-deep fissure and has not yet been recovered. No other injuries were reported.

This is the third sinkhole event on Long Island in as many years. Experts warn that more are expected. According to Hofstra University geology professor Tom Brymer, “The causes for sinkholes include the continued use of old water mains, excessive depletion of the lowest water table, and increasing periods of flooding and extreme heat.” (See diagram, here.)

In conjunction with the New York Department of Agriculture (NYDOA), the New York Environmental Protection Agency (NYEPA) announced yesterday that Long Island’s aquifers have not been affected. Residents may continue to drink tap water.

The NYDOA has closed Sterling Park and its adjoining streets to nonresidential traffic during an excavation and fill, which will begin July 7 and is slated to run through July 18. The nearby Garden City Pool will also be closed. For more on the sinkhole, see pages 2–11.

From “The Lost Children of Maple Street,”

by Mark Realmuto,The New Yorker, October 19, 2037

It’s difficult to imagine that Gertie Wilde and Rhea Schroeder were ever friends. It’s even more ludicrous to think that the friendship would turn so bitter as to result in homicide.

Connolly and Schiff posited in their seminal work on mob mentality, The Human Tide, that Rhea took pity on the Wilde family. She wanted to help them fit in. But a closer look belies that theory. When the Cheon, Simpson, and Atlas families moved to Maple Street during the five years prior, Rhea did not attempt the same kinds of friendships. Though she welcomed the families with baskets of chocolate and perfume, by their own accounts, she was cold. “I think she was intimidated,” Christina Cheon admitted. “I’m a doctor. She didn’t like the competition for most accomplished woman on the block.” Ellis Simpson added, “Everybody from around here had family to help them out. That’s why you moved to the suburbs. Free babysitting. I mean, it definitely wasn’t for the culture. But the Wildes were alone. I think that’s why Rhea plugged into Gertie. Bullies seek the vulnerable. You know what else bullies do? They trick people who don’t know any better into believing they’re important.”

It’s entirely possible, then, that Rhea had it out for Gertie from the start.

118 Maple Street

Friday, July 9

“It’s a hairbrush night,” Rhea Schroeder called up the stairs to her daughter Shelly. “Don’t forget to use extra conditioner. I hate that look on your face when I hit a knot.”

She waited at the landing. Heard rustling up there. She had four kids. Three still lived at home. She had a husband, too, only she rarely saw him. It’s unnatural, being the sole grown-up in a house for twenty-plus years. You talk to yourself. You spin.

“You hear me?”

“Yup!” Shelly bellowed back down. “I HEAR you!”

Rhea sat back down at her dining room table. She tried to focus her attention on the Remedial English Composition papers she was supposed to grade. The one on top argued that the release of volcanic ash was the cheapest and smartest solution to global warming. Plus, you’d get all those gorgeous sunsets! Because she taught college, a lot of Maple Street thought she had a glamorous job. These people were wrong. She did not correct them, but they were absolutely, 100 percent wrong.

Rhea pushed the papers away. Sipped from the first glass of Malbec she’d poured for the night, got up, and scanned the mess out her window.

She couldn’t see the sinkhole. It was in the middle of the park, less than a half mile away. But she could see the traffic cones surrounding it, and the trucks full of fill sand, ready to dump. Though work crews had laid down plywood to cover the six-foot-square gape, a viscous slurry had surfaced, caking its edges. The slurry was a fossil fuel called bitumen, found in deep pockets all over Long Island. It threaded outward in slender seams and was mostly contained within the park, but in places had reached under the sidewalks, bubbling up on neighbors’ lawns. There was a scientific explanation, something about polarity and metal content. Global warming and cooked earth. She couldn’t remember exactly, but the factors that made the sinkhole had also galvanized Long Island’s bitumen to coalesce in this one spot.

All that to say, Sterling Park looked like an oozing wound.

They never did find the German shepherd. Their theory was that a strong current in the freshwater aquifer down there had carried him away. They’d likened it to falling through ice in a frozen pond, and trying to swim your way back to the opening.

He could be anywhere. Even below her feet. Funny to think.

This evening, the crescent was especially quiet. Several families had left town for vacations or to get away from the candy apple fumes. Those who remained, if they were home at all, stayed inside.

Just then, pretty Gertie Wilde emerged from 116’s garage. She carried a haphazardly coiled garden hose, its extra slack spilling down like herniated intestines. Gertie’s big hair was coiffed, her metallic silver eye shadow so glistening that Rhea could see it from a hundred feet away. She stopped when she got to the front yard, hose in hand.

Rhea’s pulse jogged.

Gertie peered inside Rhea’s house, right where Rhea was standing. She seemed frightened and small out there, like a kid holding a broken toy, and suddenly, Rhea understood—Gertie had no outdoor spigot to which to attach her hose. She needed to borrow. But because of the way Rhea had acted at the Fourth of July barbeque, she was afraid to ask.

A thrill rose in Rhea’s chest.

Margie Walsh screwed it up. She came out from the house on the other side of Gertie’s and walked fast to meet her. Waves and smiles. Rhea didn’t hear the small talk, but she saw their laughter. Polite at first, and then relaxed. They hooked the hose, then unrolled a plastic yellow bundle, running it the length of the Walsh and Wilde lawns. Water gushed and sprayed. A Slip ’N Slide. With the temperature lingering at 108 degrees, its water emerged like an oasis in a desert.

Pretty soon, Margie’s and Gertie’s kids came out. Fearless Julia Wilde gave herself ten feet of running buildup, then threw herself against the plastic and slid all the way down until she landed on grass. Charlie Walsh followed. Each took a few turns before they could convince rigid Larry. At last, he did it, too. But Larry, uncoordinated and holding Robot Boy, didn’t build enough momentum. Only slid halfway.

The lawn got torn up. The kids got covered in mud and then hosed themselves off and started over. Tar from the sinkhole stuck to their clothes and skin like Dalmatian motley.

Now that the seal was broken, all of Maple Street opened up and shook loose. The rest of the Rat Pack and some of their parents streamed out. Laughter turned to screams of delight as even the grown-ups joined in.

Rhea watched through her window. The laughter and screams were loud enough that muffled versions of them permeated the glass.

Gertie didn’t know any better. With her central air-conditioning broken, she’d probably gotten used to that slightly sweet chemical scent. The rest of them were stir-crazy. Figured, if a pregnant woman was willing to take the risk, the rest of them were pansies not to go out, too.

But anybody who watches decent science fiction knows that the EPA isn’t perfect. The stuff her neighbors were rolling around in tonight might glue their lungs with emphysema twenty years from now. Even her husband, Fritz, who never had an opinion about anything domestic, had announced that if the hole didn’t get filled like it was supposed to, they ought to pack the family into a short-term rental. He’d crinkled his nose that very first night it happened, grudging fear in his eyes, and said, “When it smells like this in the lab, we turn on the ventilation hoods and leave the room.”

Rhea ought to warn these people. She was obliged, for their safety. But if she did that, they’d think she was a killjoy. They’d think it had to do with Gertie.

She played the conversation out in her head. She’d go out to 116, trespassing on Gertie’s property, and urge them to go home. To take hot showers with strong soap. They’d put down their beers, nod in earnest agreement, wait for her to go away, and then start having fun again. Probably, they wouldn’t say anything mean about her once she was gone. Not openly. But she knew the people of Maple Street. They’d chuckle.

She backed away from her window.

Between the papers, the people outside, her husband at work, and even her children upstairs, Rhea felt very alone right then. Misunderstood and too smart for this world. All the while, Slip ’N Slide laughter surrounded the house. It pushed against the stone and wood and glass. She wished she could let it in.

*   *   *