I’m taking Rochelle’s advice and refusing to play the game. Even if I was planning to engage, I wouldn’t want to screw around with Jack’s phone and potentially mess with people’s immigration situations.
No! That’s too far. And I’m not retaliating.
The car stops. I groan internally, annoyed that we’re picking up a sixth passenger.
“What is this, a clown car?” the old lady in the front says. There’s always someone who makes that comment. The driver chuckles dutifully.
The blond girl’s groan is not internal. She huffs it out in frustration and opens the door, pulling back the seat. Just the sight of the heavily pregnant woman waiting to board makes it clear there is no way she can squeeze here with me. To her credit, the blond girl climbs in beside me without a word of question or complaint and pulls the seat to close us in.
The pregnant woman thanks her and heaves herself onto the seat vacated by the blonde. “Lovely. Air conditioning,” she murmurs gratefully.
My phone vibrates.
Oh, you’ve discovered a moral line in the sand? That’s interesting. I figured when you started dabbling in biological warfare the sky was the limit.
I bristle.
Har. Har. If I’m such a bad person, what does that say about you, then?
That I’m just as bad.
“What did you do? The biological warfare thing?” the blond girl next to me asks. She is unashamedly reading my text messages.
“Um, it’s nothing. My neighbor,” I answer. High school girls are unpredictable creatures. There is no ignoring or rebuking her. I do, however, pull my phone up and away from her view.
“You did biological warfare on a neighbor?” the brunette asks, turning around with interest.
“No, no. It was just a cat. My neighbor has allergies, so I—” I see the pregnant woman’s eyebrows angle up in judgment. “I mean, I wanted to make him itchy so he’d move. But that’s because he’s forever doing obnoxious things to me.” The need to defend my honor to this jury of my peers is as necessary as it is ridiculous.
“What did he do?” the old lady asks, angling her body to look at me from the front seat. All eyes are on me, including the driver’s occasional glance through the rearview mirror.
“I mean, he plays his music super loud, the same song over and over on repeat, when I’m hungover. And he cooks the nastiest things, only on days when he knows I was out late.”
The teens look invested in this reality show of mine. The brunette shakes her head in disapproval of Jack’s antics. “He takes my sopping wet clothes out of the dryer and sticks his in instead, then leaves my stuff on the dusty folding table to get that mildew smell.”
That wins over the pregnant woman. She looks furious on my behalf.
“There were, like, three whole days when a dog was barking nonstop in his apartment, and I convinced the super to check inside because I was sure my neighbor had abandoned a helpless animal. But it was a recording playing on his laptop. A recording of a dog barking…for three days.”
The old woman looks aghast. I eye the man in the suit. Which story will win him over? “Our super painted the stair banisters black, and my neighbor removed thewet paintsign on his way out in the morning. I ended up getting paint all over my favorite top, and I was late getting to work because I had to run back into my apartment and change.”
That does it. The suit is in.
“What have you done to him besides the cat thing?” the blond girl asks.
I recite the ways I’ve retaliated, skipping some—like that time I posted a fake petition from him in the lobby, asking for signatures to support turning the basement into a sex club—since I don’t want to lose my front-seat support. Before I know it, the rest of the story—about the wall, my thinking Jack was a cheater and his attempt to kiss me, him throwing my mom’s words in my face, and his plans to buy my apartment—all pours out.
“You should, like, tell everyone in the building he’s a sex offender,” the blond girl says.
“That’s probably illegal,” the guy in the suit says. “Maybe have a conversation with your other neighbors and see if they’ve had similar issues with him?”
“Talk to the super!” the pregnant woman says. “Or the building owner.”
“Tried that,” I say. “Jack only tortures me. Gence, our super, says he can’t do anything. I suspect he thinks I’m to blame. Plus, he’s pissed at me because I opened that hole in the wall.”
“How about you hide something that reeks in his apartment?” the brunette says, and I clamp my mouth shut before I can tell her what I already did with those cans of tuna fish. It occurs to me that the two high schoolers keep plotting vengeance, while the adults propose diplomacy. Do I have the emotional IQ of a teenager? The thought is sobering.
“No, I think… I think the others are right. I need to figure out how to resolve this in a mature way,” I say.
