Page 3 of A Vicious Rumor

I had a stripper for a mother and a wimp for a father.

What a joke.

“We’re here,” my father said, putting the car in park. I sat up and looked around as he got out of the vehicle. We definitely were not in Potomac anymore. Potomac felt spread out and pretty much every car on the road was either an Audi, a Porsche or something more exotic. Everything here was crammed together. The houses weren’t even separated. They were just one right after the other, all connected together. And so were the cars. They all lined the streets basically bumper to bumper. And none of them were even close to Audis.

I grimaced. Was he really going to make me get out of the car and apologize to someone in this neighborhood?

My father rapped his knuckles against my window and I grumbled but opened the door. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” I said, pulling my hoodie up over my head.

We walked up the porch in front of us. I took careful steps, not sure if the rotted wood would hold both of us up. My father looked around for a doorbell, but finding none, he just knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” a voice from the other side of the door called through.

“Uh, it’s Leonard Stone and his son.”

“What do you want?” the woman’s voice asked.

“My son has come here to apologize for what happened yesterday with your daughter on the field trip.”

There was silence behind the door as I shifted first from one foot, then to the other. I wanted nothing more than to bolt right back into the car. I didn’t want to apologize to the girl. I didn’t even catch a good look at her yesterday, but she was probably just as shitty as the other kids who thought they could laugh at me.

“Lily! There’s someone here to see you!”

A few moments of silence followed by footsteps on a staircase passed before the front door was finally opened. A girl about my age with bright blonde hair and blue eyes stood before me. I winced as I noticed the bruising around her nose marring her face.

She stood there, just looking at me. Her crisp blue eyes held my gaze until I felt so uncomfortable that I had to look away. I didn’t like the way she was seeing me.

My father cleared his throat and gave me a nudge.

“Hey uh, sorry about your nose,” I muttered under my breath, not looking up to meet her blue stare.

“We’ve got swings out back,” she said in a sweet voice.

“That sounds like a great idea,” my father replied, answering before I could tell the girl to shove off. “Why don’t you and Lily play out back for a while and I’ll talk to her mother,” he said with a fake smile to the rather round woman standing just behind her daughter. Maybe it was for the best. Her mom reeked of alcohol.

I rolled my eyes and let out a sigh, but followed the girl through the house all the same. I wrinkled my nose as we walked. The house didn’t smell bad or anything, but everything around me seemed used and worn. Even the hardwood floors were discolored in places where people walked. I didn’t know floors did that.

“Here,” she said, tugging at the sliding glass door with all her effort. “It gets stuck sometimes.”

“Let me,” I said, yanking the thing open. It careened into the other side of the wall and I winced, hoping the entire house wouldn’t fall down from the force.

“You’re strong,” the girl giggled, and I chanced another glance at her as she was walking through the door. She was smaller than I was, but not by much. Her frame was rather wispy. She looked easy to break, but those eyes of hers told me she wasn’t.

She sat down on one of the swings and looked at me again. I kept my own gaze cast down on the muddy ground as I took slow steps to sit on the swing next to her.

“I am sorry about your nose,” I said to her as I finally sat down. “It looks like it hurts.”

She shrugged. “It’s fine. Mom was pretty upset, and it did hurt a little, but now that the pain’s mostly gone, I think it’s kinda funny. I look a bit like a raccoon.”

“Yeah, well, raccoon or not, you shouldn’t get involved in fights that don’t concern you.”

“But, it did concern me,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“How you figure?”

“You would have killed that boy. Of everyone there, I think I was the only one that realized that. I had to stop you. He was too young to die. And you’re too young to kill.”

She started swinging for real now as her words hung thick around me. I didn’t have anything to say back to her, but it didn’t seem like she was waiting for my response. We stayed on the swings like that for a while. Finally, my father walked through the sliding glass door.

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