By Brianna Blacklock

111 Sherwood Circle, Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota. I forget the zip. I can get there without it.

×

“You know drinking milk makes your boobs grow big,” Heleina said, her pasty legs dangling from the tree branch we always climbed in our neighbor’s side yard. I looked over. She bore more skin than I ever dreamed of. Her tank top dipped just enough to show the hint of a crevice, one I was unfamiliar with. I hadn’t thought about my chest before. We were only nine. I hated milk. I hated the thickness that covered my tongue and coated the roof of my mouth. The feeling always reminded me of chicken fat, the yellow kind that’s always floating around the surface of open cans of chicken noodle soup. I drank it anyway. I wanted boobs.

×

Heleina banged on my front door. I stepped out onto the porch, the concrete cool on my bare feet. “You’ve gotta come with me,” she said, her eyes wide and urgent behind fiery orange bangs. I must have looked hesitant. “Just come on, I’ve gotta show you somethin.” She led me to the side yard, our hangout. There was a huge bush that grew against the siding of the house next to the oak tree everyone always climbed. It made for a perfect hideout, except everyone hid there, so it was no secret. We made it homey, breaking off the branches that poked us in our faces until we had an opening to sit in within its center. We wore the grass down to dirt. She led me there and pointed to a cardboard box full of spray paint, hammers, wrenches, and screwdrivers.
“Whose is that?” I asked, giving the box a nudge with my foot.
“It’s Steven’s,” she said, “Well, technically the neighbors’.” Steven was our friend too; he lived right across the field from Heleina, diagonal from me. We lived in two-story quadplexes, courtesy of Minot AFB. The neighbors whose tools were hiding in our bush lived directly across from me. I used to watch them from my room. If our house hadn’t have been torn down years later, there’d still be evidence of me standing at the window sill. Bite marks from where I took comfort in letting my teeth sink into the wood, the white paint chipping off into my mouth.

×

My mom used to brush my hair before bed. My hairbrush was a satisfying blue-green hue. The kind with the big fat rectangular head, and rows of black plastic bristles that make a raking sound against your scalp. The pain was only semi-tolerable because she would coat my locks with a detangling spray that smelt like green apples. I’d still wake up with rats’ nests matted to my head. They sometimes took her hours to brush out in the morning. If they were really bad, she’d attack them in intervals, a little before breakfast, some after, some right before I got on the bus. My scalp was always tender and sore afterwards.

×

The neighbors directly across from us were strange people with a bunch of cats. All I can remember about the way they looked was the wife’s long black hair. It was always tied back in a bun. It caught me off guard when it was down, falling to mid-thigh. I think they had a child as well, much younger than us. They kept to themselves. All of the parents on our stretch of Sherwood Circle would send their children off to bed so they could sit in their lawn chairs, talking, smoking, drinking out of tall plastic cups, their heads hung back in laughter as the sun lingered in the sky. They would gather in a circle in the front yard right next to the neighbors that never came outside. I told myself they were aliens. Or maybe I only thought that as a way to make myself feel better for what I had done. It’s interesting how the brain holds onto lies for so long they start to feel true. I can never tell the story without calling those neighbors aliens, those neighbors that never came outside.

×

I used to get excited about sleepovers. “Can so-and-so stay over?” I’d ask my mom.

“Go ask your father,” she’d say, so I’d run half way down the steps to the basement and ask him, shout over the buzz of his wood saws. He’d tell me to ask my mother. I’d go back upstairs, tell my mother what he said. She never answered and I’d end up sitting on the basement steps, waiting for my dad to notice. I’m sure he knew I was there the whole time. It was always the same scenario. He pretty much always said yes. But it always took him a little longer to respond when I was asking to stay over at someone else’s house. They had a hard time trusting people.

×

Heleina told me the aliens were on vacation. The tools in the cardboard box behind the bush came straight from their garage. I didn’t fully connect the dots until I was standing on their back porch with her, my heart pounding, sweating through my t-shirt even though summers in the plains were dry and hardly ever got over 70. The back of the house faced an open field, but it was daylight and I was petrified. She fiddled with the door knob as if she’d done this type of thing before, leaned into it with her shoulder. It fell open.

×

“Bring all the black clothes you have,” Heleina said. I dug through my drawers, stuffed whatever I had into my overnight bag. We walked across the street and up into her room. There were black pieces of clothing scattered all over her bed. She told me to change into what I brought, said I could borrow some of her clothes if I needed to. “We can’t be seen,” she said. I thought maybe we were sneaking out to play man-hunt with the older kids down the block.

×

Heleina was spending the night. We were camped out on the hardwood floor in my room. We always slept on the floor. My twin size bed was never an option. I never even considered it. She started making noises. Moaning. She reached through the covers and grabbed my hand. Placed it on her hand. I felt the bristles of my hairbrush. The handle was inside her. I pulled away. “My sister does this,” she said and then fell silent for the next couple minutes. She reached over again. My brush was in her hand. She told me it was okay. The cool plastic up and down. I’d never felt anything like it.

×

“Pee into this,” she said, handing me a Dixie cup as I pulled one of her black t’s on over my head.

“I don’t have to pee,” I said, even though I did.

“Fine, I’ll do it.” She said, heading for the bathroom. I could see the bathroom from where I was standing in her room. She left the door open, still talking to me, squatting over the cup. She came back with two cups and handed me one. I was surprised at the warmth. Thankful I wasn’t holding the one she’d just shit in.

×

I stood in the frame of the alien’s doorway as Heleina scurried about. At first she collected handfuls of markers and crayons from a wicker basket on the kitchen table, but then her eyes fell upon a stack of mail about a foot high. She looked at me. “Grab some,” she said.

×

All the bedrooms on base were on the second floor. We were all essentially living in the same house. I could navigate through every house on that street with my eyes closed. At the top of the wooden stairs was the bathroom, the only bathroom in the house. If you turned right, you’d walk along the banister and quickly be in the first bedroom. This first room was mine. It faced the front of the house, with one window that allowed you to look out and see the whole neighborhood. If you got lucky, your parents would take the screen off. Mine was only off because I had an extreme fear of fire, constant dreams of the house burning down. I had a bag with an orange dinosaur on it that was packed with my favorite things, just in case. A fire truck had to visit our house several times just so the men could talk to me, reassure me that they would be there to take care of me if anything ever happened.

Underneath every window of that front bedroom was a mini roof, a porch cover. It was several feet long, long enough to cover your porch and the neighbors right next door to you. Heleina had the same room.

×

We crouched between two recycling bins, slashed open every piece of mail. Threw away all the evidence. Everything except the money. There was something over $170. She gave it to her older sister, whose boyfriend took her to the mall and spent it.

×

We waited until it was dark. She pushed her window open, took the screen out, shoved it into her closet and crawled out onto the porch cover one leg at a time. “I hate my next door neighbors,” she said. “Hand me that cup.” I gave her the one full of her pee. “Not that one,” she said, reaching for the one I didn’t want to touch. Her next door neighbor’s were the Oaks. Their daughter, Katie, was my best friend. They hardly allowed her to do anything though. Every time I’d knock on the door she had chores to do. And she was never allowed to hang out with Heleina. At the time I never understood why.

×

Someone had been cat-sitting the alien’s house. They’d also been collecting their mail, piling it on the kitchen table. My mother and I had spent the day in town. We turned the corner onto Sherwood and all of the parents on our street were standing in our driveway. There was a cop car parked on the side of the road. I felt worse than the time I was walking barefoot in the gutter with my pet frog. The water streamed along the curb from where I turned our garden hose on. I followed him as he floated in the current. Lost him. Turned around and felt something crunch under my foot. Turned back to find him floating upside down, his white belly up in the air. I couldn’t save him.

×

Heleina took the cup from my hand and walked across the porch cover to Katie’s little brother’s window. She smeared her shit all over his screen. Those kids wouldn’t be caught dead with their screens off.

“Gimme that other one,” she said, and I handed her the Dixie cup full of pee. She tossed it in the direction of Katie’s dad’s red Chevy. It hit the cab and fell into the bed of the truck. I watched as her pee trickled down the back windows of the cab.

×

Steven told his parents at the dinner table that Heleina and I stole stuff from the aliens. He made sure not to mention the cardboard box of their tools hiding behind the bush.

My mother tore my room apart. My room that faced the front of the neighborhood just like Heleina’s. I remember her kneeling at the front of my closet, pulling things out one by one, demanding to know if everything was actually mine, throwing each and every thing over her shoulder. She found my diary. It was purple, and had a 3 letter combination code instead of numbers, easier for kids to remember. My code was mom. She didn’t care. She shoved a butter knife between the lock and its pages. Broke it open. Some pieces of paper with advertisements on them fell out. I can’t remember why I had those. “What is this?” she said. “Are these yours?”
“Yes,” I said, repeating myself over and over again until I was sobbing and we were both exhausted. She might have been crying too. She was disgusted. I don’t remember her ever brushing my hair after that.

×

Years later my sophomore prom dress was the color sea foam. The same color as my hairbrush. I wore it again at senior prom until my boyfriend slipped it off me. He told me when he was younger, some neighborhood kid made him pull his pants down and touch himself. I cried and told him about Heleina. I’d never told anyone. Never felt so free.

×

The aliens came home early from vacation. My mom made me walk across the street and apologize. She stood on the porch and watched as my legs dragged my sketchers to their front door. I knocked. The lady with long hair answered the door. I tried to apologize, but she cut me off, “Did you take my husband’s plaque?” she said. I shook my head no. “Are you sure?” I had no idea what plaque she was referring to. She shaped the air with her hands into a rectangle the size of a bulletin board, and said all of his military decorations were displayed on it. “Are you sure you didn’t take it? It’s not under your bed? You could easily hide it under your mattress.”

×

I lied to the cops. They stuck me in a tiny white room for questioning and I lied about the mail. I told them I didn’t open any of it, blamed it on Heleina. They brought me out into a larger room, sat me down at the end of a long conference table. My parents sat on one side. I couldn’t look at them in the face for the longest time. I could feel the disappointment. I didn’t need to see my mother’s swollen, bitter eyes or the clenched muscles of my father’s jaw. The base commander sat across from me at the end of the table. He questioned me about the mail. I lied again.

I had community service after that. Spent hours wiping down church pews and picking up cigarette butts smashed into the dead grass. I was grounded to my room that entire summer and on into the beginning of school. My parents put the screen back on my window. I moved my desk in front of it, and sat there for hours watching the neighborhood kids play in the gutters without me. Katie sometimes stood in my yard and waved, her face was sad.

Heleina was back outside before a week’s time. I saw flashes of her red hair around the neighborhood. Her parents didn’t seem to care like mine did. I was never allowed to hang out with her again and when I saw her in school that next fall, she wouldn’t talk to me. She spread rumors that it was my idea.

My idea. I can’t blame her. We were only nine.

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Brianna Blacklock

Twenty-one-year-old senior Interdisciplinary Studies major with a concentration in Photography and Creative Writing. Fell in love with both fields halfway through my 3rd-to-last semester so I have spent the past year devoting my studies to developing myself as both a writer and a photographer. I enjoy spending time in the water, whether it’s SCUBA diving, surfing, or simply exercising. I also spend most of my time with my most recent additon, Surge, my sweet little lab-sheppard puppy.