There Is No Long Distance Now by Naomi Shihab Nye

Author:Naomi Shihab Nye
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

We Like You for Your Flaws

On a block of upscale, finely landscaped homes in the Alamo Heights neighborhood, one house stood out—sleekly modern, pale green minimalist, no curtains at any windows, and a front door that could have been designed by an astronaut—matte silver, studded with planetary bumps.

It had been for sale a moment only before the Sold sign was slapped across the realtor’s name.

Someone had really wanted that house. The architect who built it was moving to New Zealand.

Jenna and Brianna, who lived across the street in a regular house with a front porch and geranium pots, and liked to lie on their stomachs at night in their twin beds, staring out the window, felt fascinated. Lucky people. No one would buy their house that fast. “If they have a kid, I hope it’s a boy,” muttered Jenna.

Brianna sighed. “It won’t be. It never is. Whatever you want, it’s always the other thing.”

Their parents had called them the yin and yang twins for years, one positive, one negative, one blond, one brunette. They were really a year apart, but preferred sleeping in the same room so they could exchange secrets late at night, gossip and predict, criticize and fantasize. Talking was their shared talent. They arranged what would have been their other bedroom like a sitting room for teens—TV, game table, couch. They kept that room neat, and their sleeping room messy. It had worked out for them. They were concerned about splitting up when they went to college.

Usually CNN stayed turned on all night in the other room, on mute, with the word-band traveling across the bottom of the screen, collecting bad news from around the world so when they woke in the morning, bleary-eyed, wishing for just another hour of sleep, the one who wasn’t in the bathroom yet would stand in the sitting room announcing, “Earthquake! Bombs in Kabul! William and Kate have set the date!”

They saw their new neighbor the day she moved in. She stood in the front yard, long auburn hair streaming loosely across her shoulders. She was staring at her own new house with a pensive look, and appeared to be fifteen or sixteen. She had a backpack in one hand and an oversize orange purse on her shoulder.

“She should get a different purse,” muttered Jenna. “Clashes on her hair.”

“Anyway, who needs a purse if you have a backpack?” said Brianna.

A woman came out of the house and drove her off in a black SUV with one dent in the backside.

“Bad day for her,” said Jenna. “Meeting all those people at school. Overwhelming.”

“How do you know she didn’t move here from five blocks away?”

“Did she look comfortable?”

“No.”

Because they went to St. Mary’s Hall, a private school on the north edge of town, Jenna and Brianna didn’t know everyone at the public Alamo Heights High School nearby. But there she was again, their new neighbor, at St. Mary’s Hall, standing outside the front office with that purse. She wasn’t wearing her uniform yet, which was why they hadn’t pegged her.

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