" – peculiar, really. The lot of them. And what's that girl's name? The one that's Jaime's age? Sara?"

Barely morning, kitchen still painted in dusk, and these are the ways my mother uses her energy. Spending her voice on nonsense, such things that, at this time of time, echo in a particular way, not in the air but just in my ears. Never fading away, but just getting louder, darker, harder even to bear. Coming downstairs to this is what I imagine my personal hell would be, if the devil created a special pocket for each soul, tailor-made to their individual triggers.

"It's Saxa." I've told her hundreds of times.

She doesn't even turn around to greet me, just continues on, as if it were someone else who spoke, someone who had been here the whole time, since whenever was the beginning of her little spiel. "Oh, right. Well, what kind of name is Saka anyway? You come to America, and you set your children up to be made fun of. I'm telling you, no one hates their child more than someone who gives them a unique name."

My father is standing by the sink, cleaning the pans he's used to make breakfast. Sometimes he responds, in small nods moreso than anything else. "You're right, June-y," is all he mutters from time to time.

She hates this.

"You're not even listening, Jeff!" But she doesn't really mind that he isn't listening, just that he pretends to be. It’s dismissed with a sigh, and soon, her head turns to me, still standing at the foot of the hallway. "Good morning, sweetie," forged with a smile bright enough to push out her cheeks. "How did you sleep?"

"Fine." A derivative response for a derivative question.

"Don’t be modest," she says, teasing, sipping coffee, "You slept so much. You’re always sleeping,” and then she looks away through the guise of rolling her eyes. “Honestly, I'm jealous of you."

What she means is that I went to bed too early last night, when it was still light out. (“Like a child,” she told me as I was making myself dinner in the microwave. “You know, some people consider this afternoon, still.”)

More than once she’s said I sleep too much, (even showed me an article or two about how too much sleep at a “young age” can lead to brain damage or something – “And listen to this! ‘Boys especially are encouraged to maintain a healthy sleep routine, as they are more susceptible to develop long term issues from lack of mental stimulation.’”) More than once, I’ve told her that this is not the case with me. “Then what is the case?” But realizing that I couldn’t very well say “I don’t sleep at all. I just sit at the window, letting the food grow cold, watching the neighbors watch the sunset and then, even after they’ve gone back inside, I still don’t sleep. I stay up hours more, just staring at the ceiling and wondering about it; the reasons why they stand there – oh, the stories I have constructed in my mind! – teasing me, haunting me, tapping me on the shoulder just as I’m about to drift off to whisper ‘Hey, don’t sleep yet. We’re still here,’” I ceded and said that she had been right all along. What’s left of those arguments, just these lingering lines – you’re always sleeping – and in the farthest corner of my room, a pile of the pamphlets I find stuffed under my door from time to time.

"Why were you talking about Saxa?" I say.

"Her mother came over this morning to ask us for dinner," says my father from the sink.

These words – casual as their delivery is – don’t hit me casually at all. By the time they’ve crossed the room from my father to me, they’ve enough force and acceleration to nearly knock me off my feet, to cast out previous echoes and replace them with only pleasant-sounding things: the lilting of songbirds, the swaying of trees in the rain, the pages of a book ruffling between fingers; I have to bite the corners of my lips just to keep them from curling upwards. There’s a heat rising around my eyes, and suddenly, years flash before them – every evening I've spent, head tucked into the corner of my window, stealing glances at the Morstads in their crisp white clothes, afraid for them to notice me yet hoping desperately that they do; every night I’ve lain awake, dreaming about them, walking through their world. That yard. That house…And then the days I’ve spent, too, pondering what I could say to them, what sort of excuse, what sort of key I’d use to enter that world, watching Saxa from the seat just behind her at school to wonder if she would ever notice me, if she would ever know how often I think about her. Dreams that feel so flawless somehow in rationality that it's not a question of "if" but "when" they will happen, and gosh, that when is finally now.

"Obviously we're not going to go! It's a suicide mission,” says June, and in the same second, my breath leaves me.

My father laughs. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know. Have you ever seen those parents out of the house in the past five years? They’re like vampires. Actually!” she finishes a sip of coffee before proceeding, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were all just a bunch of murderers. Just imagine! In the middle of dinner, they'll ask us to go get something upstairs, and we'll find ourselves locked in the basement the next morning! Ha!" My mother snorts when she laughs; she loves her own jokes.

“How do you know they have a basement?” I say, still standing in the hall as if anything past this archway would be acid on my feet, hearing the tension rise in my tone and doing nothing about it.

She sighs. “That’s not the point.”

“Then what is the point?”

From across the room, "I guess we could give 'em a chance, June-y. They could be nice."

"Jeff, you can't be serious! They're obnoxious."

In all of this, my father's expression never changes, at least not from what I can see of his half-hidden face. A plate slipped out of his hand bangs against the drying rack. “Shit,” he says under a breath.

My mother continues. "Their kids act like they've never had a mother, and that father–" a scoff, "the most antisocial person you’ll ever meet. Why the invite anyway? What could they possibly want from us?"

And then -- there's a single moment of pause. Just enough to make me think that my mother could actually change her mind, could actually consider a change of mind, – but no. I should have known better. She finishes picking at a mark on her wrist and carries on.

"No, no, we're not going. That is final!” and then, she slaps her fist on the kitchen table, not unlike a gavel, and she snorts at this, too. And just after, the way she flicks her head to the side, as if shaking the idea right out of her hair.

"Maybe they just want to be good neighbors," I say. The words pass straight through my teeth.

"After like…how many years has it been, Jeff?"

“A dozen, probably,” said over his shoulder. Then, a beat later, “Thirteen, I think.”

Back to me, “After thirteen years?”

"It's possible."

"So they just decided now that they want to be good neighbors?"

"Okay but, if not now, then when else?"

"When?” and the look in her eyes when she says it is one entirely of disdain – no, disdain and a little unease. “I can think of a million times ‘when.’ Tell me, where were they when we moved in? When..." She pauses in between sentences, little breaths of nothingness, little moments for me to wish I’d never woken up today at all. "Oh! and where were they when I was pregnant?” I wish I never woke up today. “When my mother passed?” I wish I never woke up today. “When that tree fell by the house after that storm...what was it called?"

"Red Alder," says my father. His voice is irritatingly calm.

"No, not the tree. I meant the storm."

"Oh, I don't remember."

"It doesn't matter. The point is, Jaime, if you want to be a good neighbor, ‘golly, this nice Friday in April!’” (delivered cross-eyed and mocking) “is not the occasion to start!"

"But what's wrong with giving them a try!" I don’t want to raise my voice, but it happens anyway, perhaps out of no more than a fleeting hope that it’d mean for my words to touch her more deeply, mollify her, make her suddenly a good person, or at the very least a decent mother, perceptive, caring of something outside of her.

"And when your sister died?” she says, in what I imagine is the loudest voice she can muster this early in the morning, “Where was their neighborly spirit then!"

It's the sudden increase of volume in the room that educes a response from my father. "Jaime, your mother is obviously serious about this. Just sit down and eat or go get ready for school."

I hate him for saying this, for always speaking up in the worst ways -- always "Appease her, Jaime," "Just let her have what she wants, Jaime," "Jaime, you know she's serious when she mentions Joy." But I'm numb to Joy, now. It's like, sometime after her death, my mother realized she could get anything she wanted just by reminding people that once, she watched her daughter be buried in the ground, and now it's her favorite way to end an argument -- to the point that now the name sounds so foreign whenever spoken from her lips, like for that second after it crosses, 'Joy’ is not a person who once existed, but merely a word thrown around to get people to behave in the way June wants.

"Yeah, come on, sweetie,” she says, smile pushing out of her cheeks, “stop standing in the doorway.” A beat. “Sit down. Eat with us.” She relaxes back into the chair and pats the seat next to her. "Let's not let those people ruin our day."

Her shift in tone, so sudden, yet so easy for her, speaking as if she hadn't just mentioned my dead sister a second and a half ago. She acts as if anyone else in the world could jump through sentiments in this way, as though it were totally plausible, that anyone else would dare such a thing: to use a daughter's death – from years ago, even (closer to seven than to six now) – as an excuse not to have dinner with the neighbors.

“Come on,” she repeats, and just after, the sounds of running water soften then stop from across the room. My father turns around and starts humming a tune, something made up, just on the spot. “Don’t be so dramatic,” June says.

I start a step forward, but then I think better of it.

"No," I say, not as coldly as I would have liked, but it’ll do. "I have to get to school,” and then I leave, not waiting for a response, as I know there won’t be one -- no objection to my leaving and no acknowledgment of it either. By the time my feet touch the stairs, they’ll have already forgotten about our fight, or that I even attempted to join them in their morning routine.

At least the wood creaks beneath my steps, creating trills just loud enough that I won’t have to listen to them anymore, and once I’m in my room, I’ll lay on the bed and stare up to the ceiling, taking in the stillness of it all, as needed as it is impermanent, and for just a moment, I’ll let that hurt.

And in that stillness, there’ll be a breeze that passes from my open window. Just outside it: joyful screams, followed by the pitter-pattering of little feet, the crash of pots and pans and the sound of a basketball thumping down the stairs. A teenage girl screams "I love you!" seconds before a door closes, and a car starts outside. Her mother must say something back, but her voice is drowned out by the sounds of the car as it pulls away.