The driveway

In winter, Gail’s mom would be outside in her red, knit hat, shoveling the driveway, even for only a quarter-inch of snow. She used a curved metal shovel to scrape along the driveway, getting right down to the surface, leaving it clean. Deep black against cold white, it clearly marked where our yard ended and theirs began.

In the summer, the driveway would be meticulously re-blacktopped and sealed. It ran in between our houses, hollyhocks and evergreen shrubs lining it on our side, and wild mint volunteering on their side, next to their side door. From my bedroom window, I looked across the driveway, to the mustard-yellow house. At night, when I was supposed to be sleeping, I would watch her mother through their kitchen window, doing the dishes, answering the phone, getting a bowl of ice cream. I’d see the upstairs bathroom light flick on and then off again, and then her dad would lumber down the stairs, past the window at the landing. Her older brother’s window usually remained dark.

Gail’s own room was on the other side of the house, but I would wait to catch a glimpse of her through the window on the landing of the stairs, padding up to bed. Sometimes, she would hear me calling her name, and she would come to the window. We would whisper across the divide. "What are you doing? Nothing. Do you want to do something tomorrow? " We imagined we could string two cans together on a length of wire, or rig a little bell so that we would know when the other was calling.

One August night, we slept out on the driveway, watching for shooting stars. There were too many street lights drowning out the stars in the sky, so we watched cars pass by instead. Tucked inside our sleeping bags we played word games and told stories, naming the mosquitoes that buzzed around our heads. Somehow we managed to sleep all night on the hard surface and woke early when the sun made its way down between the two houses, and the chill of the morning dew made it impossible to doze. When we woke, we were different people. We were no longer friends, because we knew too much about each other.

I would still wait at my window each night, but she would never come. I would think about our plan to string a wire across the divide, a line straight from my heart to hers, now disconnected. I was casting without catching anything, slack and searching.

Later that summer, I woke one morning in my own bed to the sound of voices coming from the driveway below. It was Gail and two others I recognized, Ryan and Sarah. They were just waking up too, or perhaps they had been up all night. I stayed there under the covers and listened to them talk, their voices raspy with the moist air. I knew I had to get up, go to the bathroom, make my breakfast, ride my bike uptown and pretend it didn’t matter she had left me out. I had to pretend that I hardly noticed I didn’t exist anymore. I had to pretend that I was just another neighbor, living in the house next-door.