Hi, thank you for taking my call. I've been thinking about whether to share this for a long time now, and I finally decided tonight was the night. This happened when I was eight years old. Summer of 1978, the summer before third grade. We lived in Millbrook, Indiana, this tiny little town where nothing ever happened. My dad worked at the plant and my mom worked afternoons at the department store in Crawfordsville, so I was home alone a lot during the day. Latchkey kid, if that makes any sense. I had the run of the house from about noon until six o'clock most days. We lived on Sycamore Lane. Quiet street, maybe twelve houses total. The Hendersons lived next door to us, older couple, kept to themselves. And on the other side was this house that had been empty for years. Overgrown yard, curtains always drawn. I remember my mom saying someone had finally moved in that spring, a woman and her daughter. I never saw a moving truck or anything. They were just there one day.
It was maybe the second week of June when I met her. Jenny. I was out in the backyard, playing by myself near the fence line, and I looked up and there she was. Standing on the other side of the chain-link, just watching me. She had dark hair cut short, almost like a boy's haircut, and these big brown eyes. And she was wearing this yellow sundress. Pale yellow, with little white flowers along the hem. I remember that dress so clearly. She asked if I wanted to play. Just like that. No introduction, no 'my name is,' just 'do you want to play.' And I said yes, because I was lonely. I didn't have many friends. The other kids on the street were either too old or too young, and I spent most of my time by myself. She came around through the gap in the fence and we played for hours that first day. Tag, hide and seek, making up stories. She told me her name was Jenny and she was seven, almost eight. Same as me. When I asked about her mom, she just said her mom was always busy. Always inside.
After that, Jenny was there every day. Every single day that summer. She'd appear at the fence around one o'clock, always in that yellow dress, and we'd play until I heard my mom's car pull into the driveway. Then Jenny would slip back through the fence and disappear into her house. The strange thing was, I never went inside her house. Not once. She always wanted to play in my yard, or in the little patch of woods behind our properties. I asked her once if I could see her room, and she got this look on her face. Not scared exactly. Just blank. She said maybe someday. My mom said Jenny seemed like a sweet girl. Very polite. mom at work all afternoon was tough - Karen' She asked me once where Jenny's mother was, why she never came over to introduce herself. I didn't have an answer. I'd never actually seen Jenny's mom up close. Just a shape moving behind the curtains sometimes. A silhouette.
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