15) Watching

From up here, at home, the apartment complex looks like two E's with their corners missing, one turned to face the other. A street runs between them and ends at a bank of dumpsters. Two lines of parking lots cross the street parallel to one another. There are no second floors. Each apartment shares a back wall, so that half of them face the parking lot and the others face either the woods, like mine, or, on the other three sides, the large toy store, the cemetery, or the main road, from which our complex road reaches us. In the center of the E all apartments face a parking lot. I do not know if those are more expensive than mine, but I like mine more. The missing corners are the access to the backside apartments. Mine is beside an open corner.

I watch Neil and Hunter now nearly as much as I do May. They rarely have anything to say to each other, and Neil does not look at Hunter except to stare at the back of his retreating head. Hunter is somewhat solicitous of May, and I know the look on Neil's face for my own when Hunter is around her, for Neil and I will often turn to each other with our glued lips and pursed brows. I like none of these new feelings. Are there any good ones to have? Do I have to earn the better part of humanity, or is this as human as I am allowed to be? What did The Center really want me to be, putting me in a human dwelling and having me work at a human job? Halfway up the tree tonight, I realized I still wore my pants.

I can see Neil's car before he turns into the complex, shortly before I hear it. He parks in the space I have been given, in front of the apartment behind mine. I can no longer see him, but I hear a door creak open and bang closed. Then another. Presently, he emerges at the corner of my apartment, bent almost double over the bicycle he pushes along the concrete walk. He leans it carefully against the wall before my door and knocks. I decide to remain silent, but a smile opens my lips as Neil lays his head on my door, his mouth open slightly. Only Neil makes me smile. I stir, uncomfortable with the tension of contained mirth. Neil's eyes shift and see me. I laugh. He grins. I come down.