They Trashed My Books, So I Rewrote My Life novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Neighbor's Bags

Rhys from across the street bags her clothes and lends her his jacket, Hattie arrives with Amber's wrong-time text, and Rhys says to keep his footage off the internet and play it where they're all sitting down.

By eleven the party had spilled onto my lawn, and people were filming me pick up my own shoes.

A woman in a sequined top held her phone at arm's length and narrated.

"And here's the tenant, folks, gathering her things."

Her friends laughed, and one of them tossed an empty cup that landed by my foot.

I kept stuffing a wet dress into a bag that had split at the seam.

Behind me the music got louder, and every few minutes the wall screen flashed through the front window.

Payment Successful.

Another box came off the second floor.

I looked at the lawn strewn with paper and wondered how long it would take to clear.

"You're going to need real bags."

The man standing at the edge of my lawn was holding a roll of black contractor bags.

He looked about thirty-three, with dark hair graying at the temples and a navy work jacket with a reflective stripe.

He lived in the brick house across the street, and I'd said hello to him once, over a recycling bin.

"I'm Rhys," he said. "I'm not here to be a hero. I just have bags."

I stared at him.

"Everyone's filming me, and you want to help?"

"Everyone's filming you," he said. "So I'd like to be the person who isn't."

He tore off a bag, shook it open, and held it out.

We bagged shoes in silence.

He lifted each handbag out of the mud and turned it right side up before he bagged it.

My teeth had started to chatter, and I couldn't make them stop.

"Can I?" he asked, and pointed at his own jacket.

"I don't take charity," I said.

I had said it in a lot of church basements, and I heard how it sounded.

"It's a jacket," Rhys said. "Give it back Tuesday."

He put it around my shoulders without touching me, and it was warm from his body.

I let it stay.

He glanced at my right arm, which I was holding against my ribs.

"They twisted that behind your back," he said. "I saw it from my window."

"You saw the whole thing."

"I saw all of it. I filmed it."

I went still.

"From the first sticker," he said. "I film when there's shouting. It's a habit from work."

"Why didn't you come over?"

"I called it in twice. Dispatch logged it as a noise complaint, and a car comes when one's free."

His jaw tightened.

"I should have crossed the street sooner. I'm sorry I didn't."

Headlights swung across the lawn, and a small green car mounted the curb with two wheels.

Hattie got out before it stopped rocking.

She was wearing her puffy coat over scrubs, and she ran at me with her arms out.

"I'm going to kill her," Hattie said into my hair. "I am going to drive back to Fitchburg and kill the sign."

"What sign?"

"The sign on the shop door. It says closes at six."

She yanked out her phone and shoved it under my nose.

Amber's text sat at the top of the thread: Wedding surprise for T! Pickup's at the quilt barn, they're open till nine, my treat!

Under it, Hattie had typed: It's locked. Nobody's here. It closed at six??

And under that, Amber had sent a single smiling face and nothing else.

"She wanted you somewhere I couldn't call," I said.

"She wanted me out of the way, and she got me out of the way."

Hattie looked at the house, at the lit windows, at the red stickers on the books I could see through the glass.

Then she saw Rhys and the jacket on my shoulders.

"Who is this?"

"My neighbor," I said. "He has bags."

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

Dalton: Come home. Say you were in on it and Amber will take the stream down. Don't make this ugly.

I showed it to Hattie, and she said a word I won't write.

Rhys read it over my shoulder without asking and didn't comment.

"I watched the transfers from my window," he said instead. "The screen ended the night at forty-one thousand five hundred."

"He paid that to wreck my house?"

"He paid it with a smile."

I typed my answer with one thumb.

Be out of my house by eight tomorrow morning, you and Amber both.

The three dots appeared and disappeared twice.

Then: Our house. And you won't do anything. You have nowhere to go.

Hattie grabbed the phone out of my hand, and I took it back.

"I'm putting the video online tonight," I said. "I want every one of those people to see it."

"Don't," Rhys said quietly.

Hattie and I both turned.

"If you post it, Amber cuts a short clip of you screaming and calls it a breakdown by morning," he said. "She has four hundred thousand followers and a head start."

"So what do I do?"

He looked past me, at the screen flashing in the window and the eighty faces clapping behind it.

"Don't post it. Play it where they're all sitting down."

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