My Neighbor-s Son Part 1 - Jack Radley Rafael... -

Tonight, my father had yelled at me for two hours about my “attitude.” Tonight, my chest felt like a clenched fist. I couldn’t sleep. So I did what I always did when the walls felt too close: I slid my window open, swung one leg over the sill, and dropped onto the old oak branch that stretched between our houses.

“Come sit,” Jack Radley Rafael said. “I don’t bite.”

So I ignored him.

That’s when I saw him.

I rolled my eyes. I didn’t need friends. I had a plan: finish high school, move to the city, become invisible until then. New people meant questions. Questions meant answers. Answers meant trouble . My Neighbor-s Son PART 1 - Jack Radley Rafael...

But tonight was different.

“He’s your age,” my mother said, peering through the blinds. “Maybe you’ll be friends.” Tonight, my father had yelled at me for

For three days, I caught glimpses. A tall boy with messy dark curls, always in a faded gray hoodie. He never waved. Never smiled. He just sat on their back steps, sharpening a pocket knife against a whetstone, over and over. Weird , I thought. Stay away.

He nodded, like that made perfect sense. Then he flicked the cigarette into the dark and patted the shingle beside him. “Come sit,” Jack Radley Rafael said

And I knew, with absolute certainty, that was a lie. End of Part 1.

Heat flooded my cheeks. “I don’t stare.”