CHAPTER 1
If there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that Mike Warren is always late.
Calm down, he texts. I’m coming.
I sigh heavily as though he can hear me from his house, which almost leans against my own, they’re so close together. From the outside, the houses themselves are nearly identical, except there’s a dog perched in my living room window. Billy’s old eyes stare me down as if to ask, Why don’t you take me with you anymore? I offer him a weak smile before turning back around, facing Goodie Lane.
“You ready?” Mike asks, startling me as he finally joins me on the sidewalk. He lowers his Yankees hat over his eyes and offers me one of his smirks before flicking on the end of my ponytail.
“Are you ever going to be on time?” I ask, tossing my hair out of his reach. “It’s six thirty-five.”
“Wow, Parker. Five whole minutes.”
“Yes: Five. Whole. Minutes. Late.”
“What can I say? I need my beauty sleep in the morning. Unlike some people.” He raises an eyebrow in a way that makes me blush. He notices and laughs. “Just kidding, Parker. Don’t be so serious.”
I scowl at him and start to jog in place. “You warm?”
“Who isn’t? It’s ninety degrees out here.”
“Then let’s go. They’re not coming.”
“Of course they’re coming. They come every morning.”
I wave my hand across the street, motioning to the empty lawns. “Look. No one’s there.”
He whistles under his breath just as one of the front doors opens. “Told you. Here comes Ms. Bea.”
I follow his gaze just as our neighbor glides out of her house on a pair of delicate heels. As usual, her face is painted as if she’s ready for an old-movie premiere even though it’s six thirty in the morning: red lips, rosy cheeks, spider-leg lashes, and smooth, plastic-looking skin despite the fact that she’s supposedly older than my grandma Jane. A layered gold necklace hangs around her neck, shimmering against her long emerald gown. Her hair is black and woven into an elegant knot on the top of her head.
“Good morning, Ms. Bea,” Mike calls, waving and smiling from my driveway.
Ms. Bea arches a penciled eyebrow. “What’s good about it?” she snarls.
“Sun’s shining,” Mike goes on. He smiles at the sky for emphasis. “Some nice fluffy white clouds . . .”
“Ease up,” I hiss at his side. “You’re laying it on too thick.”
“She loves it,” he whispers back. Then to Ms. Bea he shouts, “Your roses look extra nice today!”
Before she can answer, the rest of the neighbors pour out of their homes and shuffle onto their own manicured lawns. Like Ms. Bea, they’re well-dressed—actually they are overdressed in uncomfortable-looking, old-fashioned clothes. Their skin looks flawless, and they wear frowns that rival Ms. Bea’s. Mike waves and smiles at them, but they ignore him, turning their attention toward their roses and their watering cans just as they have been doing morning after morning for the last two weeks, ever since Mike and I started our investigation.
“You’re staring. Pretend to stretch,” I whisper, dropping into a forward bend and feeling the familiar burn in the backs of my calves. Mike follows my lead, his head close to mine.
“You see anything new?” he asks.
I peer up at the Oldies, our nickname for our neighbors. “It’s hard to see from here,” I admit, straining my eyes across the street. “Ms. Attwood’s nose looks pointier and slightly crooked. Kind of like a cartoon witch’s. You see it?”
Mike peers up from his stretch. “Noted,” he says. “Check out Dr. Smith. He’s swinging that watering can around way easier than he was last week. It’s like his shoulder doesn’t bother him anymore.”
“Noted.” I stand upright and stretch out my quads, signaling for Mike to do the same. I hear Billy scratching at the window, whimpering to get out and join us.
Sorry, bud. It’s too hot.
Billy stops scratching, as if he somehow understands, his eyes looking even sadder than normal, sweet brown eyes that have lost their sparkle since Dad died last year.
It was Dad who first suspected that something was up with the Oldies.
“They’re kind of creepy, don’t you think?” he’d ask Mom and me at dinner. “It’s kind of like they never age. They’re old, but not old enough, if you know what I mean.”
“Leave those people alone, James,” Mom would plead. “No one likes living across the street from a nosy cop.”
“What about a nosy daughter?” At this he would smile and ruffle my hair. Together we’d laugh and continue to exchange our theories about the Oldies, despite Mom’s disapproval. In the beginning, we’d suggest the easy-to-explain stuff: Botox, titanium limbs, plastic surgery. It wasn’t until later that the more supernatural guesses started to creep in: ghosts, fountains of youth, witchcraft . . .
“You two need to lay off the scary movies,” Mom would tell us, rolling her eyes.
At this, Dad would wink at me and whisper, “We’ll show her.”
I think about Mom’s comment as Mike and I continue to stare across the street.
“Maybe they’re aliens,” I say.
Mike shoots me a look. “That’s wild.”
“What’s wild about it?” I press. “You said so yourself: they’re too weird to be human.”
“I didn’t mean that literally. Maybe they’re on some kind of medication. Don’t you watch commercials? Prescriptions have some pretty major side effects.”
I shake my head. “No, this isn’t from a pill. This is something bigger.”
Mike’s always trying to bring science into things. Where I see ghosts and ghouls, Mike sees medicine and surgeries gone wrong. That’s why I didn’t want to investigate with him at first.
Actually, I didn’t want to investigate at all after Dad passed. For months it was impossible to laugh, or run, or speculate. I couldn’t think about the Oldies—that was a Dad thing, and Dad was gone. Spying felt pointless without him, and far too painful.
It wasn’t until two weeks ago that I allowed myself to wonder once again about my neighbors, and that was only because Mike brought it up.
“Ms. Bea looks different again,” he told me one day on the walk to school. “And Ms. Attwood’s limping kind of funny.” His usually smug face looked hopeful, his eyes genuine from underneath the brim of his signature Yankees hat.
And all at once, it was as if a switch flipped in my brain: Dad would want this, I realized. Dad would want us to investigate. Just the thought made me feel close to him again, as if he wasn’t really gone.
I study Mike now as his shoulders stiffen. “What’s up?” I ask.
“I don’t see Mr. Brown,” he says, narrowing his eyes as he scans our street.
“He’s . . . Wait. You’re right. Where is he?”
“Make a note,” Mike says. “We should go, though. They’re starting to look at us.”
A chill seeps into my limbs despite the early-June heat. I feel the weight of my neighbors’ eyes without even looking at them.