That’s when I saw him.
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.
“He’s your age,” my mother said, peering through the blinds. “Maybe you’ll be friends.”
I froze, half on the branch, one foot on my sill.
Then, last Tuesday, a moving truck the color of a bruised plum parked outside.
So I ignored him.
He knew my name.
Here is of the story. My Neighbor’s Son Part 1: Jack Radley Rafael The first time I saw Jack Radley Rafael, he was climbing out of his own bedroom window at two in the morning.
“Come sit,” Jack Radley Rafael said. “I don’t bite.”
I watched from my window as they unloaded: a worn leather armchair, stacks of books in crates, a guitar case with a cracked latch, and boxes labeled Fragile – Records in sharp, angry handwriting. The new neighbor was a woman—sharp-shouldered, dark-haired, always smoking on the porch like she was posing for a black-and-white photograph. Her name, I learned from my mother, was Celeste Rafael. She was a pianist. Divorced. And she had a son.