Be Loud
At 5:02 in the morning, I woke up to a sound like the world was grinding its teeth.
A deep, rumbling roar. A beeping that wouldn’t stop. The whole house was humming with it. The glass of water on my nightstand was shivering in little circles.
I sat up in bed. The sky outside my window was still gray. Not even really morning yet.
I went to the window and pulled back the curtain.
And I froze.
There was a concrete truck in my backyard.
Not on the street. Not in a driveway. In my backyard. It had driven straight across the strip of grass along the side of my house, crushing my hydrangeas, and backed right up to the edge of my pool. Its big drum was turning, slow and steady. Its long metal chute was swung out over the water.
And gray concrete was pouring out of that chute into my pool.
Thick, heavy, endless. Like oatmeal. Like lava. It slid into the clear blue water with a horrible wet sound and sank, and the water around it turned the color of dishwater, and the concrete just kept coming.
Standing next to the truck, in a pink quilted bathrobe with her arms crossed, was my neighbor. Katherine Vance.
And behind the wheel of that truck was her husband, Dale.
I don’t remember going down the stairs. I remember the cold of the wet grass under my bare feet. I remember the smell, like wet stone and diesel. I remember screaming her name.
Katherine turned around and looked at me. She was smiling.
“Now,” she said, “there’ll finally be some peace and quiet.”
I stood there in my nightgown and stared at my pool. At the gray sludge rising up the sides. At the beautiful blue tiles disappearing one row at a time.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
TAP ” READ MORE ” 👇
