Let's Not Meet Again

"Just Wait Until Mummy And Daddy Aren't Home..."

I was about nine years old and my sister was twelve. It was a hot summer day and we were hungry, so we thought we'd take a walk to the Dairy Queen nearby and get some ice cream. We lived in a fairly nice neighborhood. There was a sweet old lady in a yellow house across the street. Our landlord also lived across the street. My best friend lived on my right, her grandmother was somewhere on the left. We didn't really know most of our neighbors, at least not on a first-name basis, but it felt like a peaceful community.

My sister and I were passing one of the apartment duplexes toward the end of the street when a man in a plastic lawn chair sat up and waved to us. He looked to be middle-aged, his head bald and a beer gut swollen beneath a gray wife beater. He had a friendly smile, though. He looked like he could be someone's father.

"Hi," he said. My sister and I had been taught to avoid strangers, but the kind of strangers we were warned about were scary alleyway boogeymen. The kind that jumped out of cars with knives or grabbed you in the grocery store or followed you home. Not friendly neighbors.

"Hi," my sister said back. She held my hand, nonetheless.

"Where are you girls going?"

"Dairy Queen."

"You girls like ice cream? I got a lot of ice cream if you want to come in. I got chocolate, vanilla. Whatever you like."

At this point my sister was obviously uncomfortable. She squeezed my hand tighter. "That's all right, we want blizzards."

"So expensive," the man commented. We didn't know how to respond to that.

After a few moments, "Where do you live?"

If my sister had been older, she probably would've thought to lie. But she didn't. "Just down the street."

"What are your names?"

My sister squeezed my hand and walked faster. "Don't talk to him," she snipped quietly, before I had the chance to answer for her.

There was a pause. "That's a funny name," he laughed. "Tell me your names." Silence. "Come on, I'm just trying to be nice. Why don't you come over and tell me your names?" Silence. "Ignoring someone is rude, you know. Didn't your parents bring you up right?" His tone went from playful to almost threatening. We felt his eyes on us as we passed his house and until we were out of view, but he stayed put in his lawn chair. On the walk we talked about it and agreed that he seemed really off, so we would just ignore him from now on. Seemed safe.

We were gone for a few hours. We'd decided to walk around town a little after we finished our ice cream, and by the time we came back to our street, the sun was beginning to set. Still, the man was in his lawn chair. We felt his eyes land on us, and they followed us the entire walk past his house, though he didn't say a word until our backs were to him.

"Yeah, yeah, you keep walking, you keep ignoring me." he chuckled. "Just wait till mommy and daddy aren't home to save you."

I felt a little sick and grabbed my sister's hand tighter. At the last second, instead of turning to go to our yard, she went for my landlord's house and knocked on the door. His son, a good friend of hers, let us in. I remember playing with their pool table in the garage while my sister was inside, on the phone with the police.

Finally, my landlord came and escorted us back to our house, where he told my mother everything. On the way in I didn't see the man in his chair anymore. The police came to our house a few minutes later to ask some questions.

Apparently the man had harassed many other children in the neighborhood since he moved in and attempted to lure them into his house. He seemed to know he was in trouble after what he said to us, because he fled and the police couldn't find him. That night my sister and I slept in the living room, away from the windows.

The police did eventually catch him. They found drugs in his house, and that was what sent him to jail. We found out later that the man had a brother who was a convicted child molester living in another nearby neighborhood. I don't live there anymore, but sometimes I see him in town when I come back to visit my parents.