The Town by Bentley Little

“Dishwater getting cold,” she said.
    Gregory drank his coffee and shrugged apologetically, but Julia ignored him, looking away, watching his mother’s back as she began washing plates. She felt bad about the way they’d treated the old woman over the years, guilty for the manner in which they’d automatically dismissed her obviously deeply held beliefs.
    Was Julia a believer now herself?
    No, not really. She was spooked, yes, but she still thought that it was probably due to the fact that she was spending too much time in the house. That was what was at the root of the problem, not anything supernatural. She just needed to get out, meet some people, find something to do.
    Maybe volunteering wasn’t such a bad idea.
    But she had a newfound respect for her mother-in-law, and as she walked out of the kitchen and back to the bedroom to change out of her pajamas and bathrobe, she vowed that she would no longer disparage the older woman’s convictions. After all, this was her culture as well. She was American, but she was Molokan, too, and perhaps it was time she started honoring her roots.
    She walked into the bedroom. The drapes were open, but it was still dark in here, and Julia shivered involuntarily as she quickly flipped on the light.

3
    There was a letter waiting for him when he got home from school, a letter from Roberto, and Adam took it immediately into his bedroom and closed the door. He plopped down on the bed, tore open the envelope and read. Roberto had written a hilarious account of the first day of school, catching him up on what all of the other kids had done over the summer, how Sheila Hitchcock had ballooned up even more and now looked like a white whale, how the sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Mejia, wiggled her butt when she wrote on the chalkboard and how Jason Aguilar stood behind her and did a killer imitation and then quickly sat down in his seat before she turned around. He’d included, as promised, a Spiderman card, a new one, and Adam immediately added it to his collection, placing it on the top of the rubber-banded stack on his dresser.
    He reread the letter, then lay on the bed, looking up at the ceiling.
    As much as he liked Scott, he wished Roberto was here instead.
    He missed his friend.
    He missed California.
    But he was getting used to McGuane, and already his feelings of homesickness had faded from the peak intensity of that first week or so. He broke out his English notebook, ripped out a page, and wrote Roberto a reply, describing his own first day of school, what the kids were like here, Scott. He embellished and exaggerated, made everything sound a lot more exciting than it actually was. He considered telling Roberto about the banya, but he didn’t quite know what to say or how to describe it, and he decided to save that for another time.
    It cheered him up, writing, and he felt good as he addressed the envelope, slapped a stamp on it, and carried it up the drive to the mailbox. He popped up the little red flag on the box to signal the postman that there was outgoing mail, and then jumped as a hand smacked the back of his head.
    “Loser,” Sasha said.
    She started down the drive to the house, swinging her backpack, apparently having forgotten that he even existed, and he was tempted to run after her and smack her in return. Maybe knock her backpack into the dirt, but even though she was a girl, she was still bigger than he was and could easily kick his ass, so instead he waited by the mailbox until she was halfway to the house before following.
    He walked slowly, looking down at the ground, kicking small rocks ahead of him. His birthday was coming up soon, in a few weeks, and he found himself wondering what they were going to do about it. Ordinarily, his parents took him and a group of friends to Chuck E. Cheese or someplace like that, someplace with pizza and video games, but this year there were no friends to take. Scott, maybe, but that was it. He half hoped they’d simply ignore