The Boy Next Door - Weebly

few months. Perhaps, after reading them, you will come to the same conclusion I did: that the
two of you have managed to find something very few of us in this world are lucky enough to
discover: a soulmate.
>So what do you want to know? Did she believe I was Max Friedlander?
>I am sorry to say that she did. Did I play the part of Max Friedlander to perfection?
>I guess I must have, or she wouldn't have believed I was he.
>Do I feel like a grade-A heel for doing it? Yes. Self-flagellation and a big scarlet letter
>A for me. The worst part is...well, I already told you the worst part. She thinks I'm Max
>Friedlander. Max Friedlander, the ingrate who doesn't even seem to care that someone
>cold-cocked his eighty-year-old aunt.
>Melissa cares, though.
>That's her name. The redhead. Melissa. People call her Mel. That's what she told me.
>"People call me Mel." She moved to the city right after college, which makes her about
>twenty-seven years old, since she's lived here for five years. Originally, she's from
>Lansing, Illinois. Have you ever heard of Lansing, Illinois? I've heard of Lansing,
>Michigan, but not Lansing, Illinois. She says it's a small town where you can walk
>down Main Street and everyone goes, "Oh, hi, Mel."
>Just like that. "Oh, hi, Mel."
>She showed me where Max's aunt keeps the dog and cat food. She told me where to
>buy more, in case I ran out. She told me what Paco's favorite walks were. She showed
>me how to lure a cat named, and I kid you not, Mr. Peepers, out from underneath the bed.
>
>She asked me about my work for the Save the Children Fund. She asked me about my trip
>to Ethiopia. She asked me if I'd been to visit my aunt in the hospital, and if it had
>upset me very much, seeing her with all those tubes coming out of her. She patted me on
>the arm and told me not to worry, that if anyone could come out of a coma, it was my
>aunt Helen.
>
>And I stood there and grinned like an idiot and pretended I was Max Friedlander.
>
>I've met this completely terrific girl. I mean completely terrific, Stace: She likes
>tornadoes and the blues, beer, and anything to do with serial killers. She eats up
>celebrity gossip with as much enthusiasm as she attacks a plate of moo shu pork, wears
>shoes with heels that are way too high and looks fabulous in them--but manages to look
>just as fabulous in Keds and a pair of sweatpants.
>And she's nice. I mean, really, truly, genuinely kind. In a city where no one knows his
>neighbors, she not only knows hers, but actually cares about them. And she lives in
> Manhattan. Manhattan, where people routinely step over the homeless in an effort to
>get into their favorite restaurants. As far as Mel seems to be concerned, she never left
>Lansing, Illinois, population 13,000. Broadway might as well be Main Street.
>I've met this completely terrific girl.... And I can't even tell her my real name.
>No, she thinks I'm Max Friedlander. I know what you're going to say. I know exactly what
>you're going to say, Stace. And the answer is no, I can't. Maybe if I'd never lied to her
>about it in the first place. Maybe if right from the first moment I met her I'd said,
>"Listen, I am not Max. Max couldn't make it. He feels really bad about what happened to his
>aunt, so he sent me in his place." But I didn't, all right? I blew it. I blew it from the
>very beginning. And now it's too late to tell her the truth, because anything else I ever try
>to tell her, she'll think I'm lying about that, too. Maybe she won't admit it. But in the
>back of her mind, it will always be there. "Maybe he's lying about this, too."