The moving truck showed up on a Tuesday.

Which felt weird.

Nothing important ever happened on Tuesdays. Tuesdays were for reheated leftovers, unfinished homework, and staring at textbook pages while your brain quietly drifted somewhere else. They were ordinary. Forgettable.

They were definitely not supposed to be the day everything started changing.

I was sitting at my desk with a yellow highlighter in one hand and my AP History textbook spread open in front of me. The French Revolution stared back at me from the page, and I was trying—really trying—to focus.

Then I heard it.

A low rumble rolled through the quiet street outside, loud enough to cut through the usual afternoon sounds of lawn sprinklers and distant barking dogs.

I ignored it.

For about three seconds.

Then I looked.

Because obviously I looked.

A battered black moving truck was parked in the driveway of the Mercer house.

The Mercer house had been empty for months. Seven, if you wanted to be exact. Ever since old Mr. Mercer moved to Phoenix to live with his daughter. Since then, the place had just sat there collecting dust and dead leaves, looking lonely with its cracked birdbath and sad, half-dead rosebush.

Now there was a truck.

The paint was faded and scratched, like it had spent years driving through places that weren't particularly kind to vehicles. There was a huge dent above one wheel that looked oddly like the shape of Florida.

A man climbed out of the passenger seat.

Late forties, maybe. Salt-and-pepper beard. Tired eyes.

Not the exhausted kind of tired that comes from missing a few hours of sleep. The deeper kind. The kind people carried around in their shoulders.

He stretched slowly, wincing a little, then stared at the house.

Like he wasn't completely sure what he thought about it.

Then the driver's door opened.

And everything got... distracting.

A boy stepped out.

Well, unfolded was probably more accurate.

He was tall. Annoyingly tall.

The kind of tall that made everyone else look slightly unfinished.

He wore a black leather jacket despite the September heat, dark jeans, and boots that looked like they'd survived several questionable life choices. His dark hair curled slightly at the ends, brushing against his ears.

And then there were the tattoos.

Even from my second-floor window, I could see dark ink winding up the side of his neck before disappearing beneath his collar.

My stomach did a weird little flip.

Which was irritating.

He reached back into the truck, grabbed a cigarette, and lit it with a silver lighter. The metal flashed in the afternoon sunlight.

Then he looked up.

Directly at my window.

Directly at me.

Oh.

Oh no.

I should've moved.

A normal person would've moved.

A normal person would've stepped away from the window immediately and pretended they had something extremely important to do.

Instead, I froze.

For three painfully long seconds.

Highlighter still dangling from my fingers.

Staring right back at him.

The boy didn't smile.

Didn't wave.

Didn't even look embarrassed about catching me spying.

He just looked at me.

Calm. Unbothered.

Like he was studying something mildly interesting.

Like maybe I was a bird sitting on a fence.

Then he looked away first, took a drag from his cigarette, and said something to the older man.

I finally remembered how to be a person and stepped away from the window.

My heart was beating way harder than it had any right to.

"Avery!" Dad called from downstairs.

I jumped.

"Dinner in twenty!"

"Okay!" I shouted back.

My voice sounded normal.

Hopefully.

I sat down again and stared at my textbook.

The Estates-General.

I read the same sentence four times.

Nothing.

My brain had officially left the building.

It's just a new neighbour, I told myself.

Not a big deal.

Completely normal.

I grabbed my phone.

Someone moved into the Mercer house.

I sent the text to Mia.

Her reply came almost instantly.

DETAILS.

I rolled my eyes.

Boy. Around our age. Maybe older. Tattoos. Leather jacket. Smokes.

The typing bubble appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

AVERY COLLINS.

ARE YOU SERIOUS.

THE UNIVERSE JUST DROPPED A MYSTERIOUS HOT BOY NEXT DOOR AND YOU'RE STUDYING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION?

I laughed despite myself.

Then immediately put my phone face-down on the desk before she could send seventeen more messages.

Dinner that night was Dad's pasta.

The good pasta.

The one with way too much garlic and garlic bread that always came out slightly burnt around the edges.

The smell filled the kitchen before I even made it downstairs.

Ever since Mom left, we'd kept certain routines alive. Family dinner was one of them.

It wasn't perfect.

Sometimes it felt a little forced.

But it was ours.

"The Mercer house finally got new tenants," Dad said between bites.

I kept my face carefully neutral.

"Yeah. I saw."

Dad twirled pasta around his fork.

"Saw a kid out there."

Kid.

Dad always called teenagers kid when he hadn't decided whether he trusted them yet.

"He looked older than you."

"I didn't really see him."

The second the words left my mouth, I knew I'd made a mistake.

Dad looked up.

Not suspiciously.

Just... knowingly.

Parents had this annoying ability to detect lies that weren't even important.

"Mm-hmm."

That was all he said.

But somehow it felt worse.

The conversation moved on.

I spent the rest of dinner avoiding eye contact.

Later that night, I found myself standing at my bedroom window again.

Purely by accident.

Mostly.

Okay, not by accident.

The lights in my room were off.

Outside, the neighbourhood sat quiet beneath the glow of streetlamps.

Most of the Mercer house was dark, but one light burned downstairs.

Warm yellow light spilled through thin curtains.

I could see a shadow moving around inside.

Maybe the older man.

Maybe him.

I rested my forehead lightly against the cool glass.

And I thought about that look.

The way he'd met my eyes without flinching.

Without looking away.

Without seeming embarrassed or nervous or anything at all.

Most people looked away.

He hadn't.

Something about that bothered me.

Or maybe intrigued me.

I wasn't entirely sure.

I stared at the house for another minute.

Then sighed.

"This is trouble," I muttered to myself.

And because apparently I enjoyed making things worse, another thought followed immediately after.

That's exactly why you should stay away from it.

Good plan.

Excellent plan.

I closed the curtains and went to bed.

That should've been the end of it.

But the next morning, before I'd even fully opened my eyes, I found myself glancing out the window.

The black truck was still there.

Parked in the driveway.

Solid. Permanent.

Like it belonged.

Like it had always belonged.

And for some reason, looking at it sent a strange feeling twisting through my chest.

The kind that shows up right before your life changes.

Maybe Tuesdays weren't as ordinary as I'd thought.

Maybe Tuesday had known exactly what it was doing.