A Normal Day?

It’s right there.

Gray, aging shingles sticking up just above the treeline. A swingset just barely visible in the backyard. A neatly if infrequently trimmed hedge running along the street.

Home, sweet home.

I don’t mean that sarcastically. I really don’t. It is sweet. It is home. Cozy, welcoming, comfortable. Until right now, I was thinking with untempered eagerness of setting down my bags, changing into my comfortable if raggedy pajamas and curling up on the couch with a snack. The normal. Blissful normal.

Again, I don’t mean that sarcastically.

But on a whim I took a different route home. Mix things up a bit before the normal, because I do like a change of scenery every now and then.

I forgot it would take me here.

My hand hovers over the blinker. Right, right? Right.

Right...

The car behind me honks. They’re right. I have no right to block this intersection so long. I have to decide now.

I don’t want to have to forever wonder what I left behind.

I turn left.

The street hardly looks different from mine at first. It is mine, technically, I guess. Or has it changed?

If it hadn’t before, it is now. I begin to wind uphill. Usually, the houses get bigger and fancier when you go uphill in the city. But not here. They just get weirder. A bright purple house that seems composed entirely of triangles is followed by a long, flat house topped with an enormous statue of a moose. Vertical brickwork meets neon metal roofing. Houses appear sideways, upside down.

And then, from between the trees, it appears.

The last thing you would expect in a place like this.

A normal house.

Normal is relative, my more pedantic relatives would be quick to point out to me. But there’s no other word for it. The house is stereotypical, like the house you might find in a child’s kindergarten artwork, but not in an over the top way. It isn’t a caricature. It is composed of off-white siding (wood or vinyl - I can’t tell) with a tastefully aged but not dilapidated metal roof, agreeably rectangular windows, and a modest but comfortable-looking porch. It is either two stories, or one with a large attic. Part of the lawn is mown, and flowerbeds surround the house. I can see a corner of a vegetable garden around the back. The whole setup is overlooked by a sturdy oak tree.

But yes, normal is relative. Because, here, normal is the most eye-catching thing around.

And that’s why I had to come.

I have never wanted to be boring.

Who would? It’s...well...boring.

But I have feared that I am. And I have tried not to be.

But I can’t help it.

I like to be normal.

But I don’t like to fit in.

I gather my courage and open the car door. I gather even more courage and walk up to the door. I gather the last shreds of my courage, and knock.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. I should give you some backstory.

***

When I was sixteen years old, and deep into the pursuit of not being boring, but struggling to find a suitably unusual interest, or style, or anything of the sort, a friend, to whom I’d confided these troubles, told me about “the weird neighborhood” as it was called. “It’s so close to your house!” she’d said. “I can’t believe you haven’t been there!”

And so I’d taken the left turn out of my driveway and driven up that winding road. I’d seen the houses. I’d waited for inspiration to strike. But it hadn’t come.

But then, I’d rounded the corner and seen the house.

The normal house.

And I didn’t understand why, but I started to cry.

So. You could have these things and be interesting too.

I wasn’t secretly just caught up in conformity.

There were people who liked these things even when they weren’t the easiest option.

So maybe, I was just human, and that was an interesting thing to be.

I almost went and knocked, then.

But a thought suddenly hit me and stopped me cold.

I remembered something.

I remembered when I’d seen this house before.

I drove down the mountain as fast as I could, never intending to look back.

Well, so much for that.

***

Mary Smith had showed up on the first day of sixth grade. It took everyone a while to realize there was a new kid, she fit in that well. She was the most ordinary person any of us had ever met. It was extraordinary.

I instinctively liked Mary. I aspired to her level of comfortable normalness. And so I tried to befriend her. And it worked. We developed a pleasant, ordinary friendship.

That is, until she invited me over to her house.

At first, we had an ordinary, pleasant day playing in her ordinary, pleasant yard and ordinary, pleasant room.

But after I’d been there for a few hours, in her ordinary, pleasant neighborhood, I thought I felt the house shake.

I dismissed it as my imagination.

But then I heard Mary’s mother yell.

“Mary! I’m sorry, it’s happening. Get your friend outside!”

Mary leapt up and hustled me down the stairs without another word. When we reached the door, I was surprised to see tears in her eyes.

“You need to run down the street now,” she told me, voice quavering. I didn’t dare disobey. “Goodbye!” she yelled after me.

I was most of the way down the street before I dared look back.

Her house was nowhere to be seen.

Mary didn’t come back to school. And I didn’t see her house again until that day when I was sixteen.

And then, again now.

***

Maybe I was just making it up.

I wasn’t usually a child with a vivid imagination, but children in general are notorious for having those. But even if the thing with Mary’s house had really happened, that didn’t mean this was the same one. It was, after all, deceptively ordinary.

But I didn’t doubt it any longer when I saw the face of the ordinary girl who opened the door.

She scanned my face for a moment, then her mouth dropped open. “Lucy?”

I smiled at her. “Yes. That’s me.”

I couldn’t tell if she was scared or delighted. “How did you find me? And why now?”

I searched my brain for an answer, but both were equally mystifying. “I...don’t know.”

We stood there on her porch, just two ordinary girls with an extraordinary story. And as the silence grew between us, I realized that we didn’t know how to talk about it. I would have been much more comfortable discussing the weather. A fascinating topic.

And no, I don’t mean that sarcastically.

But that would have felt out of place.

At last, it was Mary who broke the silence. “Do...you want to come in?” She saw me hesitate. “It’s stable right now. I’m confident. Last time we ignored the warning signs. I’m sorry.”

I stepped through the door.

***

I can’t tell you the rest of the story.

It’s a secret. Mary swore me to it.

But what I can say, is that I turn left pretty often now.

Did I make you curious? I’m sorry. What I can tell you is this. No, I wasn’t making things up. Yes, Mary’s house is magic.

But it’s very ordinary magic.

Really not that interesting. Rather stereotypical.

It just happens that the stereotype includes not talking too much about it, so I can’t tell you anything more. Use your imagination. It’s almost certainly more interesting.

But I don’t envy you. I’m just here enjoying my ordinary life.