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The neighbors are new. Sapnap is not.
Sapnap has lived here for years, sleeping in the same bed in the same room with all that changes being bedsheets and wall paint. Sapnap has lived here since he was too small to see over the windowsill, grubby little hands reaching up to smear finger paint over fresh-laid white without a care for the way his mother tells him not to.
Sapnap has never lived anywhere else. He doesn’t know anything else. All he has is this old neighborhood, and this little room, and this same window with a sill he can finally see over.
For a long, long time, there isn’t much to look at. Trees he’s memorized the shape of and grass that doesn’t get cut often enough, tired parents chasing after young kids in a yard with dilapidated swings. Exhaustion crept empty up the base of his fatal spine, and Sapnap stopped glancing, and he kept to the other four walls of his upstairs bedroom without much interest for the wrong side of glass.
And nothing changed. For years, nothing changed. Annoying kids grew up to be annoying teenagers in the same old backyard, and Sapnap didn’t see them outside of glances in his rocky driveway when he was learning how to drive or visits to his parents he didn’t want to be a part of.
Then, they moved.
Sapnap had heard of it from his mother at the dinner table and he saw the for sale sign the next day. The house sat empty for a period of time Sapnap didn’t care to quantify, waiting for someone new to move in and fix what could be broken.
And it’s a warm July morning when Sapnap notices the new cars in the next door driveway. He would be surprised he didn’t notice the changes to a real estate sign sooner if he didn’t know himself.
There were two parents and their teenage-looking son, a blond who appeared to be around his age but could really be anything. Perhaps he was older than the previous neighbors, or the same age, or younger. He appeared to be about Sapnap's age, though, and he was content to go with that.
So the neighbors are new. Sapnap is not.
He meets his new neighbor for the first time when all three of them come by to say hello. They say that they’re new, and that this neighborhood looks nice, and Sapnap's parents offer favors without labels.
Sapnap learns that the blond’s name is Luke, but he prefers to go by Punz. And they’re the same age, but Punz is a few months older—Sapnap pretends it’s not slightly annoying to no longer be the apparent most mature kid on the cul de sac.
It was just because he was the oldest.
They don’t stay for long. Punz and his parents head back next door before the conversation can really become a conversation, and Sapnap disappears back upstairs to his room. For the first time in a few too many years, he heads intentionally for his window, and he watches the way three strangers walk across their tired front yard.
He doesn’t talk to Punz for the rest of the summer.
It’s almost strange that they seem to keep missing each other. Punz is busy trying to figure things out before he starts his junior year of high school in a brand new town, and Sapnap has other friends to hang out with and bother before he starts his. He doesn’t hear much about the new neighbors, and he’s alright with that.
He knows they’re okay because he looks out his window sometimes.
He learns that Punz spends a lot of time outside. And he has his driver’s license (he assumes) but he takes off down the sidewalk on a skateboard more often than he grabs his keys, the scratch of old wheels along rough concrete fading obscure before it reaches the crack of Sapnap's window.
He learns that the old neighbors didn’t take down their old swing set, and it’s still sitting in the back corner collecting dust and moss and dirt. Punz sits on the old swing sometimes, and Sapnap watches him from upstairs, and he wonders what he’s so busy thinking about.
He learns that he climbs up the side of the house to sit on the roof some nights, blond hair on tiles and eyes for the stars. Sapnap isn’t sure how he manages to get up there without hurting himself—he never catches him early enough to watch how he does it—but he never gets the chance to ask.
It’s not until there’s a quiet tap-tap against his window that Sapnap hears Punz’s voice again. When he’s sitting at his desk, trying to finish reading the book he put off until the last week before school, an August night crawling in through tempered glass in silence.
He waits for it to go away. It doesn’t.
Sapnap gives in, heading for the window before the sound can get any louder. With his newfound proximity, he can see the way driveway pebbles hit against the panes, light and small enough to not leave a mark but rallying with enough weight for him to hear it.
Sapnap frowns. When he looks towards the grass, he sees Punz standing two stories below him with a grin, and it starts to make at least a little bit of sense.
But why is he down there?
Cautious, Sapnap pulls the window open and leans out where he lacks a screen. The humidity of nightfall sticks to his skin in seconds, a calm breeze rustling the messy hair atop his head without much care for the way he sees from his eyes.
“What do you want?” he calls down toward his neighbor, watching the way his volume clamors when he knows the world to be asleep.
Punz shrugs. With a palm curved and full of unthrown pebbles, he calls back, “I don’t know.”
A huff rolls past Sapnap's bitten tongue. Rolling his eyes, he wonders aloud, “Do you want me to come down there?”
The grin on Punz’s face surges wide enough for Sapnap to see it from the window. He fails to admit the intoxication on those blurry lips.
“Sure.”
It’s hasty. The way Sapnap climbs gracelessly over his sill, feet grappling for footholds against loose shingles and first-floor windows. He hits the ground feet-first with all the breath rushing free of his lungs, turning on one heel to face where Punz is waiting in the night.
He throws a pebble out towards the street. “Come with me.”
Sapnap follows.
He learns that he would follow Punz anywhere he goes.
And for the rest of that warm summer, Punz stands between their slanted houses and throws pebbles at the window in the dead of night. For the rest of that warm summer, Sapnap climbs down from his fresh-painted ledge to meet him on the ground, and they drive or they run or he catches him on his skateboard.
They both share the sentiment of we should’ve done this sooner. They make enough bad decisions in a week to fill the whole summer.
Punz drives too far and almost runs out of gas, and they throw firecrackers into the lake just to see how it reacts. They fall and scrape their skin and bleed softly onto wrought pavement, they come home too late and sneak back through windows feeling too far to reach without assistance.
On the last day of summer, Punz climbs up the side of Sapnap's house.
He knocks on the window with curled knuckles and a grin, the sight of his face above the dusty sill scaring Sapnap out of his skin. But he opens the window and lets his neighbor in, to which the first thing he says is, “I don’t think I’ve ever been in your room before.”
Sapnap huffs. “You've never been in my house before.”
They talk for a while. It’s harder to make mistakes only a walk away from their parents, but they find a way. The two of them sit together on Sapnap's bed, and they talk in hushed voices, and they press up too close for it to feel normal.
With their thighs aligned and breath mixing reckless in the air, Punz makes the first move.
He leans over and kisses Sapnap on the lips, only lasting for a second before he pulls away. The room falls quiet again, and Sapnap has to catch his breath, losing himself to his spinning head and the fact that his neighbor just kissed him.
“Sorry,” Punz rushes. “I should’ve asked first.”
Sapnap blinks. No “I shouldn’t have done that,” no “that was a mistake.”
“I should’ve asked first.”
Sapnap asks before Punz can get up and leave back through the still-open window.
“Kiss me again.”
Perhaps it’s the easiest thing to oblige. For Punz is kissing him, and he’s kissing him like he means it, and for a moment, the world is silent. There is no school tomorrow, and there are no unread books—only them, alone, together.
They kiss, clumsy and juvenile and messy, and Sapnap loses the last bit of his mind. It tastes like everything that’s meant to be more.
When he watches his neighbor through the part of his window now, Punz watches back.