ADA

My name is Ada Accardi, and I am eleven years old.

I have black hair and eyes that are actually brown except some people say they look black as well. I have one brother named Nicolas, and he is nine years old. I speak two languages fluently: English and Italian. My favorite food is macaroni and cheese, especially the way my mom makes it. My favorite book is Daughters of Eve by Lois Duncan. My favorite flavor of ice cream is cookie dough.

Also, I killed my next-door neighbor, Jonathan Lowell. One more thing:

I’m not sorry.

How to Kill Your Creepy Next-Door Neighbor—A Guide by Ada Accardi, Grade Five

Step 1: Leave Behind Your Home and Everything You Love

Tomorrow, we are moving.

Mom and Dad are really excited about this. Especially Dad. He keeps talking about how we are going to live in this great new house and we are going to love it. They act like they are doing this wonderful thing for us, except I don’t want to move. I like it in the Bronx. All my friends are here. I even like this apartment that they say is “too small.”

But when you are eleven years old, you don’t have a choice. If your mom and dad tell you that you need to move, you have to move.

Anyway, that’s why I can’t sleep.

I’ve been lying awake in bed for the last hour, staring up at the ceiling. I like my ceiling. It has a lot of cracks in the paint, but the cracks look familiar. Like, there’s this crack right in the center that looks just like a face. I named it Constance.

I’m going to miss Constance when we leave. “Nico?” I whisper into the darkness.

One thing my parents say is bad about our home is that Nico and I have to share a room. And because he’s a boy and I’m a girl, we shouldn’t have to share. Except Dad hung a curtain in the middle of the room, so it’s fine. I don’t mind sharing with Nico. I like knowing that when I go to sleep, he is in the room with me, on the other side of the curtain.

“Yeah?” Nico whispers back.

He’s awake. Good. “I can’t sleep.” “Me either.”

“I wish we didn’t have to move.”

Nico’s mattress makes that loud squeaking noise that it always does when he rolls over. “I know. It’s not fair.”

Somehow, it makes me feel better that Nico also doesn’t want to leave. Because Mom and Dad are so excited. You would think we were moving to Disneyland.

But it’s not as bad for him as it is for me. Nico has always made friends more easily than me. Everyone likes Nico right away. But I have

had the same two best friends—Inara and Trinity—since I was in kindergarten. Also, I am only three months away from graduating from elementary school, and I am going to miss my graduation. Instead, I’m going to graduate with a bunch of kids I don’t even know.

“Maybe it will be awful,” Nico says, “and Mom and Dad will want to move back.”

“Probably not. I think this new house was really expensive.” “Right. They said they can’t even hardly afford the garage.” “You mean the mortgage?”

“Is that different?”

I don’t understand what a mortgage is, but I know it’s not the same as a garage. Like, I’m pretty sure. “We are stuck living in this new house until we go to college.”

He’s quiet on the other side of the curtain. “Well, maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe we’ll get to like it.”

I can’t imagine that. I can’t imagine making all new friends and getting used to a big scary house.

“Nico?” I say.

“Uh-huh.”

“Can I pull the curtains open?”

The curtains separating the two sides of the room are really meant for me. When Dad put them up, Mom told me that we were doing it because “you are a young lady now and you need your privacy.” But I always sort of want to open the curtains at night.

“Okay,” Nico says agreeably.

I climb out of bed and pull the curtains back. Nico has his Super Mario Bros. bedspread pulled up to his neck, and his black hair is messy. He waves to me, and I wave back.

I remember the day Mom and Dad brought Nico home from the hospital. Mom says I can’t possibly remember that because I was only two years old, and my brain couldn’t make memories yet, but I swear I remember it. Mom brought him into the house in his little baby carrying case, and he was just so tiny. I couldn’t believe how tiny he was! Even smaller than my dolls.

I asked if I could hold him, and Mom said that I could if I was very careful. So I sat down on the couch, and Mom laid him down on my

lap. She told me I had to support his head, so I did. He looked really happy being held, although he mostly looked like an old man. And then I put my finger in his little tiny mouth, and he sucked on it. And I said to him, “I love you, Nico.”

I will miss my brother being my roommate.