The House on Firework Lane
The keys felt heavier than they should have, a single brass ring with two teeth-worn shapes dangling from JD's fist like he was holding something alive. He stood at the edge of a yard gone feral—crabgrass to his shins, a dead lemon tree leaning like a drunk against a chain-link fence, a FOR SALE sign still jammed in the dirt though nobody had bothered to pull it. Above him, the house waited. Two stories of chipped Spanish stucco the color of old teeth, a terracotta roof missing scales like a sick lizard, and a porch light hanging crooked from a single screw, swaying faintly though there was no wind to speak of.
Somewhere behind him, maybe a mile off, maybe two, the sky cracked open in color. Boom. A hiss of gold sparks unfurling against the dusk, then a second report rolling low across the rooftops of Anaheim. Nine o'clock fireworks from the park, right on schedule, the way they'd been every night for sixty-some years. JD had picked this street on purpose—Firework Lane, though that wasn't its real name, just what the locals called it, because you could stand in your own backyard and watch Disneyland light up the sky for free, borrowed magic drifting over fences that could use…