Around the Cul-de-sac

By Christina De Paris

Around the Cul-de-sac is a rollicking short story collection that charts the inner workings of Sydney Lagunilla, a kid growing up in the '90s who views trespassing on her neighbors' properties as doing them a favor. In this work of realistic fiction, the Central Florida native finds a way to skirt a standardized test worksheet, and in an above-ground pool, acts out the farewell floating door scene in Titanic. Sydney's ruling passions undergo rapid shifts, occupying her time with rowboat adventures or whatever sport features in the latest (now nostalgic) family comedy. She could be catching lizards one moment, then staging a performance of the 1996 Grammy Nominees album in the next. The 16 stories are magnetic and will leave readers bemused through seriously funny and honest narration.

This is the debut short stories collection by emerging humor writer Christina De Paris.

What people are saying about Around the Cul-de-sac:

"In this witty collection, Sydney, a kid growing up in Florida, finds herself in one suburban adventure after another. From casual neighborhood trespassing to romance at the skating rink, these stories deliver big on humor and '90s nostalgia." - BookBub

"The beauty of Around the Cul-de-sac is in how well it illustrates everyday situations, whether light-hearted or serious, while also framing these events and messages with subtle, tasteful humor. The colourful protagonist leading the action with flair and laughs is the cherry on the cake. Overall, this book is a pleasant and intriguing read that adults can enjoy as much as young readers." - Electra Nanou; Reedsy Discovery

• Language: English
• Publisher: 8th & Atlas Publishing
• Release date: Sep 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781737718109

Book preview

THE FAMILY NEXT DOOR

There was already a family living next door when Sydney moved into the neighborhood with her parents and two brothers. The only indication that told her this was a screened-in back patio full of toys and playsets because it never seemed like anyone was ever coming or going. And this girl monitored her neighbors, especially the houses adjacent to hers. Not a sole objective, it wasn’t as if she was perched in a tree with binoculars, but more she maintained vigilance of the periphery.

The neighbor’s back patio had three compartments for some purpose. Maybe the former occupants were running a backdoor kennel, this was unclear to Sydney Lagunilla. The far corner that made up a quarter of the outdoor space was completely empty, a waste for all the young girl was concerned. The quarter section closest to the house was a children’s play area that went grossly underused. High-dollar toys never tinkered with; they weren’t brand new, it looked from afar, but not moldy or faded either.

Three steps stretched the length of the back side of the house; a gradual cascade that led to a lake a hundred yards down was the reason for the level change. The screen doors had adjustable latches that kept them propped open, the kind that, if set to the wrong mode, slammed violently behind you clipping the Achilles if not speedy enough to get through the frame. A labyrinth connected by screened portals was how the space looked, and there were two sets of sliding glass doors leading inside the home.

One sliding glass door had access to the outdoor playroom. The other opened to the half of the patio boasting a rectangular pool—always glistening in that recreation area, with a motorized vacuum and suctioning tube doing all the work for the reverse squatters. Now, lakes are a Florida standard. But having a private pool in the state was a special kind of luxury, at least for Sydney it was.

Many months had passed since Sydney’s move to her new house, and on no account did she see anyone domiciling the premises next door. She doubted the utilities usage would even register on the meter. Mail was regularly couriered to the occupants. Sydney knew this because she opened the latch to check on occasion. But there wouldn’t be stacks of postage bulging from the mailbox. Someone was retrieving the deliveries. That had to mean bills were getting paid to keep the lights on.

Sydney had moved from a condo in an Orlando suburb to a house in a strictly residential city halfway between the inland metropolis and the coast when heading east on Interstate-4. Any good apartment, duplex, or condo complex in the state should have a bevy of pools for the residents, along with courts for tennis and shuffleboard, at an absolute minimum, and Sydney’s was no different. Floridians can’t get enough of their outdoor activities, so long as access to misting machines or air conditioning is available on demand, and a private swimming pool is the envy of nearly every Floridian on a scorching day. This was explicitly the case if no other water source was in close proximity or an innovative parent didn’t attach a lawn sprinkler to the garden hose.

Sydney was a swim junkie and found solace in the tepid lake she and her family dwelt on, but only after her mom removed the lake grass from a section to make a humble lounging area. The girl also didn’t mind diving headfirst under waves in the Atlantic. With such precision, she was seldom caught up in a rough tumble, but if her judgment was poor, she wasn’t immune to getting tossed around as if she was in a washing machine then hacking up ingested salt water that entered through her nose.

Going to the beach was a day trip manageable only if Sydney’s mom or dad drove her and her two brothers, Matteo and Wade. The backyard lake, however, was consistently cycled into the girl’s list of activities, despite the murky waters sometimes repugnant in smell. The family lacked a dock to extend beyond the remaining lake grass to jump from, which also might have allowed them to be free from the foul-smelling sunbaked mud on the lake’s edges. A community pool, although chemically enhanced, would have given Sydney the ability to make more of a splash than in a lake, committing to flapping leaps and cannonballs. Regrettably, there was none in her new neighborhood.

No human ever appeared to take care of the neighbor’s pool, yet its contents were perpetually translucent and swirling.

How could it be? Sydney would continuously ask herself.

This kept the girl trolling, an occasional night’s sleep directly affected by it. The neighbors didn’t have to pluck out leaves jamming the filter or floating on the surface because of the protective screen repelling the shedding live oaks and Florida maples that spanned across the back yard. Sydney began to wish the metal frame and screening mechanism wasn’t erected from the get-go so she could solicit pool-cleaning work, should the residents ever appear, and thus solidify free-range use of the pool after gaining their loyalty and trust.

The neighbor’s pool became mysterious, a circulating current keeping the water in motion. Since the pool-per-capita ratio was high in Florida, Sydney had seen her share of stagnant green algae pools—but the neighbor’s pool was pristine, its bottom and walls a hotel blue coating.

The disappointment of blighted pool trips was felt by Sydney and her family a few times during their condo days when the nearby pool was being worked on or when maintenance personnel hadn’t measured the chemicals correctly and turned it a seafoam hue. That’s when the condo’s other swimming hole came in handy, the one attached to the clubhouse; however, that one was highly populated with couples and relative groups. Sydney preferred an empty pool so she could make a ruckus, swim recklessly, and feel that she was part shareholder of an exclusive piscina, along with a few select others. That’s why the family typically frequented the one closer to their sector of the complex toward the entrance.

It wasn’t long before the girl started to become embittered that the neighbor’s more-than-adequate pool was going unused. Constantly outside, she tried to keep the pool in view. She did laps around her house depending on what called to her—solitude by the lake, forts in the woods, rowing her red boat, or out by the street to see what kind of action would unfold.

Down the road from her house, or more directly, across the lake, was Stanbull Park. It had a sand beach with minimal lake grass but scads of screaming children. Sydney would also belt out at times, really let her voice carry, but she didn’t like being around the commotion of dozens of kids when she could peacefully enjoy her stretch of the lake. She’d also surrender the park’s swing set for the wooded property next to her house.

One Saturday afternoon, she was on top of an electrical box close to the street. It straddled her house and the pool neighbor’s, and she would sit on it hazardously, noticing the inner workings buzzing and trembling and thinking it was making good on its commitments in the neighborhood. Sydney appreciated a solid work ethic.

Watching cars roll by, she guessed where the drivers might live, half promising herself that she’d check later on at each house to see if the supposed car was there. It was at that moment she witnessed something that had never happened before.

A car pulled into the neighbor’s driveway.

Sydney became frantic on the inside but maintained her composure, quietly repeating to herself, This is it, this is it, because she knew the first engagement was about to occur. This was either going to make or break the entreaty to gain access to that pool.

The garage was opened by a nebulous portable opener.

Sydney mused, Wow, the driver doesn’t even have to get out of her car, walk into the house, and then press the garage door button? And the car can actually pull into a garage that has space to park?

Foreign concepts for the girl, as her family’s garage wasn’t remotely opened, and it was filled with shelves of wired apparatuses, boxes with labels that didn’t match the contents, loose furniture, and toys that were routinely played with.

The woman behind the wheel, presumably the mother of the two children sitting in car seats in the back, waved at Sydney with a kind smile.

But who knows, she could have been thinking, Oh great, there’s no way I’m getting out of talking to this little twerp, as some parents undeniably feel with unrelated children.

The lady emerged from the car. She was plump, a mane of strawberry blonde curly hair looking wispy just below her shoulders and like she used shampoo plus conditioner, not a combo version. Her attire was conventional, like it could be a variation of the same outfit in one of a handful of color stories.

A pocket-sized boy let himself out of the sedan, and given his stature, Sydney guessed he was around the same age as her brother Wade who was five. The child marched up to her as if he was the community’s volunteer sheriff.

The neighborhood had no real watchdog and was plausibly under-policed. The Lagunilla girl often wondered if there was any truth behind the neighborhood watch sign four blocks down because she hadn’t noticed any citizen patrolling.

Tiny cowboy boots were the boy’s footwear, much like the ones Sydney’s dad wore. Her dad’s boots were of course man-size and inspired more by Highlander, the fantasy action-adventure film, than by the television series Walker, Texas Ranger, like how the young boy’s seemed to be.

The two cities Sydney had lived in didn’t have the rural composition as seen in other parts of Florida, so when she noticed the boy’s cowboy hat, she thought, This kid’s the real deal.

He approached the girl and curtly barked, Tell me your name!!! with one of those toy cap pistols pointed between her eyes.

Sydney recognized the plastic weaponry because she and her brothers would play with the same kind until the reel of round pops ran out. The high-quality prop, when struck by the gun’s hammer, made a loud popping sound, emulating gunfire, and had a puff of smoke with a surprisingly pleasant aroma. The authentic smell of gunpowder for all Sydney and her brothers knew.

She stated her name casually and with slight disinterest to gain the upper hand, although knowing full well around five years his senior she could nimbly pull a wrestling move on the small child. He wouldn’t immediately understand how rugged Sydney was, or at least how she perceived herself to be. The girl was known to tell her mom that she tried to bleed daily from injuries while at play.

A softy for cute little kids, Sydney found them entertaining, and this boy was no different. She countered with the same vigor, Now give me your name!

He said his name was Nicholas and that his little sister was named Natalie, who came out of nowhere, summoned as if on cue. Based on her size, she was a young toddler. Natalie hadn’t mastered any form of cogent speech but babbled a greeting, to which Sydney returned with a standard hey.

The sister was visibly tamer than the apparent tyrannical cowboy.

The Lagunilla girl remained seated on the waning green electrical box, demonstrating that although this was a shared domain, she was in control of it at the time.

Interrogation spearheaded by the boy then began, him asking the Lagunilla girl if that was her house and if she lived there, pointing to the yellow one-story.

Quite redundant, Sydney wanted to scoff but remained genial, relishing the interaction she had been anticipating for ages.

Could he have had this same sense of wonderment of who his neighbors really were? she pondered.

Maybe both parties had been in and out the entire time, passing like ships. This was running through Sydney’s mind when telling him, yes, she was in fact his neighbor.

Nicholas’s and Natalie’s mom started unloading groceries, no paranoia whatsoever that her children were standing beside city infrastructure, not all that far from the road, and a weather forecast of potential heat-lightning within the next three hours. A promising sign of low-key parenting in Sydney’s processing.

The electrical box had all these scary warning signs, but it wasn’t cordoned off or anything, so Sydney essentially just ignored the appeals, ultimately evaluating the scenario as having nominal danger. Summiting the metal cube made her feel like a statue of a person commemorated for doing something courageous, for example, not swimming in a neighbor’s pool before being invited.

The mother went in and out of the house through the garage, bringing in brown paper bags of groceries that seemed high-end. When Sydney saw that green letter P with a circle around it, she realized, Ohhh yeah, this family’s loaded.

This was the same grocery chain that her dad’s family liked to shop at. Especially her abu and abuela, who were very particular about their salted deli meats, and hardly ever let down by the store’s fresh cuts as well as its assorted cookie platters.

Acknowledging Sydney with that same cordial smile from before, the woman said hi and left it at that. The girl tallied, This lady’s going to be fine to have as a neighbor and probably won’t get in my way either.

Sydney had encountered some treacherous neighbors back in the condo days—if you so much as dropped a weightless sheet of paper or looked at their unspoiled patches of grass for too long, they would notify the complex’s management with reports of hooliganism. That was all it took for this one couple who lived diagonally from her family.

Sauntering away from the three of them with two thumbs up to Sydney, it was almost as if the woman was saying, You’re good here with my two kids, right? Sydney didn’t mind the short exchange and was more intrigued by this compact cowboy and his lackey sister.

The girl stood up from her seated position on the electrical box and jumped off it to inject a little fanfare. Her display really could have backfired if they asked to be hoisted up on the box, but Sydney knew better not to make any sudden moves. This was a fresh encounter where the end game wasn’t just limited to forging new friendships. Lucky for her, they shifted their attention away from the city infrastructure to gauging what the girl’s deal was.

The same maneuver she was employing on them.

The Lagunilla girl ambled over to her family’s best climbing tree that was between the two houses. There were so many routes to the upper echelons of that camphor tree. A truly superior object of nature with long horizontal branches starting from low to the ground. It didn’t take long after moving in for Sydney to figure out her circuit. Then it became a race against time to get to the top whenever she scaled it.

To really stun the neighboring rugrats, she converted into her monkey-self and ascended to the treetops. Her hands and bare feet clawed the branches as she effortlessly bounded her way up. Afterward, the two siblings naturally wanted to follow. Already she had them in her clutches, needing her assistance. Before she could even get down, Nicholas buried his toy gun into his holster and set about pulling himself up. It turned out that Natalie was content just watching.

Sydney appraised, How wonderfully obedient and less problematic for her to recognize that she wouldn’t fit in well to this equation.

Nicholas, on the other hand, was rising as if documents to be granted sole imminent domain over the tree were in the upper sector branches.

Swinging down to calm his haste and create a dependency, Sydney prompted, Whoa whoa whoa partner, wait for me.

She had this tree mentally mapped out like a ski resort distinguished by novice and expert slopes, and Nicholas was skipping to a black diamond.

The young lad didn’t concern himself with Sydney’s directions and paved his own way, quite admirably, the girl noted, as she might have done the same if someone was aiming to wield comparable power over her. He climbed higher than Sydney imagined he would.

Panache, determination, courage.

Yeah, this kid could hang around our house, she reasoned.

Though he wasn’t quite in the running to enlist in the sporting activities that Sydney, her older brother Matteo, and the neighborhood cohort rotated in and out.

Sydney tossed a vertical, Good job, to Nicholas, who was about halfway up the tree.

He hissed back, I know!!!

Uncertain how to react, she just muttered to herself, All right then, careful not to let him hear since he seemed quarrelsome.

She took a moment for another consideration.

Damn, is your mom still bringing in groceries?

The kids’ mother didn’t hover, much like Sydney’s mom. But the Lagunilla second born was sure that her mom didn’t leave her offspring as toddlers under the guardianship of a child they had known for five minutes. The neighbor mom could have been looking through some side windows, but Sydney doubted it.

Sydney’s mind drifted into the snack palace she assumed the neighbors had. They looked like the kind of family that had a stocked pantry, not sparsely filled cabinets with ingredients that, when combined, simply could not taste like Fruit-by-the-Foot, but rather a jumbled Shepherd’s pie.

After a short while, the Lagunilla girl assessed that she didn’t mind hanging out with the two little kids. They were quelling her demonstrative boredom. They also appeared within a time frame in which she was in the mood to socialize.

Nicholas kept roosting in the tree, then ordered Sydney to guide him down. His confidence had fizzled, but the girl still had a great deal of respect for him to talk to her with such authority. Needless to say, she complied with his demands and assisted him down because, in a way, these kids were under her watch.

Taking the proverbial little guy under her wing was something that came naturally to Sydney, befriending the lonely kid in class with a sense of duty.

She didn’t always extend the same treatment to Wade, who she had begun to terrorize unrelentingly, but more in a pesky big sister way. The exception was when anyone else crossed Wade, or he was hurt, then she was like a vulture swooping down and neutralizing whichever threat came against her flesh and blood. They had to have each other’s backs in their neighborhood and couldn’t let certain mischief-makers at the entrance to their street be privy to any vulnerabilities or familial fractures.

How Sydney looked at it, Nicholas could add numbers to her streetwise posse. His sister would no doubt linger, getting in the way if they had to disperse or get somewhere on the double. But she anticipated Natalie would prove herself resilient and stick around for the action. If Nicholas kept up his demeanor, the girl would be just fine if becoming a product of her environment.

After about 20 minutes in the common ground between their houses, they meandered toward the backyard, Sydney inching in that direction. This way, the Lagunilla girl could strategically point out that her family also had a screened-in area but tragically lacked a pool, and didn’t he find that odd?

"Hey would you look at that, you’ve got a nice pool there, and is that a regulation diving