MY NEW NEIGHBOR

Olivia Cummings

4th Grade • Saint Clement School

I just woke up on a Saturday morning and I am exhausted. I spent all night unpacking boxes. My new house is great, but I already miss my friends. I couldn’t even hug them goodbye thanks to this stupid pandemic. I know I am going to make new friends, and my mom says my neighbor’s name is Sienna and she is my age. I am sooo excited to see her from a distance, but the six foot tall fence separating our houses isn't doing me any favors. In between our houses are the driveways and between our driveways is the fence that goes all the way to the street, so, obviously, neither of us can see over or through it. I can talk with Sienna if we both yell from our sides of the fence, but the neighbors already don’t like that, and we want to see each other. I did meet her from six feet away, but that was the day I moved in and I only saw her for three seconds. It won't be the same if we don't see each other, so we are going to come up with ideas. Happily Sienna is very creative and loves STEM class, just like me.

Day 2 (Science)

The next morning, I finish breakfast quickly and run out to the fence, where I yell to see if Sienna is there. From the window, my dad yells at me to stop yelling. I hear, “Olivia? Are you there?” from the other side.

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“Yes! Is that you, Sienna?”

“Hi! Come over here!” “Over where?”

“Over by the knothole in the fence!”

“Stop yelling! The whole neighborhood can hear you!” yells my dad, again.

Five feet away, I see a hole in the fence the size of my palm. I look through and see Sienna looking through from the other side. This is great, but I can’t even see her entire face. “This hole needs to be bigger,” she says.

“Can we make it bigger?” I ask.

“Ya! If we can find a force to bust open the fence, we could see each other better!”

“Hmm...what mass could we accelerate to create a force that would make the hole bigger?”

“My mom has a hammer? Do you?”

“No, but my brother has a metal baseball bat I can use.”

“Ya, great idea, let’s go get them,” she says.

We sneak inside our houses and grab our tools. Just as we’re both about to start banging away at the fence, my dad and Sienna’s mom run out screaming for us to stop. We both had to stay inside for the rest of the day.

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Day 3 (Technology)

The next morning, we meet at the knothole in the fence again. Just like yesterday, we can only sort of see each other and hear each other. It’s really hard not being able to yell across the fence. “I wish my parents would get me a cell phone,” I say.

“Me too. Is there something else we can use to talk?” asks Sienna. We think and think, then Sienna says, “Hey, I saw this old movie where they used tin cans connected by string to communicate.”

“That is a great idea,” I say, “we should try that... but how?”

Sienna remembers that they had canned peaches for breakfast and runs into the house to wash them out. I remember I had a string in my arts and crafts bag and went to get it. Back outside, Sienna tosses one of the cans over the fence. I catch it, then slide one end of the string through the knothole, and we each tie our ends to the cans.

We talk for a whole hour. It sort of works, but with a lot of echo. Then Sienna says, “I will be right back,” and two minutes later I catch a walkie talkie in my hands. “Oops! Forgot my brother and I had these!” They work perfectly! We talk for the rest of the afternoon and learn everything about each other. We go inside for dinner, promising to talk again before bed. Unfortunately, we both fell asleep early and forgot to turn them off, so the batteries died.

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Day 4 (Engineering)

I’ve been so happy talking to Sienna, but we both agree we need to see each other. We spend the next morning brainstorming ideas, but that fence is still in the way. Because we can’t get around it without going into the street, and our parents won’t let us bust a hole in it, we’ll have to find a way to see over it. Sadly, we’re definitely not six-foot-one.

We think of lots of ideas, but all of them either won’t work or will get us into trouble. Sienna managed to drag her baby brother’s highchair outside. While she was wobbling on it, I ran to get a barstool and heard her middle brother yelling “Mommy needs the baby’s highchair!” Sienna got distracted and fell down, scraping her knee badly.

While she was inside getting cleaned up, I walked around the backyard. Behind the house was a firepit, and the old owners had a pile of large branches for firewood. I found a couple that were strong and had places sticking out for my feet. Ta-da! Stilts! Surprisingly, I was pretty good at balancing, but not good enough for the circus.

Right before dinner, it hits me, we have a ladder! I pull it out of the garage and lean it onto the fence. I climb up and, for the first time, can see into Sienna’s yard. She’s there and sees me and starts jumping up and down, yelling, “You did it!” She runs to get her own ladder, leans it onto the fence. Finally, we are face to face! Then my dad yells, “What are you doing? There’s a pandemic! You’re too close!” It was also dinnertime, so we both went inside.

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Day 5 (Math)

At last, we had a solution! The only part to figure out was how to be far enough away from each other. I had a tape measure, but it kept bending and falling down when we tried to measure from across the fence. We needed something that wouldn’t bend. Then Sienna remembered her mom had a hockey stick in their basement. She brought it outside, and I tossed her the tape measure. The hockey stick was exactly six feet long! It took about ten minutes, but we figured out how to set up the ladders six feet apart.

My mom found us outside. “Girls, that’s a great idea! How did you figure this out?” We explained all of our steps. She then said, “How wonderful. But I need to hang some pictures, so Olivia has to get off the ladder. Why don’t you two just take a walk?” We’re both confused, then we realize we can walk together if we each hold an end of the hockey stick. So that started our friendship from six feet away.

Epilogue

The years roll by and I learned if I didn’t move, I would not have realized how important friendship is. I might miss my friends but I have made other friends here, too. Now I know that leaving your friends is not such a big deal because they can visit you and you will visit them. While it took some time to make new friends here, especially during a pandemic, it was fun to be creative doing it.

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