3If you haven't been to my hometown already, then you never will. It's gone. Don't worry, I can guarantee nobody's missing the place; it was a tiny town to begin with, nestled in one of the most isolated regions of the US. I'm not going to give any specifics because I don't want anyone poking around. All I'll say is, if you take the right exit off the right interstate, if you keep driving down that dejected little road, then eventually the quaint cottages and gas stations will thin out. You'll speed past a long, long stretch of pristine woodland for an hour, and then you'll end up on the land where I was born and raised. A "town" that, at its peak, had a population of 378.
The story of our existence is pretty straightforward. Now, we had hardly anything to our name, but it was gorgeous out there in the boonies. Not the kind of view you'd find in any city. Crystal-clear lakes, endless pine forest that left your sinuses feeling tingly-fresh, lush green grass perfect for lazy weekend picnics. It was a hidden piece of the world. Us townspeople, we were a tight-knit community, our bonds strengthened through quiet isolation from the rest of the world. We left our front doors unlocked. Maybe we were a little archaic in our ways, but that can only be expected from such a small settling.
But as lovely as our sanctuary was, it wasn't going to last. The young people were leaving to attend college and navigate the far corners of the world. The old were getting older. You can't sustain people on happiness alone.
When I was just a kid - fifteen, I think - this hotshot oil magnate decided that we would be the perfect destination for his summer home. Whittaker, that was the family name. I had never heard of him before, but he was big news, worth more than everyone and everything in our town combined. He was seeking out a little slice of peace and quiet in the country, and he fell in love with the place right away - who could blame him? It wasn't like we had much of a a choice in the matter; Whittaker had enough clout to mow down any opposition, and really, what would we have done? Staged a protest with our staggering numbers?
For a year, there were the raucous construction crews, carving out a suitable lot from the earth. The mansion rose from the ground like an unstoppable force of nature: first its raised brick foundation, then its bare-bones frame, slowly packing on meat and muscle and finally a red-brick skin. Every day, a swarm of flies in orange vests buzzing over our heads. Every day, the sounds of destruction and construction filling our ears. The Whittakers wanted an enormous pool in their backyard, so they chopped down the trees and drained the streams. The Whittakers were worried about local wildlife hurting their pair of designer-breed Great Danes, so they had trappers brought in to wipe out the coyotes and foxes. Suddenly there was a sour tinge to the fresh country air: resentment, bitter and strong on our tongues. Nobody likes a stranger coming into their home.
I tried to ignore it; I tried to settle back into normality. I babysat for five dollars an hour and volunteered at our town's senior center on Sundays. Well, it was really just Mrs. Watterson's house, which she opened up on the weekends for the white-haired and cloudy-eyed to gather together and play blackjack and poker. My "job" was pretty much to refill the jugs of mint iced tea, help out if someone wanted something from a high shelf, and make sure Mrs. Watterson's dog didn't soil the carpet. The old folks were nice enough to me, when they weren't too busy trading old gossip over their card games. They grumbled about the construction, of course, but I tuned them out. It made things fade into the background for a while.
When the mansion was finally done, the town held its breath until the day the family pulled up in a glossy black limo. There was Whittaker and his wife, and Caroline, their seventeen-year-old daughter. The three of them tall and regal and groomed. Caroline was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. She made me and the other girls in town look lumpy and plain, with her wardrobe of designer clothes and french manicures, but there was something cold about her, something that kept any of us from trying to talk to her. Not that there were that many opportunities for that, anyway. Her family rarely left their sprawling villa - they had no reason to. There was nothing in the town for them, nothing at all, and the feeling was mutual: we wanted to forget they were there at all. Unnfortunately, that didn't happen. Not on our end. Their mansion towered high over our one-story houses, making us feel small. Insignificant.
In the weeks following their arrival, I sensed fresh discontent brewing in the senior home. Nobody wanted them there. Half their conversations were spent talking about how Whittakers didn't belong here, they needed to leave, they'd get what was coming to them.
Still, in the midst of all the townspeople's anger, I couldn't help but feel drawn to the family and their otherworldly existence. In my head, I came up with a name for them: Shinies. I thought it suited them well, you know what I mean? The luster of salon-treated hair and plumped, glossy lips. The oiled, overstretched look of skin that'd seen one too many a facelift. The sheen of custom-tailored Armani suits and strings of Tahitian white pearls. Shiny smiles and shiny purses and shiny shoes and shiny houses; everything about them was so shiny. I was dazzled. On the rare occasions that I did see them in person, I couldn't help but stare, transfixed by the family that seemed to have come from another time in another world.
Over time, thank god, the starstruck feeling began to ebb away. I guess I went through an adjustment period like any other, except I was adjusting to the fact that there were people who existed outside of my town, something which had never really seemed to cement itself in my brain before. With enough time, it seemed that things were going to return to normal.
Until the construction of the statues.