My Neighbors .

At the beginning of third grade, the teacher assigned us a Polish essay on one of the selected topics. I chose the topic "My Neighbors" because I had an adventure last year. I didn't tell my parents about it, or even the nice policeman when he asked me if I'd seen anything strange. He asked me because he knew Bartek was my friend. So, last summer, I experienced something I'd never told anyone before. I'll write an essay about it because I think it's a good topic. But there's another reason I'm writing about my adventure.

I think I'll start by saying that Bartek has always been strange. When we played football with the boys, he always told us he imagined the ball was his older sister Marta's head. Marta was three years older than Bartek, and all my friends would turn to look at her whenever she walked by. What I mean by that is that Marta was very pretty, and almost every friend of mine was secretly in love with her. But Bartek hated her. Whenever we came home, he would tell me that if he could, he would kill her. I remember well one day, after a trip to the railroad tracks, which were very far from our homes, we were walking back together. It was probably three o'clock, and I wanted to be home before my parents arrived because my mother wouldn't let me go to the tracks. She told me that I might be kidnapped by a tramp or hit by a train. Even though I'm terrified of tramps, I always went to the tracks with Bartek because then we felt like cowboys. We'd pretend we were defending trains from Billy the Kid's gang, and we'd always take a handful of old coins with us to put on the tracks. The passing train would flatten them, creating really cool shapes. This was about three days before that happened. We were walking back along the river that flowed through the meadows we were walking through. I had about five flattened coins in my pocket, one of which was simply wonderful. We were playing "cock or hen," pretending we were cowboys, looking for criminals to shoot. And then Bartek became lost in thought, as he always did when he thought about his family, and he said something I still remember, because I thought he sounded like an adult. No kid ever spoke like that.

"You know what, Mati?" Bartek asked me. All my friends call me Mati. "I feel useless. My parents just gloat over that brat, and if something bad happens, it's my fault because I'm younger. They only buy her new clothes and other stupid things. When I saw new Adidas shoes in a store window once and told my parents, they told me they wouldn't buy them for me because I'd ruin them. I know I'm small and stupid, but I think they don't want me." I could hear the real hatred in his voice. "She came home with muddy shoes once and messed up the carpet, and when my father saw it, he didn't even ask who did it, he just took me on his knee and spanked me. Or, another time, she stole two cigarettes from my father, and it was all over me again when my father couldn't count them. I hate them all and would gladly kill them. But I know if I do, they'll put me in jail."

That's just how Bartek was, and when he talked like that, he scared me. But beyond that, he was perfectly fine. I never believed it could be anything more than idle chatter. But when he talked like that, there was something in his eyes that truly frightened me. A glint I didn't understand. The next evening, at Bartek's, we watched the horror movies he'd rented that morning. He must have had some truth to what he was saying, because while I was sitting in his room (his parents let him move the video to his room, but reminded him that if he broke it, he'd get a beating he'd remember for the rest of his life), my parents never once came in to see what we were doing, let alone bring me any cookies. My parents would never let me watch movies like that. We spent the entire evening eating chips we'd bought that afternoon, laughing and freaking out, or hiding under a blanket when a scene was truly awful. But the most important thing is the movie we watched at the end. It was about a boy from an orphanage who killed the families who adopted him. At one point, when I looked at Bartek, he had that look in his eyes again that terrified me. He stared at the screen, his mouth open, seemingly transfixed. Bartek watched with such rapt attention the scene where the kid had tied the entire family up around the table and turned on the gas in the stove. Then he snatched the little daughter of the couple who adopted him out of her crib, gave her a lighter to play with, and then quickly fled the house. Moments later, the house exploded and burst into flames. When the police later asked him where he was, he said he was playing behind the house when it exploded. He returned to the orphanage and waited for the next family to adopt him. When the film ended, Bartek still looked lost in thought.

"Bartek, are you okay?" I asked, genuinely frightened, but he seemed not to have heard me. "Bartek," I repeated, and he looked at me, and what I had seen in his eyes vanished.

"There's still some time, shall we play Monopoly?" he asked as if nothing had happened, but his cheeks were still flushed. Anyway, we played Monopoly for the rest of the evening, and I didn't ask him what happened to him during the movie because I was so scared. I haven't seen him since. The next day, I went to Greece with my parents for two weeks. It was a reward for finishing that year with a five-zero average. I had a wonderful time. We swam in the sea with my parents, and I met some cool guys from Poland there. Once, my parents let me go down a giant slide straight into the sea. I came back all tanned and with lots of memories. When we arrived, I immediately ran to Bartek. I wanted to tell him everything I'd experienced in Greece, and besides, my dad had bought me two samurai swords so we could pretend fight. But when I reached the place where Bartek's house should have been, I couldn't believe my eyes. The house was gone, and in its place stood blackened ruins from the fire. The entire area was cordoned off with police tape, like those crime scenes in cops and robbers movies. I stood there for about half an hour, staring at what was left of his house, unable to comprehend what had happened. It occurred to me that Bartek had used the scene from the movie to finally fulfill all the desires that terrified me, but Mr. Zawadzki, who lived across the street from Bartek, came out to me and explained what had happened.

"They must have left the gas on, and while everyone was sitting at breakfast, someone must have lit a match or a lighter, because the house blew up with such a bang that I thought it was World War III." The fire department arrived, but when they put out the fire, all that remained of the house was what you see now. They counted four bodies. So they were all roasted. I shouldn't have told you this, but all that was left were skeletons, and even those were pretty badly melted."

I remember bursting into tears and running home. I told my parents everything. My dad didn't believe me at first, but then, I think when he looked at my face, he realized I wasn't lying. I cried until late, and when I fell asleep, I dreamed I was returning from one of my trips to the tracks with Bartek. I walked beside him with my head down, listening to him say he hated his family. I didn't want to look at him, but my head lifted and turned on its own. I saw a skeleton, just like the one in our biology classroom, only this one was melted in places, walking beside me. Instead of holes where the eyes should have been, I saw small flames. Two days later, the policeman came to ask me a few questions because the guys from the neighborhood said I was his best friend. I don't know what he wanted from me, but he asked me about all sorts of things. Finally, he asked me if I'd seen anything strange or if there was anything going on they should know about.

"Is something wrong?" my dad asked. "I mean, it was just an accident, right? You see, my son was deeply affected by the death of his friend, and we wouldn't want him to just relax and avoid stress.

" "Of course," the kind policeman replied, looking me in the eye. I wanted to tell him about that evening we watched movies, but at the last moment I bit my tongue. I didn't want my parents and that kind man to mistake me for a little child with an overactive imagination. He ruffled my hair and then reached into his pocket. He took a lollipop out and gave it to me.

A week later, my dad took me to the cemetery. He took me to Bartek's grave and told me to say goodbye. He said it was the best way to come to terms with the death of loved ones. He said it was best to tell them what we never told them in life and wish them a happy life in heaven among the angels. I said goodbye to him, and it really helped. As I walked to school, I barely thought about what had happened, and I only had the skeleton dream twice more. Now I think I shouldn't have said goodbye to it.

When I started school in September, we had biology on the third day. In the biology classroom, by the entrance door, there was always a skeleton, which I've written about before. Mrs. Łuczaj, our biology teacher, always boasted that it was a real, preserved human skeleton. The thing is, when I entered the classroom for biology on the third day, the skeleton was gone. I couldn't concentrate on what Mrs. Łuczaj was saying throughout the entire lesson. After class, I asked her what happened to "ziutek" (that's what we called our skeleton), and she told me that someone had broken a window during the holidays and stolen it.

That was my adventure. I wrote about this because it seems like a good topic, but I also wrote it because I've been having increasingly worse nightmares at night, and when I wake up, it seems like someone's watching me through the window, even though I live upstairs. Once, when I was at a museum with my parents, I saw a tour of an orphanage. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed someone watching me, and when I looked at the other side, I thought I saw Bartek looking over his shoulder at me, but the boy immediately turned away, and I didn't have time to get a good look at his face. I didn't run after him and check if it was him. To this day, I don't know if it was him or if I just imagined it. But I think it was a good thing, because I really didn't want to know.