The Kids Up the Street
Shane Denherder

When I was seven years old, some new kids moved into my neighborhood.  Though, when I say “neighborhood,” this was more like a loose municipality of country homesteads that averaged two to five acres each.

I spotted these new kids while riding my bike home from a friend’s house. Seeing other kids on bikes was rare in this neighborhood and definitely a cause for celebration. As I sped toward them with my heart rate increasing, I noticed the prominent waiving of bright-orange safety flags affixed to their bikes. These poor kids were also made to wear bike helmets, which were unheard of in those times. I knew these kids were strange, but I wanted to check them out. I introduced myself, in the awkward way that a seven-year-old does, to Aaron and Cody. Aaron was about a year older than me, and Cody was barely old enough to be riding a bike.

I remember their dad— always within earshot of us, pretending not to be spying. Upon first meeting, he asked probing questions about where I lived and what my family was like, the types of questions that make a seven-year-old shut down. These were the classic “helicopter parents” that we hear so much about nowadays, but with an authoritarian twist. They were incredibly strict about every aspect of the brothers’ lives. It seemed as though anytime we hung out, they got in trouble for something trivial and received harsh punishments. Though it wasn’t always trivial— Aaron’s moral compass was a bit off. He and I once thought it was a good idea to sneak onto a neighbor’s property and play around in one of the old broken-down cars. He found a bunch of cigarette butts in the ashtray and pocketed them to go experiment with later. Keep in mind— he was eight.

Cody was different. The tag-along little brother, who was always excited to be hanging out with us, seemed to be a happy kid despite being born to the strictest parents I’d ever encountered.

While playing around in their backyard one day, we heard a big “boom.” The brothers assured me that it was just a varmint trap that was in the yard. They led me over to the device on the side of their house, and I was both shocked and intrigued by what I saw. Their dad had fabricated a tall metal trap that sat over a molehill and employed a shotgun shell. If a creature came up through the hole obstructed by a lever, the shotgun shell was discharged straight down into the hole. The boom we heard was the device destroying a mole.

It took me a minute to piece together what had just happened as I surveyed the contraption and the bloody mess beneath it. Their dad came running around the corner, irate that they had shown me his illegal masterpiece's inner workings. He took them back inside and yelled at me to go home, presumably so that he could inflict pain with “the paddle.” The brothers never came to see me after that, no doubt, on their dad's strict orders.

My parents divorced later that year, and I moved into the city shortly after. I didn’t return to live in that neighborhood until I was in high school— an effort to get me back to a better school district and away from the “bad seeds” with which I had assimilated. I soon made friends, had a girlfriend, and commuted to and from school in my own car.

While driving up the street one day with my girlfriend Erin, I asked her if she ever knew the kids who lived in that old house. She got quiet. Her eyes welled up with tears, and she began crying, telling me Cody's fate. When he was 13 years old, he died by “accidental asphyxiation.” The official report said he had accidentally hanged himself while trying to play the “pass-out-game.” In his bedroom, by himself. Everyone who knew him assumed it was suicide.

Suicide rates have almost doubled in kids aged 10-24 since 2007, and nearly tripled in kids 10-14. When Cody died in 1995, suicide statistics were not available for 13-year-olds.

Cody was an extreme extrovert with many friends, but Erin said that he was deeply depressed in his last months. Their eldest brother, who was severely disabled, had passed away a year prior. Aaron went to a juvenile detention facility when he was 15 years old. Cody was now the only one left in the house, and he would get the lion’s share of the attention from his parents.

Looking back on my first encounter with the brothers, it ’s sadly ironic that their parents emphasized protecting them from the dangers outside the home while ignoring the threat from within.