No.
She tears it. Once down the middle. Then again. And again. Neat, deliberate strips, each one separated with a decisive rip that I can hear from thirty feet away through seven feet of premium boxwood.
She sprinkles the strips into the hole.
She's mulching with my citation.
My citation, with its perfect margins and its footnoted subsections and its carefully calibrated seventy-five-dollar fine, is becoming compost in a hole she can barely dig.
She scoops the clay back over the paper strips, pats it down with her palm, and sits back on her heels. Wipes her forehead with the back of her wrist, leaving a fresh streak of earth. Grins at the patch of dirt like she's just planted a flag on enemy territory.
The screwdriver finally ejects from her bun and lands point-first in the dirt beside her.
She doesn't even flinch. Just picks it up and jams it back in.
My hedge has a dent. Two dents. Both from my hands.
I release the boxwood. Step back. Straighten my tee shirt.
She's still grinning.
The dents in my hedge require emergency corrective pruning. I retrieve the hand shears from hook eleven, kneel at the eastern face, and begin reshaping the compressed boxwood with small, precise cuts. Each snip restores a centimeter of dignity. The shears are Japanese carbon steel, hand-forged by a bladesmith in Kyoto who understands that a clean cut is a moral act.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
"Hey! Flynn!"
Snip.
"Flynn, I know you're behind there. I can see your head. You're very tall and the hedge has dents."
I keep cutting. The boxwood will recover. I will recover. Order will be restored.
Footsteps in grass. Not my grass. Her grass, which is more weed than grass, more chaos than lawn. The footsteps approach the fence line, and then something heavy scrapes against wood.
"I'm putting something on the fence for you."
I do not respond. Subsection 4.2.3 of the neighborhood covenant clearly states that fence-line interactions should be conducted during designated community hours, which are Saturdays from 10 a.m. to noon.
"It's an apology."
The word lands strange. Unexpected. I pause mid-snip.
"I was a jerk about the fertilizer thing. I mean, you were also a jerk about the laminated list thing, and the nail gun thing, and the seventy-five-dollar fine thing, but I started it with the fertilizer cloud, so."
A grunt escapes me. Involuntary. Acknowledging nothing.
"Anyway, I'm giving you a plant."
No.
"It's a really nice one."
Absolutely not.
"It's a Verdant Cascade vine. Super rare. I grew it from a cutting I got from a witch in Vermont who owed me a favor. It's gorgeous, Flynn. Deep green leaves, almost the same shade as your—" A pause. "As your lawn."
I stand. The shears hang at my side. Through the gap where the hedge meets the fence, a sliver of traffic cone orange.
