Page 10 of Down Bad

“I have love. I have respect.”

“You just destroyed a flowerbed.”

“By accident.”

“Not to mention ripping down her curtains—”

“Curtains?” I don’t realize we’ve stepped closer, practically in each other’s faces now. “The hell’s this about curtains?”

“All I’m saying is …” He lets out a huff of agitation. “You need to be the border, Diego. Not the mower.”

His words stop whatever I was about to say.

Leaves me staring him down, confused. Then struck.

Then annoyed again.

The mower continues growling behind me, clicking in its own kind of agitation, waiting.

What am I supposed to say now? “I can go and … pick up some bricks. Or wood. Something to make a border.”

“Don’t bother.” He turns and walks away.

The hell? “I said I—Hey!—I said I’ll get some bricks and—” My eyes drop to what looks like a full grocery bag sitting in the grass where he stood. Was he holding that the whole time? Didn’t even notice. I pick it up. It’s heavy. “Hey, you left your—!”

But he’s already back in his house.

It’s over.

Yet feels far from.

He doesn’t have to like me. But going from smiling nice guy to whatever that was? Telling me to put on a shirt because we can’t have a civil conversation otherwise?

I look down at the bag.

At the top, a Hadley’s Hardware sticker slapped on a package.

It’s a toolbox.

Receipt tucked in next to it, folded nicely in half with its price scratched out.

I look over at his house again, the front window, the one he was looking at me through earlier.

No eyes are looking back.

I throw the bag into the garage by the door, wanting nothing to do with it or him, then return to the rumbling mower, release the brake, and get my ass back to work under the punishing early evening sun. Despite trying not to, I keep eyeing his house every few seconds, confused.

—3—

Wyatt

I ask my parents for advice.

Y’know, on what to do in a hypothetical petulant man-child-next-door situation.

But ever since leaving on their cross-country “journey of self-discovery”—which we all knew was code for “midlife crisis/second honeymoon”—it’s difficult to get them to take me seriously. Mom always sounds high. Dad’s always in the middle of a nap. I’ve been on my own for the last few years and no one’s fooling anyone.

And is this really something worth bothering them over?