Page 8 of Down Bad

I spot Wyatt in his kitchen window. Watching.

The next instant, he’s gone.

What’s his problem now? Is this prehistoric mower breaking some neighborhood sound ordinance? He about to report me to the noise police?

Though he didn’t exactly look mad.

Maybe he knows some trick to getting this thing started. He’s going back and forth in his head on whether to come out and help. Making a spreadsheet and flowchart. A list of pros and cons about whether helping me out will make things better.

I don’t get that about guys like Wyatt. The less nice you are, the more determined they are to make you like them. Like it’s an arm wrestling match in slow-mo, but with smiles.

He should give up. Stay in that house. And leave me alone.

Everyone else does.

Always had a set of eyes on me, ever since I was a kid. Scared of me. Or waiting for me to fail. Teachers. My tío. Doesn’t make a difference, they’re all the same.

But someday soon, I’m gonna get that car in the driveway up and running again, have all my shit figured out, and tear down the highway to wherever. Everyone else can eat my dust.

Except maybe Tía Lottie.

She’s always been an exception.

Probably the only reason I agreed to stay here.

That, and kinda having fucking nowhere else to go, I guess.

I’m fucking dying in this heat. I take a break between yanks of the cord to peel this tank top off. Takes an effort, with as sweaty as I already am. Tuck the drenched-ass tank into the waistband of my jeans. Then I’m back to yanking away.

Taking the shirt off must’ve been the trick, because after way too many tries, I finally get the mower chugging to life. Off I go.

My tía sure wasn’t kidding. This lawn is overgrown as all hell. Blades of grass poking out this way and that, a rope of it trying to grow across the sidewalk. Knee-tall weeds springing up wherever they want.

I start tearing it all up and taking names as I wipe the lawn clean with this old dinosaur, row by row.

Just under the front window is a whole-ass empire of weeds reaching up nearly as high as the windowsill. Colorful weeds, I’ll give them that, but weeds nonetheless.

Like a tedious chore Tío Marcos left me to deal with.

So I deal with them.

Run the thorny bastards right over until the mower’s spitting out shreds of blue and yellow back at the lawn.

When I come around the corner to do the side, I hear a shout.

I already know it’s Wyatt, even before I turn around to find him standing there between our houses, mouth open, eyes wide like he can’t believe what he’s seeing.

I was joking earlier about the noise police thing.

Now I wonder if I should’ve taken it seriously.

“What’d you do??” he cries out, turning his shout into words.

I release the mower, leaving it clicking and rumbling in idle, then follow Wyatt’s line of sight to the colorful weed confetti I left under the front window.

I look at him. “What’s the problem?”

He slowly turns his two blank-ass eyes onto me. “You … You mowed over the …” His eyes crinkle in disbelief. “Did you seriously not see the flowerbed here?”