Ivyland by Miles Klee

weird.”
    â€œWhat is?” No answer. “Nothing else to do.”
    â€œGet some bottles and play Submarine.”
    â€œI’m bored of Submarine. “Come on, wienie-puff.” I absently karate-kick at the waist-high grass along the curb, pausing every few seconds to tear crumbly caps off of the blades and flick the powder at Henri.
    â€œWould you stop!” he pleads, unable to suppress a giggle.
    â€œWeenie-puff, weenie-puff,” I chant, like he’s stepping up to the plate. He really can hit.
    â€œYou can’t make me. So far, too.” He’s not exaggerating: probably about seventy-five steps to the top, and steep ones. “This is so stupid.”
    â€œThat’s why we do it. Stupid kids. Weenie-puff.”
    â€œPish-posh.”
    â€œPish-posh? Are you, like, the Queen of England now?”
    â€œâ€˜Pish-posh’ is a perfectly acceptable term.”
    â€œYou saying ‘pish-posh,’ that’s the pish-posh.”
    â€œI’ll go up if you stop saying ‘pish-posh.’ “
    â€œDeal. After you.” I jab my index finger into his spine to get us going. The steps have wooden frames but are filled in with gravel. I occasionally grab a handful and toss a gentle spray at Henri.
    â€œWhat is it with you and throwing things?”
    The lawn is drier and pale as the hill stretches upward. When I start to listen to him, Henri is saying something about how human waste that ends up in septic tanks is sold as fertilizer once the solid waste and pathogens and stuff are filtered out.
    â€œThat why you’re always shitting on your lawn?”
    â€œSaid you have to filter it.”
    â€œCould you walk any slower?”
    â€œTold you this hill would suck.”
    â€œFine, stay here.”
    I shove Henri aside and bound up the remaining steps, leaving him next to a fat pine near the top. When I arrive at a crumbling brick stoop, I notice all the creepy paraphernalia of a person who tried to fit in but failed spectacularly: a battalion of lawn ornaments dot the crest of the hill, many with parts designed to spin in the breeze. They’re motionless, rusted in place. Wooden wind chimes, maybe a dozen sets, bonily chatter from freestanding steel rods. The first floor windows are caked with dust on the inside.
    â€œHenri?” I turn to hiss. There’s only a rustling. Out of a desire to get it over with, I tiptoe up to the door and find the mailbox off to one side, turn the old-fashioned red flag thing up to the ‘got mail’ position. Pointless, really. I start back down two steps at a time.
    Behind me, from the house, comes a definite thump. I veer off the path, twist my ankle on tilted ground and go down in a cloud of limbs. Scrambling with hands and feet, I get behind the pine Henri had been waiting near and peek around it at the front stoop. There’s a screech as the screen door swings out savagely, then a snort as the man who opened it steps outside.
    Wet, yellowish skin: looks like he sweats potato-chip grease, but every third day it’s gasoline instead. He rocks side to side on filthy feet while surveying the property from his stoop, dressed only in a stained tank top and boxer-briefs the color of old paper, with a pistol jammed in the elastic waistband.
    The raised red lever on his mailbox registers at last; he flings the tin thing open and slams it shut in one motion. He stares at the closed mailbox like he’s trying to meld minds with a higher life force. Then he punches it, leaving a crater. The sound coaxes a woman’s voice from inside the house—can’t be made out, but the inflection is of casual worry.
    â€œSupposed to get a check today,” he yells in. “Dickhead mailman is playing games .” He wrenches the red flag off and hurls it down the hill, then brandishes the gun, asserting its realness, and disappears inside to answer a follow-up question from the female voice. I crawl