She walked through her apartment looking for her dog. There weren’t many places to look: Her space had been partitioned into a living and small kitchen area, a bedroom, and the intolerable bathroom. As she was on the ground floor, she also had an exit to the backyard with a dog door. Mr. Contreras had tried to charge her extra for that access, but Lorna had countered that the fact her bathroom was a closet ought to bring the price down. In the end, he did not raise her rent, and Agnes was free to come and go as she pleased while Lorna was at work.
The large backyard was available to all the residents, but until a couple of months ago, Lorna and Agnes were the only ones who ever used it. It was overgrown in some places, bare in others. The flower beds grew nothing but weeds now.
But then a kid had moved in across the hall from her. On the day he and his dad moved in, the kid had spotted her—or rather, Agnes—when they’d come back from a walk. “I like your dog!” he shouted at her from across the lawn.
Of course he liked her dog—everyoneliked her dog. With a curt nod of acknowledgment, Lorna had kept walking.
“Can I pet it?” he shouted.
Lorna stopped walking. She did not want to stand in the sun and humor the kid, but she also didn’t want to seem like a witch. “It’s not an it; it’s a her.”
The boy took that as a yes and came charging toward them. His dad, laden with two boxes, was apparently perfectly fine with his son petting a stranger’s dog. He’d barely even registered them before disappearing inside.
The kid had round cheeks, blue eyes, and reddish-brown hair that was in desperate need of a comb. Sweat poured off him—not that he seemed to notice. She thought he was seven or eight, overweight in a way that made her ache for him because she knew from personal experience how cruel kids could be.
As he squatted down next to Agnes, his face split with a broad smile. “I love dogs. They are my favorite animal. But also sloths are my favorite because they’re really cool.”
“Sloths?” Lorna had recoiled slightly. “Sloths are no comparison to dogs, sir.”
“What’s your dog’s name?”
“Agnes.”
“Hi, Agnes.Hiii,” he said, scratching her behind the ears.
Agnes lapped up the attention like warm milk, her bobbed tail wagging hard. The kid laughed at her eagerness. Then the man came out and yelled and the kid got up. “Bye!” He ran off.
Since that day, the kid was always in the yard, and if he was in the back, Agnes was with him. Agnes adored him.
Lorna suspected Little Mr. Sunshine was responsible for the thudding and went to the back door. She turned the lock and then stepped out onto her small landing. Just as she did, a large object whizzed past her head, slammed into the side of the house, and bounced up and off again. She’d almost been decapitated by a soccer ball.
“Sorry!” the kid called out as he and Agnes chased after the ball.
“You should look where you’re kicking,” Lorna said irritably, but the kid was too far away to hear. “Agnes, come!”
Agnes ignored her. The kid kicked the ball again, this time sending it to the back of the lawn.
“Fine.” Lorna walked down the few rickety steps onto the lawn, then followed the path that led to the creek. There used to be pavers here, but they were long gone. She could feel the heels of her sensible pumps sinking into the loamy dirt and wished she’d thought to take them off. The kid was squatting in the grass, looking down at something. And Agnes was beside him, digging furiously, kicking up dirt that landed on Lorna’s pant legs until she thought to move. That’s when she noticed a very big hole in a bald patch of the grass. “What’s this?” she demanded, gesturing wildly to the hole.
The kid pulled the soccer ball out of it and looked up at her, blinking in the sun. “It’s a hole.”
“I see that it is obviously a hole, but what is it doing here? Agnes, stop that,” she commanded.
Agnes stopped for a moment, turned her dirt-covered snout to look at Lorna, then gleefully resumed.
“Aggie and I dug it today.”
“Why?”
He examined the hole as if searching for the answer there. Honestly! Like this house wasn’t falling around them as it was. The lawn was so unkempt that a boy could see it and believe it the best place for a hole.
“Do you have a shovel?” Lorna asked, making a mental note of the complaint she’d submit to Mr. Contreras.Children should not have shovels to dig holes for no apparent reason.
“The shovel is over there,” the kid said, pointing to a smallequipment shed that was leaning slightly to the left. And there was the shovel, propped up against the wall. So typical of the yard crew—they left out equipment that the tenants’ rent paid for to be stolen or taken up by young boys with bad ideas.
“But I found this really cool metal thingy.” The kid dropped the ball and looked around the grass, then triumphantly produced a green metal stake, the sort that plastic fencing was tied to.
Lorna stared at it. Then she stared at his red, sweaty face. “You found this and thought,I’ll just dig a massive hole?”
