“You want to go first or second?”
“First,” he grumbled.
“I can do the other part,” Lou interjected.
“Goo, the handle is taller than you are. You’ll end up running your brother and me over, hitting a car, mowing down a cat or two, and catching something on fire. No thanks. Maybe when you’re sixteen.”
He took it as a compliment, his expression practically beaming. “Okay.” Like he was really proud of the mayhem I thought he was capable of.
“Let me show you how to turn it on, J,” I said and went on to instruct him how to use the machine even though I knew for a fact he’d done it with my dad a few times.
By the time Josh was done, I’d shoved and tripped Louie into three different piles of leaves, and then we had to clean them up afterward. The backyard wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t going to bust Josh’s balls over it, and I settled for sticking my pinky in his ear. “Good job, hambone. Now you have to bag the leaves in the front with Goo.”
The expression on his face made it seem like I was trying to poison him or something. His shoulders slumped and he lumbered toward the front yard with Mac barking from inside the house; I’d closed the dog door on him so he wouldn’t sneak out while we’d been busy. I finally let him out, shutting the gate in his face to leave him in the backyard. Josh was still bumbling around when we got to the front, and I didn’t think twice about putting my index finger to my lips while his back was turned and telling Lou not to say anything.
He didn’t.
In what would probably be one of the last times I was capable of, I picked Josh up in a cradle hold while he screamed, “No! No! You better not!”
I laughed, noting subconsciously how heavy he was.
He shook his head as he thrashed in my arms. “No!”
Obviously, I ignored him even though he was inches from my face. “Louie, he’s saying yes, right?”
“Uh-huh,” the little traitor agreed, his hands over his mouth as he giggled.
Eyeing the biggest pile of leaves, I walked over to it, struggling more than just a little with Josh’s weight as he yelled, “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!”
“Do it? You want me to drop you in the leaves?”
And as he kept yelling for me to have a heart, I dropped him like a sack of potatoes. He’d live. My dad had done it to me enough times as a kid in piles smaller than this one. A couple of bruises weren’t going to kill him.
And sure enough, he acted like he’d gotten shot.
I wasn’t sure how it happened, but somehow I ended up on the ground, too. Before I knew it, Louie went flying squirrel on us and dove on top of his older brother. At some point, I noticed my shoes had been thrown across the yard. It wasn’t until they were both draped on top of me, trapping me on the ground and pressing an elbow down on my crotch while a forearm squished my boob, that I started smacking the palm of my hand down on the grass. “I give up. Jesus—”
“Abuelitasaid you’re not supposed to be saying that,” Lou corrected me from his spot the furthest away from my face.
“I know whatAbuelitasays,” I groaned as the elbow over my pubic bone pressed down on it again, making me cringe and try to buck Josh off. “But you know what elseAbuelitasays? Don’t be a snitch.”
“She doesn’t say that,” Josh argued, crushing my mams.
“Yeah, she does. Ask her next time.” They wouldn’t ask, and I’d bet my mom didn’t know what a snitch was anyway. I hoped.
Mac was howling in the background from the yard, fully aware he was missing out on playtime and losing his mind.
Josh hopped up to his feet, giving my poor chi-chis a break, and then held out a hand to help me up—which filled me with a stupid amount of pride. It wasn’t until I was standing that I looked around the yard and saw the mess we made. Fuck. “Shi—oot.”
“Ugh,” was his response.
“Let me grab the rakes so I can help you get this all together.” I sighed again, tiptoeing over to pick up my shoes and put them back on.
“I got it,” Louie said, already running toward the gate that led to the backyard.
I wasn’t thinking, otherwise I would have remembered that Mac was going to barrel right through him once the door was opened. Just as I yelled, “Wait, Lou,” the big, shaggy, white beast did just what I had expected. He knocked Lou to the side as he sprinted across the front yard, zig-zagging in excitement like he’d been imprisoned for the last decade.
And like the paranoid, worrywart I was, I immediately envisioned him running onto the street and getting hit by an imaginary car.
