Because we want to be grown up we play war like adults do. Trevor shoots balloons filled with garbage at our house and I sneak an old boombox in the hedges and blast bubble gum punk after midnight until they bash through the greenery and turn it off. Nate sprays wobbly driveway propaganda over hopscotch squares and pastel unicorns drawn by Andy’s little sister Sad. Short for Sadistic we joke though we don’t know what that means. Because she’s youngest Sad plays the role of the busted baby, disfigured or left for dead which means we park her somewhere quiet and ignore her. ‘How come I’m always the baby,’ she screams but we’re launching ops against Nick’s front window, curtains drawn against his mom who no one has seen past the trash cans for months. When the glass shatters from our rocks her empty face scares us more than fury so we shout and point fingers shuffling backwards until we get home to suck cold cucumbers and candy.
Emily joins in when she feels like it which isn’t often because we make her play the mother or widow, always crying, always screaming, all tears and fists hammering the pavement linking our post-war houses or the plush grass where yellow-headed dandelions aren’t allowed, just another battle waged here.
‘It’s a game’ we say when our parents scold us but at some point the pranks stop making us roll on the ground laughing and we stop meeting up after to plot or talk about anything else, it’s all war and silence and instead of trash balloons Trevor leaves shit on our grass and then in my school locker. Instead of music in hedges I light a small fire in the garage where Trevor’s father spends most of his time and Nate dips a towel in the flame and hurls it toward the house though his aim is bad and it flops in the zucchini bed. We stop bringing Nick over to watch movies in our basement when his dad breaks things, we just call police and watch his father windmill all over the driveway, his mother quiet behind the squawking radio, red and blue streaking our houses and Nick bleeding tiny crescents in his palms.
In class we draw lines for others not to cross and slice open our coke cans when they do, carving jagged welts on each other’s forearms like contour maps. Our parents come to the school and Nate’s dad says sorry but mine blames Trevor’s dad and Nick’s tries to intervene so they both go at him and soon they’re shouting over the teacher and canceling the street barbecue.
Later Nick steals Andy’s lawnmower and someone complains to the city about overgrown grass so the bureaucrats come and Andy’s dad says he’ll call police over the stolen lawnmower and Andy kidnaps Sad and won’t say where he took her even when Trevor and I arrive with baseball bats, not because we care, just to bash his head in. We bust his arm before they stop us and he passes out for some reason and no one finds Sad for two days. She’s mostly fine and not even crying but she doesn’t talk for a while.
Mom scoops me and Emily up to our aunt’s house because ‘this neighbourhood’s bonkers.’ Emily and I and lemonade our aunt makes us tart and cool on our tongues, her warm garden smelling of honeysuckle and sprinklers, no friends or dad but separation is part of war. We feel very grown up, we just like we thought.