I’d turned my face away from hers without answering, and she’d assigned her own personal meaning to that, as people generally do. Who needs pretending when people do your work for you?

“Um, good for you,” I say to my weird locker room buddy who’s making me reassess my newfound fitness goals. “Congrats.”

“You like your job, man?” he asks.

“I like it well enough,” I lie.

“If you’re looking for something on the side, I can get you in at my agency. We have the lockdown on this neighborhood, and with VerenTech moving in? It’s gonna change everything.” He mimics an explosion with a loud kaboosh. “You ever see pictures of an atomic bomb drop? Not the mushroom cloud, but that energy rippling out, completely changing the landscape? That’s what VerenTech’s about to do here.”

“You know that isn’t a good thing, right?”

He chuckles. “Depends on who you ask. Get in now if you want that good money, bro. I can hook you up.”

He hands me a card, which I take with pinched thumb and forefinger because he’s sitting here in tightie-whities and I don’t know where he pulled it from.

The card has a weird font that’s supposed to be trendy but just makes it hard to read: William Bilford, Real Estate Master, BVT Realty.

“Yeah. Thanks. I appreciate it.”

A couple of Black dudes walk in from their shower and William Bilford turns back to putting on his clothes, winking at me as he does. I guess this is what happens when you stop skulking in your room or walking the streets when no one is around—you run into some really weird people.

I tuck the card into the pocket on the side of my gym bag, then make my way back toward Gifford Place, walking slow and taking everything in. It’s slightly less humid than when I went in—the telltale puddles show it rained sometime during my workout, and there’s a light breeze coming down the street, cool on my wet scalp. The sounds of this larger street amplify whatever feel-good hormones the treadmill has pumped into me: the squeal of a bus’s brakes as it screeches to a halt down the street, the flap of a pigeon’s wings as it takes off after stealing a bread crust from a small brown bird, the roll of tires on wet asphalt.

I almost stop walking as it really hits me: I’m in a good mood. Despite the weird night I had and the fact that my maybe-ex-girlfriend/co-homeowner is clearly stepping out on me. The basic facts of my life haven’t changed, and even if I don’t feel like shit, I’m still a piece of it, but I don’t really care about that right now. Because—

I spot Sydney through a gap in the foliage that clings to the chain-link fence in front of the community garden that I’ve passed countless times. I’d checked out its value, wondering how it still existed in an area where houses would soon be on the market for a million-plus, but now I really see all the bright beauty of it. Sydney is on her hands and knees, her hair styled in long, thin teal-tipped braids cinched in a twist atop her head and her ass encased, barely, in denim shorts.

I should keep walking, but I turn into the open gate of the garden. Instead of approaching Sydney directly, I take a little turn around the place, checking out the various plots and what people are growing. Lots of tomatoes and leafy greens. A half-built henhouse. Flowers galore, and rows of cuttings waiting to be planted. I’m not super interested in plants, but it feels weird to walk up on her from behind. Now, as I make my way around a plot that seems to be growing some kind of frizzy lettuce, she glances up at me.

I thought gardening was supposed to be a relaxing hobby, but her mouth is turned down in a grimace so pronounced that it’s almost comical. Her gaze is hard, underscored by dark circles beneath her brown eyes, and it doesn’t soften when she sees me. She takes a deep breath and stands, revealing that her shorts are the overalls she was wearing at the corner store, with both straps buttoned over a black T-shirt. She strips gloves from her hands and throws them onto the ground next to the box she’s been working in.

“Your hair is different,” I say.

“Is it?” she asks, then pats at her head and makes an expression of smug shock. “Wow, I didn’t notice. I guess it just did that by itself. Magic!”

She smirks at me.

Oh boy.

“Did a rabbit steal your carrots or something?” I walk a couple of steps closer to her. “You have a real Farmer McGregor vibe going right now.”

She rolls her eyes, but the hardness softens a bit in the millisecond it takes her to do it.

“We have raccoons here, not rabbits. And they have nothing to steal from my garden because I’m killing everything edible.”

There’s strain in her voice in that last sentence, even though she tries to play it off as a joke.

“That sucks. Is it the weather or just a bad season? Those happen sometimes.”

I have no idea what happens sometimes in gardens, but that sounds about right.

She shakes her head and bends down to grab one of those travel coffee mugs—from the clink of ice cubes I’m guessing there’s iced coffee inside.

“I’m not my mom. That’s the problem.” She sips almost angrily. “She started this garden when I was a teenager. I was so mad when I had to waste weekends toting trash and helping set up plant boxes while my friends were outside the gates riding bikes, or off at the beach or doing other fun shit. But now . . . well, she’s not here to take care of things now. So I have to do it. And I’m the worst.”

Her mom owns a prime piece of land plus that fantastic house? I try not to be envious of what that kind of security must feel like.

“I would offer my gardening services in addition to my research services, but I’m not really good at stuff like this.” I glance at the plot where she’s been working. It does look a little less vibrant than the others, but it’s not a total loss. “That seems to be growing well, whatever it is.”

“It’s a weed,” she says miserably, then laughs a little helplessly. I recognize this laugh, the one you make when you feel like you’re just caught up in life’s gears, slowly getting ground to dust.

My envy retreats. Mostly.

“Some weeds are edible. Dandelions? You can make salad with that.”

“Are you some kind of prepper or something?” she asks.

“No. Just something I picked up as a kid. I was briefly fascinated with things you could eat for free.”

Great. I guess that’s one way to reveal you grew up poor and hungry.

“Look,” she says on a sigh. “You don’t have to do this research thing, you know. I got it. It was nice of you to offer, but—”

“Are you firing me?” I place both hands over my chest. “Wow, kick me when I’m down.”

“You haven’t started yet,” she reminds me. “A lot of this week’s research is focusing on . . . shit that’s going to make you uncomfortable. For example. All this land originally belonged to indigenous tribes, right?”

“And then they sold it,” I say automatically. I know this history. “For some beads.”

“Not really. Land sale didn’t work the same for them. Mostly colonizers took what they wanted. And that’s what keeps coming up as I research.” She bites her bottom lip, releases it. Sighs. “I don’t wanna have to worry about your little white feelings, okay?”

“Wait. Do you think I’m racist or something?” My body tenses and my cheeks go hot, and Sydney throws a hand up in the air.

“See? This is what I’m talking about. It doesn’t matter if I think you are—even if you aren’t, you’re gonna need me to reassure you about it. Like, Preston got arrested this morning. I don’t have the energy to make you feel better.”

“Okay. Okay, I get that.” I don’t get the connection between a teenager getting arrested and me helping her, but I can deal with that later. I look at her, try to figure out her mood. I smile. “I still want to help. I’ll try to keep my white feelings, which aren’t little, in check.”

She purses her lips, and I can tell she’s trying not to laugh. “Fine. Whatever. But we need a safe word.”

“Do we?”

She looks at me sharply.

“A safe word for when you’re being dangerously white,” she clarifies.

I grimace, but say the first thing that pops into my head. “Hmm . . . how about ‘Howdy Doody’?”

Her laughter comes out in a peal that makes her face scrunch up and her eyes close tight. I don’t even care if she’s laughing at me. It sounds so much better than the being-ground-by-gears sound, and I want to make her laugh like that again.

“Perfect,” she says. “I was gonna go with ‘mayonnaise,’ but let’s be real, Miracle Whip really hits sometimes. ‘Howdy Doody’ it is.”

The sounds of squealing children interrupt us and then she shrugs and points at the group of young kids streaming in through the gate, followed by Len, who waves at us. “Day camp kids, here for a visit. Can you come to my place at like five o’clock? We can go over what I have so far.”

“Your place?” I feel like I just stepped off the treadmill all over again.

She tilts her head. “Yeah. Directly across the street from you?”