“Just the one?”

The store clerk eyes Sonny as his scanner bleeps the product through. One gallon of bleach and nothing else. Sonny ponders, before reaching for a PayDay bar on the side and handing it over to the guy, as if it were an olive branch.

“Thank you, sir.”

Exiting the store, Sonny had to move quickly. He turned round the corner and started making quick pace back to Anthea’s neighborhood, expecting to find her still at the riverbank.

He had slowed down a few paces away from her to catch his breath, and not pant so heavily as he approached her with the gallon of bleach. Anthea stood up then, sensing him walking up waving his occupied hand.

“How is it?” He asked lowering his arm. Anthea shuffled aside for him to see.

It was a hatch door just below the bridge, which was covered in mold. The two of them had looked it up somewhere that bleach would do the trick to getting most of it off, theoretically just enough for them to reach the handle.

“It’s not bad. We can dig under all this dirt and clean it fresh… you realize they sell smaller containers for bleach, right?” Anthea looked up and raised her eyebrow at Sonny. He scratched his neck and shrugged.

“I mean… it doesn’t hurt to have more?”

Anthea pursed her lips and reached to her side, pulling out thick rubber gloves and face masks.

“Chemical smell of bleach, you know. I think you’re not supposed to be too exposed to it. Also, it smells super strong,” Anthea held a plastic cup to Sonny’s face.

“And that’s for…?”

“Diluting the solution. Could you scoop us a bit of water?” She asked him like it was an order, and subconsciously he obliged. Sonny stood up and walked over to the riverbank, lowering the rim of the plastic to let the running water sink in, lifting the cup as it was filled just halfway.

As he returned, Anthea had already gotten a large bathroom brush to scuff the surface junk of the hatch.

“Let me see the cup,” She reached her hand out without ever looking up, and again Sonny obliged. Anthea was hard at work filling the rest of the water with the bleach she popped open. Sonny hadn’t even noticed that she did. She was really in her element.

I mean, it goes to say that Sonny had never stepped foot into the school’s gardenhouse before, or he wouldn’t have seen her tending to plants and flowers like she always mentions doing. Anthea knew a few of a lot of things that he didn’t, and maybe it was because of how stupid he felt watching her and toying with his PayDay bar in his pocket, but he felt humbled above all. Anthea had bested him, and he was calm.

What sort of sick world is this? Did the sun shine a little brighter today? Is there a meteor happening?

“Where was that?” She had asked, which snapped him out of his trance. She was looking at him— the bar, she was looking at the PayDay bar.

Sonny looked down at his hand, then at her, remembering that they had been wandering here since ten o’ clock in the morning, not expecting her to have eaten breakfast today or the fact they had skipped lunch to continue digging deeper into the woods of Anthea’s creepy backyard.

Without words, he offered it to her.

“No, nah, please, I’m not asking for it,” She scoffed, and Sonny urged it forward again.

“C’mon, I heard your stomach growl.”

Anthea shot him a glare before bending down to level with the bar, having to just bite it directly considering that her hands were muddy and occupied. Sonny had cracked a grin at her attempt to eat from his hand.

“God, you know how ridiculous you look right now?” Sonny broke, and that make Anthea fall back and laugh. “And you’re chewing with your mouth open?”

Anthea mumbled witty remarks, but in the end of that good five minutes she had clear her throat, and Sonny had coughed his last laugh, and now they were two strangers digging a hole in the ground again.

Sonny pursed his lips, wondering what else he could bring up with Anthea. “So, your family is—“

“Nice. They’re proud of me,” Anthea finished for him, but Sonny felt the underlying message in her half-truth.

“… but?”

Anthea sucked her teeth. “I mean, come on… this isn’t exactly where you expected I’d come from, no?”

Anthea had her back turned now, pouring the bleach mixture bit by bit into the hatch and scrubbing furiously.

“I’m not… you know, how I act,” Anthea admitted. It wasn’t even aggravated… she was closer to her statement sounding like an apology.

“How do you act?” Sonny teased after an awkward pause, seeing Anthea slow her moss cleaning and weed killing. Anthea turned to the sky and continued keeping her gaze away.

“You know how I was in primary school. With Tanya, with the rest of them. Snotty, stuck up, just—“

“Entitled, bratty, annoying…” Sonny chuckled, taking a short nibble from his bar. “But what does it matter now? I mean, we haven’t argued… yet.”

(it got late at night and i was getting sleepy so rushed ending)