I'm back home visiting the family staying in the house where I grew up. My dad and I ran out to the store and as we passed the neighbor's house down the street, he noticed the box in their trash at the end of the driveway.
"Buckshot 190. Looks like somebody's got a new target."
"I wonder if the twins set that up in the backyard?" 'The twins' probably haven't lived in that house in nearly twenty years. I'm not even sure if their relatives still own it, but in my mind it will forever be 'the twins' house. The kids on my block were quite a bit older than I, probably 4 - 6 years, which in kid years is, like, entire lifetimes, so I never much hung out with them, but rather watched from afar.
"Did the twins live on the corner or the house next door?"
I can't even hide a slight dreamy tone when I answer, "Danny lived next door. He used to mow our lawn."
"Oh yeah?"
I told Dad about the impossible crush I had on Danny. I would go outside whenever he came over to mow the front yard. A flirt early on, I would find a way to be there before Danny even pulled the cord on the mower. I'd read my book (though I'm sure little reading would get done, as staring was my real occupation) usually posing on top of the old Mercedes in the driveway, as if that was where I did all my reading.
If I was lucky - and it was terribly hot and humid in Louisiana, so I often lucked out - Danny would take off his shirt. Sometimes he would say hi to me or exchange a few other words, but I seriously doubt if he had even the slightest clue how much I crushed on him. He was in high school and I was some silly early middle-schooler bookworm who thought the car hood was a good place to contemplate Encyclopedia Brown.
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