isn’t far behind; Lacey recognizes her fuchsia talons poking
up from behind the groundhog’s deflated head. The two men
are wearing gloves and facial masks. Mr. Medley, not taking
part in the action but rather standing beside them and in-
specting, has a bandana pulled over his nose.
Lacey quietly heads towards the stairs. She climbs up to
the roof. She sits on a little bench Mr. Medley put up there
a few months ago and places her empty boxes beside her.
She looks up at the sky. The stars don’t pierce through the
clouds. There are too many lights around the area, anyway.
Lacey sits with her arms tightly wound around her body.
She’s surprised nobody finds her. She watches the planes
embedding lines into the sky.
A few hours later she hears a noise in front of her building.
She stands up and peers over the roof. Mr. Medley is out there
on his hands and knees plucking out the grass. She watches
him for a while before she returns to the bench. The clang-
ing of his shovel keeps her company throughout the night,
until after a while he retreats back into the building. Once
the sun starts to come up, she heads back down the stairs.
She stops at her room and taped onto her door is a note.
Lacey -

We found the source of the smell. No need to worry anymore.

Lawrence
Lacey doesn’t enter the apartment. She turns
around and walks down the stone stairs and jogs past the
barren land for the last time.
********
At dawn, Mr. Medley enters his apartment and throws his
bandana into his closet. He claps his hands loudly, bringing
light to the dark room. He sets his keys in an unused ashtray
sitting on the kitchen counter and grabs a magazine from a
pile on his kitchen table. He sits on his couch with a Home and
Garden on his lap and removes his boots. He looks around
his apartment. The chairs across from him are covered in a
thick blanket of grass, as well as the carpet below him. He
yawns and opens up the magazine, putting his feet up on the
grassy green ottoman. He curls his feet in the green blades.
Kaitlin Brunsden
Senior, Creative Writing
12
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