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judge had snickered and shaken his head and wiped a couple of happy tears out of his eyes, which still brought a blush of shame to Danny’s cheeks when he thought about it.
    Damn judge.
    Danny had plenty of time to think about stuff while he mowed the grass and trimmed the hedges. It was while he was edging the sidewalk that a couple of kids went by on skateboards and one of them screamed out, “Ooh, I like your pink leg warmers!” referring to the garbage bags Danny had strapped around his feet.
    Being an adult now, Danny did the only mature thing he could do under the circumstances. He gave the kid the finger. The boys roared on past on their skateboards, hooting with laughter, both of them shooting a finger back in return. Ah, youth.
    Danny saw a couple of faces poke around curtains in nearby windows, but he ignored them. He went about his work, trying to be as thorough as he could. He wanted his dad to be pleased with the way the yard looked. He was very, very careful not to pass the nightlights he had poked around the perimeter of the lawn the night before, delineating his green-light zone. The last thing he wanted was for the neighbors to enjoy the sight of twenty squad cars screaming up to the house and a shitload of cops hauling Danny off to the hoosegow, kicking and screaming, just because he had overstepped the limits on his ankle monitor.
    While he was thinking about that, Danny had another thought. He suddenly realized his dad wouldn’t be back for three weeks. Three weeks! The grass would be all grown back by then. Even the hedges would look ratty again in three weeks’ time. Danny would have to do the work all over again for his dad to see the results of his labor.
    Well, poop. He stopped what he was doing immediately.
    Danny gathered up all his equipment—lawn mower, edger, shears—and stored it back in the basement. He peeled off his grass-splattered garbage bags on the back stoop and tossed them in the trash. He went inside, showered, did another round of headbanging to style his hair after climbing out of the shower, swiped another streak of deodorant across his armpits, and donned a clean pair of shorts and a clean shirt. He ignored the urge to beat off and ate lunch instead. Frederick sat at the other end of the table, watching him. The cat had cleaned the blood and feathers off himself since the last time Danny saw him. Danny supposed he would be running across a desiccated pile of bird bones and feathers sometime soon since he didn’t know where the cat had finished devouring the poor beast, but Danny would cross that bridge when he came to it. In the meantime, he accepted the uneasy truce between himself and Frederick and even gave the cat a little smile and a finger waggle of greeting when he saw it watching him.
    The cat yawned and walked away. Hmm. Maybe all wasn’t quite as forgiven as Danny thought.
    Danny cleaned up his mess from lunch, parked himself in the recliner in his room, and after digging around inside his cast for five minutes with the curtain rod trying to appease an itch that was apparently unappeasable, he finally conked out and slept the rest of the afternoon.
    It wasn’t until later, when the day was long over and the moon was high and most of the city was sound asleep, that things got interesting.
    Danny couldn’t know it at the time, but his life was about to change. For better and for worse.
    The “better” part would be great. Phenomenal. Better than he could ever have imagined.
    The “worse” part would suck. Big time.
     
     
    I T WAS two in the morning when headlights swept across Danny’s bedroom walls, jarring him awake. It must be Mr. Childers. Sometimes the man stayed out late, maybe because of a night job; Danny wasn’t sure. Mr. Childers’s driveway was situated so the headlights of his car were aimed right into Danny’s bedroom. Especially if Mr. Childers backed into his garage like he usually did.
    But the headlights were on the wrong wall for it to