Six Feet Over It by Jennifer Longo

in the niches nearby or in the shed repairing the lawn mower or prepping liners, and the verbs and adjectives come rapidly. Wade adores him—the son he’s always whining about missing out on. He has not only accidentally hired an overqualified dream of a groundskeeper/grave digger, but a very patient person who endures Wade’s endless pointless lectures on random crap Wade knows nothing about but loves to relate to a clearly uninterested Dario anyway (the proper way to still liquor in a bathtub, how to clean fireplace andirons). Theirs is a unique relationship based upon Wade’s love of being a know-it-all and Dario’s enjoyment of absorbing Wade’s crass, slang-laced vocabulary, which, despite the constant taking of the Lord’s name in vain, provides a nice contrast to the sedate, properly constructed sentences NPR tends to offer.
    “That kid !” Wade sighs contentedly after dinner practically every night. “He’s got a way with people you wouldn’t believe. They just take to him right away, you know? Man! Did I find the perfect guy or what?”
    “You sound like you guys are dating,” Kai says. “Leave him alone, he probably has friends he wants to hang out with.” She is so post-cancer sassy.
    Wade scowls. “Baloney! He loves working lunches! That kid is going places!”
    “Do you have to call him a kid ?” I say, voicing my and Kai’s joint distaste. “He’s got to be at least twenty; if he wasn’t from Mexico, you totally wouldn’t call him that. It’s gross.”
    “Oh for Christ’s sake, I would, too!” Wade hollers defensively. “He is a kid—you’re all kids! My Sierrawood Hills Kids … how did we get so lucky?”
    Exactly what I’d like to know.
    Sierrawood Hills Kids. We’re all very special people living in a very, very special group home.

    “Kind of dark in here,” Kai says, stretching her legs before a black office wingback. I toss her a bunch of Yorks. She’s right. Winter in a graveyard is just as depressing as one would imagine. It is super dingy, but I refuse to turn on the overhead fluorescent lights. Too clinical. Morguey. Freezing December rains flatten the muddy lawn and send old people to us in droves, two or three a week, nearly faster than Dario can dig. The graves lie cold beneath blankets of brown pine needles; the hum of Wade’s leaf blower never shuts up. People come wrapped in twenty-seven layers of sweaters and coats. The poor ducks hang around hiding in the withered blackberry bushes, and I wish they would get the clue to migrate: they’re too used to the stale bread Real Nice Clambake feeds them every week. I’m just waiting for Dario to announce that “December twenty-fifth is the festival of the rare skin diseases!” My birthday is one thing; if he comes near Christmas, I’ll kill him.
    It is weird, Kai sitting here. She’s messed up her calf muscle and has been sent home early from track practice to sit in a bath and rub it. Which is what I remind her she’s supposed to be doing instead of lounging around in here yakking with me, but she just unwraps her Yorks, chews. “How is it? You okay?”
    “Oh yeah,” I say fake-casually, staring aimlessly out at the graves. Clambake tosses an armful of pine needles and dead leaves in the Dumpster behind the office as she goes. I can see the perfect rectangle of cleared lawn over her sister. “It’s nice, actually. Wade was right. Hardly anyone comes in, better than the library. Look—rubber pencil!”
    She pulls more Yorks from the bag and watches my admittedly excellent rubber penciling. “Yeah?”
    She can run a million marathons over Hell’s half acres all she wants; to me this remission will always feel unsure. Precarious. I will not disrupt its magical, invisible hold.
    “Yes,” I say. “It’s fine. I love it. ”
    “What about school?”
    “What about it?”
    “You don’t have any friends.”
    “Do too.”
    “Oh, really?” She settles in for a formal