Monday after school, the community service office smelled like old carpet and stale coffee. A poster of a smiling teenager picking up trash tried to convince me this was character-building. The fluorescent lights hummed like they were nursing a grudge.

  Mom checked us in at a chipped counter. The clerk slid a clipboard toward me without eye contact. Name, address, school, offense. Seeing “vandalism” in my own handwriting made my stomach wobble.

  A door clicked and a woman in a navy cardigan and sensible flats called, “Diana Sinclair?”

  Her office was narrow, with two chairs and a desk that looked like it had fought a war with a label maker and lost. A fidget spinner sat by her keyboard. She gestured us in. “I’m Ms. Kelley. Let’s get you sorted.”

  She read from the report Officer Morales had filed. “First offense,” she said. “Good grades. No prior record.” She clicked her pen. “You got lucky.”

  “I know,” I said, because that was the safest thing to say.

  “Just because we’re going easy on you, don’t think it won’t be worse if you do anything like this again.” She pulled a sheet from a file. “You’ve already arranged amends with the rink?”

  “Saturday at eight,” I said. “Scrape, sand, paint. Benches and bathrooms while it dries.”

  A flicker at the corner of her mouth that might have been approval. “Good. We still want more hours.” More paper shuffling. “Standard for a first-time tag is twenty to forty, depending on attitude and follow-through. I’m putting you at twenty since you worked it out with the aggrieved party. You’ll do six hours at the rink on Saturday. After that, we’ll spread the rest over several weeks.”

  Mom nodded like she’d prepared for worse. “She can work after school.”

  Ms. Kelley typed with decisive little stabs. “Two placements. Parks & Rec needs hands at Patterson Park for litter pickup and mulching from four to six, Tuesdays and Thursdays. And the library branch on Eastern needs after-school helpers to shelve returns and wipe down tables, Wednesdays. You’ll sign in and out. No skips.”

  I pictured myself in a neon vest picking up gum wrappers while toddlers judged me. Then wiping kid fingerprints off picture-book covers until my soul squeaked. “Okay,” I said.

  “You’ll also attend one restorative circle,” Ms. Kelley added. “Group session. Kids talk about why they made the choices they did. One hour. No, you can’t skip it.”

  “Okay,” I said again, because apparently that was my whole vocabulary now.

  She slid a form across the desk for me to sign. “Bring this to each shift and have the supervisor initial. Lose it and we start over.”

  I signed. Mom signed. Ms. Kelley clicked her pen closed like a gavel. “Make the time mean something, Diana. Don’t waste it wishing it was shorter. That’s the only way it works.” She stood, which was our signal to stand, too. “Questions?”

  I had a thousand, none of which were about trash bags. “No,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Outside, the late afternoon had gone flat and gray. Mom and I walked to the car without talking. She unlocked my side first, which was her version of a hug.

  “Twenty hours,” she said once we were seated. “Fourteen, really, since we already have the rink accounted for. You can handle that.”

  “I know.” I buckled in. “Thanks for coming.”

  Her fingers paused on the keys. “Where else would I be?”

  I didn’t have an answer that didn’t make my throat tight. She started the car. We merged into traffic. The heater blew air that smelled faintly like dust and old pennies.

  Back home, I stuck the timesheet to my corkboard with a pushpin, a certificate I earned but didn't want. Tuesday/Thursday: Patterson Park, 4–6. Wednesday: Library, 3:30–5. Saturday: Rink, 8–? bleachers, bathrooms. One restorative circle, date TBD.

  My phone buzzed.

  Sketch: Verdict?

  Me: 20 hrs. Rink Saturday at 8, park cleanup T/Th, library W. Restorative circle (lol).

  Sketch: I will bring you a ceremonial trash grabber and a coffee.

  Me: If you snap a picture of me picking up trash with tongs, friendship over.

  Sketch: Noted. You see anything today?

  Me: There were two in Homeroom. No one else noticed.

  Sketch: Two?

  Me: Winged lizards, same as station. They were playing, or fighting, or something.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  Sketch: That’s sort of cool. WL encounter recorded.

  Me: Please do not acronym the monsters like a sports league.

  Sketch: Too late. I made a spreadsheet.

  Me: Of course you did.

  Mom knocked and poked her head in. “Dinner in ten. I’m making eggs.”

  “Okay.” I set the phone down. “Thanks.”

  She lingered, eyes on the pinned timesheet. “We’ll make it work around homework,” she said. “I can drop you Tuesday. Wednesday you can walk to the library from school.”

  “I can handle it,” I said. Huh, it felt true. “I’m going to do it right.”

  A small nod. “Good.” She glanced at the corkboard map. “And Saturday, I’ll be with you until Gus says I’m hovering.”

  I smiled, amused. “You don’t have to.”

  “I want to.” She gave a small smile and closed my door.

  ***

  The rest of the week was painfully normal. Classes, homework, cafeteria pizza. No strange shadows. No flickering lights that weren’t just old wiring. No impossible creatures pinging at the edge of my vision. I almost missed the weird.

  Saturday came, it felt strange to dread the weekend.

  Mom and I pulled into the rink lot at 7:55 a.m. The building looked smaller in the morning, less like a dare and more like a mortgage. Ms. Perez met us at the front with a clipboard and a “we open in an hour” face.

  “Morning,” she said. “Gus is out back.”

  Gus turned out to be a compact man in a beanie, and a jacket that had seen more winters than me. He had the posture of someone who had been blue collar all his life.

  “You the artist,” he said, not quite a question.

  “I’m the idiot,” I said, because I was tired of spinning words. “I’m here to make it right.”

  He nodded once, like we’d passed the only test that mattered. “Gloves,” he said, handing me a pair that smelled faintly like rubber and warehouse. “Scraper. Wire brush. We knock off the loose first. Then we sand, wipe, prime, and paint. Don’t go at it like it owes you money. Let the tools do the work.”

  The back wall was dull red, the section I’d hit a little darker from rain that hadn’t entirely given up. Up close, my smear was obvious—a jaundiced shadow under the surface. Shame prickled hot on my neck. Mom squeezed my shoulder, then stepped back, deliberately out of the way. Hovering but not.

  Scraping wasn’t glamorous. It was arms and shoulders and flakes of old paint skittering down onto a drop cloth. The wire brush chewed at the edges until the surface went from slick to toothy. Gus watched my hands, corrected my angle with a tap. “Pressure comes from here,” he said, tapping my palm. “Not your wrists. Saves you later.”

  I expected to be wrecked by the first hour. I wasn’t. My arms burned, sure, but a steady kind, like my body had found a gear and settled into it. Mom followed with a shop vac, pulling up dust and chips with little thunks. Gus tried to tell her that she could go, but her satisfied smile defeated him. We wiped the wall with rags until they came away without flakes of debris.

  “Primer,” Gus said. He told mom to back away to avoid getting slattered and cracked a can that looked like the inside of a brick, gave it a long stir. I peeled off my hoodie and Mom tossed it in the car waving goodbye to us and promising to be back to pick me up.

  Alone now, Gus showed me how to load the roller—back and forth, not dunk and drip. We worked in rectangles, overlapping edges so there wouldn’t be lines when it dried. The primer went on ugly, the way primers do, but it was a smooth surface, waiting for fresh paint. My braid stuck to the back of my neck.

  By ten, the Learn to Skate hour had started. Ms. Perez poked her head out. “Benches need love,” she said, apology in her tone. “When you’ve got a dry patch.”

  Gus checked the wall with a knuckle. “You’re good for an hour. Don’t touch anything until I say.”

  Inside, the rink was a cold bowl of echoes. Little kids in oversized helmets inched across the ice like brave penguins. I set up a bucket and a long-handled brush and went row by row, scrubbing sticky rings where sodas had died and popcorn had become fossils. It wasn’t complicated work. It was also not nothing. My mind wandered in the good way for once—blank and present. A girl in a pink puffer fell and popped up grinning. A boy with legs like newly-born deer made it from one line to the next and looked like he’d won an award.

  “Can you help me tie these?” a dad asked, carrying rental skates like they were a puzzle. I showed him how to lace snug over the instep and looser at the toes. He thanked me like I’d taught him a secret.

  Back out back, the primer had gone from sticky to dull. We rolled on a fresh coat of crimson. It wasn’t exact—the old paint had years of sun baked into it—she was due for a facelift. I guess something good came out of this. I left it to dry before the second coat.

  “Bathroom?” Ms. Perez said, appearing like an apology. “If you’re not too exhausted.”

  “Bathroom,” I said, because, of course.

  Bathrooms are where penance goes to sweat. I scrubbed sinks and mirrors and a stall someone had tried to turn into a diary. I didn’t think about anything except the circle my brush was making and the way grime surrendered to elbow grease if you kept at it. Weirdly, by the time I finished, dirty and notably smelly, I felt cleaner.

  By two, the wall looked like a wall. The benches were cleaner than they’d been in a year. The bathrooms didn’t make me want to hold my breath. If I stood where my smear had been and squinted, I couldn’t even see a ghost under the new red.

  Ms. Perez signed my timesheet with a firm hand. “I’m happy to credit your six hours,” she said. “Gus says you work hard.”

  Gus shrugged like that wasn’t a compliment so much as a fact he’d observed. “Followed directions,” he said. “Didn’t whine.”

  “I can whine later,” I said, and he snorted.

  When Mom picked me up, she took a picture of the wall. She’s that person. Then, one of me with a paint roller and a wickedly tired smile because she’s also that person. She didn’t post it anywhere. Adults are strange, for which I’m grateful. She texted it to me, and I saved it even though it made my arms look noodle-y.

  On the way home, my muscles started to report in. Forearms. Shoulders. A line between my shoulder blades I hadn’t known existed. It hurt in a way that felt earned. Mom drove with one hand and sipped coffee with the other.

  “I’m proud of you,” she said, not looking over, which made it easier to hear. “Not for the wall. For the work.”

  I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. “Me too,” I said, and meant it.

  My phone buzzed.

  Sketch: How’s your career in facilities management?

  Me: Glamorous. I’ll autograph your mop.

  Sketch: Bet Gus says you’re a natural.

  Me: Gus says I didn’t whine.

  Sketch: Lol.