The Declaration of War

The Rosewater Lane Summer Garden Contest is the most important thing that happens on my street, and I am not going to apologise for caring about it. Other people care about football. Other people care about their cars or their phones or being cool. I care about the garden contest, and I have cared about it since I was twelve, and this year — the year I turn twenty, the year I am finally old enough to enter in my own name and not under my mum's — this year I am going to win it. I have a plan. I have had the plan for months. The plan involves cosmos and dahlias and a colour scheme and a thing I read about deadheading that I am not going to explain right now because we'd be here all day. The point is: the plan is good. The plan is, I would honestly say, unbeatable. The plan did not account for the new guy at number six. Number six had been empty all spring, and then in May a van turned up, and out of the van came furniture and boxes and a guy about my age, and I want to be clear that I did not pay attention to him at first. I had a contest to prepare for. I do not have time, in a contest year, to pay attention to guys with floppy hair carrying boxes. I started paying attention to him on the morning I came outside and found him in his front garden — the front garden of number six, which had been a sad rectangle of nothing for years — and he was on his knees in the dirt, planting things, and he had clearly been to the same garden centre I go to, and in his trug, in his actual trug, were cosmos. And dahlias. My cosmos. My dahlias. I walked straight over. I want everyone to know that I walked straight over, in my pyjama top, with no plan for what I was going to say, which is not like me. "Are you entering the contest," I said. He looked up. He had dirt on his face. Annoyingly it did not make him look bad. "The garden one?" he said. "Yeah. The lady at number eleven told me about it. Apparently it's a big deal round here." "It's the biggest deal round here," I said. "I'm Bea. Number nine. I've been planning my entry since February." "Tom," he said. "Number six. I've been planning mine since —" he looked at his trug, and at the dirt, and sort of grinned — "this morning. In the garden centre. About forty minutes ago." And here is the thing. Here is the thing that made me do what I did next. He said it like it was funny. Like it was charming. Like a person could just stroll into MY contest, on MY street, forty minutes after deciding, with cosmos he picked because they looked nice, and that this was a fun and breezy thing to do — when I had a colour scheme, when I had a deadheading strategy, when I had cared about this since I was twelve years old. So I declared war. I did. Out loud. I stood in his sad rectangle of a front garden in my pyjama top and I said, "Okay. Tom. Number six. I'm going to be honest with you because I think honesty is important between enemies. I am going to win this contest. I have wanted it my whole life and you have wanted it since breakfast, and I am not going to lose to a man who doesn't even know what cosmos need. This is war. May the best garden win." I thought he would be annoyed. I wanted him to be annoyed, a little bit, I think. Instead Tom from number six sat back on his heels in the dirt and looked up at me with this big delighted grin, like I had just handed him a present, and he said, "Brilliant. Okay. War. But it has to have rules — I'm not having you sneaking over here at night to sabotage my dahlias, Bea from number nine. We need a treaty. Rules of engagement." He held out his hand. There was dirt all over it. "Shake on it. War, with rules." And I should not have shaken his hand. I see that now. I see, looking back, that the smart thing, the contest-winning thing, would have been to keep my distance from the enemy, stay cold, stay focused, win. I shook his hand. It was warm and covered in dirt and he had a grip like he meant it. "War," I said. "With rules." That was in May. It is July now as I write this, and I have to tell you, before this gets going properly, that the war did not go the way I planned. The rules did not help. The rules, in fact, turned out to be the whole problem — because every single rule we made was a reason to knock on each other's door, and I did not see that coming, and I'm not sure Tom did either, and the contest is in three weeks, and I have absolutely no idea anymore which of us is winning what.