Between My Teeth

The note was yellow. Not some fancy stationery, just a ripped piece of legal pad shoved under my door. It said: 'The soil is ready. Don’t be a dick.' It wasn't signed, but I knew it was Vicky. Only Vicky uses the word 'dick' as a motivational tool. I stared at it for twenty minutes while my coffee got cold and a thin film formed on top.

My jaw was so tight I could feel a pulse in my molars. That’s the stress. It’s a constant, humming thing. It’s the sound of a fridge you can’t turn off. My foot was doing that thing again, tapping against the desk leg—thump, thump, thump—a rhythm I didn’t give it permission to have. I looked at my hands. They were pale, the kind of white you only see on the underside of a fish. I’d been in this studio for three weeks. Maybe four. The days kind of bleed into one big grey smear when you’re staring at code and eating cold protein bars.

I stood up. My knees popped like bubble wrap. I needed to move. I needed to not be here. The air in the apartment smelled like stale laundry and the ghost of a pizza I’d ordered on Tuesday. Or Sunday. Whatever. I grabbed a hoodie—the one with the grease stain on the pocket—and stepped out. The hallway light was too bright. It flickered with a high-pitched whine that made my skin itch. I hit the elevator button. Nothing. Out of order. Again. Classic. I took the stairs, my legs feeling like they belonged to someone else, someone heavier and less coordinated. By the time I hit the street, I was breathing like I’d run a marathon. The air outside wasn’t much better. It was that weird mid-April air—half frozen, half humid. It smelled like wet pavement and bus exhaust. It was loud. Everything was so loud.

People were everywhere. Moving fast. Everyone had somewhere to be, someone to ghost, some meeting to dread. I felt like a ghost in a crowd of living things. I kept my head down, focusing on the cracks in the sidewalk. Every time a car honked, my shoulders hit my ears. My breath was shallow, stuck in the top of my chest. I tried to remember that breathing exercise my therapist told me about—four counts in, four counts out—but I forgot the middle part. Was there a hold? I couldn't remember. I just kept walking. The garden was three blocks away, a small patch of dirt wedged between a luxury condo and a shop that sold overpriced candles. It shouldn't have been a big deal. It’s just dirt. But as I got closer, the green started to hurt my eyes. It was too much color. The trees were doing that thing where they bloom all at once, shaking pink and white petals onto the trash-strewn street. It looked like a glitch in the system.

I pushed the chain-link gate open. It creaked, a sharp, metallic sound that set my teeth on edge. Vicky was there. She was wearing overalls that looked like they’d survived a war and a baseball cap pulled low. She didn't look up when I approached. She was stabbing a trowel into a wooden planter box. 'You’re late,' she said. Her voice was scratchy, like sandpaper on wood. 'I didn’t say I was coming,' I replied. My voice sounded thin, unused. 'You’re here,' she said, finally looking up. Her eyes were sharp, scanning me. 'You look like you died and forgot to fall over.' I shrugged. 'Work.' She snorted. 'Work is a scam. Digging is real. Pick up the shovel, Larry. The one with the blue handle. Not that one. The other blue one.' I grabbed the shovel. The wood was rough, dry. It felt good, actually. Something solid that wasn't a screen.

'What are we doing?' I asked. 'Life,' she said. 'Also, kale. We’re planting kale because people in this zip code think it makes them immortal.' I started to dig. The soil was heavy, dark. It clung to the shovel. Every time I pushed the blade down with my boot, I felt the resistance travel up my leg. It was grounding. The static in my head started to quiet down, just a little. The tapping in my foot stopped. I was focused on the dirt. There were worms. Slimy, pink things writhing away from the light. I felt bad for them. One minute you’re chilling in the dark, the next some guy with an existential crisis is flipping your house upside down. 'Don't overthink it,' Vicky said, sensing my hesitation. 'It’s just dirt. It doesn't care about your feelings.'

Sam showed up ten minutes later. He was wearing AirPods and a tech-fleece vest that probably cost more than my rent. He looked out of place, but he didn't seem to care. He was humming something under his breath. He saw me and grinned. 'Yo, Larry. You emerged.' 'Barely,' I said. He dropped a bag of mulch next to me. 'The sun is aggressive today, right? Like, chill out, big star.' He started spread-loading the mulch with his hands. No gloves. I watched him. He looked happy. Or at least, he looked like he wasn't vibrating with anxiety. 'How’s the project?' he asked. 'Stuck,' I said. 'The logic is circular. I keep hitting the same wall.' 'Then stop hitting it,' Sam said. 'Walk around it. Or better yet, just leave the wall there and go get tacos.' He laughed. It was a loud, genuine sound. It made me feel a weird pang of jealousy. How was he so okay?

I kept digging. My back started to ache. A dull, throbbing pain at the base of my spine. It felt honest. Better than the phantom pains I get from sitting in my gaming chair for twelve hours straight. The sun was hitting the back of my neck. I could feel the burn starting. I didn't care. I watched a bee hover over a dandelion. It was so small, so busy. It didn't know about the economy. It didn't know about the 'impending collapse of social structures' I read about on Twitter at 3 AM. It just wanted pollen. I envied the bee. 'You’re doing it again,' Vicky said, dumping a tray of seedlings next to my hole. 'Staring into the void. Stop it. Plant these.' She handed me a tiny green plant. Its roots were a tangled mess of white threads. 'Be gentle,' she added. 'They’re fragile.'

I knelt in the dirt. My jeans were getting ruined, the knees turning a dark, damp brown. I didn't mind. I poked a hole in the soil and tucked the seedling in. I pressed the dirt around it, firm but not too tight. It felt like I was tucked into bed. The physical contact with the earth was weirdly intimate. My hands were covered in mud now. It was under my fingernails, gritty and cool. I looked at Sam. He was talking to some girl who had just walked in with a watering can. They were laughing about something—probably a meme I hadn't seen yet. I felt a surge of that social awkwardness, that 'what do I do with my hands' feeling. I went back to the plants. It was easier to talk to things that didn't have expectations.

'So,' I said, not looking at Vicky. 'Why do you do this? The garden. It’s a lot of work for a few salads.' Vicky leaned on her shovel. She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving a brown streak. 'Because the world is fake, Larry. Your job is fake. Your friends on the internet are fake. This?' She pointed at the dirt. 'This is the only thing that doesn't lie to you. You give it water, it grows. You ignore it, it dies. There’s no algorithm. There’s no hidden agenda. It’s just physics and biology.' I nodded. I got it. Or I wanted to get it. I looked at the row of kale I’d planted. They looked small and pathetic against the backdrop of the city. A tiny rebellion against the concrete.

By noon, I was exhausted. My muscles felt like lead. My head was spinning, but for once, it wasn't from a screen headache. It was just the sun and the movement. Sam came over and handed me a water bottle. It was lukewarm. 'Good shift,' he said. 'You look less like a Victorian ghost now.' 'Thanks,' I said. I took a long drink. The water tasted like plastic, but it was the best thing I’d ever had. 'We’re going to that place on 4th. The one with the spicy margaritas. You in?' I hesitated. My apartment was calling to me. The safety of the dim light. The familiar hum of my PC. I looked at my muddy hands. I looked at the garden. The spring light was hitting everything at a sharp angle now, making the green leaves look neon. 'Yeah,' I said. 'I’m in.'

We walked out of the gate together. The city felt different now. Still loud, still chaotic, but I felt heavier in a good way. Like I had an anchor. We passed a guy screaming into his phone about a delivery. We passed a woman trying to take a selfie with a grumpy bulldog. It was all so human. So messy. I felt a weird ripple of something—maybe hope, maybe just a sugar crash. But as we turned the corner, I saw a black car idling by the curb. The windows were tinted dark. It had been there when I left my apartment, too. I didn't think anything of it then. But now, seeing it here, blocks away, sitting perfectly still in the middle of the city's vibration, my jaw started to tighten again. The pulse in my molars came back, sharp and insistent. Sam didn't notice. He was already talking about the taco menu. I followed him, but I couldn't stop looking at the car in the rearview of my mind.

The world felt bigger, sure. But it also felt like it was watching back. The spring air turned cold suddenly, a sharp wind whipping through the buildings. I pulled my hoodie tighter, the grease stain a small comfort against the sudden chill. We kept walking, but the feeling of being followed didn't leave. It sat in the back of my throat like a pill I couldn't swallow. I looked at the sky. It was a bright, aggressive blue, without a single cloud to hide behind. I realized then that coming out of the dark meant everyone could see you. And some people were definitely looking.

I tried to focus on Sam’s voice, on the way his sneakers clicked on the pavement. I tried to focus on the dirt under my nails. It was still there. It was real. But the static was creeping back in, a low-frequency buzz that hummed just beneath the surface of the conversation. I wasn't just a ghost anymore. I was a target. Or maybe I was just paranoid. That’s the problem with isolation—you lose the ability to tell the difference between a threat and a coincidence. We reached the restaurant. The neon sign was buzzing. 'After you,' Sam said, holding the door open.

I stepped into the cool dark of the bar, but I felt a shadow catch in the doorway behind me, lingering just long enough to be felt before it vanished into the bright spring light.