The Argument About Nothing

Owen crossed his arms. Lily crossed hers right back.

They were standing in the living room on a perfectly good Saturday afternoon, and they were mad. Not regular mad. Not stubbed-your-toe mad. This was the kind of mad where your ears feel hot and your words come out sharp and pointy.

"You ALWAYS do that!" Owen said.

"Do WHAT?" Lily shot back.

Owen opened his mouth. Then he closed it. Then he opened it again.

"THAT thing! The thing you do!"

"That's not even a thing!" Lily said, throwing her hands up. "You're the one who started it!"

"I did NOT start it. YOU started it!"

"Nuh-uh."

"Yuh-huh."

"Nuh-UH."

"Yuh-HUH."

Their dog, Biscuit, looked up from his spot on the rug, sighed the longest sigh a dog has ever sighed, and walked into the kitchen.

Five minutes passed.

Owen sat on one end of the couch. Lily sat on the other end. There were exactly three couch cushions between them, which was all the couch cushions there were, and that still didn't feel like enough.

"I'm not talking to you," Lily announced.

"Good. I'm not talking to you either," Owen said.

"Fine."

"FINE."

Then it was quiet. Really quiet. The clock on the wall went tick, tick, tick, and each tick sounded louder than the last.

Owen looked out the window. The sprinkler was going in the backyard, shooting water in wide, wobbly circles. The kind of circles that were perfect for running through. The kind that made rainbows if you looked at them just right.

He almost said something about it. Almost. But he remembered he was not talking to Lily, so he pressed his lips together tight.

On her end of the couch, Lily noticed the sprinkler too. She almost said, "Hey, want to go run through the sprinkler?" because that was exactly the kind of thing she would normally say on a hot Saturday afternoon.

But she didn't. Because she was not talking to Owen.

So they both just sat there, not talking, watching the sprinkler spin without them.

Fifteen more minutes crawled by.

Owen pulled a piece of paper off the coffee table and started folding it. He was making a paper airplane — or trying to, anyway. The wings kept coming out lopsided. Lily was really good at paper airplanes. She knew the trick where you fold the wings down twice so they fly straight.

He was NOT going to ask her.

He folded it wrong three more times, then smooshed it into a paper ball and dropped it on the floor.

Lily, meanwhile, was trying to reach a book on the high shelf. She stood on her tiptoes. She stretched her fingers as far as they would go. She could just barely touch the edge of the book, but every time she touched it, it scooted further back.

Owen was tall enough to reach the high shelf. He could get it down easy.

She was NOT going to ask him.

She gave up and flopped back onto her end of the couch with no book, no sprinkler, and no brother. Well — a brother. But not a talking brother. Which was almost worse than no brother at all.

Ten more minutes dragged themselves across the floor like a cat that doesn't want to go to the vet.

Owen started bouncing his knee. He was bored. He was SO bored. He tried to think about why he was mad, and the reason felt like trying to grab a cloud. It had been right there a little while ago, big and obvious, but now it was just... poofy. And far away.

What were we even fighting about? he thought.

He tried to trace it back. Lily had said something. Or maybe he had said something first. About the remote? Or was it about whose turn it was to pick the cereal at the store? Or... was it about the blue cup? They both liked the blue cup.

The more he tried to remember, the more it felt like trying to hold water in his hands. It kept leaking through his fingers until there was nothing left.

He peeked over at Lily.

Lily was picking at a thread on the couch cushion, wrapping it around her finger and unwrapping it. She looked the way he felt — like a balloon that had lost its air.

She must have felt him looking, because she peeked over at him.

For one second, they made eye contact. Then they both looked away fast, like they'd accidentally touched a hot stove.

Five more minutes.

Biscuit wandered back into the living room carrying a sock. Nobody's sock in particular. Just a sock he'd found somewhere. He dropped it right between Owen and Lily like he was delivering very important mail, then sat down and wagged his tail, looking from one of them to the other.

Neither of them moved.

Biscuit picked the sock back up, tossed it in the air, caught it, and looked at them again.

Nothing.

Biscuit tilted his head so far to the side he almost tipped over.

And Owen — he didn't mean to — but a tiny laugh came out. Just a small one. More of a snort, really. A laugh crumb.

Lily heard it. And the corner of her mouth twitched. Just barely. She bit her lip to keep it from happening, but it was too late. The twitch had already twitched.

Biscuit, thrilled to have ANY attention at all, started doing his wiggly dance — the one where his whole back end swayed but his front paws stayed still — and the sock was hanging out of his mouth like a floppy tongue.

Owen let out another laugh. A real one this time.

And Lily — she tried SO hard — but a giggle escaped, the kind that sneaks out through your nose when you're trying to keep it in.

"He looks ridiculous," Owen said.

"He looks SO ridiculous," Lily agreed.

And just like that, the invisible wall between three couch cushions crumbled into dust.

"Hey," Owen said, after the laughing slowed down. "What were we even fighting about?"

Lily scrunched up her face. She thought for a second. Then two seconds. Then five.

"I... don't remember," she said.

"Me neither," Owen said.

They stared at each other. Lily started to grin. Owen started to grin. And then they were both laughing again — not because of Biscuit this time, but because they had just spent forty-five whole minutes of a perfectly good Saturday being mad about something that neither one of them could even remember.

Forty-five minutes! That was almost a whole TV show. That was enough time to build a blanket fort. That was enough time to run through the sprinkler a HUNDRED times.

"Do you want to go run through the sprinkler?" Lily asked.

"I was JUST about to say that," Owen said, jumping up.

"Race you!" Lily shouted, already running.

"NO FAIR, you got a head start!"

They burst through the back door and into the bright, warm afternoon. The sprinkler caught Owen right in the face, and Lily laughed so hard she doubled over. Then Lily tried to jump over the sprinkler arc and tripped and landed on her knees in the wet grass, and Owen laughed so hard he got the hiccups.

Biscuit followed them outside, still carrying his sock, and ran straight through the sprinkler and shook water everywhere, which made them both scream and laugh at the same time.

The afternoon stretched out ahead of them — long and golden and dripping wet.

And if you had asked either of them later what the fight was about, they wouldn't have been able to tell you. But they could tell you everything about the sprinkler rainbow they found, and how Biscuit's sock got so wet it made a squelching sound, and how the grass smelled sweet and green, and how the rest of Saturday was — by every possible measure — absolutely, completely, totally perfect.