Someone kept ruining my freshly painted garage door just days before our neighborhood’s biggest competition.

When I found out who was behind it, I decided to give the judges a show they’d never forget.The bottom half of my white garage door was covered in black paint.

I noticed it while taking out the trash before work on Friday morning. I had the bag in one hand and my coffee in the other, and I was halfway down the driveway before my brain caught up with my eyes.

At first, I thought I was seeing things. A shadow, maybe. A trick of the early light.

Then I walked closer and saw the thick, uneven strokes running across the panels. Big sloppy swipes, like someone had used a roller and didn’t care where it went. The paint had dripped down onto the concrete in little black tears.

I dropped the trash bag right there in the driveway.

“Toby!” I shouted toward the house.

My husband appeared on the porch in his work shirt and socks, still holding his coffee.

“What happened?”

I pointed at the garage.

“Who the hell would do something like this?”

Toby came down the steps slowly. He stared at the door for a long moment. Then he sighed, the same sigh he uses when the dishwasher breaks or the Cowboys lose.

“Probably teenagers. You know how those kids from the high school get.”

He had a point. The school was only a few blocks away, and we’d occasionally found toilet paper in our trees or empty soda cans scattered across the lawn. Last Halloween someone smashed every pumpkin on the street.
Every morning when I take out the trash, I look at that little black smudge. And I remember the boot hanging off Marian’s rooster, and the scarecrow in Joyce’s shirt, and Kelsie standing in front of her own face on a giant screen.

And I remember that I could have called the police, and I didn’t.

I won the competition. But I think that was the part I’m actually proud of.