Amanda took another step back, taking a moment to admire Dunc’s backside up close. “I enjoy the view.” She stated dumbly. Dunc froze. He wasn’t accustomed to any kind of compliments on his appearance.
“What?” Dunc turned to see Amanda vanishing into the kitchen. He made a face at her retreating form. Dunc grumbled and went to retrieve his shirt only to find it missing. Amanda had taken his shirt!
Amanda darted through the kitchen, waving her prize above her head. Everyone stared at her in surprise as she passed through and headed to the bathroom. She had closed the door behind her by the time Dunc entered the kitchen, yelling for her. He was stopped immediately by everyone making cheering sounds and laughing at him. His mother looked particularly amused.
***
Amanda changed from her shirt into Dunc’s. If she had to spend the day with him, then she was going to enjoy flustering the man. She was also going to see an expression on his face that wasn’t his usual frown or scowl. Plus. This was fun. She paused for a moment to lift the collar of his shirt over her nose and smell it. It had a clean and woodsy scent. She guessed the pleasant smell she couldn’t describe was Dunc.
For a moment, Amanda reconsidered wearing it and wondered if she could slip out of the house and hide it. She decided against it since Dew and Sallie would never leave her alone about it if she did.
The shirt, which was solid black with nine emblems representing the various key players in a superhero franchise, was too big for her. It dropped over one shoulder, which wasn’t a bad look. But she ended up tying the bottom of it so it wouldn’t look quite as over-sized as it was on her.
“Amanda?” Dunc was softly knocking on the door. “Can I have my shirt back?”
She opened the door and gave Dunc a smug smile, showing off her new look. He immediately backed off with a nervous expression. The way his eyes shifted away and then back to her, then aside again said it all. “I’ll find another shirt.” Dunc wandered off with a stupid grin on his face that he didn’t want Amanda to see. It looked cute on her and made him feel weird.
***
The morning went by quickly, with Dunc giving out orders and assigning everyone a job to do. Dunc had half a dozen friends, most of whom were almost as tall as he was. Three were muscular men with tan skin and black tribal tattoos encircling their massive arms. These three big guys were all skilled woodworkers and brothers. Dunc put them to work laying down wood foundations and walkways through a miniature town.
One of Dunc’s friends, Ray, helped Sallie and Dew prepare the plywood walls for paint. They laid down base coats and had them propped up inside the garage and in the driveway to dry. Dunc’s two remaining friends, a couple called Lola and Trey, did a lot of busywork. Lola was a stocky, short young woman. Trey, her slightly shorter, very skinny boyfriend, was always nearby, following her lead. Trey had a mop of curly brown hair over wandering brown eyes who slurred his words. He was a little weird, and Amanda suspected he had dyslexia by the way he misread everything. They delivered tools and nails and filled in where needed. They were both friendly and polite.
That left Amanda as a floating helper. Dunc found out she could read his plans clearly. He had her doing the rounds on half the projects to make sure they were going according to the plans. This freed him up to do more thorough overseeing of the other half.
Amanda realized that Dunc was going to destroy his entire lawn to build this playground. There were two rows of buildings going up with an upraised plank walkway between them. Dunc had explained that this was in case of rain so that it wouldn’t turn it into a muddy mess. The buildings were mainly walls with simple roofs here and there. They were oriented in an L shape that went from Dunc’s garage on the side street to the front of his house. It stopped at the walkway to his front door.
The graveyard would take up the yard's small strip on the other side of the walkway to Amanda’s property line. Amanda was amazed at the scope of the project and how fast it went up. The framework for the entire mini town was done by lunchtime. They had also put down floors and a full deck that ran around the front row of buildings.
Dunc had cut out most of the signs that he intended to fix at the buildings' top. He had everyone help paint the base coats. Walls would be going up next. Then they would go back to the signs and use stencils for the various building names.
Kids began showing up and yelling at Mr. Dunc how great his work looked. Amanda hadn’t realized there were so many kids in the neighborhood. Packs of children were drifting by the house. They looked at what was being built with increasing excitement as the day went on. Dunc smiled at the kids and told them to come back on Saturday for hot dogs and lemonade.
This was such an odd side of Duncan McCormick. She would never have suspected him of being social with anyone but his small group of friends. He seemed to like to hide out in his house as much as she did. Then she realized he had more friends than she did. She talked to a
