kickflip

The other guy pushes a mop and bucket across the carpeted floor towards the mop closet. He carefully lifts the bucket with his foot beneath it, allowing the front wheels to hop over the vacuum cord on the floor.

“Mop kickflip,” the other guy says.

“Mop ollie,” he says.

“Mop ollie. Is it okay if – god that would be pretty ugly, a mop kickflip,” the other guy says.

“Do you think you’ll ever get to the end of that sentence?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry. Can we stop by my house so I can check on my chili? It’s in the instant pot,” the other guy says.

early

“You want to just head to the college now?” the other guy jokes.

“Hell yeah,” he says.

“We’ll just like sweep everyone out of the buildings,” he adds.

“Yeah. All right, welp, time to get the fuck out, we got janitoring to do,” the other guy says.

“We could just become the type of janitors who kick students out everywhere,” he says.

“Like, ‘this Kaivac ain’t just for hosing floors,” the other guy adds.

He laughs.

“Everything I know about cleaning I learned from America’s most prolific mass murderer,” the other guy says.

security

 “Does [security guard] like not really talk to you anymore?” he asks.

“Not really. I think it’s that they’re making him wear a mask now.”

“Hmm,” he says.

“Yeah,” the other guy says. “Like, he just looks like he’s tired and wants to get the buildings locked up as fast as he can.”

“Maybe,” he says. “I saw him in Science tonight and he didn’t have a mask but he’s still like, ‘hey, have a good night,’ and kind of stomped off.”

“Hmm,” the other guy says.

“Did we like fuck his wife or something?” he asks.

“Maybe he was allergic to the cookies we baked them,” the other guy says.

“Yeah,” he says and laughs. “He spent all Christmas break in the hospital because he’s like fucking allergic to peanuts or some shit. Haha.”

parking

He parks in a parking lot near the library because the way their dad and another person parked leaves no room for his car. He audibly sighs and gets out of the car and the other guy also groans a little.

“Can you please just park all the way up at the front of the curb,” he says to their dad.

“Oh, hey! I figured Karen would want to park there so I left room but then I guess this must be someone else’s vehicle,” their dad says.

“Yes. It is someone else’s vehicle. Can we just park in the order we arrive? I don’t see why Karen has the front of the curb reserved for her at all times and, like now, if it’s someone else working instead of her you’re leaving all this space and we have to park all the way in the parking lot. And I have to wear a mask when I drive right now because mom doesn’t want me potentially having the virus and giving it to [the other guy]. So my glasses fog and it’s just hard to drive, like, to park and stuff in general.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry,” their dad says.

He lets them all into the building and disarms the building and goes back outside to vape for a minute and says under his breath, “Why the fuck does he do more for random people he doesn’t even know then us? Like what the fuck is that about?”