Theo Marchetti

At the end of the street, where the road turned into a gravel loop, there was the garden. It belonged to everybody. Old Mr Petrakis had started it years ago on an empty block, and now it had tomatoes and beans and a lemon tree and a plum tree and a row of sunflowers that in a good year grew taller than Wren's dad.

This was not a good year. The tomatoes had curled up. The beans had gone yellow and crisp. The sunflowers had got as high as Wren's knee and stopped, and bowed their heads as if they were ashamed.