by L. A. Fields
“If it was up to choice, which one would you want to kill?” Ray asks, making chitchat.
“Whoever that kid sticking his finger in the other kid’s face is, he once shot me with a rubber band gun, him I wouldn’t mind seeing dead. What about you?”
“I don’t think I actually care. They’re all the same to me.”
The bossy one Noah pointed out makes himself a team captain. A girl tries to join in the game and is rebuffed. She leaves alone, but a lot of good that does Ray and Noah, since they’re only looking for boys. One kid takes a spectacular spill and starts limping home, but his friend is helping him, or at least sticking near him for moral if not physical support. The game is nowhere near over at that point, but with two players departing, everyone but Bossy gives up. He yells his face red, but he can’t influence any of the others to keep playing. His lack of control makes him kick the ball into the trees in anger. He turns towards the school, probably looking for more people to shout at. The rest wander towards the sidewalks.
“You’re right,” Ray says as they return to their cruising positions to follow the dispersal. “That kid is a little shit. Too bad he’d probably be impossible to trick into the car.”
“Yes, that’s quite a pity.”
One block away a boy is finally walking alone, but when they pull up close to him, Noah accidentally hits the power locks instead of the window down button and speeds back up in a flustered panic.
“Noah, what the fuck?” Ray scolds him, watching out the back window as their big opportunity fades into the distance. “What the fuck did I tell you yesterday, man, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“Ray, pay attention to what’s in front of you,” Noah says, because the next right turn reveals another lone boy, on a side street instead of in front of everyone’s living room windows, and this boy they both know.
“Robbie Rosen,” whispers Ray, sitting up straight and rigid, like a bloodhound with a scent.
“He must be visiting his grandparents or something,” Noah says, seeing no one on the street before them, and no one but Ray in the rearview mirror. His pupils are dilated and his breaths small and shallow.
“Yeah, something like that, probably,” Ray agrees, and he grazes Noah’s neck with his fingernails as he leans over the center console to hit the window down button on the passenger side himself.
“You know what that kid is?” Noah asks, then answers, because this is a set-up and not a real question. “He’s a group of crows.”
Ray laughs, and the friendliest smile lights up his face. That will go a long way towards convincing Robbie to go for a ride.
“I know why that’s funny,” Ray says, victorious and pleased all the way to his core.
“I don’t,” Noah says honestly, but he eases the car up to Robbie and leaves the charm offensive to Ray. It turns out Noah really will do anything for him.
L.A. Fields is the author of The Disorder Series, the short story collection Countrycide, and My Dear Watson, a queer Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Her work has appeared in anthologies of horror, erotica, and academia.
She has a BA in English Literature from the New College of Florida, and an MFA in Creative Writing - Fiction from Columbia College Chicago. She lives in Dallas, TX with a cat and a day job.