Looking at this boy now, and considering the aggressive boldness with which he ignores my existence in the name of relentlessly pursuing his passion for wheel theft, I'm almost certain he would come down in the latter category.
"Hey," I try, kneeling so I'm closer to eye-level with the other boy while keeping that safe distance between us and holding onto the knife in my pocket in case I need to act fast.
"Piss off," the boy bites out. He still doesn't look away from his task.
"You shouldn't be doing this," I say tiredly, getting the distinct feeling this is going to be more difficult than usual.
The boy gives an extra hard crank with his ratchet and scoffs at me. "That a good boy merit badge you're fiddling with in your pocket, then, is it? Or have the police decided to get real creative with their informant recruitment."
Yeah, calling it now, this shithead is going to be the cause of my next migraine.
"You know," I respond sardonically, "there are less dramatic and obstructive ways to kill yourself than this. Think of the poor bastard who'll find you hanging from the warehouse rafters looking all cut to shit. Think of the city workers who'll need to risk their necks on a ladder to get your dead body down."
There's a pause where nothing but the sound of metal scratching metal fills the dank street.
A series of emotions flicker across the boy's face, none of them sticking around long enough for me to accurately read, until his expression settles comfortably into an annoyed frown, that full mouth of his nicking down on both sides.
"What makes you think that if I was going to kill myself," the boy challenges, "I'd feel the need to be selfless and convenient about it?" He finally deigns to look at me, and it's with the bitchiest pair of raised eyebrows I've ever seen. "Maybe Iwantto fuck up a young paramedic's afternoon."
Holding up my free hand in a sign of placation, I say, "You're right, I don't know you like that. Made assumptions based on human decency. Won't make the same mistake again."
That earns me another noise of caustic incredulity from the boy. "Projecting, are we?" He stares me down with those dark green eyes and I feel caught by them, held in place, the muscles in my shoulders tightening at the harshness of his gaze. "You set on making a polite corpse out of yourself one of these days?" He asks, sounding oddly curious about it.
"Don't plan on making anything out of myself," I murmur, giving him a wry quirk of my lips. "Not really living that class of life, am I?"
The boy eyes me like he's reserving judgement for some unknown point in the future when I'll be given the opportunity to disappoint him. "What class of life's that?"
I huff out a breath, meeting his frank look of appraisal with my placid one, far beyond caring what anyone thinks of me. I ripped that layer of humanity off my first year on the street. "Where you get to be anything other than who the world tells you, you are."
"Woah, deep," the boy intones sarcastically. "You ever think about writing that shit down?"
I smile a bit wider at the playful scorn in his voice. "What, like throwing it up on a brick wall?" I'd have to find a spot not already covered in a mix of street art, gang signs and dick doodles.
"Was thinking more intimate." He tilts his head to the side, one loose curl falling over his forehead. "Like scratching it into a bathroom stall with a sturdy biro."
It takes more restraint than I'd like not to reach over and twang the escaped curl. He'd probably chomp my whole finger off with his tiny, sharp kitten teeth.
"You're a mean little princess, aren't you?" I suppress laughter with an enormous bout of willpower. My eyes flicker up to the top of his head. "Someone steal your tiara or something?"
The boy snorts. "Nah, they stopped handing them out to all the new orphans," he says, dry enough to choke a man. "Fucking disrespectful. That's why I left the feral care of social services to unlawfully become a man six years early."
I flinch internally at the mention of social services. Every kid who winds up on the street has tangled with that rigged fairground game of a government system. "Your parents, they died?" There's no sympathy behind the question. Dead parents is hardly the cruellest version of this story.
I've met kids who wish their parents were dead, kids who wish they'd died before their parents could fuck them up beyond repair, forcing them to live through the carnage. Some parents are like a child who gets a new fish and shakes the bag too hard because their own parents never taught them that consequences are a thing you're meant to learn from.
"Worse," the boy sighs, "they're alive and justprofoundlyshit at it." He doesn't seem upset by the fact, more resigned, which is probably for the best. I've seen what happens when kids try to hold on to a lost cause, like people gripping the seats of a plane as it falls out of the sky. There's only so close you can get to the ground before any available parachutes stop offering a chance at survival.
"Being parents?" I ask, curious despite myself.
The boy smiles grimly, his green eyes appearing to fade, like a forest dimming in the evening light. "Being alive."
There's a jagged edge to him, something sharp and dangerous. He's like a sprawling jungle, mercilessly beautiful on the surface while possessing an untamable chaos of wildlife beneath.
I can hear Paige's voice inside my head, telling me not to get attached, to listen to my instincts telling me this kid is trouble. But she told me the same thing about Bo and Amira, and I ignored the hell out of her then as well.
"You got a name?" I ask.
The boy's grip tightens on his ratchet, his eyes narrowing, guard up and ready to withstand a siege from all fronts. "Not for you I don't."
