--  12  --

 

 

     The longhaired boy in the denim jacket sits alone at a worn picnic table by a slow stream in the nature preserve. It is balmy and windy. It is the last day of school, but the boy has skipped school because he will be arrested if he goes back there. He remembers the knife in his pocket, the one he bought at the carnival last summer. The blade is now dull and the point is broken. He uses the knife to carve this into a slat of the tabletop:

GINA HAS A PENIS.

     He is careful to make the two S's look like the S's in the logo for the band Kiss. He tries to carve a pentagram below the word "penis," but he accidentally carves a star of David instead.

     He smokes his last cigarette while sitting on a green-gray rock and spies something orange in the reeds. It's a brand-new-looking fishing lure. There's even a bit of gooey looking meat still stuck to one of the hooks. The longhaired boy thinks hard about how much he could sell it for.

     A gnat buzzes by his eye and he swats at it. He notices a Dad-kind-of-guy watching him from behind the wheel of a dusty green sedan. The boy fearlessly stares at the man for a long time and stabs out his cigarette on the seat of the table. The guy in the car shouts "Hey!" and the boy walks away, over the weedy hill.

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