Summer Blizzards

It was a muggy summer day in the coastal city that eight-year-old Eli had lived in his whole short number of years in so far. The basking warmth of the sun filtered down in sharp rays through the glowing green maple leaves of the trees whipping past overhead, the wheels of his bicycle rattling every time he hit a crack or pothole in the old asphalt sidewalk that, over the course of more years than he'd been alive, had nearly sunken to almost the same level as the road. Straightening his loose fitting helmet that kept going lopsided, he stood up on the pedals and glided the rest of the way down the street and only slowed down a little when he approached the somewhat bent over stop sign pole at the end of the street. Without having to actually stop, he did a quick check both ways down the street to make sure no cars were coming before jumping his bike over the curb and peddling across the street.

Eli wasn't one for wearing shorts, not for any particular reason, but he just didn't wear them a lot. And so he had on blue jeans, a red t-shirt, and black quarter crew socks with his black green trimmed sneakers.

Mission goal was in sight just down the street now.

Dairy Queen.

He could already taste the ice cream without even being there yet.

He rode into a vacant lot and swung his bike into a skidding stop, the tires tossing up wafting clouds of dust and pieces of gravel. He covered his mouth with his elbow as he let out a dry cough. He tried to look to see how far back his friend was, but he slapped his hands to his side in defeat when he saw his friend only just coming down the opposite end of the street now. Panting, he squinted as he looked up to the sky at hearing a helicopter but the sun was too bright. His dad had told him the helicopters were probably from the coastguard looking for lost people. He awed as he managed to catch just a tiny glimpse of the helicopter before it disappeared over the ridge that separated the waterfront uptown of the city from his own area of the city, which was the north end. There were different ends of the city, like the west end, south end, and any other direction really. The south end though was bad.

Really bad.

People got shot and killed there and lots of drugs happened. It was just simply something everyone knew, at least everyone who was from this city.

He'd gotten so lost in his thoughts that he didn't notice his friend until his friend was coming to a stop beside him. "Hey Finn," he piped up, a happy playful glint in his eyes at his friend finally catching up so that they could finally get their ice cream. "Took long enough, huh?" he giggled at him. Finn had on a yellow t-shirt, black basketball shorts, white quarter crew socks, and black orange trimmed sneakers.

"Shut up," he muttered, giving Eli a playful slap on the arm.

Inside the cool air conditioned interior of the Dairy Queen, Eli waited in line with Finn beside him, both of them with their helmets off leaving them with just their sweat mangled hair.

Eli actually lived on the street they'd just come off of to get to this street that the Dairy Queen was on. Him and Dairy Queen were basically neighbours, but not as close neighbours as he was with his school since the fence along one side of their property was all that divided their property from the schoolyard. Him and Finn had just come back from messing around at the school playground. After the two of them got their small size blizzards, paid proudly with coins out of Eli's pocket, they walked their bikes back to Eli's house, eating the blizzards as they walked. At one point Finn made him giggle while he had ice cream in his mouth and he almost choked but managed to get it down. Like most things though, it didn't faze him and only a moment later he would try and talk while he had more ice cream in his mouth.

It was later, some time after they'd finished their blizzards and Eli's parents had gone out somewhere, that Eli was holding Finn at gunpoint with a Nerf rifle in the living room, the high pile carpet soft even through his socked feet.