Boys Will Be Boys (v.2)

chapter twenty-six - team

chapter twenty-six — team

GIRLS WERE PRETTY. Girls were okay to kiss too. The first girl I kissed had fluffy, brown hair and wore sparkly things. It happened behind the swing set, the rest of our third-grade class spreading the news like cooties-rumors so my teacher knew about it before I'd even realized the gravity of the situation: I'd kissed a girl— I was a man now. She said it made her a princess, and since I kissed her I was her prince. I stayed her prince for two days until I realized princes couldn't play basketball and suddenly being a prince didn't seem that fun.

The first girl I dumped stopped wearing sparkles and didn't kiss another guy until highschool.

Her name was something painfully exotic— something so cool and unique it was entirely forgettable. But, I remembered the little crown-shaped eraser she had at the end of her favorite pencil: it made her a princess. A lot of things made her a princess apparently: sparkles, kisses, and crown-shaped erasers. She shouldn't have needed a prince to continue her rule successfully, but elementary school anarchy struck and her empire crumbled.

Girls were pretty, but they could be mean. Especially to each other.

"So, Roger, you a tits or ass kinda guy?"

And guys could be fucking weird.

Marco slouched against the bleachers, sinking again the icy chill of the metal with a curious grin.

"Me? I'm a personality kind of guy," Roger smiled in tandem with Marco's frown, shallow dimple making a rare appearance as he leaned onto his backpack. He was using it as a makeshift pillow, hood pulled up so it could keep his ears warm as the late November wind tried to steal them.

I wasn't exactly sure who'd decided that meeting up by the football field during the lunch break was a good idea, but judging from the way Marco's eyes flashed like the cold metal cutting into my asscheeks I figured it had something to do with the demonic clown and his smooth brain.

"You sly motherfucker. That's how you get them, isn't it?"

"What? No," Roger squinted in disbelief, turning away from Marco to smash his face further into his backpack, "I don't have enough energy to argue with you"

"That's fine. I have enough energy to argue for us both."

"How about we don't argue?" Lukas suggested helpfully from the bench below mine, his thigh pressed flush against my shins. The tip of his nose was pink, eyes watering every few seconds as he squinted to see in the breeze. My eyes just got dry when it got cold and they would start to go numb if I didn't blink like I was trying to fly away using only my eyelashes.

"Fuck outta here with that pacifist preaching," Marco griped, a smile still plastered on his face as he continued to eat his fries.

"We all know you're not a saint."

A fry dropped to the ground and Marco looked at it with conflict. Roger opened one eye, feigning sleep, and waited to see if the idiot would actually eat the cold potato stick that had fallen on the fucking outdoor bleachers.

"What do you mean he's not a saint?" The words sounded wispy as they left me, but they managed to snap Marco out of his dilemma. He picked up the fry and tossed it in our trash pile, the fallen soldier looking sad and out of place amongst the crumpled napkins.

Roger chuckled into his backpack at my question, turning a lazy, singular-eyed gaze over to where Lukas and I were sitting a few feet away. His shoes had bits of crushed leaves stuck in the crevices of his sole in a weird pattern. They were mostly yellow, but I spotted bits of red leaves. I liked red leaves more than the yellow ones— they seemed cooler. Yellow leaves were plain and they blended in together, but red leaves could stand out and still look just as natural. And brown leaves were just angry and crumbly. Like me.