are you from Worcester? I'm from Fort Lauderdale, left a couple years ago, haven't seen any of my family from there, they think I'm a bad kid." He had a bright happy expression, or maybe it was anxiety, and the light stayed bright in his sparkling long-lashed eyes, right through the end, "...bad kid." I was getting milk at the Store24. The boy was maybe 20, maybe 17—maybe not even that. He had dark hair, rosy cheeks (it was five degrees outside last night), pink pouty lips, and several piercings, three in his ear and one in his left eyebrow.
His clothes were mostly dark, he had a long coat. But he wasn't goth, he just looked like he tried to be, once, on a whim maybe. He had probably tried a lot of different 'looks' and different personalities on his way from Florida. I got excited just being next to him in the store, which is a very bad sign. It means that I sensed that he had no clue who he really was, and that he was desperately looking for someone to tell him who he should be. I hate to admit it, but my fear—and the lonliness of isolation which I otherwise prefer—agitatedly approve of his type, and push me to take guys like him home.
He sounded dumb; it wasn't a Southern accent, he didn't have one. Besides, I think a Southern drawl is quite elegant. No, he had the accent of the street, which is full of ain't's and don't-got's, and the ever useful, 'Wha!', but he spoke now with genial, accomadating tones, five feet from me, continuing a hustle begun somewhere down the street. He stood at attention, almost, the way a little boy in a sailor suit might—and he looked just as vulnerable. He stood near the counter, waiting, watching a forty-year-old man, the one to whom he spoke, the one who the youth hoped would give him something: ...a ride further along his trek to who-knows-where. ...a warm bed on a very cold night—or at least a place on the floor. ...a little money maybe, so his existence might count in this fat Christmas-culture; so he could prove that he's not a 'bad kid,' that his family is wrong; and maybe so he could buy some weed and get high.
something else I hate to admit is this; that I bitterly envied the guy who did have this boy's undivided attention.
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