All the Wild Children by Josh Stallings

and the little fucker knows it.  He plays pool down on the razor, bets on a game, doesn’t have a dime in his pocket.  If he loses they will kill him.  He loses.  He lives.  Don’t ask.  I don’t know.  When we got caught for creeping houses, Lark and I are arrested for grand theft, felony B&E.  Tanner’s name is never mentioned.
     
    Lark also runs with Sammy, Donald Green and Lovelace.  Three hardcore ghetto princes.  They never roll unstrapped.  Everyone knows them.  Most fear them.  Lark makes a point that I am seen in the parking lot with them.  I am traveling under a diplomatic seal from then on, at least with the criminal set.  Doesn’t do a lot for me on campus, but in the parking lot I am solid.
     
    Saturday.  Tomas and I take the train to San Francisco.  We go to Market Street and buy badass platform shoes.  I get a grey felt pimp hat.  I have a brown leather pimp coat.  Tomas has a tan one.  We look in store windows as we walk by.  Our reflections are badass, Superfly.
                 
    THE FIRST POTENT CROSSROAD
    Tomas and I are walking back from lunch, we’re both a wee bit high.  Tomas shoulders me.  I bounce off a locker.  He laughs hard.  He coughs.  We don’t notice we have crossed into the quad.  We haven’t shown respect to the natural order of Ravenswood.
    “You know where the fuck you are, boy?”  He’s big but dope skinny.  He has the slur and ashy skin of a junky.
    “Yeah, do you know?”  His friends are not in any better shape.  There are three of them.  A finger hits Tomas’s chest and shoves.
    “This look like bean town to you, you see your sister sucking my dick?  No?  Then what the fuck are you doing here?”  Tomas doesn’t answer.  He is in battle mode.  Coiled.  Ready.  I’ve seen him drop full-grown men in Kung Fu class. 
    I slip my hand into my jacket pocket. 
    “You gotta pay the toll you wanna cross our yard.”
    They aren’t looking at me.  Tomas is clearly the threat.  If it goes pear shaped, they will gang drop him, then me. 
    I snap the Buck knife’s blade open.  My hand curls around the handle.  I focus on the neck of the young man standing next to me.  I am ready to bury the knife in his throat.  I know I will.  If Tomas swings, I will stab.  It is the only option that doesn’t end up with us in the hospital or morgue.  I am calm and detached.
    The ashy junky is getting aggravated at Tomas’s unemotional face.  He spits.  A lugi e runs down Tomas’s cheek.  If it is going off, this will be it.  But Tomas simply looks at the junky and smiles ever so slightly.
    “Come on J, let’s roll.”  He turns, exposing his back to the junky and his pals.  It says take me if you think you can, cause I ain’t worried.  They can read it as well as I can.  I step past them and Tomas and I walk down the hall.  When we are finally out of the free-fire zone I close the Buck knife.  Tomas hears it click shut and nods.  He wipes the spit from his face with a bandana from his back pocket. 
    “Man, I was sure you were going to take his ass out.”
    “J, he’s a junky.  Why do I care what he thinks of me?  You on the other hand, you spit in my face and I will rip your liver out and feed it to Torso.”
    “I’ll keep that in mind.”
    “Good.” 
    And like that, it is over.  We move on.  There is plenty more day to try and get through.  You get hung up on the past, you won’t be present.  And that can get a fella killed.
    In hindsight I recognize that was the crossroad I could have turned left and stabbed that kid.  There’s no turning back.  I go to jail.  A White boy who killed a Black boy.  They have to toss the book at me or they have riots.  Whatever the outcome.  My life is completely different.
     
    “Homes, did you hear that crazy shit went down in Belton’ s clas s ?”  James is smoking, leaning against Jorge’s bug.
    “I didn’t make first period.”  I had been getting