"I want to get shitfaced," Kenny announces. Craig bounces a thick rubber ball in front of his feet and catches it on its decent.
"That's stupid," he says, rolling the ball around his knuckles and dropping it. It bounces unceremoniously up to his knees and falls off the curb.
"No, it's not. Then I could run around and be wasted and have fun." Craig stares at the ball as if it's going to hop up to his hands on its own accord. When it doesn't, he stoops down and plucks it off the asphalt with two slim fingers.
"So what's stopping you now?" he mumbles, knees straightening and locking in place.
Kenny smirks and says, "Everyone'd think I'm nuts."
"They already think you're nuts." He throws the ball forcibly to the concrete and it flies above both their heads.
"Really, now?" Kenny responds, snatching it out of the air. "Then I can do whatever I want, hey?"
"Seems that way." Craig's slate eyes don't leave the ball in Kenny's hands, like the way dogs stare at food, fixated. Kenny tosses it to himself, watching Craig's irises follow it loyally. It lands with satisfying heft in his right palm, his left palm, his right again. He lobs it to Craig, who hooks it between his fingers and bounces it quickly, rebounding off the sidewalk with each downward push of his hand. Kenny coils his fingers into claws and growls gutturally, hunching over and stalking around Craig.
"What the hell are you doing?" he asks, drumming the ball feverishly and automatically.
"I'm a velociraptor," he rasps, hissing.
Craig raises his eyebrows but doesn't react beyond switching the ball to his left hand and bouncing it ambidextrously.
Kenny roars and tears down the block, running in long, loping steps. He scares a crow sitting on a fire hydrant into a fluttering, feathery, frenzy and whoops triumphantly when it sails into the sky. He whips his head around, dirty blond hair flying in ropes.
"Craig! Come scare crows with me!"
Craig makes a bad bounce and the ball hits his shoe, rolling listlessly off the curb again.
"Oh, hell," he complains, scooping it up again. He's done this so many times today that his back is beginning to twinge. "No. I'm not scaring crows with you."
"Craig!" Kenny screams, sounding so alive and adolescent. His voice thrums with teenage recklessness, extroverted energy that begs to be used.
"What? I'm not going to run around like an idiot and get all tired and hot." He resumes dribbling the ball.
"It's like, 35 degrees out! You're going to fucking freeze to death with all of your monotony!"
"Fuck off!" Craig shouts back. He makes another misjudgement and again the ball rolls against the curb.
"Craig!"
Craig stares for a moment. Then, a smirk grows onto his face. He makes claw hands at Kenny and bounds down the walk at Kenny, making prehistoric shrieks and growls. Kenny pounces at him and they spar for a few seconds before Kenny spins around and sprints into a vacant lot a few buildings down. Craig runs after him, and a cloud of crows erupts from the empty lot. They fly a million different directions, Kenny screaming at the top of his lungs for the motherfuckers to fly, fly far, and Craig catcalling nonsense at them. (Fly fuckers fly to Nebraska fucking beaks and caws and I hate crows!)
Someone up the street from them picks up the abandoned ball, and Craig might have gone after them and beat the shit out of them if he was aware that the theft was happening, but he wasn't, and he didn't realize he didn't have it until the evening, when it didn't matter anymore.