Roger crosses his arms over his chest and looks defiantly up at his mother.
"Why can't I have it?" he whines, jutting out his lower lip.
His mother raises her eyebrows. "Have what?" she demands. "The cobra starship, the 'shiny toy guns,' as you put it, or the pepper spray?"
Roger frowns. "Well, Marky has all of them," he points out. "Why can't I?"
"Because I," replies his mother, "unlike Mark's parents, do not have the financial resources required to purchase an endless supply of violent toys. Nor, in fact, would I want to, because I believe in raising a peaceful child who cares about other people, rather than a violent little boy who only wants to kill people."
"But killing people is fun," Roger informs her.
His mother claps a hand to her forehead, suddenly struck by a headache. "Roger," she says patiently, "I'd like you to go draw something, okay? Just draw me a picture. Crayons, markers, whatever. Just make a picture."
"I don't wanna," Roger wails.
Mrs. Davis exhales. "In that case," she says, her voice tight and exasperated, "I'll drive you over to Mark's."
"Okay!" squeals Roger, and he grabs his leather jacket before scrambling out the door and into the minivan.
As she gathers her belongings, including her purse and her make-up case, Roger's mother makes the convenient decision to take two tablets of Tylenol.
Roger is nine. He is excitable. He is absurdly eager to do anything and everything that might give a single mother a headache.
After swallowing the first two pills, Mrs. Davis places the pill bottle in her pocketbook, and then descends the porch stairs to join Roger in the car.
---
"Wow," says Roger in awe. "You sure have a lot of toys."
Mark beams. "Yep!" he exclaims. "See, this is the new one, right here." He indicates a sleek black starship with a neon green snake painted on its exterior. "It's a cobra starship. My mommy didn't want to buy it, except it says it lasts ten years and that means I can have it for a really, really, really long time and I wanted it a lot so she said I could have it."
Roger nods. "It's cool," he says politely, and turns to point at another object. "What's that?" he asks.
With an excited smile, Mark announces, "Toy gun."
"It's shiny," Roger informs his friend.
Mark nods. "I have a bunch. Three or four, five maybe. You want to play with 'em?"
The truth is, Roger does. Desperately. But something tells him that he doesn't want to fall in love with a toy just to be disappointed, to have to leave without it, lacking any chance of ever acquiring one.
"No, thanks," he mumbles. He collapses onto Mark's bed, letting his hair fall into his eyes as he stares at a bottle on his friend's desk.
Mark giggles. "That's pepper spray," he tells Roger smugly. "It can make people in-ka – in-ka-pa – in-sa – um… sick."
"Allergies?" Roger asks politely. "I'm not 'llergic to pepper. Try it on me."
Mark shakes his head. "I better not. My mommy says I can't use it unless it's an emergency."
"Ahh," says Roger dryly. "I'm dying. Spray me."
Giggling madly, Mark holds his finger over the bottle's nozzle and pretends to aim it at Roger. But Mark is nine, and his fingers are tiny and slippery from playing with no end of substances. To any onlooker, it would not be surprising that Mark's finger, through some bizarre twist of fate, does not manage to shield Roger from having his eyes blasted with pepper spray.
A wild, excitable boy though he is, Roger cannot help but scream. He claps his hands to his eyes and squeals in pain. He neither whimpers nor asks for help, but holds his eye and rocks back and forth, alone in Mark's room as Mark runs to get his mother. Cries of "Mommy!" can be heard throughout the house, and when a stricken Mrs. Cohen comes to see what the problem is, she, with the swift movements of a trained mother, lifts Roger into her arms and carries him into the bathroom.
Roger is set down on the counter by the sink, and he feels like a baby about to receive his first bath. He does not know what to expect, his eyes squeezed shut. "Open your eyes, honey," Mrs. Cohen instructs gently, and with much difficulty, Roger complies. His eyes are red and swollen, and he whimpers as a wet paper towel is dabbed onto each eye respectively.
"Hurts," he whispers.
"I know it hurts, honey," Mark's mother says, but adds encouragingly, "You're doing great. Just keep your eyes open. It'll stop hurting soon, I promise."
Roger whimpers. "Thought it was a toy," he admits.
"Oh, dear lord," murmurs Mark's mother, but she neither pauses nor slows in her meticulous cleansing of Roger's eyes. "Come on, sweetie. Just keep them open. It'll be okay."
He nods, trying to be brave. He wants to impress Mark's mother and let her know that he can be a big boy, eyes open, not acting like a baby in spite of the pain.
In the few seconds between Mrs. Cohen's dabbing of one eye and the next, Roger glimpses Mark out of the corner of one eye. He is standing off to the side, his thumb in his mouth – a habit of which he hasn't quite cured himself yet – and appears to be deep in thought. "It's okay," Mark adds, trying to be supportive, and approaches Roger and lays a hand on his friend's ankle, that being all he can reach.
"Thanks," Roger mumbles, but it hurts so much and there really isn't much to say, just ow, and he doesn't want to say that, because it would make him sound (and feel) like a baby.
After twenty-five agonizing minutes, Mark's mother finally lifts Roger off of the sink and places him down on the ground beside Mark. She tells the boy to stay put, then crosses into Mark's room, retrieves the pepper spray, and pours the entirety of the bottle down the sink.
"Have you two learned your lesson?" she asks.
Roger nods. "Hurts to play with evil toys," he declares.
Mark wrinkles his nose. "My toys aren't evil," he grumbles. "They're better than any toys you could ever have, stupid-head."
Unfazed, Roger crosses his arms over his chest and retorts, "At least my toys don't make kids get hurt."
"You practically are a toy," Mark, ever the creator of metaphors, snaps. "It's like you're made of plastic, like an action figure, and when your leg snaps off there's no point playing with you anymore."
"Mark!" exclaims his mother, shocked. "Stop!"
Roger ignores her, and informs his friend – former friend? – that "Well, at least I'm not a teddy bear," he growls. "You get hit and you just suck it up, and then the stuffing starts to poke out and you get replaced with a new one."
"You are both ridiculous," declares Mark's mother. "And you are both in time-out."
Roger looks up at her, horrified. "My mommy never gives me time-out," he sneers.
"Maybe she should," says Mrs. Cohen sweetly, and escorts the two children into Mark's room. "Sit," she says firmly, and, on her way out, retrieves the cobra starship and toy guns and removes them from the room. She exits, closing the door behind her.
Mark glares at Roger. "This is your fault, stupid-head."
"No, it's not," Roger whines. "It's your fault. You were the one who got that stuff in my eye."
"You told me to spray you!" Mark cries.
Roger rolls his eyes. "If I told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?" he mumbles.
"Probably," Mark responds matter-of-factly.
Roger snorts. "You so wouldn't," he snaps. "You'd probably push me off."
"Is that what you think?" Mark demands, horrified. "I would never do that. I'd push anyone off a bridge if they tried to push you off."
"That's confusing," Roger informs him.
"Well, wouldn't you do the same for me?" Mark asks softly.
Roger's jaw drops. "Of course I would!"
"There you go, then."
The two boys sit in silence, bewildered. Are we still fighting? Is it over? Is there more? Do I hate you, do you hate me? As always, they share one another's thoughts. Roger's eyes are closed, his hands caught in the fabric of his shirt, and like a greenscreen replication of the same image, Mark is sitting in the same position. His fingers, like Roger's, are tangled up in his shirt, and his eyes are closed loosely, trying to block out the images of his friend squirming and whimpering, pepper spray in his eyes.
"Are we still fighting?" Roger asks suddenly, his eyes wide and alert and open.
As if on cue, Mark's eyes open as well. "I don't know," he says. "Are we?"
Roger shrugs. "Do you want to be?"
"No," says Mark bluntly.
Unconsciously imitating his friend's words, Roger sighs. "There you go, then."
Moments later, Mark and Roger begin kicking a ball around the house, smashing into walls and kicking various fragile objects. At the same time, they slump against the couch, panting, exhausted and exercised to the limit. Their blond hair falling in their eyes, bright eyes open and contemplative, anyone looking in on them would think them related – cousins, brothers, twins.
In the same way that Mark's hand seems to mold into Roger's whenever their hands touch, the two boys often melt into a single individual, MarkandRoger, one boy with a lifetime's worth of flaws and talents.
And in those moments, Roger has no desire for Mark's toys, parents, and house; Mark has no need for Roger's sibling-free home, shiny leather jacket, and abandoned guitar that once belonged to his father. In those moments, Roger has everything he might ever want from Mark, and Mark from Roger, and both boys from the entire rest of the world.