Disclaimer: I do not own West Side Story! Characters that do not appear in West Side Story, however, are mine.
Boy the sun was hot! As the young man walked along the beat by the playground, he wiped the sweat off of his forehead with the back of a dirty, tanned hand.
Then, he heard it. The fatal call. The low glissando. Not fatal because of danger, but fatal because it was not just a whistle, it was a mark. A statement of where he belonged. The Jets.
Turning on his heel, he made his way through the playground, dodging flying basketballs and girls' skipping ropes, his blistered feet aching in his tight shoes.
A group of boys, young men, had now formed in the corner by the see-saw. The tallest of the boys looked up, nodded, and lit a cigarette. His blue sweater was dirty around the collar, and his cream trousers were slightly too short. Next to him was a stocky fellow with thick, curly, brown hair, whose face was stuck in a permanent snarl. It was as if he had been sucking lemons since he had come out of the womb.
There were two boys sat in front of them. One of the boys who was slightly smaller than the first, though still tall, was leaning against the wall. His face was looking up at the sky, the light so harsh on his face that you could barely see his strong features. The unbuttoned shirt he wore over his vest blew slightly in the New York wind, and brushed against the arm of a blonde haired boy wearing a bright red shirt. He stood up and strolled towards the young man. Who need to be tall when you had the biggest, broadest, strongest shoulders known to the whole West Side?
In the corner of the alley the silhouettes of three people were outlined by the sun. One, tall and muscular, one small and thin and another the spit of the first. Yet more boys joined them. The smartest looking of all the boys so far walked over with such a presence that you wouldn't, at first glance, have expected him to be in a street gang. His hair was perfectly slicked back compared to the boy next to him. He was short and stocky, much like the lemon boy. His hair was a mousey brown, locks of it clumped together from the sweat that had formed on his brow.
Shuffling along behind the pair of young men was a girl, if you looked closely, trying to be discreet. She wasn't allowed in the gang. She was a girl. She had cut off all her hair and wore boys clothes. The boys hated her. A clingy nobody, anybody, from off the streets.
But who were they to talk? Each one of them didn't belong anywhere else than the Jets. They had a family, obviously, they weren't just there, but they could never be part of that life. The Jets were their own family.
There was the older brother, always looking out for others. Ice. The young brother, always making fun. Arab. The grumpy old one; the grandfather. Action. The cousins, in their own worlds and affairs. Tiger, Mouthpeice, Joyboy. The jumpy, hyperactive uncle; always cracking jokes. Snowboy. The smart, superior one. The godfather perhaps? Geetar. The relative that only makes an appearance at Christmas. Big Deal. The school girl sister, annoying and argumentative. Anybodys.
And the new born. The baby. The innocent doey-eyed pup. Baby John.
Baby John was newest member in the gang, as well as the youngest. He was tall and lanky, with bright blonde hair. Always dirtied like the rest of them, yet by far the most bloody. Because he was the youngest you see, he was the who always got picked on.
But not anymore. The fighting had stopped. Ever since it happened. That why Ice was the leader. The sharks were friends now. There was the odd rivalry now and then, but nothing like what there used to be.
It was hard for Baby John. It was hard for all of them. But I guess the one thing the Jets had learned was this:
When the world is your oyster, you don't always get the pearl.