"Ow!"
Finch whipped around as he brought his hand up to rub the back of his neck, where he had been targeted with a small pebble. Between the horses and wagons that marched the streets, he could see the girl on the other side – the girl who wore trousers, the girl who wore her hair up in her hat, the girl who stayed in the house with the boys, the girl who held a slingshot in her hand, staring at him through the fork of her weapon. She tucked it back into her coat pocket and shot him a look, a look that said stay away from my spot.
Finch scowled and turned away, trudging back from where he came.
She started living with them about a few weeks ago. He didn't know her name, or where she came from, but he didn't really care. All he cared about right now was how she was good with her slingshot and he felt threatened. The slingshot was his thing. How could she just walk right in and be… almost better than him? It was stupid. She's stupid.
They never spoke, not with words at least. It started when Finch was standing with Henry, talking to him about this and that and the new girl that decided to stay in the lodge. I ain't never seen no girl with a catapult, he told Henry. I bet she's just got it for show, pretendin' to be tough or somethin'. Girls got bad aim.
Oh, how he would regret saying that.
Mere seconds later, something hit Finch in the back of the head. He jumped around and saw a balled-up piece of newspaper roll to a stop on the floor, then looked up and saw the girl barricaded on her bunk, all the way across the room. Henry burst out laughing, ridiculing Finch until another wad of paper hit him square in the forehead. Finch watched the girl, who just stared back at him with a blank face. He walked out of the room, unsure of how to feel.
The next day he got his revenge – he finished selling before she did, so he positioned himself at the top of the stairwell and waited for her to walk in. When she did, he hit her with a wad of paper and ran off. In one swift motion, the girl swept the ball off the ground and shot it back at him.
"What?!" he cried, spinning around when he felt the projectile hit his back. She stood there looking up at him, expression unreadable but determined. He turned around and marched down the stairs, stopping a step or two above her. "Oh, it's on."
Since then, they've been engaged in a silent war. Finch would ambush her when he found her off-guard, but he almost always got hit whenever he was least expecting it – for instance, when he stumped upon her selling spot and she hit him with a pebble. Not only that, but whenever he got hit, he'd have to look around for her. She was always hidden!
"Where is she?!" Finch yelled one day, after getting shot in the middle of the rec room with the girl nowhere to be found.
"Who?"
"The Sniper!" He yelled. His eyes washed over the entire room, looking for her braids under one of the caps.
Choruses of huh?s and what's you talkin' about?s from the boys yelled in response. Finch waved around erratically.
"The girl, the girl! She's a sniper, she keeps– ow!"
A balled up piece of paper collided with his nose, causing him to go cross-eyed for a moment. Immediately he jumped into action, ignoring the howling laughter from the other newsboys, and located the source of the projectile: the… door? The closed door. Right. Okay. Finch marched to the door, flung it open, and saw the girl hightailing it up the stairs.
"Oh no you don't!" Finch yelled, barreling after her.
When he got up to the bedroom, the girl was once again hidden. Finch looked around, armed himself with his slingshot in preparation, and slowly proceeded into the room.
"Alright, I know you's in here," he said. Cautiously, he walked down the middle aisle, scanning the room with each step. It was quiet… too quiet. The only noise in the room was his light footsteps, kicking up loose newspaper pages that lay scattered across the floor. Suddenly, something to his left fell, and he whipped around, slingshot ready. Nothing stuck out, and he looked at the surrounding area through his slingshot. A balled up piece of newspaper fell, presumably from the top bunk, he deduced. He picked up the projectile and very, very quietly climbed up the adjacent bunk.
Then he was hit.
"No!" He yelled. He dropped off the bed frame and turned around to see the sniper once again barricaded on her bunk, the one in the very corner closest to the door where she wouldn't be seen from the doorway. "Shit," he cursed, then scrambled to pick up the ball and shoot it back at her. In an instant, she hid back under her fort, and the ball bounced uselessly off the pillow in front of her. Finch dove onto the floor under the window, grabbed a stray piece of paper in his fist, balled it up, and shot it. This time it hit her, and she shot three more wads of paper back. They began to slingshot the balls back and forth across the room, like two kids in a snowball fight. At some point, Finch ran out of loose paper around him, and all the previous balls lay scattered around the girl's bunk. Finch grabbed the closest thing to him – a sock – balled it up, and launched it. The sock soared across the room and hit the girl square in the face. Finch let out a burst of laughter. The girl took the sock, and rather than shoot it back, sat up on her bed and chucked it across the room onto Finch's face. With his mouth open in laughter, part of the sock made direct contact with the inside of his mouth, and Finch jumped and flung the sock off him in disgust.
"Eww, disgusting!" He yelled, scrubbing off his tongue with the back of his hand. Across the room, the girl burst out laughing.
"Hey, what's going on up here?" A voice called from the door. The pair turned and saw Jack, who'd entered the room amidst the chaos.
"She threw a sock into my mouth!"
"He threw it first!"
"Alright, alright," Jack held out his arms, signaling for them to chill out. "Come on, you crazy kids. We's going out for supper soon, so hurry it up."
Jack left, and Finch hoisted himself off the floor. He walked over to the girl's bunk and offered her a hand as she climbed down. He chuckled, saying something about how you know, that was pretty fun as she hesitantly took his hand. She let go, and they began to hop down the stairs together.
"Hey, Sniper," Finch said. "You wanna try shootin' targets together sometime?"
She laughed. "Ain't that what we been doing?"
"No, like cans and bottles and stuff!" He said. "I bet I can get more than you."
"No way," she replied, shoving his shoulder (with probably more force than needed, since he bumped into the stair railing as a result). "I've got better aim."
"Do not."
"Do too! You's just afraid to admit it!"
Finch let out a light laugh. "Yeah, sure. We'll see about that."
Weekly shooting contests then became a thing. Every couple of days, Finch and Sniper would go out to an alley behind the lodge and shoot the cans, bottles, rats, and trash cans, often competing to see who could hit the most or who could hit the best. Their little shoot-offs were fierce and competitive, yet friendly. Sometimes, when they were feeling daring, they'd sneak around the corner and shoot pebbles at people's feet, and duck back into the alley as they laughed at the confused and exasperated yells. They never got caught, but even so, you don't want to get into a fight with these kids – if they get into trouble, they stand back to back, each armed with their slingshot, and unleash all hell. Prepare to lose your eyeballs if you try and fight them, they won't even let you get close. They're a deadly team.
They didn't really realize they'd become friends until someone pointed it out.
One day Albert came back to the lodge, holding up a bunch of grapes in his fists victoriously. The boys gathered around the table to pick at the fruit, thoroughly enjoying the refreshing bursts of juice on their tongues.
"Didja buy these, Albert?" Buttons asked.
Race guffawed. "Are ya kiddin'? Albert's the cheapest one here, he wouldn't even buy a new mudder if it meant he'd hafta give up fifty cents." The boys laughed, and Albert shoved him.
"Hey, Finch!" A voice called. Finch turned towards the voice and saw a slingshot aimed at his face, with Sniper behind it and a grape in the pocket. "Open up!"
Finch opened his mouth up wide, and Sniper launched the grape across the table. It just barely missed his mouth, ricocheting off his teeth and onto the floor. Sniper laughed and tried two more times before successfully getting it into his mouth, where it almost went directly down his throat before he even had a chance to close his mouth. The other boys cheered and slung their arms around the two friends.
"You two are a riot!" Specs laughed.
"Yeah, you's been much more fun since you became friends!" Jojo agreed.
Finch and Sniper just looked at each other, a look that said, yeah, I guess we are friends.