Brooklyn kids talk fast and laugh loud, giggles snapping, popcorn popping. Brooklyn kids chew gum. They slide across the street on their skateboards. They are fire crackling over grease.
Brooklyn kids wear their baseball caps tilted to one side. It's kind of stupid, but they think it makes them look tough, so it does.
Brooklyn kids tell lies.
Thresh couldn't lie if his life depended on it, and when he wears a baseball cap, he doesn't look tough; he just looks like Thresh wearing a baseball cap. He's not a Brooklyn kid. He's a kid from the Midwest, and he misses his friends.
One day, about a week after his family moved to Brooklyn, he's leaning on the railing of the fire escape. Not thinking about anything, just watching the pigeons- and a girl swings down from the fire escape of the apartment above. She lands, stands, leans her skinned brown elbows on the railing next to him. "Hey," she says, and he's thinking, how do pigeons fly- so it takes three more heys ("I said, hey!") and a poke in the shoulder before he finally notices her presence.
"Hello?" She leans forward, waving a hand in front of his face. Her curly hair looks like two slightly dented chocolate munchkins, one on each side of her head. "Are you okay?"
He blinks, slightly startled. "Yeah. Sorry. I was watching the pigeons." Chocolate munchkins with little plastic flowers.
This time, he's startled by her smile. "Do you like birds, too? I love birds- I watch them all the time. My name's Rue, by the way." She offers her hand, a delicate, twig-like thing.
"Thresh." He shakes her hand.
"It's nice to meet you, Thresh. Welcome to the neighborhood."
He's not a Brooklyn kid, but neither is she. She's something different, a bird of the air.
And Thresh has a friend.