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Billy
by Hetre Z

Billy walked on thumbtacks and he loved it. He’d shake his hands out, get ready to rumble, go.

The city looked blue and hazy when he stared at it right, and he always imagined it was colder than it was just so he could feel happy not wearing a coat. His favorite song from Rocky Horror was the one with the switchblades in it.

The grit between his fingers, the scrape of dirt on his face, always made him feel older. The life made him feel older, dangerous wild carefree uncontainable and loving it older. Like the Newsies, he thought. He had always wanted to be the edge of something besides peanut butter sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

When Billy moved he swung his hips out and arched his back, even when nobody was looking.

He liked watching the light fade from the city. He never let himself believe that it was running away from him and his dirt and his edge, but sometimes he dreamed it and woke up smiling. Billy would stand on top of buildings at sunset and hold his arms out, and wave goodbye, see you tomorrow.

He would have liked to cut his hair with a knife when it got too long, but it always pulled and hurt or didn’t go short enough, so he learned how to sneak into the barbershop, stealthcut. Billy remembered loving the James Bond movies when he was little.

He didn’t live anywhere in particular, but he didn’t like sleeping in boxes, either. Most of the time he built cinderblock igloos or camped out in abandoned warehouses. He was almost always proud of himself for it.

Billy found ways to rhyme “knife fights” with “nifty”, because he thought they were, and he proved it to himself every day. The only day they weren’t nifty was the day the knife flitted across his face, and even though it just touched his eye he could taste metal all the way to the back of his throat. He knew the city looked bluer-whiter-hazier-grittier with both eyes, but instead he tried to think of what a nice pirate he would make with a patch on his face.

When Billy cried, the salt stung and made the cut hurt worse, but he couldn’t help it.