Dedicated to anyone who's ever felt...

.

.

Gray

.

.

Summer.

Brilliant emerald leaves hang limply from the stately oaks and round-crowned maples that march in military-straight lines along the edges of his world. Heat curls upward from the pavement, making lazy shimmers over the blacktop as far as the eye can see. Not a single cloud graces the pale blue sky; no puffy white shield drifts slowly across the endless expanse between that burning, blazing sun and the boy that stands, indecisive, on the edge of the parking lot. The trees droop, submitting to the oppressive heat of midday in August, but the boy vibrates with energy, oblivious to the miserable conditions as only a child can be.

His sneakers had been white, once, the laces new and crisp, with their little tips still wrapped in protective plastic nubs to guarantee ease of lacing. Now those laces are frayed, and grayed, the tread worn flat and their whiteness faded to a strange lack of a color that could only be called 'dust'. Scuffed at both toe and heel, one taps rhythmlessly against the concrete curb, its owner contemplating the vast, empty stretch that had once been tar-black but which is now as faded as his tired shoes. Yellow stripes, barely visible now, are nonetheless still perfectly mapped out in his head, as they had been the year before, and the year before that. This is his place.

Above the sneakers are bony, sockless ankles that give way to skinny legs, pale despite the summer sun's best efforts, dotted with the darkening hairs that foreshadow an inevitable end to his childhood. Freckles skitter elusively upward, one here, one there, until bright blue shorts cut off the view just above his knobbly knees, mocking the washed-out sky with their vibrancy. Only a small band of that blue shows under the oversized t-shirt that hangs shapelessly on the boy's slight frame. Long-fingered hands, too big for his body, wring together in the cotton of that shirt, hiding their awkwardness behind a thin layer of cotton that has been washed time and time again. If the shirt ever had a color, it, like the shoes, had long since given it up, resigning itself to a life of being worn and washed until its holes comprised more than its fabric, and an absentminded mother finally tossed it in the trash bin.

If shirts had dreams, that was the dream of this one - to finally enjoy retirement amongst the moldering banana peels and rusty tin cans of a landfill, in peace without its weekly trip through the violence of the washing machine's agitator, or lanky hands to twist and pull at it mindlessly, and especially no bullies to smear dirt and dog shit on its backside, aiming for the too-long ponytail the boy insists on keeping.

It is this ponytail now that the boy reaches for, having given up on the shirt. One hand creeps up behind his back to play with the bottom of it, luxuriating in the softness of it. A certain smug joy smolders quietly in his heart, that it is finally long enough to reach from below. Perhaps he should feel guilty for it, but sometimes, he is glad his father is dead. If he lived still, the ponytail would be brutally chopped off, perhaps a buzz cut employed to enhance the illusion that the boy is anything more than a scrawny, quiet loner. If he lived still, there would be no parking lot to play in, but a baseball diamond, full of the dust that makes the boy choke and wheeze, full of just the kind of children who like to torment him most. Instead, alone, he can come here, to his own personal desert. He is too young to think in such words, but he feels the truth in his heart, that the endless stretch of blacktop and the vicious sun beating down are his crucible, burning away all the unnecessary, superfluous parts of him and leaving only the truest, most concentrated essence, colorless and hard, undecorated but adamant, like ugly coal crushed to beautiful diamonds, sparkling in the unrelenting light.

The hair he is playing with had been red at the start of summer, but now it is bleached to a vivid strawberry blonde, the perfect complement to the freckles that proliferate their way across high cheekbones and from there scatter wildly across the rest of his Scottish-pale skin. Eyebrows so pale as to be invisible give him a perpetually surprised appearance, and draw attention to pale eyes, gray like so much else about him. Lips that would have been better suited to a girl are twisted into a thoughtful frown, one caught between blunt, white teeth as though it is being punished for being unable to speak the myriad of thoughts racing through his mind. His head bobs as he tugs on the end of his ponytail, sharp chin seeming about to pierce his chest with each motion but never making it all the way down, like a swing threatening to go high enough to spin all the way about the bar, but always giving in to gravity in the end.

Finally all his nervous movements - foot, hand, teeth - stop with eerie suddenness. The world narrows to one point in his vision, a mirage drifting across the parking lot toward him, seeming to strafe amongst the shimmering heat. At first it is shapeless, but as it grows closer it gains definition, until it splits into several moving objects that gain velocity toward him. It is too late to turn away when his sun-addled brain finally processes what it is seeing.

Two older boys on skateboards, their hair fashionably dark and cut at an angle to cover one eye, are coming toward him, pre-faded jeans and punk t-shirts making them seem cut from the same cloth, for all they look nothing alike naturally. The deserted parking lot, not yet given over to cracks and rampant weeds, is the perfect place for their sport of choice, and the last thing they expected was to come across the boy standing there, perching on the edge of the curb like a soon-to-be suicide on a precipice, staring down the endless crevasse that would pass by in a blink if only he could gain the courage to lean far enough forward.

Skidding to what is likely considered an artful stop, the taller of the two strangers kicks up his board and wipes sweat off his forehead. He knows who the redhead is, has seen him around the neighborhood, but hadn't expected to see him here. Recently abandoned, the parking lot is the perfect place to practice useless moves, to master the delicate art of not looking like an idiot on a truncated, wheeled surfboard, and he and his friend had naturally assumed that its suitability guaranteed that it would belong solely to them. Rubbing his sleeve over his brow once more, he ignores the damp spot it leaves, ignores the uncomfortable heat that leaves him smelly mere minutes after showering

"What're you doing here?" Sweaty demands, in his most intimidating voice, which falls somewhere between belligerent and cocky, encouraged as his companion also stops and tries to flip up his skateboard. This time it doesn't work, and the shorter skateboarder, in a Ramones t-shirt, scrambles to snatch it up without losing any of their dignity or impact.

The boy does not answer. He knows these two; they have thrown rocks and insult at him before, but still he stares at them intently, expressionless, knowing that his lack of a reply combined with that unflinching gaze is unnerving to most adults, much less kids only a year or two older than himself. The gulf between teenager and adolescent, eighth grader and high schooler, is bridged in that one moment by a pair of colorless eyes, fearless and hard. Ramones-shirt swallows hard and immediately regrets it, sure the other two heard in the stretching emptiness of their silence and the rhythmic, swelling drone of the cicadas. Less willing to show fear, Sweaty bares his teeth in that most ancient of masculine challenges. "I asked you a question, fag. The fuck you think you're doing in our parking lot?"

There are many things the boy could say. Having come here year after year, to the once car-studded vastness that was now bereft of gas guzzler and hybrid alike, he could truthfully say that it was more his place than it would ever be theirs. He knows each crack in the pavement, each lifting lump where the oaks push their insistent roots upward in search of water and sunstenance. This empty plain is as much his as it could belong to any one person, especially now that the big corporations have relinquished their claim on it, discarding it and its attendant strip mall as 'not profitable'. There are scars on both of his knees, lovingly given to him by this very lot, and here were these two would-be usurpers, trying to frighten him into giving up what he made his a long time ago.

Without fear he lifts his chin and stares them down, not blinking, relishing the way they have to squint to glare at him, the sun at his back like a silent supporter. Taking his cue from that ball of fire, he remains quiet, not seeing fit to dignify such a ridiculous question with an answer.

Later, as they shove him down to the baking asphalt and kick him anywhere their Vans can find purchase, he is sure that bleeding out on the lot makes it more his than it ever was before. In a moment that seems to last an eternity, he watches the sky fade to the same colorless state that he had before. In his mind this seems fitting. The boy does not know that the blood pooling under his body, staining his shirt and his shoelaces, is giving him color again, a blazing red speck on a vast concrete sea.

As his vision dims, he imagines he sees his father walking across the parking lot toward him, another mirage the sun has conjured up. He expects to hear a scornful comment about his ponytail, but the angel does not speak, just leans down to take his hand. Their fingers lace together, and one freckle darts from his hand to his father's, moving of its own volition to the thick knuckles that would one day have belonged to the boy. As he rises up out of his body, he glances down. All he knows is that he might have liked to stay, haunting the lot forever more, keeping it his forever. But they are moving forward, up and faster with each passing moment, the blazing sun growing larger and larger in his vision until it is all around him, its heat pressing in on him until he feels as though he might dissolve into nothing at all. He is sure that flying into the sun will surely melt his wax wings into nothing and, like Icarus, he will plummet downward. But as he clings to his father's hand, ponytail streaming behind him, he feels no fear. His last thought is for the parking lot below, his kingdom, now truly abandoned, empty but for the crumpled body of the man he would never be.

.

.

.

Hate Crime Results In Local Boy's Death

Early Wednesday afternoon police found twelve-year-old Aaron Shining dead at the Wall-Store parking lot after being assaulted by an unknown assailant. The recently-closed store had already had its security equipment disconnected and police are looking for any leads regarding this senseless and brutal crime. They say that evidence leads them to believe the murder was not premeditated and urges the culprit to come forward immediately.

Betty Minter, 53, is a neighbor of the Shining family. "That boy never done hurt anyone," she told reporters today, sniffling into a kerchief. "He's a sweet boy, takes my trash down every week since Henry died."

The boy's mother could not be reached for comment.

.

.

.

- sin sin -