I’M FALLIN'

Romy stumbled into the townhome with all the grace of a calf learning how to walk, nearly falling face first over a pair of shoes she’d kicked off earlier in the day and hadn’t bothered to pick up. “Cricket!” Her voice was slurred just slightly, the effort of his full name feeling like a tongue twister in her current state. “Cricky where are you!” Gripping his doorknob, she pushed the door open and let out a triumphant sound when she found her target. “You,” she points, making her way towards his bed and all but flopping down onto it, hooking an arm around his neck. “I got you sodas,” she grins, holding up her bag, filled with a few sodas and two Arizona Iced Teas she’d taken from the 7/11 a few blocks down. “Come on, you’re gonna go out, being inside is depressing.” @cricketnovak​

Oversized headphones blasting a soft rock song from his bedtime playlist, Cricket attempted to will himself to sleep. The Griffin street townhouses were home to Lockwood’s most outrageous parties on most nights--but the weekends were on a different level entirely. From sundown on Friday to sunup on Sunday, the street was sin city. It was torture for a recovering alcoholic. A struggling recovering alcoholic. The dropping temperatures prevented him from fleeing to the beach or the baseball field, so he figured he’d try to sleep through it... but three Advil PMs and two cups of sleepytime tea later, it was becoming clear that wasn’t going to happen. Sleep never came easy to him; his brain refusing to quiet enough for him to relax. “Jesus christ!” he yelped, a sudden weight dropping down on him. Previously shut eyes flew open, and the boy had to bink a few times before the face staring up at him finally registered. “Romy--” he shook his head, knocking his headphones the rest of the way off-- “I think I just had a fucking heart attack.” It took a moment of staring at the lumps in her bag for her words to set in, a crease between his eyebrows forming. The thoughtfulness caught him off guard and it took him a few seconds to school his expression. “Why do you insist on trying to force me to have a good time?” He gave the arm draped around him a pinch. “Let me stew in my misery for a change.” 

“You’ve heard the idiom, ‘there are only two things certain in life: death and taxes?’ So, yeah, accounting.” 

“It used to be a part of my daily route. It was more of a way to hype myself up than an anger thing, though. I’d maintain eye contact with my reflection and repeat ‘I Am Cricket’ in the style of a gregorian chant–then my knee was shattered in a car accident and leaping had to be cut out of my morning ritual. I’ve tried just the eye contact and chanting, but it doesn’t have the same power. Everything I once loved is now just out of my reach.”

Lottie rolled her eyes, “You don’t give me enough credit.” The petite blonde muttered as she toyed with the loose nail sticking up from the weathered wood of the picnic table, “I’ve gotten into fights with guys way bigger than him, all you have to do is reach down, grab them by the nuts and they stop everything they’re doing and fall over.” Charlotte glanced back to Cricket, “You men are weak just saying.” She laughed now as she tugged the nail up and out of the wood, humming to herself, “I think I could take him, I could just flash him my tits, that would work.”

“Testicals on the outside were a mistake,” he agreed, cringing at the picture she painted in his mind. “I’m not suggesting you couldn’t take him. You definitely could. I just think, if he’s able to tackle you, it’s game over. He’s a very stout man while you look like you barely break the hundred mark soaking wet. At best you get the air knocked out of you, at worst something snaps. Avoiding being tackled should be number one priority when stealing from an ogre.” He eyed the rusty nail in her hand, “Giving him tetanus could work.” Cricket chuckled around his straw, nearly choking on the sweetened beverage. “The man works on a college campus, tits are a part of the landscape. How effective could that be? If you really want that taser, your nutcracker idea is the way to go. Unless he has literal balls of steel, it can’t fail.” 

The boardwalk was much more bustling than Maggie was used to. There was nothing like this in Rochester, a feeling of likeness that nearly seemed fictional in its make-up. It was too perfect. People smiled at one another and she felt like she was an extra in an episode of 90210, lingering in the background in her light-purple lensed sunglasses, perched up on the ledge of a beach bar as she observed humanity around her. The events that transpired were nothing like what she’d witnessed so far and when she saw it was one of the few people she’d already met at the Huntington campus behind the attack, she couldn’t help but laugh. “I guess he deserved it, huh?” she asked, having missed the sour interaction from earlier. “Do you usually carry a baseball bat everywhere you go?”

Cricket peered over his shoulder, watching the now tomato red man shoo off a kid on rollerblades offering him a hand. “He’s wearing a Rolex watch and Balenciaga sneakers, and refusing to pay for a two dollar caricature--” his gaze flicked back over to Maggie, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth-- “He definitely deserved it. A year ago I would have stolen his wallet, too.”  Cricket ran his thumb over the handle of the bat in his grip, growing wistful for a fraction of a moment. "Just when I’m blowing my paycheck at the batting cages.” He shuffled closer to lean against one of the pillars holding up the thatched gazebo as his knee gave off a particularly sharp throb. “Well, and when I have to walk through the Murphy neighbourhood. The beach grass there is so tall and dense, it creeps me out. I feel like a skinwalker is going to leap out and maul me.” 

“What do you think my chances are I won’t get tackled to the ground if I try and steal the campus guard’s taser,” Lottie pondered as she smacked her gum, resting her chin on her hand and watching the portly man walk around the entrance of the library, tugging at his tight belt and scratching at his beard, “I wonder what his life is like… he’s so intriguing…. like a fairytale ogre come to life, guarding all us with nothing but his wits and a whistle.”

Tearing the tops of four sugar packets off with his teeth, Cricket dumped the white substance into his iced tea. The slight breeze blew some of the granules onto the table, making him frown. “His wits, a whistle, and a taser,” he corrected, flicking sugar at her. Taking a sip of his drink, he sighed in relief as the caffeine immediately started relieving his headache. “I’d certainly like to see you try it--but, for the sake of our friendship, I feel compelled to remind you that you’re tiny and, if he landed on you, you’d probably pop like a water balloon.” 

now that she’d been here for a while, mili could not figure out why she’d chosen to live in griffin street when garcia row was right there, with its pretty colors and its pretty everything. she’d been walking around the neighborhood for a bit now, probably looking like a stalker to anyone that paid any attention to her presence, and initially she’d thought of coming to see viktor but at some point she’d forgotten that was her mission, distracted by the pretty architecture. she’d been staring at a house for a while, when she sensed someone was actually staring at her, and the realization startled it. “cross my heart, i wasn’t planning a robbery, just thinking if i could paint the outside of my place like that — but if i was planning a robbery, it’d be stupid easy if people keep leaving their windows open all the way like that. rookie mistake, gotta say it.”

The crisp late November air was causing Cricket’s bad knee to ache more than usual. He knew the smart idea would be to stop where he was and order a Lyft to drive him the rest of the way home, but his pride just wouldn’t allow it. He was supposed to be in the prime of his life, afterall. It was humiliating that the relatively short walk from Garcia Row to Griffin Street caused him such pain. He’d just plopped himself down on the curb for a quick rest and a cigarette when he noticed a woman staring, unblinking at a house across the street. “Disappointing,” he rasped, pulling his gaze away from her as she finished her explanation, “I thought you were possessed and I was going to get to have a showdown with a demon.” Cricket flicked his lighter to life, bringing the flame to the cigarette pinched between his teeth. “Well, if you were casing the place, I’d tell you the students who live in that house have pawned most of their valuables to support their cocaine habit. The big bucks are at the pepto-bismol colored house on the corner. They’re Rochester transfers, though, so I doubt they leave their windows open.”