ken🤠

"The ground is frozen!" Luke calls from somewhere at the bottom of the garden, "How are the worms gonna' get out?"

Jack wishes he were a worm, buried deep in the soil. He'd probably be fucking warmer there. But-

Go play outside, guys, Mom had asked them, Dad and I need to talk.

The tightness in her tone had let Jack know it wasn't a good idea to argue that their hands would freeze, and it wasn't like he wanted to draw Dad's attention to the fact he'd lost his gloves, anyway. It was better to be out of the house for these 'conversations' between his parents.

"Cut it out," Quinn says now as Jack lifts another full fistful of stones into the air, ready to aim and launch. "You can't be throwing shit at the house. Someone lives there now."

Jack scoffs, biting down the urge to taunt, I'm telling Mom you swore where Luke can hear.

It's true, he saw the moving trucks yesterday just the same as Quinn and Luke. The three of them, heads pressed together and peering through the foggy window as Mom said with forced cheerfulness that maybe there would be new kids for them to play with now.

But he'd also seen the way the lady who got out of one of the vans scowled at the peeling paint of the porch as she picked at it with her thumb. Once she realises this shitty neighbourhood can't be fixed with a new coat of duck egg blue, she'll pack all her family's shit right back up and fuck off.

The only people who stick around are the people that are born here.

"It's not the house," he says petulantly. "It's the fence. Our side of it, too, so I can do what I want."

Quinn rolls his eyes, but to Jack's surprise doesn't argue. Just turns and stalks off in the direction of Luke and his worms.

Jack keeps throwing.

It's a game he plays with himself when he's not in the mood to join in with his brothers. How many times can he hit the same dented spot on one of the posts- one point each-, how many times can he aim perfectly so the rocks slip into the garden next door between the gap in the panels- five points each-, and how many-

"My mum has asked why you are throwing rocks into our garden."

The words startle Jack from his point tally, and on instinct he takes a step backwards, hands stuffing guiltily into the pocket of his jeans as though to hide evidence, like it's not too late for that now.

The voice is deep, thick with an accent Jack can't place. It makes it a shock to see a boy, not much older than himself, stepping out of the house and towards the fence when Jack looks up.

"I told her I would come to ask you," he is continuing, shaking long strands of dark hair out of his eyes, as though to get a better look at Jack, the way Jack is stepping forward again to get one in return. "To make sure it's not a sign that you are unhappy with your new-"

He breaks off for a moment, as though trying to find the word for neighbours in English.

"Friends," is what he settles on instead.

To Jack's surprise, the boy's expression is- Amused. Dark eyebrows quirked into a show of friendly curiosity like Jack is the new, shiny thing on the block to puzzle out, and not the other way around. At the same time, it's almost like this is an old joke shared between them and not the first time they're meeting.

"It's a game," Jack finds himself saying, in place of the apology he should make. "Like- Um. How many I can get through the gaps, and shit."

The boy's head tilts minutely to the left, like he's considering. It bares his neck, showing off the slope of it, and for a moment Jack finds his eyes catching there. The same way they might catch on Lexi Blaire when she makes the same move sitting three seats in front of him in history class.

He shakes the thought away.

"Okay," the boy says simply, before crouching down in the grass on his side of the fence. Before Jack can wonder what it is he's doing, he's lifting his hand and-

The rock sails through the panels, landing at the toe of Jack's sneakers. He looks slowly between it, and the boy's face. At the bottom of the garden, Luke and Quinn have fallen silent, and Jack can feel their eyes on the two of them.

"How many points?" The boy asks.