Skylar sat on the sidewalk, across from the young boy who lived near John. He grinned and held up his fist again. Skylar raised their fist, and in sync the pair bounced their fist against their palms three times before each of them rearranged their fingers.
Skylar put two of their fingers out while the boy flattened his hand. Skylar made the snipping motion. The boy stuck his tongue out, but grinned showing off the gap between his two front teeth.
The boy grabbed a box of chalk and leaned forward. With red and yellow he started drawing a figure on the sidewalk.
“May I?” The boy nodded, his brown hair catching the golden sunlight.
Skylar started drawing their family with the sky blue chalk. Labeling them mother, father, child. The boy looked over and then grabbed a red piece, drawing a big heart around the three blobs with eyeballs and tentacles.
“Do you know them?” Skylar pointed to the drawing, the clown juggling colorful circles. The boy made an ‘x’ with his two pieces of chalk. “Do you know how to juggle?” Another ‘x’. “Do you want to try?” He nodded. “I’ll be back.” Skylar pushed themselves to their feet and raced across the street.
Unfortunately John didn’t have a juggling hobby, or a sports hobby, or really, anything Skylar thought would be relatively safe for a small child to juggle. Skylar eyed the knife block in the kitchen, since they had seen people juggle those, but didn’t seriously consider them.
The kumquats sitting on the counter next to the knives was a different story.
Skylar grabbed the kumquats, using their shirt as a makeshift basket to carry them over to the kid.
“Okay,” Skylar blinked rapidly a few times as they spread the orange fruit across the sidewalk. “I guess you should start with one, kind of bouncing it between your hands.” Skylar did their best to follow the tutorial video playing on the inside of their eyelids, working up to juggling two kumquats while the kid watched them.
“Toss me a third.” Skylar kept their eyes on the fruit, the gentle arches of flight reminding Skylar of the parabolas in math class and physics. Catching the third kumquat slowed things down a moment, but they stuck their tongue out of the corner of their mouth and found a new rhythm. “Another.”
The boy tossed a fourth, then a fifth when prompted. His smile grew wider with each one Lucky managed to seamlessly fit into the flight path. And then he was prompted to throw the sixth fruit. Which he did with all the enthusiasm as a small child brings, too much force behind the small fruit and it ended up hitting Skylar in the forehead.
As Skylar rubbed their head all the fruit fell, bouncing off the sidewalk, most rolling into the grass and one making it to the curb of the street, balancing for a moment before tipping off.
“Whoops, try again tomorrow?” The boy nodded.
Word count: 500
