These mean kids loved to torment the smaller ones and make them do things Austin knew his mother would definitely whip him for.
It wasn't quite his name he heard, more like a ringing or humming in the air. He looked in the direction he thought the sound was coming from.
Nothing over there but some old buses, he thought. Maybe one of the bus drivers dropped a radio or something.
Austin looked around to see if there could have been some other kid around trying to play a trick on him. Austin didn't really have any other friends around here. He was very careful and tried to be quiet as he looked around. He knew it could be very dangerous to be caught alone.
One of the guys he knew had told him about a boy who had gotten tricked into going around back of the sanctified church on the corner. The boy had gotten his head beaten in for his curiosity. The boy was still in the hospital and couldn't even speak. His neighborhood was rough and people were always cruel, especially to a small for his age black boy.
Over by the last school bus in the corner was where the humming seemed to be coming from. Austin cautiously made his way over to the bus, looking behind him all the while.
Yes, there was something on the ground, almost under the back tire. It was shining and seemed to almost glow. He squatted behind the bus's tires and picked up the shiny object. It was spherical in shape, but had several small knobs protruding from its hard surface. It was roughly the size of a baseball, but very lightweight.
He ran his finger over the surface and it made his fingers tingle. POWER, that's the word that suddenly came into his mind. This thing has power. He didn't know how he knew; he just did. There were deep grooves all over the thing and tiny little zigzags etched into it that almost looked like letters. If they were letters, they weren't from any book Austin knew how to read.
Austin thought back to all the commercials he had recently seen on TV, to see if this was the latest new thing kids his age just had to have. He couldn't remember any such toy. He thought and thought and tried to remember the last time his mother had let him go to the toy store. That had been last Christmas, when she had let him and Tyson walk up and down the aisles to pick out what they wanted for Christmas.
Austin smiled. He remembered how his mother had said, "Just one toy each, that's all, I don't have much more than that for each one of you. Make sure it doesn't cost more than twenty-five dollars. That's all I got for both of you."
This toy didn't look like the toys in the store either, not even the expensive ones that he and Tyson had to put back on the shelf when his mother saw what they were doing.
YOU CAN HAVE YOUR HEART'S DESIRES. Where had that thought come from? He didn't know how, but it just sort of spoke in his mind. He looked around again to make sure he was alone.
He had finally found something new, something lucky, and he said out loud, "I bet nobody has a toy like this one. I got to hide it before the other kids see it."
Austin shoved his new toy under his shirt and hoped nobody saw him. He took the route through the back of the school to get back closer to home. He cautiously crept through the Middleton's back yard and down between other houses of people he didn't know. Austin was doing everything that his mother told him not to do, but he didn't care. Somehow he knew he wouldn't be caught.
I'LL JUST DIG A LITTLE in the soft dirt under this bush and bury my prize a little bit more, he thought to himself. He accidentally twisted one of the knobs on the thing. It hummed louder and glowed more. POWER, it practically sang in his mind. He didn't know why he now thought of his found toy as a prize, but he figured he was the winner of the best prize of all.
Austin accidentally pricked his hand against the rough woody thorns of the bush. A glistening red drop of blood ran down his hand and landed on his prize. Suddenly the hole he was digging was larger than anything Austin could have dug that quickly.
"Austin, where you at? Ma said you better get back before she whips your tail."
He heard his brother Tyson calling for him, and he almost dropped his prize. Nothing could be worse than Tyson getting his hands on what was his. He stuffed his prize in the hole and it seemed it buried itself. He patted the dirt back in place with a desperation he had never known or had before.
It wasn't just that his mother was looking for him, he might have some explaining to do and Austin somehow knew he couldn't explain his new find. But, Tyson might see what he had and his mother always made him give whatever he had to him. Tyson was the baby and everyone said he looked just like the dad that neither Austin nor Tyson knew.
Their dad and any presence they might have felt were both long dead. There were a few pictures around the house that clearly showed a much younger and happier mother and smiling father. Two small boys, Austin at two and Tyson a mere wrapped bundle completed the happy scene. Theirs was a father roughly torn from his small family way too soon. He had no knowledge of those times.
His aunt Marie, his mother's sister, said Tyson looked so much like his father that he could've spit him out. No one apparently thought Austin looked like
