The Cootie Catcher

The two sisters, nine-year-old Janey and eleven-year-old Kat, slid off the pink banana-seats and leaned their bicycles against the brick wall. "You ready?" Kat asked her baby sister. Janey nodded and followed her big sister through the pool hall's front door.

Behind a table at the back of the pool hall, Mookie elbowed his buddy, Jam, and said, "Check it out. Looks like the little girl came back for more." "Schwing," Jam said, laughing. "Told you she wasn't too young."

The two sisters stopped just inside the door and let their backpacks slide down their arms onto the carpet. Kat reached into the fur-lined pocket of her leopard-print coat and pulled out a cootie catcher. "Pick a color," she said to Janey. "Red," Janey replied. While working her hands so the cootie catcher opened and closed like a paper mouth, Kat spelled the word out loud "R-E-D." Then she smiled at Janey and said, "Now pick a number." "Four," said Janey, touching the printed number on the folded paper with her tiny finger. "One-Two-Three-Four," Kat said in a sing-song manner. "Pick another number." Janey pointed at the number six. "Now ask it what you want," Kat said. Janey bit her lip and blinked a few times. Then she asked, "Should we?" Kat sighed. She smiled at Janey and peeled back the triangled segment of paper with the number 6 written on it. "The cootie-catcher says yes," she said.

"Hey, baby girl," Jam called out, addressing the younger of the two sisters. "Who's your friend, hey?" A few other patrons -- guys leaning on their pool sticks -- began to laugh. Mookie said, "I've got enough candy for both you little girls."

Kat let the cootie catcher drop to the floor. She crouched down, unzipped her backpack and pulled out two sections of an AK-47. She snapped them together and handed the full weapon to her sister, then Kat stuck her hand back into the bag and when it reappeared it was gripping a pistol.

Janey shook her damp blonde bangs out of her eyes pulled a magazine out of her coat pocket. She fitted it in place and squeezed the trigger of her AK-47. Mookie flew backward and slid down the pool hall's rear wall. Two shots from Kat's pistol brought Jam forward. His head struck the green felt of the pool table, hard. It remained there, motionless. The onlooking boys began to panic, but it only took little Janey a second to cram another magazine into the rifle and put an end to the screaming. The old man working behind the counter slowly took the phone receiver off the cradle. His mouth was moving, but no words came out. Kat shot once and the old man stood a moment before dropping the phone and falling to the ground.

The two sisters quickly stuffed the weapons back into their Bratts' backpacks, slung the packs over their shoulders and walked out the front door casually. They both took hold of their bicycles' streamered handlegrips and, with the wind blowing their hair across their faces, they pedaled straight home without stopping.