“Huh,” offered the boy on the left, perhaps unhelpfully, “Yeah, that’s pretty much broken.”
“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed!” countered the other dryly, rolling an eye, “Your powers of observation astound me. I can hardly bring myself to believe that you could have knocked it over in the first place.”
“Hey, hey, wait up. What do you mean me? This is totally on you man. You were the one who distracted me with all of your yammering. If you weren’t so in your head maybe we’d actually be able to do something rather than just wander around Ikea talking and bumping into things all the time. Seriously, who does that? It’s not like we ever buy anything from here anyways.”
“Yeah, well it looks like we’re buying something now.” The boy on the right replied, eyeing the remains of the mirror glumly. “We should probably talk to a rep or something. Just let me do the talking.”
“Seriously? You always get to do the talking”
“Yeah, because I’m better at it. I get a lot of practice, remember? – And besides, what are you complaining about? You got to talk, like, all of Sunday when Uncle Jay came over.”
“Ha ha, very funny wise guy.” Said the left, “Because I’m sure you would have just loved to spend an afternoon talking about– here, you grab that end and I’ll get the big shards– talking about salmon.”
“Is he still going on about that? I wasn’t paying attention.” The right replied. Though he melodramatically feigned ignorance, he couldn’t help but break into a toothy, lopsided grin at the scathingly accusatory eye in the broken mirror.
“Seriously man? Just cut the crap. I’m sick of all your BS. You think just because you can write better than I can, or catch, or do math, or whatever. You think you’re better than me?”
“What? No of course not! Don’t be ridiculous, I– “
“You do! You actually do. I can see it in your eye! You prick!”
“And you wonder why I don’t want you to be the one talking? Look, lets just keep a cool head here, and do one thing at a time. We can argue later.”
“You’re doing it again! I can handle things just as well as you can. Here, move over, I’ll take the mirror.”
“Ow! What are you– Let go of my arm! Stop it! You’re going to make us drop it again.”
“No I’m not! Just let go. I can do this. See, look, there’s a manager guy. I’m just going to go over and– ”
“Hey you! Kid!” the man called out. The boys froze, the brief silence as the man walked over broken by the faint tinkling of one last piece of glass hitting the floor. “Kid, I’m–” he paused, briefly, to look around, grimacing ever so slightly at the shattered mirror. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You want to talk to yourself or whatever, that’s your deal, but the yelling is starting to upset the customers. I… ah. Do you have any parents with you?” When they shook their head, the man sighed, scratching at his greying temple, “Look,” he said, his voice resigned, “Just get lost. I’ll take care of the mirror.”
A short while later, a boy stepped out into the Ikea parking lot, and slowly started the long walk home.
Left foot, then right foot, then left foot…
