"Come on, here, it's easy, you do it like this."  And he just ripped the cricket's head off.

I was friends with Kevin for the first decade of my life but we were never "close" like boys our age were supposed to be.  He was my first confidant and my first fight, my first peer and my first rival.  He liked to draw because I liked to draw.  He started buying Ninja Turtle action figures (and getting more, and better accessories) because I liked the Ninja Turtles.  One day he wouldn't stop biting me so I pinned him down to the sidewalk and punched his head into the concrete until he passed out and had to be taken to the hospital.  When I had the chicken pox Kevin let me borrow his Turtle Van to play with since I couldn't play with him.  And we were never close.

Kevin and I used to play a game called "Steve and Lester" where we were our fathers.  Steve (my Father) and Lester (his) would compete in a series of Olympic games of wrestling, throwing for distance, and foot-racing.   He was more base than I, with a smaller stature and a weaker heart, choosing to pick up the still lit cigarette butts from the street to try to smoke them and cough instead of getting a running start and jump crushing them like me.  He was trying to find ways to be different when we weren't old enough to do anything different.  So like a lot of kids he took to burning things, breaking things, and hurting animals.

I don't know what he did with cats and dogs nor do I want to know, but I know that he dismantled crickets like he dismantled LEGOs.   Grabbing a meaty specimen by the body he would twist their neck and pull, leaving a thin green string with a bulb dangling.  Probably the heart.  Then he would toss it over his shoulder (or at me) and look for another.  I didn't join in.  I didn't like bugs but I also didn't like killing things.  I stepped over the dandelions in my front yard.  I would've been a Buddhist if I'd known who he was.

Then, one day, he wouldn't let go.  He demanded.   "Do it, come on.  Do it."  Smoke.  Drink.  Premature sex.  Steal cars.  Peer Pressure!  Peer Pressure!  Nancy Reagan was right, I screamed.  "Come on, here, it's easy, you do it like this."

And he just ripped the little cricket's head off.

I was afraid to...

I was afraid.  Of it all.  Of life and death, of consequence and reaction.  I said no.  I said no again.  Three, four times.  Kevin insisted.  A hoisted cricket in my face.  An easy explanation.  A visual aid.  Turn, pop, string.  Probably the heart. 

And, after all of it, I did it.

I turned, and I just ripped the little cricket's head off.

I don't know why I did it.  I don't know why I didn't just punch Kevin in his neck and tell him to stop being such a sociopath, or whatever word I would've subbed for sociopath in elementary school.  Jerk, maybe.   I don't know why I did it and I don't know why it didn't matter.  I killed something that was alive in my hands, with my hands, and it didn't matter.  The ecosystem adjusted pretty easily without that one cricket.  Kevin had thrown a hundred over his shoulder.  Most of them in front of me.  We all adjusted.   I never said a word. 

I stood on the back porch for an hour that evening as the dusk surrounded me, staring down at the bulb and trying to figure it all out.   The fireflies that danced came up from the grass and the lightning bugs that didn't rested taught and tied around the finger of the black girls jumping rope in the street away.

Next.