“Oh, Kelly, don’t pick your nose on the street!” Marcie said, screwing up her nose into the stinker face her mommy always kidded her about. But this stinker face was deserved. Kelly looked really gross and ugly with that snot just hanging out of her nostril like a bird’s claw.
Kelly stuck her tongue out at Marcie and then pushed her left shoulder back. “Tag! You’re it.” And she ran over behind the garbage can, scrouching down as if playing hide and seek. But Marcie wasn’t fooled at all. Shoo, Marcie thought, Kelly didn’t have anywhere close by to escape to. Just that brick wall, that rusty gray fence, and the cement floor behind the garbage cans.
Too bad Marcie didn’t have a grass backyard like some of her friends at school. And neither did Kelly. Kelly’s daddy had died last year when she was in the first grade, and Marcie, well, she and Mommy moved out of the Larchmont house and to the Bronx when Daddy went up to prison. And she got a divorce, too, and was now spending nights with that hairy man with the snake tattoo on his behind that he kept jiggling on his way to the bathroom after drinking too much beer. Marcie wished he’d leave them be, but he kept staying overnight in Mommy’s bedroom with her.
So Kelly decided to put up with Marcie’s snotty face. Even if it was really gross.
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