Flirting in Space

(On testing free will)

The boy wondered whether a finger tasted like carrot. 

During break time, his friends were gathered around the tire swing in the playground. He never liked tire swings. They’ve always made him nauseous. Instead, he sat in the sand with his friend, the only other person not playing. She was sitting cross legged, balancing an orange lunchbox on her knees. 

“Do you know?” She said, dipping her carrot into hummus. 

“Do I know what?” The boy replied. 

“That,” She bit into the carrot hard. “A finger is as easy to bite through as a carrot.” 

“Pff,” He stretched his legs, kicking the sand. “That’s not true.” 

“It is.” She insisted, taking another bite, then reached out to offer a carrot stick to him.

He pushed it away. “You’re making it up.”

The bell rang. 

The girl shrugged, getting up and placing the lunchbox into her bag. “My dad literally told me. I’m going back to class.”

He stayed seated for a moment, letting the sand slip through his fingers. Then he curled them into it. His thumb slid over his index finger, feeling the sturdy bone beneath it. Turning to his friends who were on the tire swing, he watched as two of them spun it with force. Their fingers being able to manage heigh momentum and heavy weight. 

“Are you coming?” She said, slinging her backpack over her shoulder. 

“Yeah,” The boy got up and brushed the sand off his pants. Then clapped his hands together to brush off the rest. The palm of his right hand caught his eye. Transfixed, he made a fist, then seeing the girl’s amused expression, quickly let go and ran five paces ahead of her. “You’re slow.”

Later, at the dinner table with his parents and little sister, he picked through his coleslaw. 

His fork caught a shredded carrot. “Is it true?” 

“Is what true?” His father replied, grinding the vegetables between his teeth. 

The boy held up his fork. “Can you really bite through a finger like a carrot?” 

“That’s what they say.” 

“It’s bed time soon, finish your plate.” His mother nodded over to him, while his sister clunked her knife against the table, she turned to her and grabbed the knife out of her hand. “That includes you too.”

“I don’t wanna,” His little sister pouted. 

“Vegetable’s are good for you,” His mother continued. “Otherwise you won’t grow.” 

The boy rolled his eyes.“That’s not —” 

His father threw a glaring look at him. The boy went quiet. 

His sister grimaced as she picked up a piece of carrot and started chewing on it. “Eww…”

Suddenly, she choked and then spit it out. But there was a bloody tooth amongst the orange mush. She started crying. 

“Don’t worry sweetheart,” His mother said rushing towards her, napkin in hand. “It’s just a baby tooth.” 

His father rubbed the small of her back. “The tooth fairy will leave you something nice this week.”

The boy took a strong bite of his own food, resisting the urge to say that there was no such thing as the tooth fairy. 

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” His mother said picking his crying sister up and carrying her towards the bathroom. 

The boy kept crunching on the food in his mouth. Then, swallowed it dramatically. “Dad?”

“Yes?” 

“Do you think I can keep the tooth?” 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” his father said, chugging a glass of water. 

As soon as he heard his parent’s door slammed shut, the boy sprang up from his bed. The entire  time he had lain, his mind circled around one thing. He opened his door, and shut it silently before creeping down the carpeted staircase. Careful to take slow measured steps against the wooden parquet that lead into the kitchen. Right by the sink. 

There it was. The tooth on the napkin. 

The boy opened the fridge and took the pack of carrots inside. He scurried for the smallest one he could find. He wondered if he should peel it first for his experiment, but the more that he turned it around in his hand, the more the unpeeled carrot felt rough. More fingerlike. 

He thought of his dad’s rough hairy hands.

 Taking the unpeeled carrot he placed it on a napkin. Then he picked up his sister’s fallen tooth. It was a fang. 

Perhaps it will cut straight through, the boy thought. 

He gripped the hollow part of the tooth, but his fingers were too big and they covered the fang. Scratching his head, he looked around the kitchen tools for something he could stick into the hole in the tooth to then drive it in. After finding a pair of tweezers, he proceeded to pick up the tooth through the hole and got ready to cut through the carrot with it. 

It failed on his first attempt. He took slow, measured jabs. It didn’t even scratch the surface. 

How can a tooth bite off a finger if the carrot knocked one out? The boy thought. 

On his second attempt, he decided to drive it in full force and used all of the momentum from the wave of his hand. But it merely made his grip lazy, and the tooth fell from the tweezers onto the floor, a quiet drop like the sound of hollow plastic. 

He set the tweezers down and bent under the table.

The tooth was gone.

If he turned on the lights, his parents might see.

If he went upstairs for the torch, they might hear.

He’d been relying on the light from the fridge. And now that fridge had started to beep.

He quickly shut it before it could make any more noise.

Back in his bedroom, he examined the hairiness of it with the torch. The light carved the lines of the vegetable, inviting him to bite right through it. His hunger grew. 

He sank his teeth into it, chomping it slowly. Feeling the mushiness in his mouth as it dissolved into the earthy taste, the bitterness that surrounded the sweetness which dissolved the rough appearance of it. It was so simple to eat. 

Then he looked at his own hand and lifted his thumb up to his mouth. 

The strongest part, he thought. 

The sharp peaks and valleys of his teeth, stung his thumb. But as much as he would try to force his jaw to clamp shut, it wasn’t enough to bite it off. Only leaving a faint line on it, and some swollen redness. Just like the lines on the carrot. 

All throughout class the next day, he was unfocused. Tapping his pen against the table, shifting in his chair, looking at his classmates doodling on the sides of their textbooks. During playtime, they headed to the tire swing. 

The girl appeared, lunchbox in hand. Opening it up, she handed him a sliced apple. “Are you taking the bus back today?”

“Yeah,”  the juice of the apple slid down his chin as he chomped on it aggressively. 

“Wanna go to the bus stop today after school?” 

“Doesn’t your dad usually pick you up?”

“He’s busy with work. Flew to — this morning.” 

The boy wiped the juice off his chin and got up. “See you after school then.” 

The bus stop next to the school was always packed around that time. The girl turned to him. “Do you know which one I take to get to — ?”

The boy hunched his shoulders. “Don’t know. Check the map.”

She furrowed her brows and looked around. There was a middle aged man standing by the bus route map. “Excuse me sir, I need to go to — . Do you know which line that would be?” 

“Mmm,” the man replied. “Let’s see…”

The monotone sound of his voice made the boy turn around on instinct. It wasn’t that threatening, but that the tone reminded him of the neutrality of that of a teacher. Something familiar. Authoritarian. 

“I think it would be easiest if you take this one…” the man said, tracing his index finger along the lines of the route. “Or maybe…”

Something brewed up inside the boy. An insatiable hunger at the sight of the man’s finger running along the map. It was so precise. Not drifting off the edges. The creases on his palm. The hairs sticking out behind him. 

The man started to lower his finger from the map. 

The boy went over and bit into it. 

Someone screamed. Someone cried. He wasn’t sure who. 

All he was sure about was that he hadn’t managed to bite it off. 

Blood dribbled down his chin. 

The boy didn’t let go.