What was he doing back there? Manjusha watched the boy squat some five metres into the alley. He hunkered over something, and the unseen something beat the concrete with spirited but frail impacts.
The boy wore the same colours as her school, and the alley did come up on the way to the train station, so perhaps he had been on his way home before he stopped for whatever it was he was crouching over.
As Manjusha approached him, he half-turned to her and then returned his gaze to what turned out to be a pigeon on its back. It thrashed its wings against the concrete and waved its crimson legs in the air, and Manjusha noticed that it had been half-chewed along its flank.
"I found him like this." The boy crab-walked a few feet to the left, making way for Manjusha to get a better look.
Instead, Manjusha stared at the boy. He scratched just under his dreamy, half-open eyes and then smoothed his fuzzy adolescent moustache. His long back and lanky legs suggested that he was unusually tall for his age.
"I think it was a cat. I saw one scamper away when I got here."
The pigeon's breast heaved deeply, like a feathered grey heart given torn-off wings. The sounds it made as it lay dying felt like they came from a much, much deeper place than the size of the pigeon would suggest.
Manjusha took a step towards it. "We should take it to a vet."
The boy held out a hand to her. "Are you silly? Who knows what kind of shit it has on it. You'll get sick, and that's just the best case scenario."
"Then we should kill it. End its misery."
This caught the boy off-guard, and he turned his whole body to look up at her. With the sun behind her, he was forced to squint, drawing his lips up and exposing his teeth.
"How?" he asked.
Manjusha frowned at him. "You've been watching him die. Just take a box cutter or a pair of scissors or something and finish it."
The boy stood up. "You can talk the talk, so why don't you do it?"
For a good half minute, neither of them spoke. The bird continued to grunt and turned to its side.
"Well," Manjusha spoke, "I'm scared."
She expected the boy to laugh at her, but instead, he put his hands in his pockets and stared at his brown shoes. "I guess it's a goner."
Manjusha turned around and made for the street, hardly expecting the boy to stroll up behind her.
"Had enough of the atrocity exhibition?" she asked.
"No," the boy stammered, "I mean yes. I mean, it's going to be someone's meal soon, so I'd rather not hang around and ruin an appetite."
A smile cracked Manjusha's lips open. "You're not as strange as you think you are, but you are a funny one. What class are you in?"
The boy felt his heart melt at her smile. He opened his mouth to answer her, only for a flurry of beating wings to sound from behind him.
He turned around to find the alley empty, and she looked up to find a wounded pigeon careen out of the alley, out of sight, into the city that kills and is too scared to kill.
