I can't remember his name now. This is what happens when your parents move around. You just make new friends all the time and you can't remember their names. They blend into these archetypes, kind of, like these characters whose faces change in every new city your family lands in.
Anyway, my Cool Friend, he picked up a slicked rock from the riverbed outside our apartment complex. A shiny, smooth rock.
"Watch this," he said. He had this delivery like he'd watched too many American cartoons. And he chucked the rock at the waterwheel.
I heard a clank. I remember that sound. It was this dull clank from the old steel, dampened by the fog and by my fear. I didn't know what he did, except that it was wrong and that the waterwheel was old.
It was a quiet, overcast morning. Everyone's parents were at work and the streets were empty. Just some car tires on a wet road, punctuated briefly, then back to the car tires.
The wheel kept spinning, water splashing around it.
"Your turn, white boy."
He dropped another rock into my hand. It was wet and slippery. It was smooth. There was some moss stuck onto it. It felt alive, almost. It felt like a fish.
"Throw it, white boy. Unless you're too scared."
I looked at the waterwheel and I felt the rock — it felt like a fish in my hand — it felt like it was writhing around trying to wiggle back into the water so it could breathe again.
"Come on, white boy."
He pushed my back, and I had to catch my balance.
"Throw it."
It was spinning.
"Throw it!"
I could have.
Or into the river.
Or at the waterwheel.
Or into his face.
Or at the waterwheel.
Or at the window of our stupid, dirty apartment.
Or at the waterwheel.
Or straight down at my own foot so I could break my own toes.
I could have.
"Scared white boy." He grabbed the rock from my hand and tossed it at the waterwheel.
Clank.
"Scared white boy!" my Cool Friend yelled and he skipped off into the fog, but I stood there listening to the wet car tires.
Just the other day, when my wife screamed at me and threw a salt shaker at my head and I ducked and it hit the cast-iron statue behind me — her stupid, store-bought, cast-iron statue — I heard that clank again and I looked at the plate I was holding, still wet from the dishwasher. I looked at the plate I was holding.