Balance

Sarah has her own way of balancing good and evil.

Sarah stared at the homeless man intently. People rushed by, some ignoring him, some giving him sympathetic looks and dropping a penny into his hat, some pulling out one-dollar bills and handing it to him, and the occasional nutjob who shouted at him for being a lazy slob.

For every person who ignored him, nothing happened.

For every person who gave a coin, ten grams were added to the golden side of the scale.

For every person who gave a bill, one hundred grams were added to the golden side of the scale.

For every screamer, five grams were added to the stone side of the scale.

After ten minutes, she turned ninety degrees to the right and looked down the alleyway. Nobody was there. She turned ninety degrees to the right again. She was now face-to-face with a teenage boy with an aqua mop of hair and arms covered in obnoxious tattoos.

“Whatcha doin’?” He tilted his head, eyes full of curiosity.

“Observing.”

The boy grinned a little bit. “What are you observing?”

“People.”

“Why?”

“So I know what to add to which side of the scale.”

He looked around. Sarah was a tiny young lady; the likelihood that she was hiding a scale beneath her thin jacket or in her pockets was very small. The grin disappeared and his brow furled slightly. “What… what scale?”

Sarah rolled her eyes and turned ninety degrees to the right, looking at a busy street. People got cut off(five grams on the stone side), a pedestrian covertly threw rocks at passing cars(ten grams per rock that was thrown, twenty for every rock that hit a car, each on the stone side), and people cursed at the drivers(three grams if it wasn’t deserved, twelve if it was, both on the stone side).

“Um… hey, I think I know you. You go to Weston, right?”

She didn’t answer him. She was busy.

“You… er… you never really talk to anyone… you have, like, a home you go to, right? I mean, you’re not… like… homeless?”

She paused for a moment, wondering what to do. His concern was enough to add two grams to the golden side, but if he intended to find her a place to stay if she didn’t have one, that was worth another seven. The only problem was that lying to find out would add about four grams to the stone side, negating over half of his good works.

She chose silence.

“Um… it’s… it’s starting to get dark. You… uh… you know how to get home safely, right? You aren’t gonna, um, hang around while it’s dark? I mean, I think someone got mugged yesterday…”

“Killed,” Sarah corrected. “They owed money and didn’t have it. It was rather brutal, but both parties were in the wrong. It was seven hundred and forty grams for the stone side. I had to donate ten dollars to a charity to balance it out.”

“That’s… a lot worse, actually. Look, I don’t want to be a creep, and if you don’t want me to, I’ll stop bugging you, but is it okay if I stick with you until you go home? I feel kind of bad. I really just… I don’t want to go to school tomorrow and find out that they found your body in a dumpster or whatever.”

Sarah paused. The golden side outweighed the stone side by two-point-six-three-eight kilograms. The sun was nowhere to be seen. For the past few days, even with yesterday’s incident, the golden side had outweighed the stone. The murder of an innocent could be anywhere from one-point-five to six kilograms, depending on its brutality.

“Could you, actually? Now that I think about it, I’d really prefer to have someone with me.”

“Yeah, totally. I mean, you’re going soon, right? I’ve gotta get home before ten.”

“Of course, of course. Say, what’s your name?”

“Richard. What’s yours?”

“Sarah.” She watched as the thick stream of cars slowly dwindled. The street was usually the least busy around nine. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was eight-twenty-seven. She had some time to kill before it was safe to balance the scale.