The boys chat on an unused pipe left by the road, their feet dangling. They talk in the needlessly loud tones of those who have adopted the street, calling to a shopkeeper here, a neighbour there. We walk by, pressed on to school, to work, to costly enjoyment. We look elsewhere, never at them, uneasy before street boys with hot eyes and opinions. Aren't they, or those like them--the grinning ones with junk chains around their necks, and their floppy hair and beastly long fingernail--aren't they the ones who whistle tunes at young girls, the ones who snatch cell phones and steal petrol from parked cars? But when we return, at night, they are shadows evading the streetlights, cigarette smoke twirling above their heads.