[401] Short Excerpt of a Possible Fiction Piece

Previous Critique

This is my first submission, it being a small excerpt of a possible fiction piece I'd like to expand. The narrator is looking back on an instant from her early twenties, a night out with newly-made friends that she didn't know quite well. It takes place in a car on their way to a bar (all of this is missing context that I want to add later on). I'm looking for critiques on the narrator's voice: How does she come off? Would you read more of her narration/POV (I know it's pretty short, so if it's too short to make judgement I understand)? I would also love stylistic critique. Any critique besides this is also welcome.

---

The guys’ smiles, which had been charming, warm and boyish, now looked stretched and leering. I remember seeing the back teeth of one of them; the set that doesn’t show in a cheerful photo or kind greeting. The ones people usually hide, out of self-consciousness. But there they were, gleaming in the streetlights that passed overhead like a bundle of white thorns.

 My stomach turned. As we drove past, the car grew stiflingly loud as they were jeered on by each other, and goosebumps prickled my skin. A swoosh of cold air filled the space - one of them had rolled down a window, handsome face pulled into a grin. I don’t remember what he chirped: his words flew out of the car like a used tissue. The woman to receive these words was hunched down on the sidewalk, a blanket or tarp wrapped about her shoulders. I remember her hair vividly; she had her face lowered, so all you could see was the tumbleweed-resembling mass on her head. A shopping cart sat motionless on the cement beside her, full of plastic bags bulging with unseen things. She didn’t move when he yelled or when the others joined in. Just kept her chin buried in her chest. 

I wonder if at that moment she was trying to imagine being elsewhere. Or counting down the milliseconds till our car had passed. Or thinking of food. Looking back on it, our youthful stupidity was insulting. It’s one thing, I believe, to harbor distasteful traits associated with assholes in their twenties. Vain. Crass. Selfish to a point. Pitifully desperate to get laid, and to be commended for it. It’s another to join in on the cruelty of those enduring the backside of society. It was the swiftest form of rampage, to spit at the homeless on your way to indulge in $12 beers at a piano bar that no doubt had a hand in gentrifying the neighborhood. She wasn’t a person. Not to us. She was equivalent to the shopping cart at her side. She could’ve rolled into the street, flattened by hordes of cars. We would’ve whined about the traffic it would’ve caused to scrape her off the asphalt.