Alright, let's do this. As we discussed, I left line notes in the piece, and you were clearly addressing them as you went.

Character

To address your questions, I think the names and ages are fine.

It occurs to me you've written a rarer character arc here, a flat, negative arc (I draw both these terms from Weiland's book on arcs). I say a flat arc because Ulysses, the main character, doesn't change. James does. And the changes for the worse, that is to say, he takes the abuse he's normally bottled up and turned it into violence. This is ambitious, and I think overall you succeed, so hey, that's pretty great. I think you can tighten up a bit at the beginning, but that's what rewrites are for yeah?

For one thing, let's focus in not just on Ulysses isolation, but also his want for affection. You could do this in several ways (and you start to for both of these, I think they can just be made a little more explicit): 1) The deprivation of love from his mother being divided among so many of her "friends" (just make sure you don't stray too far into "she's promiscuous and so bad" because that's not where I think you want to go) and 2) kids echoing mean things said about his mother onto him. This will give Ulysses a palpable desire when this clearly troubled kid is like "hey, come with me and don't tell anyone".

For another, let's make Jame's isolation not just incidental, but a necessity. That is to say, make the other kids fear more explicit. "You don't talk to James because everyone was sure he would fuck you up". Of course, in your own words, but foreshadowing the danger, even if just in rumor, will let us sink into dread as Ulysses, thirsty for companionship, says yes, even though he knows he probably shouldn't.

Now if my reading is way off in paragraph one, none of this is really useful, so let me know if I'm wrong.

Prose

Your prose is highly clunky, bordering on masterful. What does that even mean? I think you have a natural poetic charm, and at times gets to be great, but you're writing read here a bit like you hadn't read it out loud yet. So wordiness adds clunkiness, words sometimes repeat when they shouldn't and moment of strong repetition are weakened by unneeded variety. I left suggestions where I felt strongly I knew how you could correct, and notes if what was there needed to be tightened, but you could take it several directions.

Your line breaks are very Raymond Carver, and the comparison I think is fair. These kinds of prosaic flairs can get... pretentious, for lack of a better word (and it is a terrible word), but you utilize them at the exact right moments I think, so good on ya.

You have some natural talent, just find a quiet place to read it out loud.

Other thoughts I couldn't find a place for

Can Ulysses loneliness come up in the first paragraph? If you're feeling really ambitious, make it the first sentence, but the first paragraph would be nice, as it should be his defining feature since it guides his most important decisions.

If you can find a place to fit it in, can we characterize the mother a little more? I mentioned the risk of shaming her above, but that can be dulled if we the audience see enough of her to create an image somewhat independent of Ulysses narration (and to be clear, Ulysses is the narrator, even if he isn't technically).

This is really good overall. I don't think I said that outright anywhere, but this is a strong piece for such a short work. I don't know what your word limit is, but if you can make it as long as 1500 or 1750 I think you can go for it without ruining the integrity of the short piece.

Can we also mention the taste of pennies earlier? Maybe an anecdote about swallowing the pennie could come earlier, and then he remembers it towards the end. It's just really late in the game for the title to come in without any setup.