“Jesus Christ,” he says, almost amused, as if I’ve made him work for it, as if my terror is both thrilling and inconvenient, and the footsteps behind me quicken, quicken impossibly, and before I know it, the buzzing reaches its brutal peak and hot panic floods me as I smell him, his foul onion stench, and when I turn to face him, he is tipping back his hat. He has white, raking lines on his left cheek, like a fox scratched him long ago. His furred cheeks rise, and he smiles at me with glittering fury. The smile says: You should be afraid of me.

And my body obeys, that smile stealing my breath away.

As I open my mouth to scream, to try to make a sound, his free fingers brush the ends of my hair, and with that sickeningly gentle touch my humming arms and legs are awakened, and I throw the flower arrangement into him with all my might—Why was I still holding it? Why?—and the vase crashes into his gut, then shatters into glass shards at his feet, and I do not see his eyes, but in that moment I know that I can—

Run.

I sprint, surprised my bakery bag is still hooked on my arm, jostling, and as my feet pound the concrete, my fizzing brain replays that tortured split second in which I braced for him to take my hair in hand and drag me to the floor. I can almost feel the sting of my scalp and the scraping of my knees, and my eyes burn with tears as I round the corner, pushing deep into one crowd, then another. Ramming past an old woman and her rolling shopping cart, past a group of schoolgirls sporting striped school bags, past two young women chatting brightly in slacks and sensible heels. Hoping to dissolve into the infernal humming in my head, to dissolve into nothing, so no one can grab me ever again.

BOY

THE VILOKI SUN—

JANUARY 15, 2010