them.

Six years arrived inside her all at once. The rain in the alley. The wet brick against her back as she knelt. The way her palms had gone slick almost immediately, and how she had pressed harder anyway, because the man beneath her hands had been trying to look at her, and something in his eyes had made her decide she was not going to let him go alone.

The sirens growing louder, then fainter as she ran. Her apron soaked through. The bus ride home.

She could not