“Aren’t these files your responsibility?” I asked.
Kale waved me off with a flick of her hand. “I trust you to get them back.” She popped up onto her tiptoes to look over my head and I craned my neck to follow her gaze. Through the plate glass window I could see Vlad was already on the sidewalk, pulling up the collar of his trench coat against the light drizzle that had started. I looked at Kale’s flimsy, short-sleeved T-shirt.
“You’re going to get soaked to the bone. Take this.” I handed her my white puffy jacket and she slipped it on, the collar swallowing her mass of dark hair.
“Looks cute on you,” I said, smiling. “But you can’t keep it.”
Kale grinned and turned on her heel. “Thanks!”
“Such a nice work ethic with kids nowadays,” Will said ruefully. “Send them out to protect something with their lives and ...” He shrugged, cocking a boyish looking half smile.
“I think the only thing she was protecting was—”
The screeching of tires just outside the glass cut off my sentence. Will mumbled something to me, but his words were lost in the booming crush of metal and shrieks of people on the sidewalk.
“A girl’s been hit,” someone yelled from a booth behind us. “Somebody call 911!”
The few bites of lunch I had eaten sat in my stomach like stones. I wanted to get up and look, wanted to turn my head to glance out the plate glass window, but my whole body had gone statue-stiff. My every bone was feeling leaden. When I tried to speak, I realized my mouth was papery and dry. “Do you think ... ?” was all I managed to get out before I felt the tears coursing down my cheeks. “Do you think-think ... ?” I tried to start again, but another sob choked my words. They settled in the back of my throat like a solid lump. I tried to swallow, tried to steady myself, tried to get myself to move.
“The guy took off!” I heard someone yell.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!”
Will seemed to leap over the table. He gripped my arm and pulled me with him out the double doors. I think I heard him yell, “Stand back!” and “I’m an EMT!” but I felt like I had cotton in my ears—everything sounded muffled and strange.
I know I felt the cement scuffle underneath my shoes, once we made it outside. I know I felt the sting of the cold air on my exposed skin, felt chilled drops of water prick my scalp and dribble down the back of my bare neck.
“Did anyone see who it was?” a stout man in a shin-length trench coat asked the crowd.
“Does anyone know what happened?”
I looked around blankly. The slow movement, the muffled sounds—I was observing a dream. This couldn’t be right.
And then I saw Kale’s shoe. It was wedged under the tire of a parked car. My heart sped up and I sucked in gusts of cold air.
He missed her! I thought. She must have lost her shoe when she jumped out of the way! I felt a cold mist of sweat, felt the painful thud of my heart against my ribs. She’s okay.
I pulled the shoe out and ran into the middle of the street to where a crowd had gathered.
“Will, Will, she’s okay!” My mouth must have stopped in midspeech because I felt a cold lick of wind whip across my teeth.
“Kale?”
Will looked over his shoulder at me and I could see his hands. He had two fingers pressed against Kale’s lovely pale neck. Her dangly purple-stoned earring was laid daintily across her cheek; it flopped out of sight when her head lolled toward the cement, listless. Her eyes were mostly closed; the heavy mascara on her lashes made a shadowed spiderwebbed pattern on her apple cheeks.
But it couldn’t have been Kale.
Kale ran away and left her shoe. She left her shoe. I had it in my hand.
I had it in my hand.
In agonizing slow motion, I felt the shoe slip from my fingertips and heard the sound of it thudding on the ground; it was a weird, hollow echo. The rest of the world dropped into silence. Kale’s eyelids fluttered but did not open. Will eyed me and I could see that his lips were pale and pressed together; his fire chief badge winked in the few shards of sunlight that pierced the gray, pregnant clouds. There was a smudge halfway up Will’s right arm and I felt my stomach lurch.
It was blood.
Will pointed to me and I saw his lips moving, but I don’t think there were any words. The rain started up again in a slow drizzle; I watched as people milled about, losing interest in the scene. They turned up their coat collars and clicked their umbrellas open. An ambulance wailed. There were fingertips on my arms and someone was pulling me backward. I stumbled over my feet, bit down hard on my lower lip but allowed myself to be led.