“Yes.”
Shit. I flick the handgun’s safety off. I don’t know how many bullets we have left, but it’s definitely not twenty.
A voice from the front of the store makes me jump. It’s a woman. “One sec! I want to see if I can find JJ a birthday present! I’ll meet you in there!”
A voice answers from far away, followed by another.
“Yeah, yeah,” she replies. Glass crunches beneath her feet. She’s in the store. Tissue paper and cardboard shuffle across the floor. The woman hums along to herself, breaking in with lyrics. “’Cause you are my love, do you ever dream of...” Her voice grows closer.
Jamie taps me on the shoulder and points behind him, away from her. I nod and motion for Cara to follow. We move quietly, stepping carefully.
Or at least Jamie and Cara do. My ratty shoe gets caught on the floor and I trip, falling onto a pile of stacked shoeboxes.
Shit.
I freeze. Jamie and Cara freeze. And the woman’s voice stops. Everything is silent and still for a moment.
“Hello?”
What do we do? Answer back? Run? I have no idea if she’s armed. Or if anyone else is out there waiting to see her emerge from the shoe store with a birthday present for JJ.
“Who’s there?” she asks. Her voice sounds closer. There’s a click that sounds like a safety being turned off. Then light flashes up the aisle to the back wall to my left. A flashlight. That’s all it was, not a gun safety. I think.
Jamie grabs me from behind, pulling me up by my armpits. The light whips around the corner and there she is. And she does have a gun on us.
She stops. None of us move. I haven’t raised my gun but she hasn’t lowered hers. Jamie’s hands are both on me, so the rifle must be on his shoulder. She’s a Black girl who looks to be about our age. Her eyes are wide with fear, her mouth a thin line.
“Wait.” Her hands go up. The gun and the flashlight both to the sky. “Not gonna shoot you.”
“Okay.” But I still haven’t put away my gun.
“Are there any more of you?” she asks.
“What if there are?” Jamie says. Of course, because she wants to know if she’s going to get ambushed after she kills us.
“Are they in the hardware store where my people are? If so, they might be in trouble.”
Is that a threat or a warning?
“It’s just us,” I say. Jamie gives my shoulder a light squeeze and I want to tell him it will be all right. I think it will.
She nods. “Good.” She tucks her gun in the back of her jeans, still keeping the flashlight up. “Why did you come here?”
I lift my foot so the broken shoe jaw-flaps at her. “Need new shoes.”
She looks at me as if she’s trying to figure out if I’m joking or not. “Then get them and go. I think there’s a rear exit. Take that out to the alley and follow it to the road that runs along the back of the shopping center. Turn left toward the highway. I assume that’s where you came from?”
I turn to Jamie. Cara is behind him, her eyes wide with horror. Like she’s still waiting for this girl to kill us. He finally nods.
“Then you have twenty minutes.” With that, she turns and walks back toward the front of the store.
Jamie whispers to me, “How do we know she’s not just getting the others she came here with?”
Cara steps around us and peeks at the front of the store. “Because she’s waiting at the front.”
I glance around the corner to see her standing by the front door, her back to us.
“Then let’s grab some shoes and get out of here.” There’s a box of hunter-green low-top sneakers that are ten and a half that I switch to. Jamie finds a pair of dark purple sneakers that fit him perfectly and we head toward the back exit.
