General
There's a masked man in the store, and it isn't Halloween.
I duck down again—fast.
I hear someone say, "This is a stickup." It's the guy in the mask. He has a weird voice, like it's not a normal voice. He says, "Is there anyone else in the store?"
That tells me that the masked man hasn't seen me.
"No," my dad says without even a second's hesitation.
The guys huddle closer and murmur; the girls' heads incline together and they whisper. They're all talking about me. I'll bet if they were naked I could see their tattoos. They've been taken. They're waiting for me to be taken too.
I force myself to walk past them, even though I have the overpowering urge to run. Or scream, tell them I know all about their plans. Why me? I'd like to ask them that. I hesitate. Maybe I should ask them. Maybe there's some shred of humanity left in one of them and they'll help me escape.
All I could think was that I was in over my head again. The guy had one hand tight on my throat and I was pinned down. The other hand held a knife. He was snarling at me but I couldn't make out anything. Then I looked in his eyes and noticed that he was as scared as I was. He was breathing hard and he was trying to say something.
"You tell, I kill," was what I finally made out.
The door opened and two guys with ski masks on walked in. One walked straight to me. The other went straight to Lacey at her register. As they approached, I saw the guns come up. Lacey, Cam and I froze. The room suddenly went dead quiet except for the sound of hamburgers sizzling in the back and the buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights. I'd never even noticed the hum of the fluorescent lights before.
The man stared at her and his brow cleared. He smiled with a kind of wonderment. "You're a healer." A statement, not a question. "I never hoped to find such a one in a place like this."
