“Come here, you little brat!”
I lunged toward him, ready to drag him by the arm and teach him the manners his parents clearly had not. But he was faster than he looked. In seconds he slipped into a narrow alley between two buildings and vanished, that strange laugh trailing behind him.
I stood there trembling with anger.
But by the time I got into the car, my anger had already started changing shape.
Because it is one thing to hear nonsense.
It is another thing to hear nonsense said with that kind of certainty.
That night, when Jordan came home, I was still irritated.
We sat down to dinner, and halfway through the meal I dropped my fork and said, “You won’t believe what happened to me today.”
Jordan looked up immediately. “What happened?”
I told him everything. The bottles. The dirty clothes. The warning. The boy’s eyes. Even the laugh.
To my surprise, Jordan started laughing.
I stared at him. “What is funny?”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin and said, “Julia, I think the same boy met me this afternoon.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Yes. On my way back from a meeting. He stopped me and said almost the exact same thing. That you were carrying a snake. I thought he was one of those children trying to act like a prophet so people would give him money. I even offered him some cash, but he refused. He just kept repeating it.”
My stomach tightened.
“It was him,” I said quickly. “It had to be him.”
Jordan reached for my hand.
