This Is Where It Happens

by Louella Lester

They are at a table. In the food court. In the mall. Three teenage girls sharing an order of salty fries spread out on waxy paper in front of them. Pecking. Pecking. Pecking away, like the birds in the hedges along the parking lot, between chirps and giggles. Distracted, though their wings are always ready for flight, they don’t yet see the hawk-like guy, with the thick-winged coat, circling the tables.

These fries are the only thing they bought on this Saturday afternoon, but not the only things they have acquired. Tia, the one with the chipped blue fingernail polish, yanks at something in her backpack, then throws into the garbage can what, to the white-haired lady seated nearby, appears to be a price tag. Next to her, Sandy, the one whose eyelashes are just barely hanging on, reaches for a fry and a shiny new thumb ring, that her friends have never before seen, sends flashes of light bouncing across the table, making the hawk-like guy squint.

Teen boys are coming and going, flocking close to the third girl, Kate, not the best-looking one, because she never smiles. She’s wearing a hoody with bulging pockets that she reaches into before she shakes their hands. Pockets that hold what the boys are looking for, at a better price than offered by the hawk-like guy. There is something Kate doesn’t notice, until Tia yells, Look out! before she flies across the food court, Sandy winging it alongside her, to the far window where they can only flutter and flap.

Kate tries to skitter up across the table, but she’s a sparrow caught mid-flight. She sees the white-haired lady, whose mouth is now hanging open, and Kate doesn’t know this will be her only memory of the incident. Of the day. Of anything. Not the eyes of the big hawk-like guy, pulling a machete from under the wing of his coat, his toque pulled low and scarf pulled up, because he is well aware of the security cameras in what he sees as his mall—his territory. Not the slash of the blade. Not the paramedics. Not the cops. Not the names Tia or Sandy. Or the names of the other sort of familiar visitors bobbing and chirping around her hospital bed.