“Of course it isn’t!”
“He was the one who was frightened!” she snapped. “He was afraid that boy would attack him, and now he’s coming at my daughter!”
“That’s not what my son told me.”
“I was protecting my child.” She lifted her chin. “I want the manager. Right now. And I’m making a complaint.”
Theo pressed against my side.
He said nothing, but I felt him moving, rapidly flexing his fingers like he always did when he was upset.
“I didn’t mean to be bad,” he said. “She was yelling. Everyone was yelling. I thought if she could see my hands weren’t doing anything, she’d know I wasn’t going to hurt her.”
“I was protecting my child.”
My fifteen-year-old brother had knelt on a grocery-store floor to prove he wasn’t a threat.
God, I was angry. Part of me wanted to keep fighting. I had a hundred sentences loaded.
