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Then a second later I realized it came from the girl running toward me.
The girl running toward me with the filthy, ripped-up clothes, stringy, wet hair, and terrified face.
I started to shout. Decided I’d play the part of a Good Samaritan—or a hero even. I started to tell her not to worry, that I was there to help. But the second I opened my mouth, the words all backed up in my throat.
Sticking.
Clogging.
Like a drain all jammed up with gunk.
My toes were sinking. The shoes I once wore were no more. Everything had changed.
Every. Single. Thing.
I was no longer standing on a stage. The black painted wood that had, just a moment before, been supporting me, had turned into something very different—something I once saw in a really old movie.
Sandy, soggy, and swampy—I immediately recognized it as quicksand. And I knew if I didn’t move fast, in no time at all it would swallow me whole.
With the scream still lodged in my throat, I did my best to run. But every step forward was a useless endeavor. The sand was too quick, too deep. It was dragging me down—sucking me in, forcing its way up to my nose and into my mouth.
But if I thought I had it bad, well, that was nothing compared to the girl. Not only was she sinking up to her neck, but a whole team of alligators had appeared out of nowhere. Their powerful, crunching jaws yawning open and snapping shut as though it was a warm-up, as though they were preparing to devour her.
I freed my hand of the muck and lurched toward her. Urging her to lean toward me, to take hold if she could. I tried to smile, tried to nod in encouragement, to give her a reason to fight, to not give up until we’d exhausted every last resource. Watching as she thrust her body toward mine, the alligators charging, snapping, chomping on air, hoping to soon replace it with pieces of her.
And then, just when she was near, just when our fingers met and she’d grabbed ahold of me, a searing hot flame tore through her flesh, giving me no choice but to let go.
I couldn’t help it—it just sort of happened—it was a reflex—it wasn’t my fault! And when I tried to reach her again, it was too late.
She was gone.
The gators had claimed her.
My throat cleared. The scream, finally uncorked, rang out all around until I grew hoarse and it played itself out. And I was just about to renew it, hoping someone would hear me, help me, when I opened my eyes and saw everything had changed once again.
The rain had stopped.
The quicksand was gone.
And I found myself standing on a patch of freshly mown grass, getting ridiculed loudly by a small group of teens for having just screamed my head off.
I shrank back, shrank back into myself, into the shadows so they could no longer see me, though I could see them. Taking a quick look around, I did what I could to assess the new situation I found myself in. Remembering what Satchel had said, that no matter what happened, I had to stick with it, it was the only way the message could be sent.
I was in a park. A park after dark, which meant the little kids had already vacated, were already at home, safely tucked into their beds, while a gang of unruly teenagers took over, littering the sandbox with cigarette butts, and making rude drawings all over the slide.
The kind of teens I never wanted to be—always did my best to avoid—taking great pains to keep a wide distance between us whenever I’d see them lurking in my old neighborhood on my way home from school.
The kind of teens that made trouble, listened to no one, “flaunted authority,” as my mom would’ve said.
The kind of teens that pretty much wrecked it for all of the others.
And even though I knew it was my job to find a way to fit in, to blend, all I really wanted was to sit this one out.
I cowered in the dark, huddled up next to the bathrooms, hoping that unfortunate scream of mine was enough to scare them off.
For a while anyway, it worked.