would have the career he wants if I were dead. Employers choose people who have good grooming and good manners, people who work hard and get along with others.
Don is dirty and messy; he is rude and he does not work hard.
He moves suddenly, his arm with the weapon jerking toward me. “Get in the car,” he says, but I am already moving. His pattern is simple, easy to recognize, and he is not as fast or as strong as he thinks.
My hand catches his wrist as it moves forward, parries it to the side. The noise it makes is not much like the noise of weapons on television. It is louder and uglier; it echoes off the front of the store. I do not have a blade, but my other hand strikes in the middle of his body. He folds around the blow; bad-smelling breath gusts out of him.
“Hey!” someone yells. “Police!” someone else yells. I hear screams. People appear from nowhere in a lump and land on Don. I stagger and almost fall as people bump into me; someone grabs my arms and whirls me around, pushing me against the side of the car.
“Let him go,” another voice says. “He’s the victim.” It is Mr. Stacy. I do not know what he is doing here. He scowls at me. “Mr. Arrendale, didn’t we tell you to be careful? Why didn’t you go straight home from work? If Dan hadn’t told us we should keep an eye on you—”
“I… thought… I was careful,” I say. It is hard to talk with all the noise around me. “But I needed groceries; it is my day to get groceries.” Only then do I remember that Don knew it was my day to get groceries, that I had seen him here before on a Tuesday.
“You’re damned lucky,” Mr. Stacy says.
Don is facedown on the ground, with two men kneeling on him; they have pulled his arms back and are putting on restraints. It takes longer and looks messier than it does on the news. Don is making a strange noise; it sounds like crying. When they pull him up, he is crying. Tears are running down his face, making streaks in the dirt. I am sorry. It would feel very bad to be crying in front of people like that.
“You bastard!” he says to me when he sees me. “You set me up.”
“I did not set you up,” I say. I want to explain that I did not know the policemen were here, that they are upset with me for leaving the apartment, but they are taking him away.
“When I say-it’s people like you who make our job harder,” Mr. Stacy says, “I do not mean autistic people. I mean people who won’t take ordinary precautions.” He still sounds angry.
“I needed groceries,” I say again.
“Like you needed to do your laundry last Friday?”
“Yes,” I say. “And it is daylight.”
“You could have let someone get them for you.”
“I do not know who to ask,” I say.
He looks at me strangely and then shakes his head.
I do not know the music that is pounding in my head now. I do not understand the feeling. I want to bounce, to steady myself, but there is nowhere here to do it—the asphalt, the rows of cars, the transit stop. I do not want to get in the car and drive home.
People keep asking me how I feel. Some of them have bright lights they shine in my face. They keep suggesting things like “devastated” and “scared.” I do not feel devastated. Devastated means “made desolate or ravaged.” I felt desolate when my parents died, abandoned, but I do not feel that way now.
At the time Don was threatening me, I felt scared, but more than that I felt stupid and sad and angry.
Now what I feel is very alive and very confused. No one has guessed that I might feel very happy and excited. Someone tried to kill me and did not succeed. I am still alive. I feel very alive, very aware of the texture of my clothes on my skin, of the color of the light, of the feel of the air going in and out of my lungs. It would be overwhelming sensory input except that tonight it is not: it is a good feeling. I want to run and jump and shout, but I know that is not appropriate. I would like to grab Marjory, if she were here, and kiss her,