Free Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore Page A

cold limbo by the fence. The nun returned her gaze with a stern, tight-lipped resolve—mime anger. The nun didn’t seem to see the man in yellow at all, which likely was something else she would be stern about.
    “How’d you do to get yourself in such a fix, peanut?”
    “I told them I had to go home to go to the bathroom and they said no.”
    “You have bathrooms in the school, don’t you?” He said bathrooms with an f instead of a th, which she liked and decided that’s the way she would say it, too, from now on.
    “It was number two,” she said, putting down her crayon and really looking up at him for the first time. “I don’t do number two away from home.”
    “So you got shy dookie. That’s okay, I had that, too, when I was little. Shoot, bitches need to respect a person’s habits.”
    “That’s what I said. But they’re all anti-Semites.”
    “Y’all lost me, peanut. This a Catholic school, right?”
    “Yeah, I go here because it’s by our house, but I’m a Jewess.”
    “You don’t say?”
    “And an orphan,” Sophie added gravely.
    “Aw, that’s sad.”
    “And my dogs ran away.”
    He’d been shaking his head to the rhythm of the sadness of her story, but he stopped and looked up when she mentioned the goggies. She missed them. She didn’t feel safe without them, so she was acting out, that’s what Auntie Cassie would say.
    The man in yellow whistled, a long, sad oh my gracious note. “You got shy dookie, and you an orphan?”
    “I’m like Nemo,” Sophie said, still nodding, lots of lower lip to show her tragedy.
    “You don’t say, you the captain of a submarine?”
    “No, not that Nemo. The clown fish.” Her daddy had been a huge nerd and had taught her about Captain Nemo and the Nautilus, but she meant the real Nemo.
    “Shoot, that the saddest story I ever heard, Shy Dookie.”
    “That’s not my name.”
    “That’s what I’m gonna call you.”
    Sophie considered it for a moment. It could be her hip-hop name. Her secret hip-hop name. She shrugged, which meant, “Okay.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “You can just call me the Magical Negro,” said the man in yellow.
    “I don’t think you’re supposed to say that word.”
    “It’s okay. I’m allowed.”
    “Some words hurt people and you’re not supposed to say them. I have a word I’m not supposed to say. A really bad word.”
    “You do, do you? What that word?”
    “I can’t tell you, it’s a secret.”
    “You got a lot of secrets.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Maybe this meeting we havin’, this be our little secret.”
    “When a grown-up tells you it’s our little secret, it means they might be up to something. You should be careful.”
    “You don’t never be lyin’, peanut. You don’t never be lyin’. I do need to be careful. How long it been since you seen them dogs of yours, child?”
    “This morning,” she lied. It had been a week since the giant hellhounds had disappeared. “I like your hat,” she said to change the subject. “It’s nice. Daddy said you should always say nice things about a person’s hat because it was an easy way to make them feel better.”
    “Why, thank you, peanut.” He ran his fingers around the brim. “You miss your daddy, don’t you?”
    How did he know? That wasn’t right. He was a stranger. She nodded, pushed out her lip, went back to coloring her ponies.
    “You miss your mama, too, I’ll bet.”
    She had never met her mama, but she missed her.
    “You think they gone because of you, peanut? ’Cause of how special you are?”
    She looked up at him.
    “Don’t look at me like that. I know. I’m special, too.”
    “You should be careful,” Sophie said. “I need to go.”
    She stood and looked toward the building. The mean nun pointed for her to sit back down, but then the bell rang and the sister waved her in.
    Sophie turned back to the man in yellow, held out the page she had been coloring. “Here, you can have this.”
    “Well, thank you, peanut.” He