Free Lucretia and the Kroons by Victor LaValle

burst into flames. Its fur flared and it screeched and let go of Loochie’s pants and flew off. The girl swung again and again. One by one the rats were singed and they screeched and they flapped off to safety. After three or four let go of Loochie, she was no longer rising. Her body descended. The ground came closer. The remaining rats struggled to hold her up. The ones on her head were pulling out strands of her hair as she fell from their grip and she screamed.
    “Kick them off, you dummy!” yelled the girl holding the flaming torch.
    Loochie knew that voice. Loochie
knew
that voice!
    She kicked her legs and twisted her arms. On the ground the torch swatted at the ratssome more. One after another tore away terrified. Loochie’s weight became too much for the rats grasping her sweater. Now Loochie wriggled and struggled. She found new strength. And the rats lost theirs. They tore away pieces of her sweater, a little more hair from her scalp, but they let the girl go.
    Loochie landed on the ground, on her butt. Standing over her was her friend. Her best friend. That was no torch in her hand; it was a tennis racket set on fire.
    “Sunny!”
Loochie shouted.
    But this wasn’t the time for a teary reunion. The rats circled above them. A small group of them broke off from the others and shot down at the girls, a first salvo. More followed behind in waves. Sunny swatted them back, singing their wings. But she couldn’t stand there doing that forever.
    She looked at Loochie and screamed, “We have got to
run
!”

9
    Loochie had found Sunny. Or, really, Sunny had found her. Sunny had saved
her
. Which would have been kind of funny, ironic really, if there’d been any time to sit around and chuckle about it. But the flock of rats had only been pushed back, not scared off. As Sunny and Loochie booked across the playground the rats swarmed in the air, a cloud of fury.
    “This way,” Sunny said. Her voice was raspy; she sounded nearly breathless. She was so small beside Loochie. Her bald head bobbed up and down as she ran. She held the racket up, its head still burning but starting to die down. Some of the racket strings had already melted. Loochie surprised herself by scurrying over and picking up her mother’s wig. Somehow, even in the midst of all this, she didn’t want to get in trouble for losing it. After she picked it up Sunny led Loochie toward the jungle gym.
    “We can’t hide in there!” Loochie shouted. She pulled the wig back on her head just to have her hands free.
    But Sunny wasn’t listening, only leading. For a sick girl she moved pretty fast. Fear had charged her engines. Loochie had to rush to keep up. The girls reached the jungle gym as the column of rats bombed down at them again. Sunny ducked under a little wooden bridge and Loochie followed after. Under here Loochie could see a hole in the fence. A tear. Three of the thick black iron bars had been pulled up like the top of a sardine can. Sunny scrambled through the hole in the fence and Loochie dove after her just as the horde of rats smashed into the jungle gym. Loochie heard the little bridge shatter. The jungle gym exploded into pieces—the slides and the stairs and the walkways and the tunnels, all of it came apart. The rats clawed their way through the rubble but Sunny and Loochie had escaped.
    On the other side of the fence Loochie continued to crawl off but Sunny stood at the hole in the fence and peeked inside at the rats.
    “Sunny!” Loochie hissed. “Why are you stopping?”
    Sunny raised the tennis racket—the edges of the head all charred—and waved Loochie back to her side. “It’s okay,” Sunny said. “They can’t come through.”
    Loochie stopped moving but stayed on her hands and knees. She looked back. It seemed to be true. Loochie could see the rats through the hole in the fence. They clawed through the debris but they didn’t crawl through the hole. The rats didn’t even seem to notice it or Sunny even though the