Free All Fall Down by Annie Reed Page B

she
caught, not that she ever would.
    The not-so-nice man was going to kill the
kitten. Kill it and the rest of the kittens in the box. Maybe he'd
already killed their momma.
    Missy couldn't let that happen. She shoved
at his fat stomach with as much strength as she could. "No! You let
it go! I'll take care of it. Give it to me!"
    The man only stumbled back one step, then he
caught his balance. His mean little eyes got meaner. He grabbed
Missy's arm with his other hand. His hand felt oily and wrong, and
she didn't like the way he was looking at her.
    "What's to say you even come in here?" He
wasn't shouting now, and he didn't sound angry anymore. It was like
he wasn't really talking to her but only to himself. "You coulda
just wandered off down the street. I seen your parents let you play
outside all day. Who's to say you didn't get in someone's car and
they up and drove off with you? Anybody ask, I'd just say I never
seen you. Wouldn't no one be the wiser."
    His hand was so tight on her arm, it was
beginning to hurt. Missy tried to pull away, but he just hung on
tighter. "Let me go!" she shouted. "You're hurting me!"
    He snorted. "You ain't seen nothing
yet."
    The momma cat came out of nowhere, or at
least that's what it looked like to Missy. One minute the man was
looking down at Missy with a weird smile on his face, and the next
minute he was screaming because the momma cat had jumped on his
bare shoulders and sunk all her claws in.
    The man let go of Missy and the kitten at
the same time. Missy caught the kitten just before it hit the
concrete floor. Its little baby claws felt like pinpricks on
Missy's skin, but she didn't let it go. Instead she backed away
from the man as quick as she could, and when the momma cat leaped
off the man's shoulders and came after Missy, Missy opened her palm
and let the momma cat take the kitten from her.
    In just a few short leaps, the momma cat and
her kitten were through the broken window. Missy wanted to save the
other kittens, but she needed help.
    She needed her daddy.
    She ran for the garage door, but the man
caught her. He grabbed a handful of Missy's hair and yanked, and
Missy screamed.
    She screamed for her daddy as loud and long
as she could. She kept on screaming even after the man clamped a
hand over her mouth. He pulled her back through the garage and into
the house.
    Missy kicked at him and
tried to hit him, but he still held her tight. She wished she
hadn't left her daddy's hammer by the fence. If she hit him with
the hammer, she was sure that would make him let her go.
    "If you don't shut up, I'm gonna kill those
kittens, and then I'm gonna go next door and kill your mommy and
daddy, you understand?"
    Missy went still. He wouldn't really do
that, would he? Kill Mommy and Daddy?
    "That's a good girl," he said. "You and me,
we're gonna get along just fine."
    Someone pounded on the man's front door. Not
knocks, like when the Fuller Brush Man came calling, but real hard
pounding that made the door rattle.
    "Go away!" the man yelled at the door.
"Whatever you're selling, we don't want none."
    What if it wasn't the Fuller Brush Man? What
if her daddy was at the front door, and he went away because he
didn't know she was here?
    Missy bit down on the fleshy palm of the
man's hand. He yelped just like the kitten and yanked his hand
away.
    As soon as his nasty-tasting hand was away
from her mouth, Missy screamed for her daddy.
    Things happened fast after that. One minute
the mean man was dragging her toward the back of the house, and the
next minute the front door flew open and Missy's daddy and mommy
came running inside. Mommy was carrying one of daddy's tools—a
mallet, Missy learned later—and her daddy had a big hammer. They
both went after the mean man and made him let Missy go, then her
daddy hit him. Not with the hammer but with his fists.
    Mommy held Missy in her arms and kept saying
everything would be all right. Missy hid her face in her mother's
dress and tried to pretend