Free Everyday Hero by Kathleen Cherry Page B

said.
    “No!” I shouted. I pushed my body harder into the corner, because I do not like ambulances.
I do not like sirens.
    The girl stepped away. “Maybe I shouldn’t? Maybe she’ll get, like, violent.”
    The older woman came closer. I could hear the squeak of her shoes, and when I squinted
I could see their white outline against the floor.
    “Now, dearie,” she said in a kind voice. “How about you tell us who we can call?”
    “Megan,” I said.
    “Is that your friend, dearie? Well, I think she’s made her choice. But don’t you
be worrying. She looks like the type that can look after herself.”
    I wondered what this meant. I wondered if I were the type who could look after myself.
I can brush my hair. I can do laundry. I can even cook—unless I burn something. Then
the smell makes me want to bang my head.
    The girl with the two pimples came back with water. The older woman took it from
her and put it close to me.
    “Now have a drink and tell us who to call. I don’t want to have to phone the police,
you know.”
    The police?
    The police wear uniforms and make people obey rules. Except I remembered that when
I got lost seven years ago, the police car smelled of vomit.
    Plus the police officer made me go to the police station even though I wanted to
go home.
    The police station had also smelled—a stuffy mix of sweat, coffee and the dusty smell
of an old building.
    I stood, stepping toward the exit.
    “No, no. Sit down,” the woman said.
    She reached forward. Her hand touched my arm.
    “No!”
    I do not like being touched.
    My heart started to thump-thump-thump again. Sweat prickled on my forehead.
    The woman touched me again. Her hand was on my back. She smelled of perfume. I hate
perfume. I hated her touch. I hated that she was going to phone the police. I hated
that they might come and make me drive in a car that smelled of vomit.
    “Alice.”
    Megan stood behind me, a few steps from the rear door. I hadn’t known there was a
rear door.
    “You came back,” I said.
    “Yeah.” Her lips were turning down, and her mascara had run.
    “I’m—I’m glad,” I said.
    I sat, a hard, sudden movement as my knees buckled beneath me.
    “The girl’s crazy,” the woman who had touched me said. “You get her under control
or I’m calling the police.”
    “She’s fine. Leave her be,” Megan said. “Just stop going on about the cops.”
    The woman must have listened because her squeaky white shoes disappeared from my
view, and Megan slid down the wall so that we were both sitting on the tile floor.
    “Police?” I asked.
    “No police,” she said.
    We sat quietly. (I do not know exactly how long because I couldn’t see a clock. I
like clocks.)
    Also I couldn’t see her friend.
    “Where is he? Your friend?” I asked.
    “Gone.”
    “Are you sad?” I asked.
    Her turned-down mouth looked like the sad picture in the feelings chart the teacher
in my old school gave me.
    “Duh,” she said. “Though he’s a total loser.”
    This is slang. “Failure, dud, has-been,” I said, remembering the definition in the Webster’s New World Dictionary .
    “Enough already. At least he got me outta Kitimat. Escape.”
    Escape means get away, break out, get loose . Convicts escape. Prisoners of war escape.
My hamster escaped. Megan was not a hamster or a soldier or a criminal.
    “Are you arrested?” I asked.
    “What?”
    “Is that why you need to escape? They’re going to send you to jail?”
    Megan’s lips twisted. “I am in jail.”
    “You’re in Starbucks.”
    “I’ve always been in jail.” Megan leaned against the wall.
    “They let you go to school from jail?” I asked.
    “Yeah,” she said. “They let me go to school.”
    We were silent until Megan spoke. “Anyhow, um, thanks.”
    “What for?”
    “Being a friend. I’ve never had any.”
    This surprised me because Megan does not have Asperger’s and should have typical
social skills. Besides, she has 201 friends on Facebook.
    We