Prose Scene 33

Out in the main mall, there’s an altercation. This isn’t unprecedented; there have been six or seven since Zoe started working here. But from the start, something about this one is different. At first, all she can hear is yelling. She can’t even make out the words, but for some reason, they strike panic into her heart. And it takes her a long time – too long, really – to finally realize: She knows that voice.

“No! You don’t understand! It wasn’t me, I didn’t do it!”

Alex?” she breathes out in shock and panic and terror. She’s at the entrance to the shop before she can even remember deciding to move, and yes, it’s him, she’d know him anywhere, even without the cast and sling.

Don’t hurt him! she wants to scream. Don’t, please, whatever it is, he didn’t do it! But she can’t get anything to come out. She’s frozen to the spot, watching in horror as he struggles against their hold, proclaiming his innocence in a panic. They have him in handcuffs, his good hand attached to a back belt loop, and it makes her sick.

And then he sees her, and his eyes go even wider, and his next proclamation of innocence is only for her. He never breaks eye contact, he’s pleading for her to believe him, to understand, and he looks terrified at the thought that she’s seeing this. “I didn’t do it!” he says, directly to her, “I swear I didn’t do it!”

If her heart weren’t in her throat, she’d call back, I know! I believe you! Don’t struggle! We’ll figure this out, I know it wasn’t you!

But when he most needs to hear her voice, it fails her, and not until he’s around the corner and gone does she unfreeze enough to run out of the shop and yell, “Alex!”

But it’s too late. They’re gone, and her breath catches in her throat, almost a sob. She doesn’t know what to do.

Bradley is at her heels, letting out a breath in a low whistle. “Shit,” he says quietly. “Zoe, was that him? That you and that other girl were . . .?” Zoe can only nod. “Shit,” Bradley says again, and that pretty accurately sums it up.

“I have to — I have to tell — Bradley, I need to get to — to mall security, I think—” She’s flustered and fluttery, but she needs to get herself together, she needs to come up with a plan. She needs someone in charge to know what she knows. She needs to do something.

“Zoe, that wasn’t mall security,” Bradley says gently. “That was the police.”

The breath does come out as a sob this time. “He didn’t do it,” she says, insistent and desperate. “Emma did this. I don’t know what and I don’t know how, but — someone needs to know, Bradley. What do I do?”

Bradley is a college student, a sophomore pre-law major, and if anyone would know how to handle this, it would be him. “Call the non-emergency police number,” he says after a long pause. “Tell them who you are and where you work. Tell them you have information concerning the arrest of whatever his name is, okay?”

The word arrest nearly sends her into a new breakdown, but she holds it together. She has to hold it together.

She does as Bradley instructs. A police officer takes her statement over the phone, then Bradley’s, and they take her information so they can get in touch with her later if they need to, but they can’t tell her anything about Alex, and she doesn’t know what to do next.

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