“Choices” by Dianne Rees
5/20/2006
[Illustration: “Like I Don’t Exist” © 2006 by Romeo Esparrago.]
It’s not easy being a superhero. Snap judgments are what it’s all about. I mean, all I saw was her, running out of her bedroom. Him, panting at her heels, his face red — leering — his shirttails hanging out of his pants. He grabbed her when she reached the top of the stairs, pinning her against the banister and she cried out. It sounded like a scream.
So I only did what any superhero would do. I yelled, and when he turned, I concentrated all of my energy in the heel of my foot and I kicked him downstairs. How was I supposed to know that he was her boyfriend?
His neck was bent at an odd angle from how he landed, head first, knocking against the wall at the foot of the staircase. Mom and I craned our own necks to look at him. “What did you do?” Mom whispered. She stared at me as if she didn’t know who I was. Not for the first time I thought: She doesn’t appreciate me.
She walked downstairs like the bride of Frankenstein, limbs all unhinged. She leaned to get a closer look at him, her hair falling forward and hiding her expression. She didn’t touch him though. She didn’t lay a finger on him. Then she walked into the living room and I sent myself to where she was walking. She yelped when I materialized in front of her. You’d have thought she’d be used to it by now — I’ve only been doing it for about seventeen years.
“What are you going to do, Mom?” I asked.
She gazed at me steadily. Then she said, “Jacie, I’m going to call the police.”
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