Page 43 of Mad Mabel

“Oh! So you’ve—”

With her gaze forward, she puts a finger to her mouth, shushing me. Theaudacity.

I close my mouth.

She scrunches up her face in concentration, and gives the hoop a great whirl. Ridiculously, I find myself holding my breath as it begins to move. It is entirely inelegant. The hoop slips and slides and bounces off her chin. But, against all odds… it is spinning. There is something comedic about the stiff way she holds her head and neck. The child giggles uncontrollably.

“You did it!” Peter cries from his porch.

“She’s been practicing all day,” Roxanne says, appearing on hers. “She’s wanted to show you for hours.”

“Has she?”

Despite myself, I find this rather endearing. I give her a little whoop.

“Watch this,” she says, and begins circling her hips and sticking out her tongue, playing the fool. She laughs, delighted with herself.

“Quite the little clown you’ve got there,” I say to Roxanne, who nods.

Her laughter is contagious, filling the air as the hoop circles her neck again and again. Roxanne is smiling. So is Peter. Joan looks out of her window and nods, which is about as good as it gets for Joan. And, fine, I’m smiling too. I’m not entirely made of stone, as it turns out.

Adeem and Libby poke their heads out the door, presumably to see what all the commotion is, but instead of looking at us they peer toward the mouth of the laneway. I follow their gaze. A small group hovers there. Not reporters, thank God. Just young people—the grubby kind. A stringy man in a tank top with dreadlocks and a chest full of ink. Two women with high ponytails and pants so short it’s hardly worth bothering. Canvas totes. Plastic water bottles. The unmistakable musk of righteous youth and secondhand hummus. University students, I’d bet my pension.

“Thank you for coming to my show,” Persephone says grandly, and I look back at her in time to see her take a deep bow. The neighbors—and Adeem and Libby—give her a round of applause. “For my next trick, I’ll be—”

“Hey!” The dreadlocked man’s throaty voice cuts through the joyful atmosphere. “That’sher!”

We all look over. The dreadlocked man is pointing at me.

“Holy shit, it is,” one of the high-ponytailed women says. The other woman, I notice, is holding a sign. She lifts it above her head as if she’s in a crowd at a concert.

MURDER MABEL

I hear Persephone sounding out the words. “Murder Mabel? Who is Mabel?”

The woman is freckled, and five-foot-nothing. I could eat her for breakfast and have room for a second course. And yet, I am afraid. Of her certainty. Her conviction. Her hatred.

And then the man is coming at me, fast.

“Can I help you, son?” It’s Peter’s voice, which both comforts and frightens me. I feel him step toward me but the man is closer.

He comes to a stop a few meters away from me. I’m relieved. Until he lifts his arm.

“Stop!” Persephone cries.

Everything after that blurs. I hear a scream—someone else’s, or mine, I’ll never know. Persephone flashes into my vision. I throw out an arm to shield her.

Then—

A sound like a car backfiring.

My ears ringing.

And blood. In my mouth. In my eyes. So much blood.

The world tips sideways and I’m falling, boneless, weightless. But even as I go down, one thought punches through the haze: The child. Where is the child?

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