Page 12 of Don't Cross Mo Ellery

It’s definitely personal.

Days like this, I really miss that shitty copier.

“Hey, I mean it,slow down!” I shout, chasing after another child with a death wish. Like I needed the job to be any harder, this kid isn’t even going the right way—he’s hustlingawayfrom school, like he forgot his lunch or something. By the time I’ve made it to the middle of the intersection, the kid has already sprinted across the street, toward the construction site on the opposite corner featuring my favorite view: a half-built and possibly abandoned parking garage.

Whew, these suckers arefast.

I realize I’m still standing in the middle of the intersection when a car honks at me, the driver yells, “What the hell is your problem?!,” and I shuffle back to the curb sheepishly. Meanwhile, the kid ducks under a hole in the chain-link fence surrounding the abandoned construction site. This doesn’t strictly seem “safe” or “legal,” but there haven’t been any actual construction workers here since I started at this job, so I guess it’s fine? I mean, what can be in there other than a lot of rusty nails and loose pipes and chain saws and stuff. Totally acceptable shortcut for children.

Anyway, the fence and the construction site are not my realm.

My realm is the street, I think dramatically as I pull out my phone to check the time.Please let this shift be over soon.

“You’re not supposed to look at your phone,” says a kid next to me, looking at her phone.

My face gets hot. “I’m not looking at my phone, I’m checking the time.”

“On your phone.”

“Well, yeah.”

“So you admit you were looking at your phone.”

“I... that’s...”

We face off for a second. She’s probably twelve and she’s weirdly confident and has a lot of pink hair. Her eye contact is... intense. Honestly, she terrifies me.

I may be new to dealing with kids, but there’s one thing I do know: Don’t argue with the tweens. They will destroy you.

After a long, tense moment, I realize that she’s actually just waiting for me to walk her across the street.Shedoesn’t think we’re in a face-off. She couldn’t care less, which somehow only makes this even more humiliating. I sigh and step into the crosswalk, stop sign held high, before she and her friends cross.

“Have a good day,” I mutter.

“Always do,” she says cheerfully.

Must be nice.

I’ve just turned away from her when I catch a glimpse of the older lady who lives in the house just to the left of the construction fence. She’s hard to miss, always sporting ahugefloppy green hat. That, and she resents me with an intensity that could probably heat my apartment.

My first day on the job, I smiled my biggest “be nice to the olds” smile and tried to crossing-guard her, but as I held my sign up, she stopped dead in the middle of the street. She folded her arms over her chest, and said, “I’m not a child, I know how to do this by myself.” She wouldn’t finish crossing until I went back and stood on the curb. She even made me turn my back to her so I “wouldn’t be tempted.”

Another time, she hid behind a tree for a full seven minutes. We locked eyes. “Don’t even think about it, ma’am!” I yelled.

“Don’t ‘ma’am’ me, you fascist!”

“Just because I wear a uniform—” I started to argue, but before I got any further, she ran right into traffic, yelling at a car for almost plowing her down.

Needless to say, she is not my biggest fan.

So I’m obviously thrilled she’s back.

This time, she ducks between two parked cars, her green hat bobbing above the roofs, like she’s in a knockoffMission: Impossiblefor old ladies. I wave and shout, “Good morning,ma’am!” so she knows I’m onto her.

Then, as I’m herding the next wave of children, she speed walks across the middle of the block, nowhere near the crosswalk.

And flips me off in that old Italian way where it’s your whole arm.

I flip the bird back at her, going on adrenaline and pure instinct. The kids in the intersection giggle and immediately start flipping each other off. Meanwhile their parents go stone-faced, and whoops—like I said, not great with kids.