When My Heart Joins the Thousand(25)

The policeman glances at his crutch and scowls. “This isn’t what you think it is,” he says. “Step aside.”

“I’m not going to just stand back and let you assault her!”

“I’m not assaulting her, for God’s sake, I’m trying to do my job.” The man draws himself up, looming over Stanley. He’s nearly six inches taller and probably a hundred pounds heavier. “Now for the last time, put your phone away and step aside. Or this is going to get ugly.” The color drains from Stanley’s face, but still, he stands his ground. The man reaches for something at his belt.

“Wait!” I blurt out, and plunge my hand into my pocket. The man tenses and starts to pull out his gun. In the same instant, I pull out the Rubik’s Cube.

He freezes and blinks at it. His expression goes blank. Then he shoves the gun back into its holster. “Let me see that.”

I hesitate. Resisting will just make things worse—for Stanley as well as me—so I hand him the cube. He turns it over in his hands, poking at it like it’s some mysterious alien artifact, then hands it back to me. His expression is rigid, but his cheeks redden slightly. He clears his throat. “Well, apparently there’s been a misunderstanding.” He crosses his arms. “Why didn’t you just take it out when I told you to?”

I don’t answer. I don’t know what to say.

He frowns. “Is she re . . . mentally challenged, or something?”

“No,” Stanley says.

“Well, then what’s her problem?”

“You’re scaring her.”

The man glares at Stanley, then at me. He breathes a heavy sigh. “Fine. Whatever.” He shakes his head, muttering under his breath as he turns his back to us, then gets into his car and drives away. I clutch the Rubik’s Cube against my chest.

Stanley starts to reach out, then stops. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” I’m still feeling shaky and weak and a little nauseous, but it will pass. It could’ve been worse. Would’ve been, if he hadn’t shown up. “What about you.”

He smiles, though his face is still pale. “Fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“I have a thing about large, intimidating men yelling at me.” He wipes his brow with one sleeve and sags against the nearby wall. “I’ll be okay in a minute.”

This is my fault. A dull heat spreads across my brow and seeps down into my ears and cheeks.

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and lets it out slowly. “Do you want to sit down?”

I hesitate—then nod.

We walk over to the bench in the park and sit, side by side, not quite touching.

“That was nuts,” Stanley says. “I mean, you weren’t doing anything. You were just standing there.”

I shrug. “I look suspicious. That’s just how it is. Lots of people have to deal with this kind of thing.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.”

I look at him from the corner of my eye. He stood up for me. He took a risk for my sake. Not many people have done that. “Thank you,” I say, the words awkward and unfamiliar in my mouth.

“You’re welcome.”

For a few minutes, neither one of us says anything. I can’t read Stanley’s expression. His fingers are clenched tight on his crutch, the knuckles almost white. I avert my gaze, my throat suddenly, painfully tight.

“Look at me,” he whispers. “Please?”

His eyes are bright in the dimness, almost luminous. They seem to soak up the faint light and reflect it back, like a cat’s; the bluish-gray whites are opalescent. “I understand, you know,” he says. “Why you’re scared. This whole human-interaction thing isn’t exactly easy for me, either.”

He thinks he understands, but he doesn’t. There’s so much more to it. So much I can’t even begin to tell him.

I’m still twisting the Rubik’s Cube, spinning the rows of color, but my mind won’t focus; I’m undoing the progress I’ve made, scattering the rows into tiny squares, jumbling it into a mass of incoherent color.

“I was never any good at those,” he says, distracting me. “Rubik’s Cubes, I mean. I had one as a kid, but I wasn’t able to solve it.”

“They aren’t really that hard. You just have to be patient.”

“May I try?”

I hesitate, then hand it to him. He starts to twist it. His slender, long-fingered hands are fascinating to watch, almost hypnotic.

“Start by solving the white side,” I advise.

It takes him a while, but eventually, he manages to complete one section. He hands it back to me, leaning a little closer in the process. His eyelashes are very long and dark, in contrast to mine, which are short and almost invisible because they’re the same pale red as my hair. I lower my gaze and clutch the Rubik’s Cube against my chest.

“You like puzzles,” he remarks. There’s no inflection at the end, so it’s probably intended more as an observation than a question.

I reply anyway. “I find them calming.”

He smiles a little. “Sometimes, when I’m stressed out, I distract myself by solving riddles. I guess that’s kind of the same. Like a puzzle in your head. There’s one from Alice in Wonderland . . . ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ I thought about that for a long time before I learned that it was supposed to be unanswerable.”