Ыоуве Been Warned   ::   Patterson James

I take a few steps forward and call out again, louder. “Dad!”

He’s looking right at me. Why won’t he say anything? Or wave? Or something?

I continue toward him, and at last he reacts.

By walking away! Fast walking. As if he’s afraid of me or something.

“Wait!” I yell. “Dad! Please don’t go. I need to talk to you!”

He disappears around the corner, and I immediately sprint after him. Crossing the street, I see him farther up the block. He’s running now.

What’s going on? What can this possibly mean?

I call out again, begging him to stop. “I just want to talk to you! Dad! Dad! Daaad!”

We were always so close, practically inseparable. When I was a little girl, he used to pretend to race me all the time. Back then I knew he was letting me win because he loved me so much.

He wasn’t letting me win now, though. Obviously not now.



Chapter 31



I’M RUNNING AS FAST as I can. The sidewalk is crowded, and I try my best to weave in and out of pissed off-looking people while keeping an eye on the gray coat and crew cut head bobbing farther up the block.

“Hey, watch it!” a woman barks angrily, as we slam shoulders.

“Sorry,” I say.

My father turns another corner. Then he darts across an intersection, just as the light turns green. Cars, cabs, and trucks hit the gas.

But I don’t stop. I don’t even look both ways. I have to catch him – nothing is more important. I’m convinced he’s the answer to everything that’s happening.

Leaping from the curb, I hear tires screeching and feel the hot breezes kicked up from the asphalt by one near collision after another. The huge chrome grille of a bus misses me by less than a foot. “What the hell is your problem, lady?” yells the driver out his window.

You have no idea.

“Please, Dad! Please stop!” I yell. “Daddy – please!”

And just like that, the gray coat comes to a halt. My father turns on the sidewalk, and our eyes meet. We’re maybe fifty feet apart.

“I want to help you,” he says. “But you have to do it yourself.”

“Dad, what’s happening to me?”

“Be careful, Kristin.”

I open my mouth to ask, Why? How? What is it that I have to do? but he takes off again before the words can form.

I cave in to my emotions, collapsing to the pavement. My palms are skinned raw as they break the fall.