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wrench?”
    “You don’t need one for that wheel truck.”
    “The wheel itself. The spindle. I think it’s a five-eighths fit.”
    He headed for the back. I flipped up his laptop screen. Somebody named Isabella1801 had emailed what she wanted to do with him that night. No whips or chains, but it was borderline hard-core. Sager was coming back. I closed the laptop and backed away from the desk into a bucket of water, accidentally kicking it. The bucket tipped but didn’t turn over. Some of the water sloshed onto the floor. I grabbed a rag to wipe up the puddle.
    “Stop,”
Mr. Sager said. “Leave it to me.” He grabbed the rag and backed me away from the puddle. “Five-eighths,” he said, holding out the Allen wrench.
    “I’ll fix it when I get home. Thanks.” I headed out.
    That was good of him, not letting me mop up the mess with bare hands. I hadn’t spilled water. The label on the jug next to the bucket said MURIATIC ACID .

The rain was unrelenting. I headed for the bus stop a quarter mile up the road.
    I’d buzzed through chemistry quickly in my home schooling, but I remembered muriatic acid. It was used in heavy industry to render other compounds like refined gasoline or polyvinyl chloride for plastic pipe production. Mostly it’s a purifier, especially for water. You use muriatic acid to control PH, or the acid content of a compound. You might use it for cleaning, but only in extreme circumstances, like to strip rust from steel. For general cleaning, the kind a custodian would do in a high school, you’d go with a much gentler, cheaper agent, diluted bleach.
    The rain fell harder. I jogged around the corner for the upscale strip mall just down the boulevard. I figured I’d wait out the storm under CVS’s awning. Nicole’d had the same idea. She was huddled into herself, rubbing her shoulders. She looked down the boulevard. I thought she was looking at me, but when I waved she looked in the opposite direction. Why would she ignore me after reaching out to me in Schmidt’s office? She simply hadn’t seen me, I thought. How much of her vision had she lost in the attack? She hesitated at the CVS entrance and peeked through the glass, left, right, then she hurried in. I hurried in after her.
    I grabbed from the top of the mix-and-match bin on my way into the store and ended up with a vent brush, a lame item for a guy to be carrying, especially when it’s powder blue, but I didn’t want Nicole to catch me empty-handed, checking up and down the aisles for her. I found her in a side aisle, her back to me.
    This dude was following her. Okay, so I was following her too, but I was worried about her. The other dude was leering. He said to Nicole, “Last year’s
Sports Illustrated
?”
    “Excuse me?” Nicole said.
    “The swimsuit issue? You’re a model, right? If you aren’t, you should be. I know some people in the industry.” He’d approached her from her right side.
    Nicole turned to show him the left side of her face. She pulled back her hair.
    I was at the end of the aisle, pretending to look at bunion pads to hide myself behind the corner shelf unit, but I saw that the bandage on her cheek was not small. How bad was it under there? How deep was the burn?
    “Sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Nicole said. “What did you say?”
    The dude backed away with his hands up, staring at the bandage. Just before he stepped out of the aisle, he said, “I’m sorry.”
    By the time my line of sight was clear, Nicole had swept her hair to cover up the bandage. She headed for the exit, stopping briefly to check if the coast was clear. How do you live like that? Afraid to turn every corner?
    I went to where she’d been in the aisle. Bandages. All different kinds, each promising it was the gentlest on your skin.

By the time I was out on the street, Nicole was gone. I jogged to the bus stop. The rain hit me like thrown stones. I was trying to shake off the rainwater when somebody behind me grabbed my coat