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snapped his sticks to drive home his point.
    My four attackers scrambled to the edge of the gazebo, backing down the steps, laughing nervously and holding up their hands to show they weren’t going to make any more trouble. “Have it your way, you crazy fuck. You want to go Bruce Lee for robot chick, have her. She’s frigid, anyway.” They took off across the park, leaving us alone in the gazebo.
    When we were alone, my knees gave way, and I fell to the ground. The whole world was spinning. He knelt beside me, careful not to lay a finger on me.
    “Sasha, are you okay?”
    I nodded, reaching for my clothes as he spoke, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking and I couldn’t do it by myself. “Do you want me to help you?” he asked.
    Again I nodded. Like a small child, I sat up, lifting my arms over my head as he dressed me, discreetly looking away as he pulled my shirt down over my chest.
    “Don’t worry. I’ve got you. My name is Ben, Ben Fisher.”
    My breath came in short gasps. Of all the times not to be able to talk. My mind was racing, filled with gratitude and questions and the sensation of his hands on my bare skin.
If you hadn’t come along when you did, I don’t want to think about what would have happened. But how do you know my name?
Where was my backpack? I needed a pen and paper, my talk box. I desperately needed to make him understand me.
    “After you left the library I asked the old lady at the front desk about you. I feel kind of responsible for this mess—you only left because of me.”
    What are you saying? How do you know that? Who did you say you were?
My heartbeat began to slow as my body warmed and I fully recognized that I was safe. Where was my Hawkie Talkie?
    “Not that you should be walking home alone in the dark anyway, especially without a coat, and when you have such a rockin’ little body, to quote a fool. Very tempting to those with not much self-control.” This Ben person took my jacket out of his backpack and wrapped it around me. “Glad I noticed that you forgot your coat.”
    How do you know they said that to me? Were you watching from the bushes or something?
    “No,” he said. “I just got here.”
    We had been having a perfectly normal conversation, and I suddenly realized that even though I had said nothing out loud, this strange, brave boy had heard every word I thought. Had I hit my head on the cement? Was I unconscious? Was I hallucinating?
You know what I’m thinking
. This was a statement, not a question.
    “Yes, I can read your mind.” He said this simply, matter-of-factly, as if he were admitting to being able to play the guitar or drive a stick shift.
    That’s not even funny. There’s no such thing
. It was impossible to know what someone else was thinking. Maybe he was just incredibly observant and was reading my body language.
What’s the trick?
    “As expressive as your body language was at the library when you shrugged your shoulders at me, I could hear what you were thinking.”
    What exactly do you mean, you can hear what I’m thinking?
    “I can hear your thoughts, as if you’re talking to me out loud.”
    All my thoughts?
    “Every last one.”
    So that was why he was smiling into the book at the library. He knew all my dirty little secrets. Better not to go there right now.
    Then you knew what was happening, and that’s why you came after me?
    It seemed perfectly natural, and yet it was otherworldly, having someone answer my thoughts as if I had spoken them aloud. For the first time in four years I could communicate without a pen or a computer. It was a miracle.
    “I never thought you’d get in trouble on the way home. I just wanted to return your coat.” I held up both palms to ask, what next? “Then I heard what you were thinking. You were terrified. I got closer, and then I could hear what
they
were thinking.”
    You got to me just in time. Another minute and …
I couldn’t even continue. I had been seconds away from