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asked, spinning the ball in her hands.
    â€œI just do. And so do you. You need to go home.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œGo home!” He pushed her,just gently to turn her around, but she was stronger than she looked and wouldn’t budge. “Please.”
    â€œWhy?”
    He heard the laughter again, rooted, nearby. They were coming. And they would see him with her. This would be it . Bobby gripped her by the shoulders.
    â€œRosa, you have to go, now.” She took the pen and paper from her pocket and scribbled Rosa Reed Bobby Nusku.
    â€œNo,” she said, angrily, “I want to play.”
    In silhouette against the fall of the sun he saw them, the three boys from the park, walking up the hill.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said.
    Too late to run away, Bobby dove behind the bush, leaving Rosa on the pavement. He dug his head between his legs and wrapped his arms around his knees as tightly as he could. He held his breath.
    They came, but had not seen him.
    â€œHello. My name is Rosa Reed. What is your name?” Amir repeated what she’d said as if it were being played back at half speed. The two Kevins laughed. Bobby wanted to run and get help but he was too scared to move. They teased her for a while but she did not understand. Their laughter dipped to a murmur, and then the sounds began to overlap.
    The crash of Rosa’s pen and pad hitting the road.
    The sole of her shoe scraping back and forth against the curb.
    Her wailing, like a freak storm.
    All Bobby could do was listen, petrified, and imagine the worst. She screamed, then it cut off, as if one of them had a hand across her mouth. And the flapping of her trousers where her legs were kicking, that stopped too, as they lifted her feet and slammed her down into the soil.
    The churn of mud moving.
    The rustle the bush made as she reached out for Bobby and struck it.
    As he discovered shame, the dark being inside us that emerges, hunchbacked and groveling, into the light, Rosa Reed, the girl he’d been too embarrassed to be seen with, was a meter away in the dirt, discovering fear at the very same time.
    Only when he’d heard them run away, not laughing but crowing, was Bobby able to stand.
    Rosa lay on her back, where they had pressed down on her arms and shoulders hard enough to leave an imprint of her shape in the mud. Her mouth, nose and ears were packed with dirt. The streaming of her eyes ran erratic red routes through the soil stuck to her face. Bobby took her hand and pulled her to a sitting position, then began clearing the mud from her airways with his fingers. He used his sweater to scrape clean her ears and nostrils. Rosa cried. Thin pink threads of blood teemed beneath the skin around her eyes. They were glassy where she had retreated from them, to somewhere else, somewhere better, whatever garden we go to in the mind.
    â€œI’m sorry, Rosa,” he said.
    It took all of his strength to help her stand, and what loose soil remained in her hair and on her clothes quickly tumbled to the ground. He hoisted her arm around his shoulder and she sobbed so loudly that by the time they reached her front door it was already opening.
    A woman stood behind it. Her skin was pale, with dark hair and eyes, the stormy design of a Gypsy Madonna. Rosa clung to the woman and for a while they cried into each other’s necks, mud now stuck to them both.
    Rosa had begged her mother to be let out of the house to play, enough that she had finally, reluctantly, relented. It was that simple decision, one of millions over the years, which the woman knew she’d regret for the rest of her days. This was her experience of motherhood, something you can be good at for a lifetime, but only need be bad at for a second.
    A gray cloud swallowed the sun. The woman looked up at Bobby and spoke with a will so strong he swore he could see it as a color in the iris of her eyes, the greenish purple of wet snakeskin.
    â€œWhat happened to my