Attack of the 50ft Stalker

“Don’t call. 
Don’t text. 
Don’t write!”

Greg told her, which he’d demanded countless of times over the past few months, but it wasn’t sinking in, no matter how much he screamed it in her face or bellowed it down his mobile phone. Bailey, his ex-bae and current, fuck-nut stalker, had given him weeks of hell: He’d blocked multiple phone numbers, Facebook accounts, Snapchat usernames and Instagram identities. Yet, she kept coming, like a lovesick Terminator. 

To make matters worse—a living-fucking-nightmare of a situation—was the fact they worked together, too. There was no escape. She was there. Always. However, the situation had now hit its crescendo, its summit, as she went full, stage-five-clinger and erupted ‘at the office’. She stood before him now, ranting and cursing, having previously kept all arguments, threats and belittling comments and abuse to the shadows, away from work and hawk-eyed, eagle-eared colleagues, friends and managers.

“You bastard. You never loved me. You used me. Fuck it, I really am going to do it this time. If I can’t have you, then I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“Huh?” he said, her screechy voice reverberating around inside his head, sending icy, clawing talons down his back. His eye began to twitch. How the fuck did that noise not turn me off to begin with? he thought, drinking her in, fixing his eyes on her. Between that, her bullfrog-like neck, caked on make-up—half of which was always on her collar—itsy-bitsy tits with inverted nips, bland personality and the mindset of a child, I must have been thinking with my prick. Oh, yeah, I was. Fucking idiot. Well, I didn’t think she’d go all Play Misty for Me. Yep, got a regular Glenn Close on my arse.          

“Are you fucking listening to me, Greg?” Bailey clicked her fingers, stamped a foot, causing him to take a step back, away from the psycho, wannabe Barbie.  

Customers in the shop—standing on the outside of the in-store bakery—stopped to look and listen. To whisper among their numbers as the domestic unfolded. Along with the shoppers, colleagues and managers had also affixed themselves to their spot, mouths agape.

Fuck. This is bad, Greg thought, looking out at his chiefs, hoping his face looked pleading enough. “Well?” he said, thrusting a finger at Bailey. “Aren’t you—”

“Sod this,” Bailey said, cutting Greg off. 

Out of his peripheral vision, he saw her hand dart for something. 

A knife? he thought. With neck-cricking speed, Greg turned his head to look at her, seeing her reaching blindly for the rat poison the Rentokil guy had brought in earlier that day, ready to lace the traps with.  

“No!” Greg said. “Do—,” he trailed off, words giving way to laughter, as Bailey picked up a handful of raw yeast and shoved it into her mouth, going back for more. Before realising her mistake, she’d consumed over half a block.  

His giggles caused her to look, in horror, with particles of munched bread-riser falling from her drooping gob, and squeal. “What have I done?” she gagged, holding her gut. 

“You’re in for some painful diarrhoea, babe,” he said, chuckling some more.

 Customers to join in.  

However, their supervisors did not see the funny side of things, causing Greg to wipe the smirk from off his face, as they moved through the throng of goggling shoppers, inching towards the bakery’s entrance. 

“I feel awful,” Bailey said, clutching her stomach, moving towards Greg, stumbling and collapsing against the door to one of the walk-in ovens. 

“Right, that’s it. Enough of this bloody nonsense, Bailey,” Florence said, the shop floor manager, entering the bakery. “I’ve just about had it with the both of you, to be honest,” she snapped. “The tension in here the last few months has been palpable.”

“What’s a palpable?” Bailey said, her arse squeaking. “I thought it was a plant.”

Greg slapped his face and groaned. It’s that intellect that kept me around, he thought, turning to Florence. “Had you taken my complaints about her stalking and harassing me seriously, then it wouldn’t have got to this stage, now would it?” Greg said, puffing his chest out, towering over Florence. 

A loud grumble, followed by a second fart, rocked the bakery. 

“Oh, fuck,” Bailey said, putting a hand to her arse. 

“Do not use profanity whilst on duty,” Tomasina—acting store manager—said, filing in behind Florence. “You’re in enough trouble, both of you, as it is, young lady.”

Outside the bakery, Greg heard a couple of other managers trying to disperse the shoppers. 

“It’s under control now, people,” someone said. “We’re sorry you had to witness that.” 

Another loud rumble sounded out. “I think I’m dying,” Bailey said, doubling over, as liquid shit began sliding out of her trouser leg, pooling around her feet.  

“Oh, God!” Greg said, holding his nose. “That stench.”

“Right,” Florence said, gagging, grabbing hold of Bailey’s arm. “It’s the training room for you.”

“Greg, I love yooou!” she said, latching onto the oven’s door handle. “I can’t live without you. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I can’t think. Please!” Tears flooded down her face. “I promise I won’t be needy. I’ll give you space. You can fuck other women… Whatever it takes.” 

“Shhh!” Tomasina said. 

“Let go of the oven,” Florence grunted. 

“In any other situation, this would be comedy gold,” Greg said, about to give his superiors a helping hand.  

“You’re coming upstairs too, Greg,” Tomasina said, snarling, trying to pry Bailey’s fingers free of the handle.

“Hell did I do?” Greg said. 

More shit splashed out of Bailey. “I’m bleeding,” she wept. “The pain!”

“Will you help us get her out of here, for God’s sake!” Florence said. “This place will need fum—”

Florence’s rant was derailed, her hands flying off Bailey’s suddenly bulging forearm, smacking her in the face, sending her backwards, reeling, and smashing into the wall. Her skull connected with a sickening thud. 

“Uh!” Florence said, sliding down the brickwork. 

“What the?” Tomasina said. “Did—did you strike her?”

“Nooo!” Bailey wailed, Tomasina sent flying, her other forearm ballooning in size, followed by her hands, arms, shoulders, neck and every other inch of her. 

Greg, in fits of uncontrollable laughter, stopped, the gasps and screams around him jolting him back to reality. “Jesus Christ,” he said, watching as Bailey grew a dozen feet or more within the space of sixty-seconds, going from a petit five-four to gigantic seven-four, and beyond. 

Her clothes tore asunder, akin to the Incredible Hulk’s.  

You won’t like me when I’m angry, Greg thought, lifting his head up and up and up, seeing her grow at an incredible rate. This is how Jack must have felt after selling his cows.

Bailey’s body filled out. Her arse became curved and plump, thighs thick, tits stout and pendulous. 

“Why don’t you love me?” she continued to bawl, her expanding body crushing everything around it. When her head and shoulders crashed through the ceiling, raining chunks of plaster and board down on those below her, Bailey realised what was happening.  

“Greg?!” she said, her voice breaking, tears dropping like individual waterfalls, whistling like Doodlebugs as they cut down through the air, washing Greg, Tomasina and Florence away, out the bakery and onto the shopfloor. 

It was biblical. It was Noah and his fucking arc. 

“We have to get out of here,” someone said. 

Shoppers jammed together as they tried stampeding towards the exit. 

Within the bakery, more ceiling collapsed, as spider-web-like cracks raced in all directions, causing the staff canteen on the second floor to fall through. Tables, chairs, Jill from checkouts and Dan the trolley boy, tumbled out of the spreading hole, along with fridges, ovens, chest freezers and other apparatuses and workers.  

Customers were crushed and splattered. 

Puddles of blood, piss and excrement spread along the floor in lakes. 

Clean up on aisle six, Greg thought, climbing out of the tear pond, pulling Tomasina to his feet as he did so. “We have to move, before the place buries us alive,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the crumbling building and hysteria. 

“Greg?” Bailey called, her voice making the ground and shelving tremble.

When he looked, he saw Bailey raise her one exposed hand up through the hole in the roof her head and shoulders had create, and use it to smash away at the structure that trapped her. The back half of the bakery closed in on itself. Stone, plaster and board buried the large mixing bowls, bread and roll plants, tables and friers. 

Screams rang out from above, as more bodies rained down, necks, arms and legs snapping on impact. 

Greg saw blood streak and seep across what was left of the ceiling.

“Fuck,” he said, moving backwards, pulling Tomasina with him, as desks, chairs, cabinets, PCs, laptops, and other office equipment crashed from the heavens. 

Sprinklers burst to live.

Alarms blared.

Pipes exploded. 

“Where are you, handsome?” Bailey continued, her both hands now pulverizing the shop’s construct, freeing her body, like Kong breaking his chains.  

“Holy fucking shit,” Greg said, looking at her. “She must be 50ft tall.”

“At least,” Tomasina said. 

“Run,” Florence said, “before we’re—Oooph!” she cried, as Bailey’s enormous hand enclosed around her and squeezed. “Ugh… B-Bailey, you’re killing me…” she wheezed. “My ribs.”

From where Greg stood, he heard Florence’s ribcage, hips and other bones snap and disintegrate, before Bailey opened her gigantic maw and scoffed her down, grinding the manager to a bloody pulp.

“Mmm,” Bailey said, moving forwards, raising one foot and bringing it down on a group of gawking shoppers, some of which took selfies and photos of the sci-fi freak. 

“Arrgh!” they said, before Bailey turned them into a puddle of sticky crimson. 

“Come here, baby,” Bailey growled. 

“Bollocks,” Greg said, turning to run, slipping on the wet, teary floor, causing him to collide with a display table filled with packets of hot cross buns. When he saw Bailey’s hand swipe for him, he commando rolled over the Jesus buns, avoiding her grasp. “Sorry, bitch, but you’re not my type. Too tall!”

Greg glanced over his shoulder as he ran down an aisle, gaining on the shop’s exit, seeing her come after him. 

“You can’t get away from me.” Bailey swatted shoppers, staff members and managers out of her way, some of which were thrown through windows or into shelving.

“I don’t mind a tall girl, but a 44 foot difference is a bit much,” Greg said, exiting the shop, finding his car in the car park. When he reached the driver’s side door, Bailey come crashing through the front of the shop, demolishing the sliding doors and foyer, as the building’s centre fell through. Bailey stopped looked at Greg, roaring as she did. 

In the distance, Greg fumbling with his keys, he heard sirens, followed by a monstrous groan and the shredding of metal. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said, watching Bailey tear up a trolley bay and hurl it in his direction.

Greg ducked, as the missile flew overhead, and crashed into the first fire truck on the scene. 

“Move,” he told himself, slotting his key into the door, unlocking his car. Behind the wheel, he started the engine and threw the car into gear, stomping the go pedal. “Screw you, Bailey,” he said, giving her the finger in the rearview mirror.

“Go, car. Go, go, go,” he said, moving his battered Pinto out onto the main road.

All the while, Bailey’s image filled his side mirror, as she gave chase, gaining, her impossibly long arms stretching out, her fingers grabbing for his car…

Sugar In The Well

The drink was so good it reminded me of nothing else at all. I had no frame of reference in either smell or taste for how to log it. It took me away from both time and pain. Too, it reminds me that I could go a long long time wearing the heat of many words and ancient beautiful nothings inside me. Ages for keeping my mouth shut. 

Hindsight afforded me the notion that if I had showed up to the rescheduled potential second date, he would have lost respect for me. So much had been cocked-up in the lack of translation between our communication styles by now I wasn’t sure either of us wanted to enlist our interpersonal clean up crews to make it right. Would we only create more of a mess?

Then the future comes and there I am: Las Vegas, Day 3000 — all the west side apartments I used to inhabit are gone and now I live in a part of town far flung from them at the end of a street in the vintage city proper.

My backyard scintillates by day with early light and wind turning suncatchers and spinning bees. By night with the glistening backs of stray cats, black and calico, who leave the feathers of their prey askew by the back door.

Everyone has been telling me lately that I look different. That something has changed. But really I think my hair just went thru a growth spurt.

Sitting there with that cocktail in a moment that becomes a meditation I bring him in. What if we had that promised date?

Inside my imagination’s hotel I embrace him and hold him fast. I kiss him and touch his head and move my palms over his shoulders. I keep kissing him in different places as I let the desire build inside my body. Fluids rushing like a dam break.

His hands are across my ass. They bunch my skirt and expertly interpret the shape of my underwear. In a flash his shirt is up and I am inhaling the warmth radiating from his chest. A perfume uniquely masculine, undeniably his. My shoes come off. My bra undone. Stockings tugged away. Breath growing fast. Panting as his erection drops out. My lips part to what I can’t look away from. Hungry to taste and swallow precum from the throbbing head of it.

Inside a break in the action we can hear soft moans from the next room over. A woman cries out as her orgasm builds. He closes his eyes and sighs — the sound makes a warm hum in the air which has deepened his fantastic pleasures. As if inside a movie and from behind the camera of my eyes I watch. I say nothing. I don’t move. 

Well Earned

It’d been about six weeks since the day they’d run into each other at the downtown library. Grace supposed they were seeing each other now. It’d happened quickly, the weeks passing without her even really being aware. 

Grace liked the way Adrian held doors open for her. He teased her about her white-knuckled driving. He was smart. He had what turned out to be a very good job as a industry colorist. She could overlook the way he seemed to occasionally disappear, zoning out staring at mirrors or streetlamps and during movies and even sometimes in conversation. He seemed to want a companion he could relax in total silence with, and she was used to filling this silence, in any way possible. She equated this to the awkwardness of their first date last summer—they’d been mismatched because she was so frazzled, being new in town, and he was so gentile. It’d unnerved her at the time. But things were different now. Her various liaisons had made her brave. Grace felt she’d completed a step, been allowed to move up: she liked having someone real to go out with on a Friday night now, getting out of the Valley and away from her computer screen. 

A weekend in late March, or was it early April? They had a good time. He took her to the Catalina Jazz Club on Sunset. They ordered steaks and watched a pickup band play Oingo Boingo songs and he let her finish the chocolate pot de crème, scooping the graham cracker dust from the corners of the plate. Grace got buzzed off three glasses of Sonoma Coast chardonnay. A warm wind pushed her into him on the street, and they kissed for the first time: his lips were soft and determined pressed against hers. She didn’t dislike it, feeling oddly helpless in his arms. He grabbed her by the back of the head, forcing her into place. It hurt a little, but she let him. The thrill reminded her of her long-term penpal, GHOSTLOUPE. She imagined that was how he’d kiss her. This bled one fantasy into another, and she was beside herself by the time she got home, aching down there for hours. Very quietly in her bedroom, after midnight, Grace masturbated, her mouth dropping into an ah of shock at her body’s hasty, shuddering response. She felt less ashamed afterward, now that there was a real person involved. 

Her first time at his apartment, they’d had a strange conversation. She’d been admiring his vintage cameras. He had three or four on the side table next to the door: she recognized a 35-millimeter, a cracked rainbow strap curled around it; a vertical folding camera, and an old Kodak brownie from the 70’s. 

“Have you ever shot anything on these?” She asked.

“Oh yeah,” he nodded, moving forward to touch the lens cap of the 35-millimeter. “This one is a family heirloom. I’ve shot all over the city with this one. And the brownie I like to take out sometimes. Developing is a bitch though, I need to do it at work.”

“What do you like to take pictures of?” Grace asked.

His face seemed to cloud instantly. She was starting to notice it a bit, like a curtain falling, whenever something came up he didn’t want to talk about. 

“People, mostly.” He said this curtly. “Do you want me to take your picture? I could do that right now. Here.”

Grace blanched. “Oh no, I was just curious, I wasn’t—”

“I think you may need to earn it first.”

“What?”

“You haven’t earned it.”

She faltered, staring at his grave face. She’d suddenly lost points somehow. “I—okay, if you say so. I didn’t, like, mean anything by it.”

“No.” He was agreeing, but it felt like a condemnation. His gaze dropped from her to the cameras on the table. Then something seemed to change, a beat passed, and he was back. 

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just—this equipment is delicate and very old. And I have a—I guess it’s a sense of privilege, when it comes to capturing a subject. It’s a very vulnerable thing. It’s very intimate.”

You brought it up, she thought, nodding her head sagely, backing away from the table. 

“But,” he was saying; his voice changed and it was suddenly loftier, happier. He grabbed her by the hand, twirling her around with his arm extended. “You, my dear, may have earned other things.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” She asked, mimicking his playfulness, trying to lighten her own heart. Hoping for a kiss, anything to sweeten up the moment. 

“Follow my instructions,” he said to her pointedly. He was grinning, but serious. 

“Okay.”

He dropped her hand, and she stood there stupidly, waiting. 

Adrian smiled, enjoying her visible awkwardness. When his admiration had waned, he said:

“Remove your clothes, please.”

Grace made a face. “Here?” She asked. She looked at the couch, turned around to glance at the TV, then back to Adrian, who was nodding, stony-faced. She remembered she was supposed to follow instructions. Right. 

She sighed loftily, partly to curb her beating heart. They hadn’t yet slept together. They’d only made out on the street and in his car a few times—and to her surprise, he hadn’t even tried digging his fingers into her underwear then. Their knowledge of each other in these details was still unexplored territory. Her face was on fire as she sunk to the ground to remove her shoes.

“No,” he said. “Stand up.”

She eyed him silently, and stood back up. She kicked her shoes off, not bothering with the laces. He watched, one hand on his chin, as she wriggled out of her jeans and, sighing loftily again, lifted her arms to take off her t-shirt, draping both on the end of the couch. 

She hesitated in her bra and underwear. 

“Both of them,” Adrian gestured. 

Grace’s eyes had lost some of their brightness. She stared at a spot past his head as she slipped herself free of the bra—a little mesh thing he liked quite a lot, light violet, with halter straps keeping her nipples pressed tightly against the fabric. 

The briefs, navy blue, were opaque and covered both cheeks, giving everything a wide berth. Angles and cuts and nothing else to see, really, other than the tiny, wedged impression of her sex in the fabric. 

A roll of flesh dimpled together sweetly at her waist as she curled to ease the underwear down. Muscles reflexed as she curled back up, and he could observe where baby fat had given way to cellulite, and where she’d remained lean. She was shorter than his Arctic Fox. Her body was, broadly, a pear: her breasts, freed from the mesh bra, were small and white, pale nipples inverted on her chest, her waist narrow enough for him to wrap both arms around and have overlap. Her hips widened out from here, surprisingly so—into a large ass which was wide and shapely, practically an entire ocean’s surface he could imagine resting his head on. 

She held her powerful thighs together stiffly. The little triangle between them was clustered with a soft swath of brown hair, a flesh-colored slit in the middle. He wished he could put his tongue in it right then and there.

“Good,” Adrian said. “Very good. Now—turn to the wall, please.”

Grace looked as if she were starting to disassociate: he knew the expressions. As long as she followed his voice, it was fine for the time being. He’d get her out. He was very happy with her. She turned slowly from him and faced the gray wall. 

“Put your hands on it.”

Her palms sought the gray, flattened out. She stared at this, concentrating on the color. Grace imagined living inside an entirely gray world. She was suddenly chilly, and tried not to shake. She wasn’t sure what was happening down below, the sensations were confusing, and so she kept her legs together. She felt oddly hungry, a grumbling erupting in her stomach. 

“Spread your legs, please.”

She’d been afraid of this. As she readjusted against the wall, taking a spread-eagled stance, she felt air reaching new parts of her in the front and back. Out in the open like this, helpless, all she could do was wait for whatever was going to happen next. 

He came up behind her. She could feel his breath on her neck. Her ear. His lips seeking her hair. He kissed her neck. He breathed through his mouth, forcing warm air into her hair which sent quiverings up and down her spine. She felt drugged as he crawled her this way, taking in the poison through his breath, saliva, and she almost cried out when a hand also suddenly sought her ass, gripping tightly, digging the nails in. 

He kept his hand here, on her ass, in an expert hold the entire time, while his other hand began to explore her. Tentatively at first, until it began to use the moisture provided and seek out a wider, sweeping gesture. 

Grace was in a state, a place she’d never found herself. She couldn’t move. Sensations were beginning to rise—ones she’d brought herself to before, of course, but never in the presence of another and never upright like this, arms taught and trembling, as she struggled to control the rocking rhythm of his hand, which had grown enormous, and a terrible pulsing, like deep vibrating velvet, which also grew until she was gasping and squeezing her eyes shut and the word “No,” escaped her lips. 

The moment Grace whispered “No,” he knew she was starting to come. He held onto her tightly, as she was trying to get away from him, drooping and sinking towards the floor, her legs like wet clay collapsing. When she cried out it was cough-like: not the sound of someone mimicking pornos or movies they’d seen, but involuntary. This pleased and aroused him, the authenticity of it. He liked how she naturally fought it, too.

The release had triggered something in her legs, and Grace stood there, her body curling inward, hot hands sliding against the wall, trying to keep herself vertical. She breathed in loudly through her nostrils, feeling like a winded rhino and wishing he weren’t there, wishing she could just go to the bathroom and get herself together for a minute. She concentrated on the gray world two inches from her face.

“Good,” he whispered in her ear, finally releasing his grip on her ass. It was stinging a bit. The room was eerily silent. 

***

Fifteen minutes later, Grace was sitting in her car on Franklin Avenue, trying to light a cigarette. Her hands kept shaking, but after a couple of tries, she got it. She pulled away from the curb without thinking about where she was going, her mind blank, one hand resting lightly on the turn signal switch. 

It was late, not many cars on Barham. Her left hand, holding the cigarette out the window, was sturdy only by the time she’d descended back down into the valley, bottoming out at the Forest Lawn and Pass Avenue intersection. She was rounding the corner at the Warner Brother’s buildings, glancing at the familiar tan gates, the Hot Dog Haus across the street where she’d once gotten sick outside. 

He hadn’t offered to let her spend the night, but she wouldn’t have accepted, anyway. The evening seemed over, at any rate. He’d watched her closely as she pulled on her jeans, leaning against the arm of the couch. There wasn’t much said between them, and Grace felt strange, almost frightened of him as she gathered her things. Her crotch was still pulsing like a beacon, a humming filling her body which was not unlike the need she’d cultivated online with GHOSTLOUPE. 

But that had all been fantasy. This was real, and she felt a new humiliation in it, that she’d come so hard and fast, as if this cheapened her, made her slutty. It’d felt forced out her, the pleasure itself incidental. She couldn’t read where his true interest lay, exactly, in regards to her. 

This thought popped out in her head as she sat at the light on Olive Avenue. She was surprised it hadn’t occurred to her before at some point. 

He hadn’t thought it a good idea to try and get her to stay. He knew her discomfort well, and watched calmly as she avoided his gaze, grabbing her things. He was used to women not looking at him afterward. He was reminded briefly of the previous girl’s last path through the apartment. But Grace wasn’t angry or hurt, she was confused. Wrestling between pleasure and fear. It was best to let her go. He downplayed his goodbye, smiling sleepily at her, standing in the open doorway. Despite a growing fondness, or perhaps exactly because of this, he closed it in her face. Through the keyhole, he watched as she turned and, as if in a trance state, walked to the elevator alone. Turning back to the living room, he raised his fingers to his nostrils. The smell of her lingering effluvium was practically a drug; he felt woozy for a brief moment, standing there with his eyes closed. 

Adrian knew the drive home would probably be enough, but if not, he’d hear from her in the morning. He was pleasantly surprised when about two hours later, while he was reading an article on the toilet, she texted him. He clicked over to the message, eyebrow raised. 

-I had a good time tonight. 

She was sitting on her bed as she sent this. Safely bathed in the soft orange lighting, returned to an adult womb, where her parents slept soundly down the hall and, cautiously, she’d made herself come again. Lying on top of the covers, breathing heavily, Grace asked herself what had been so frightening about the evening, after all?—he’d wanted to please her. That was nice. The separation and the time to think had made the eerie feelings she’d experienced in his apartment fade away. Or maybe she’d just deleted the shame, purposefully, all of it—the strange sense of unease which had followed, the feeling she’d been violated somehow, like something had been involuntarily taken from her. 

It’d been surprisingly easy, standing in the kitchen in the stove’s half-light (which her mom left on whenever she was coming home late), absently eating chips from the bag on the counter and going over the scene again. She’d enjoyed fighting him. That was what had made it so intense. He’d known this all along. 

When she woke up the next morning, Grace was absolutely starving. Her mother found her at the kitchen table, reading an article in Entertainment Weekly about Jennifer Lawrence’s favorite swear words, and eating an enormous bowl of Cheerios. 

“How was your date last night?” Her mom moved around the kitchen, jiggering the coffee pot, dabbing at her eyes with a paper towel she ripped from the holder.

“It was nice, actually,” Grace said brightly. She was in a good mood. She preferred talking to her parents in the morning to all other times of day. The sun threw a transparent yellow angle on the dining room table, and she thought all the sudden how easy, how beautiful everything was. 

She pulled out her phone to show her a picture of Adrian. It was his main photo from the app.  

Her mother wrinkled her nose from over her shoulder. “He looks kind of like an actor that could play a vampire on one of those Gen Z shows, doesn’t he?”

Grace couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing, and couldn’t stop; she inhaled a cheerio, and started coughing. Her mother slapped her on the back a few times, frowning pleasantly. She moved Grace’s braid back and forth a few times, as if playing absently with her own.