Shara had this way of looking around when she was nervous about doing something, twitchy, like a
black-eyed squirrel. Amoud saw her begin to lunge up for the boy in the baseball cap, but it was hard to
see what happened next. He might have pushed her or he might not have done anything. But once she fell,
the rest of them followed.
The kids looked like a kaleidoscope, eyes open blindly, hurling themselves though the sunlight to the
ground after Shara. People tried to catch them. The girl with the purple headband landed in many
outstretched arms, but the kids all started screaming, even the ones with no injuries. To Amoud, the tree
suddenly looked empty and strange.
�You put �em in a hospital and they�ll wilt,� said the guy in the yellow vest. Enough people had run
that it was only about forty of them left standing around the kids. Somewhere there was a police siren,
but no one seemed to care.
The guy in the vest told everyone to lay the kids out carefully, so no one�s backs or necks could be
knocked out of place. The noise was a blow to the brain, their perpetual howling; kids wounded and
motherless, newly tree-less.
Amoud was wondering why no one had phoned an ambulance when he caught sight of Shara, all
twisted up in a blanket on a bench. Some man was stroking her back and she was sobbing, and
something in Amoud�s bones clicked into place. The kids from the tree would go home. Everybody would
just go home�to their mothers and otherwise.
Amoud walked away. He went home and got his credit card and his passport and he took a train
somewhere. Shara doesn�t call him, anymore.