Barb-the-Bomb and the Yesterday Boy

My mother saves me from that one. She beats the Sniders off with the blunt end of her umbrella. They run off swearing revenge and also just swearing. Then my mother hooks the handle of her umbrella around my neck and pulls me to my feet. I choke and splutter while she looks me up and down and inspects my crushed hand, my drenched and stinking dress, my bruised face. She's clearly furious but she doesn't say anything. That's much scarier than even the worst scolding would have been. She just watches me with her hands on her hips. She wants to know what I hoped to accomplish with my behaviour, so I bend down and gather up the scattered coins with my uninjured hand and drop them in the yesterday boy's hat. He won't notice me until tomorrow, but I smile at him anyway and tell him that my name is Barb.

"Don't touch him," my mother warns, "or you might end up when he is." Her voice is sharp and quivers with anger, but there is also a note of sympathy there. Perhaps a part of her understands why I had to do it.

"There's nothing more you can do for him," says my mother. But I'm not so sure. I can come back tomorrow and watch the theft and the fight play out on his face, watch how he reacts when I return his coins. And maybe, if he guesses that I might come back, he'll smile and thank me and tell me his name in return.

And that could be the start of an awkward, blushing something.