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Then came the disruption.

Three first-graders strolled across the mulch with that slow, puffed-up strut.

They couldn’t have been taller than four feet, but they walked up, one would’ve thought they ran the whole damn playground. Two of them were missing their front teeth, one had a runny nose he kept wiping on his navy sleeve, and the ringleader—a stocky kid with scuffed light-up shoes—had his hands shoved deep into his pockets like he was ready to collect protection tax on the playground.

I shook my head, amused, and irritated all at once.

Look at these little menaces.

The ringleader stopped two feet from Kaidence, his attention dropping to his fresh black-and-red LeBrons, eyeing them a little too hard for my liking.

“Where’d you get them shoes?” he asked, pointing a sticky finger down.

Kaidence looked up from his action figure, completely unfazed. “My granny bought ’em, and they’re fresh.”

“They look dumb,” the ringleader sneered, stepping closer. “Take one off. Let me see the bottom.”

Kaidence gave him my exact deadpan stare—eyebrows slightly lowered, eyes completely still. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you got dirt on your hands and I don’t know you.”

The boy with glasses giggled, but the ringleader didn’t like that. He reached out with both hands, trying to grab the collar of Kaidence’s polo. “Give me the toy then, baby.”

Kaidence swatted the kid’s hands away with a sharp slap. “Don’t touch me! My mama said not to let people touch my clothes.”

“Or what?” the kid stepped in, raising his fists. “You gonna cry to your mommy?”

That was it.

That was all the leeway I was giving.

The air around the playground didn’t just cool down, it died.

The playground was still loud as hell, nearly forty kids running around screaming and laughing, but I pushed all that noise to the background until the four boys in front of me seemed sealed off from everybody else. Cold crept into the space around them, sharp enough to turn their breath white, while the shadows beneath the equipment stretched farther across the woodchips than they had any business stretching in the middle of the day.

One by one, those little smiles started disappearing.

Yeah.

Now we were getting somewhere.

I pushed off the oak tree and stepped directly into the circle.

“Get yo’ fuckin’ hands off my son,” I growled.

The sound didn’t carry across the yard. It vibrated straight into the eardrums of the three bullies, low, resonant, and heavy enough to shake their rib cages.

The ringleader froze mid-step, his fists dropping.

He spun around, looking at the empty air beside him. “Who... who said that?”

The runny-nosed kid grabbed his friend’s shoulder, shivering. “Khori, why is it freezing?”

“Who the fuck is talking?” Khori whispered, his young voice cracking with nervous bravado.

I let out a slow, dry laugh that echoed like thunder inside a closed room.