The Secret and Other Stories

The Shriek

The Shriek

It was the kind of scream that cut through the din of the shopping mall, making everyone turn and look. Not the shout of someone clowning around. Not the cry a misbehaving child. It was a shriek of heartbreak and mourning, seemingly torn from the lungs.

Twenty minutes earlier...

The bottle of perfume, improbably labeled Justin Bieber's Girlfriend, was setting on the cosmetic counter. Then the next moment, poof! It vanished.

Like any competent magician, Faith employed a distraction to abet her sorcery. Hence Joey flirting with the counter clerk, flashing his boy-band-cute smile, until Faith had departed the store.

He caught up with her in the mall concourse and they exchanged high-fives. Then he led her onto an escalator coming upwards, and they tacked against traffic to go down. Faith giggled at the passengers giving them dirty looks as Joey nudged them aside.

They nestled together in a mall cafe sipping lattes. Faith exalted in her latest exploits. "Six stores, a dozen cosmetics, this is epic!"

"My turn now," said Joey. "Let's hit some men's stores next."

"You know that's not gonna work," said Faith. "If I start flirting with one of those clerks, you'll end up slugging him!"

"How about this? You stand outside the store and start screaming. Everyone's looking at you and meanwhile I make off with some leather gloves or something."

"You wanna get me thrown out of the mall?"

"You just need to make something up, like 'Oh, my baby brother's lost and he needs his inhaler, boo hoo!'"

"No, Joey, no. I'm not gonna humiliate myself in front of all those people! I won't do it." She sat and sulked. Then she noticed that the woman at the next table was glaring at them.

"Don't you kids realize people can hear you?" said the woman. "You should be ashamed of yourself!"

"Mind your own business, Mother Teresa!" said Joey. He hustled Faith out of there.

She was happy to get away from that woman before she made trouble. But Joey was just attracting more attention, racing through the crowd like a thief.

"Excuse me, young lady," said someone behind her.

She turned and saw a mall cop holding up a bottle of perfume. "I think you dropped this."

"That's not mine! " she cried and backed away. She stumbled, and several bottles of cosmetics fell out of her coat and rolled across the tiles.

"Come on!" said Joey. He grabbed Faith's hand and they ran into the crowd.

"Stop! " shouted the cop.

Ahead was an escalator coming down, and Joey started to climb it , dragging Faith behind him. But this time he wasn't able to break through the stubborn passengers riding in the other direction. The escalator started to carry them down again towards the pursuing cop.

Joey climbed over the railing and crossed metal panels to the adjacent escalator going up. Faith scrambled after him.

But when he jumped down onto the other escalator, he misjudged the distance and hit the opposite railing hard. He jackknifed on the railing and the momentum carried him over.

He only fell ten feet, but he landed head first on a concrete planter. Faith looked over the railing and saw what it did to him.

And then she screamed.