A siren wailed somewhere near the river. Leo saw a tiny police cruiser, lights flashing, trying to rally on the overpass. The giant girl’s eyes, each one the size of a swimming pool, tracked the sound.
“You’re ‘It’ now, little guy,” she said, and with a flick of her wrist, sent the car tumbling gently— gently —into the net of the high school’s football goalpost.
“You’re not hiding,” she said.
It dawned on Leo. Base. The playground was base. The water tower tea party was her “house.” The football goalpost was a jail. She had, in the span of an hour, re-terraformed their entire town into the rules of her childhood.
“Now you hide,” she commanded the empty cars. giant girl games
She didn’t crush them. That was the terrifying, bizarre mercy of it. Instead, she reached down with the tweezers and delicately plucked the cruiser from the asphalt, wheels spinning in the air. She held it up to her face, giggling.
“Ready or not!” she boomed, her voice a gentle hurricane. “Here I come!” A siren wailed somewhere near the river
“Found you,” she whispered, a warm gust of breath that flattened the trees on Elm Street.