The girl must’ve had several interruptions.
Half an hour passed before she emerged from Lille Bagerie. Dimitri and I flattened our backs against the building next door. The smell of warm bread hit my stomach like an anvil. Despite fur-lined boots, my feet had gone numb, but my gloved fingers twitched inside my coat pocket. Dimitri and I snugged our ski masks tighter.
Head down, chin tucked into her coat, the girl walked past us as if we were invisible. We waited until she rounded the corner, then we stepped out of the shadows and picked up the six large snowballs we’d each fashioned.
Passing streetcars and buses muffled our footsteps. She turned the opposite direction from the bus stop where we’d gotten off earlier. No passersby came our way. She turned another corner. A children’s park lay ahead. Electricity jumped in my veins. I motioned Dimitri to fan out on the other side—staying back so that she couldn’t see him.
When she reached the middle of the empty park, I gave the signal. Dimitri’s first snowball hit her in the middle of the back. Mine hit her above one covered ear. A third slammed into her skull. She screamed. Stumbled. Fell. The contents of her book bag flew in all directions. She lay face down in the blood-stained snow, arms covering her head, and begged us to stop.
Dizzy with elation, I bent and whispered, “Maybe in fifteen minutes.”
She whimpered. “Please. Please . . .”
“Please have some snow.” I stuffed a snowball down her back, enjoying the sight of her cringing. Not as gratifying as imagining Alexei on the train tracks, but quite rewarding. I kicked her book away from her and stomped on a small coin purse.
Dimitri yipped, scooped up her book bag, and hurled it into space.
She curled into a fetal ball, her body wracked with shudders.
We finished off our snowball-stash silently then sauntered back to Lille Bagerie.
I drank the best cup of hot chocolate I’d ever tasted.