I tried to tell them what I’d seen. Those two men, one mean, one kind.

They came door to door, looking like they had something to sell or something to hide. They were really looking for a camera, a machine that doesn’t make mistakes, doesn’t lie, doesn’t get confused—not a witness. Didn’t expect to find a person recording events in her memory. Sorry to have disappointed you both.

They looked at my Raina outfit—my costume, I call it—and sniffed with distaste. “You used to wear a uniform,” I wanted to scream. “What’s the difference? You wear what needs to be worn, what makes people feel respect or comfort. You do what needs to be done, and so do I.”

They talked to all of us, and I told them what I knew, but they didn’t listen. The mean one’s eyes kept growing wider, which meant I was becoming a story he would tell later to his friends.

I knew when he thought about it more, when it settled, the doubt would sink in. How did someone like me know so much? And slowly, in the middle of the night, I would cross the line between witness and suspect. I knew that the same way I know all kinds of things.

But the young one gave me his card and told me to call him if I remembered anything else. Not saw, but remembered, he said.

And as they were leaving, I gave him one of my little cards too. My mother had a real card, but I made mine on the computer at the library and cut them up carefully, lining up the edges on the paper cutter just so.

He held it in his hand for a second and smiled.

I knew he wouldn’t throw it away. The other one would, but not him.