The giant girl’s head swiveled. A slow smile spread across her face. “You’re fast.”
“No,” Leo shouted, his voice tiny against the vastness of her. “I’m done playing your game.”
The first thing Leo noticed was the sound. Not a crash or a roar, but a soft, rhythmic thump-thump-thump that made the salt and pepper shakers dance across his kitchen table. Then the light through the window dimmed, replaced by the pale blue of a denim sky.
“You’re not hiding,” she said.
He watched as she leaned down, her long brown hair sweeping over Main Street like a slow-motion avalanche, scooping up a dozen parked cars. She arranged them in a neat circle in the empty lot by the mall. A tea party. Her fingers, huge and surprisingly careful, placed a water tower in the center like a sugar bowl.
And Leo, heart hammering against his ribs, stepped onto her warm, soft skin.
The entire town held its breath. The giant girl tilted her head. For a long, terrible second, her face was unreadable. Then, the smile returned—not the playful, condescending grin of before, but something smaller. Real. giant girl games
“Found you,” she whispered, a warm gust of breath that flattened the trees on Elm Street.
He looked up.
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. The giant girl’s head swiveled
“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.
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.