"Ah -- that'd be why, then." He smiles, and it doesn't do much to make him look any less tired, but it's genuine. The item he glances at with great trepidation, because he doesn't want it, not really, but neither is he going to saddle some stranger with some crap meant for him, and...

He takes it after a pause, unwraps the paper, and frowns at it. Half of a necklace -- not his half. Recognition hits him all of a sudden, like a wall. He knows what this is.

"Do you see that?"

Uri is on the other side of the room, drawing on the walls, because Shani finds that absolutely delightful. (He always puts it back the way it was before her parents come home. She doesn't actually want to get in trouble for it. She's seven.) When she says it, he puts down the crayon and wanders over to the window she's standing by. "See what?"

"The car."

"That one?" He points to the silver SUV parked across the street and she lurches over, knocking his hand away.

"Don't!" she hisses, like it could hear them. He looks appropriately chastised, which lasts for about five seconds before he's back to his usual irreverence. He doesn't get the point and watching a parked car is boring. "It's been out there for two weeks," Shani says. "I think it's the police. I think they're watching someone."

He immediately snaps to attention, turning slowly to stare back at the car with renewed interest. He gets like this, sometimes -- suddenly intense, focusing so hard on one thing that it feels as if he's gone away even though he's standing right next to her. It scares her.

"I'll take care of it."

If she was scared before she's not now, because even she can tell how absurd that idea is. Shani actually has to laugh. "How? You're just a kid."

"I'll take care of it," he says again.

The next day, the car isn't there anymore.

...

"I got something for you!"

Uri takes Shani places sometimes, when she gets bored of being at home and wants to see something she's read about or seen on TV. Sometimes it's landmarks, sometimes foreign libraries. Today it's a mall in Canada that's supposed to be one of the biggest in the world. He ran off about ten minutes ago while she browsed the book store, invisible to all the adults here who would wonder about a pair of second graders without adult supervision.

He comes running to find her again after he disappeared, holding one of those plastic egg-like bubbles from a coin dispenser. When he cracks it open, something that jingles falls out, which he impatiently shoves in her hand.

It is actually two necklaces, cheap fake gold, two halves of a heart with writing on the front. "What's it say?" she asks. They just started learning English in school. She can guess because she's seen stuff like it before and it's not hard to come to certain conclusions, but she wants to know the exact words.

"It says 'best friends.' See?" He points to one of them, the half that says Be Fri. "This half is for you and the other is for me."

Her face lights up. It's what she had thought it was, but -- she'd never thought she'd have a friend who would want to do stuff like this with her. No one else at her school likes her. "Ah, that's so cool!" She puts her half on immediately and something in his face changes, relaxes, like he was afraid she'd think it was dumb or something.

He takes her hands in his and his expression shifts again -- the ghost of that intensity she remembers from last month. This time, she's not scared. "Promise you'll wear it every day, okay?" he says, more serious than she's ever known him to be.

"Yeah, I promise."

He has to turn his head and take a minute to compose himself. It's not the sentimentality of the object that gets him, not really -- it bothers him that he didn't remember her until now, but the guilt he feels over having abandoned his friend, well, that's his own burden to bear. It's that if this is here, it means that she's in danger.

And he's stuck here. He can't help her.

When he thinks he has himself under control, he exhales slowly, raises his head and offers a slightly wobbly smile. "This place really likes to punch us in the gut."