• I should have screamed for Daddy.
    I didn't know this man.
    I thought maybe my brother would have been his annoying self and bothered me as he passed by my open door. I could have gone to find my mother and helped with chores.
    But I didn’t.
    I only stood in the center of my bedroom, staring out my window at the man who stared back at me. I didn’t know why I didn’t do something. I knew I could have moved if I had wanted to.
    I just stared.
    It wasn’t a normal stare. It wasn’t one of those stares from the movies where there’s love at first sight. It wasn’t a predator stare as a lion stalks its prey. It wasn’t a magical stare or a hypnotic stare.
    It was the stare of a disappointed parent who looked down at me as if I had done something wrong. It was the stare of someone who knew me very well and knew that I had been disobedient.
    It was most curious that the longer I stared, the more I felt his disapointment. It was even more curiuos that I hadn’t done anything disobedient or disappointing recently, and I still felt as if I had let this man down.
    He broke the stare and walked away.
    I didn’t know this man.