On the seventh step, his left motor seized with a shriek of tortured metal. He fell to his knees, but he kept crawling, dragging the girl’s hand gently in his. The security guard saw them. The guard ran over.
He took one step. The world lurched. Alarms screamed in his head.
He looked at the girl. Then at the distant security desk. Then at his own rusted feet.
One Tuesday, during the dead hour between lunch and the after-school rush, a little girl stopped. She wasn’t a customer. She had no credit chip. Her face was smudged with tears, and she was missing a single purple sneaker.
