Lucretia and the Kroons by Victor LaValle

behind them.
    Sunny moved toward the sound, toward the female Kroon. When Sunny stood right next to it (her?) they looked like a jockey and a horse. One big enough to stamp the other into dust.The sight made Loochie want to pull Sunny away. Loochie scanned the ground for that tennis racket dagger, which she could still plunge into the monster, like stabbing a vampire with a wooden stake. But it had landed behind the Kroon.
    Sunny pressed her body against the Kroon, hugging its big arm and resting her head against its shoulder. How could she stand the smell? That’s what Loochie wondered.
    “Are you okay?” Sunny asked quietly.
    The Kroon sniffled but nodded.
    “Can you stand up?”
    Sunny stepped back and the Kroon rose to her full height. To Loochie the thing seemed to be seven feet tall. She looked into that face again—that missing jaw, the dribbles of spit rolling down its neck—and wanted to turn away. But now there were also two small gashes in its forehead, and a bump already starting to rise on its scalp. Hard for Loochie to believe she could’ve done such damage to something so powerful.
    Sunny pinched her lips tight. “I want you to say sorry to Alice.”
    Loochie didn’t mean to, but she laughed a little. “Her name is
Alice
?”
    The Kroon dropped her head. It almost seemed embarrassed.
    Sunny crossed her arms. “Loochie’s better?”
    That stung a little bit. “My name is
Lucretia
,” she corrected.
    Sunny pointed at the female Kroon. “And hers is Alice.”
    Sunny set her lips tight and squinted her eyes and leaned forward. It was her gangster pose. The one that had scared the Doberman pinscher away years before. Well now Loochie understood why that dog had panicked. Despite Sunny’s nearly bald head and her body worn down by cancer treatments, even with a monster standing right there, that girl looked like the fiercest thing in the world.
    “Fine,” Loochie finally muttered. “I’m sorry.”
    But that didn’t seem to be enough. Sunny said, “I couldn’t have saved you without Alice’s help, do you understand that? Who do you think pulled those bars on the fence apart?Me?”
    Now Loochie looked up at Alice, but Alice looked away.
    “You did that?” Loochie asked. “Why?”
    “She used to be as bad as the others,” Sunny said. “But she doesn’t want to act like a monster anymore. Now she wants to be friends.”
    Alice opened her hands and extended them so Loochie could see the scrapes on the palms and fingers. Proof that tearing open that hole in the fence hadn’t been easy. That Alice had done something kind for her friend Sunny. And for Loochie, too. Wasn’t that all she’d been hoping to do for Sunny in her apartment that afternoon? To be a good friend?
    Alice left her hands out and Loochie walked closer.
    “It’s going to be okay,” Sunny said calmly. She uncrossed her arms, relaxed her face. She was cooing at Loochie, the way you might call a skittish cat.
    Loochie inched closer. Alice’s big hands remained outstretched and open.
    “I promise it’ll be okay,” Sunny said, and the words were so quiet it almost seemed like Sunny was speaking right inside Loochie’s head.
    Loochie raised her two hands and set them flat on Alice’s. Loochie’s hands were so small, by comparison. Then Sunny set her hands, even smaller and frailer than Loochie’s, on top of theirs.
    “Friends,” Sunny said.
    They stood this way, and remained quiet, for a little time.
    “Let’s go home,” Loochie finally said with a smile.
    But in a moment they heard the great, echoing yelps of the male Kroons again.
    “They’re back,” Sunny said, looking at Alice. Strangely, Sunny didn’t sound scared. She sounded tired.
    Alice stood straight. Alice pointed behind them, toward the Unisphere.
    “We’ll have to hide,” Sunny said. “Let them pass by.”
    Loochie looked up at the stainless steel sphere. She’d always been amazed by the size ofit in Flushing Meadows Park, and it was just as