Not all fun and games

It sounded more like a teenage girl’s holler. Like when kids are out with their friends and act all silly and decide to wake the neighborhood up. Random noises. Not distress, not happiness. Just noise. Random. A holler. It didn’t seem unusual, not on a Friday night.

It unfolded outside, partially obscured by the trees. The hollering. The screeching tires. A Friday night. People ran out of their houses. Grocery bags littered the sidewalk. People talked. The police came. Reports were made and, just like that, silence returned.

It wasn’t a teenager playing around. It was a middle-aged woman coming back home. The tires screeching were the getaway car racing off. A bad episode of “Law and Order” outside our living room window.