Little Sally watches from her seat on the swing as the other children play a game of tag in the grass nearby. She thinks about how much fun in would be to join them in their school-yard games, but she’s afraid. She doesn’t want to get hurt again.

She knows her real name is just Sally, not Little Sally, but everyone still calls her that. She lets out a small sigh as she looks down at her tiny frame, little legs like matchsticks dangling over the edge of the swing seat.

“Make sure the little one doesn’t get hurt,” she mumbles to herself. It’s a phrase she’s overheard often enough, whispered in hushed tones. She really doesn’t like getting hurt, and not just because of the pain.

Last summer a dog bit her on the hand. It was the neighbor’s dog from down the street. She had gone up to pet it one day and it had lunged for her, snapping its teeth and snarling. She wasn’t quite sure what happened next, but she felt a sharp pain in her hand and then felt herself being pushed to the ground. When she dared open her eyes again after what seemed like forever, she no longer heard the growling and howling that had so terrified her. In fact, she couldn’t even see the dog anymore. The chain it had been leashed to now ended in a twisted link and lay limp on the ground. In a frantic worry she glanced behind her in case the beast was ready to pounce on her again, but she relaxed after a moment when she saw that it must have run off somewhere. It was then that she finally looked at her hand. There was blood coming from a pair of holes between her thumb and her first finger, but she didn’t cry. She took out her hankie and wrapped it around her hand before running home to show her mother.

Later that evening, her father had gone to talk to the neighbor about that dog. He said he was going to make sure that it never bit anyone ever again. When he got home, Sally listened at the kitchen doorway as he told Mother that they didn’t need to worry about the dog bothering Little Sally any more. The neighbor had found it a few houses away. It must have gotten into a fight with a bigger, meaner dog — a much meaner dog. He wouldn’t talk about it any more when Mother asked him what he meant by that, but Sally saw the scared look on his face as he glanced to the doorway where Sally stood.

Little Sally hops off of the swing and slowly walks over to the sandbox where a young boy is making a small mountain with his toy bulldozer. She sits on the bench and watches him for a bit while making S shapes in the sand with her foot

“What do you think, Max? Is it high enough?”

She glances up to see the boy pause a moment, then nod and go back to dozing more sand up the side of the mountain. Sally can’t see the person he is talking to, but that doesn’t mean that there is no one there. She knows all about friends that no one else can see. She has one herself. She knows from listening to the other children that he� she’s pretty sure it is a “he”� that he isn’t much like the other children’s friends. For one thing, he never, ever talks to her. Sally only rarely sees him, and even then only in the shadows. She doesn’t know what he really looks like, but he is always there, watching; waiting in some dark nook or corner.

Sally had tried to tell her mother about him once, but her mother said that she mustn’t tell stories. They have had to move yet again because of the stories. They live in the city now. Her mother had grown tired of the small towns. Sally had liked the towns because she could go off to play in the woods or in the streams and whatnot, but her mother had said that they were “gossip mills”. When Sally had asked what that meant, her mother had told her that they were places where people told mean and hurtful stories about each other, and her mother was tired of being hurt. So they had moved to the city in the hope that it would be better here, that the neighbors wouldn’t stop their conversations to stare at them with dark expressions as they walked past on their Sunday strolls.

Sally kicks at the sand, thinking about the last town they were in.

There was a mean little boy that she had gone to school with there. His name was Pete, and Pete was a bully. He was always calling her names and running up to her yelling “Boo!” really loud in her face. One day he did more than just yell; he ran right up and hit her. He hit her so hard that she fell to the ground crying. The teachers yelled at him and sent him home, which was the last time Little Sally ever saw Pete the Bully.

Her parents had told her that Pete wasn’t going to be going to school there anymore, that he had gone far away. The story that she had heard later from the kids at school was that Pete was dead, and that Sally was the one that had killed him. Sally was certainly shocked. She was fairly certain the she would have remembered something like that. They said that Little Sally was cursed, a witch, or a maybe a demon even. They said that Sally had killed him, just like all the others. Anyone who hurt Little Sally ended up dead.

But it wasn’t all just gossip. Sally knows that now. It was only a few weeks ago when she realized that all the stories about her were true.

Sally was sitting on a bench waiting for her mother to pick her up from school, amusing herself with a small wooden puzzle her uncle had made for her. As she heard the sound of a car pulling up and stopping in front of her, she looked up in the hopes of seeing her mother’s car, but instead it was one she didn’t recognize. It’s passenger door swung open.

Inside a man smiled at her with a sad and worried face and told her that Sally’s mother couldn’t come. She had been hurt in a car accident and he was going to take Sally to see her. Sally looked at the man closely. Her mother had told her to be careful of strangers, and that Sally was never to go with anyone who did not tell her the secret password. But if her mother was really hurt, she might not have been able to tell anyone what the password was. What if she didn’t go with this man and her mother was really hurt? What if she was dying and Sally did go!

As she began to get off the bench, a steak of shadow rushed out from underneath, racing past her feet and into the car. Sally saw a look of surprise and then terror cover the man’s face before the passenger door slammed shut and the car started to rock and bounce on its springs. She heard a muffled shriek and then the windows were covered from the inside with a bright red and bits of things Sally didn’t want to remember. With a sudden lurch, the car slammed onto its side with the sound of bending metal and breaking glass. Rolling, it came to a stop on its roof� and then silence.

Sally sat and stared for a long while, unable to look away. Finally, she picked up her puzzle and raced back into the school. She didn’t scream. She didn’t even cry until she got home later that evening, after talking to the people at the school and to the police officers that came. She only told them that she had seen the red. She knew that they weren’t interested in listening to “stories”. She didn’t want to make them mad. Later that night, as she lay in bed, she cried quietly and fitfully into her pillow.

As Sally’s attention drifts back to the sandbox, it now appears to her that Max and the boy have decided that the mountain is, in fact, too tall. The boy is removing great gouts of sand with wide sweeps from the bulldozer, accompanying the effort with loud bulldozer-like noises. Hearing a little snuffling noise, Sally turns to see that a sad-looking puppy-dog has walked up beside her. It sits down on its haunches and lets it’s tongue hang out, panting in the way that dogs do, obviously looking for attention.

Sally looks down at the poor thing and shakes her head. “Go home puppy-dog. Go on home. I want to give you a pet. I really do,” she offers with a sad smile. “But I’m scared you might bite me, and I don’t want to get hurt. I don’t want to get hurt ever again.”