When You Were Young - Page 182/259

"What's this? The baby's boyfriend?" The boy shoved Joey backwards. He lost his grip on Molly and they both fell to the ground along with Phyllis. The boys laughed at this. "Look, they haven't even learned to walk yet."

"Please, just let us go," Joey said. "We don't want any trouble. We only want to get Molly home."

"Oh, maybe we should let them get the baby to her crib before she wets herself."

"Fine, we'll let you go, but only if you crawl out of here like the babies you are."

"I'm not going to crawl on the dirty ground," Helena said.

"Do you want to stay in the cellar?" Joey said.

Helena thought about this a moment and then got down on her knees. By now Molly had recovered enough to crawl on her own. Joey followed behind her, his face turning red as the boys howled with laughter. "Look at the babies crawl," they said.

To add to the insult, one of the boys kicked Joey in the rear. His eyes watered up from the pain, but he refused to cry in front of them. Molly looked back at him with concern and then kept going.

They continued to crawl all the way to the bakery on the edge of town. By then the boys grew weary of tormenting them. "I hate them," Helena said as she got to her feet.

"Let's just get out of here," Phyllis said. She and Joey ran alongside Molly towards the trees. As Joey neared the edge of the forest, he heard a scream. He looked back to see Aunt Veronica holding a struggling Helena with a knife at her throat.