The sky shouldn’t be blue, the birds shouldn’t sing. There shouldn’t be white puffy clouds sailing like catamarans across a vellum sea. The air shouldn’t be fragrant with daphne, honeysuckle and gardenia; there shouldn’t be a sense of magnificence in each stolen breath. Today was that day. I got out of the car, two bodyguards piled out behind me. Three others led the way. We pushed through angry cattle-like crowds, all poised and ready to stampede. Fortunately Fresh Start had sent a citywide Verse-warning a few hours ago, just in case anybody decided to pull another gauntlet. If there was a disturbance today, all transgressors would lose their ticket into the next life. Just then, a herd of reporters tried to shoulder their way through the mob, media bands around their foreheads recording everything they saw and heard, as if that somehow justified their presence here. “How does it feel to be responsible for the worst tragedy in the past decade?” “Can you explain why your niece survived, when sixteen other children were brutally murdered?”
