LITTLE SANFRANSOKYO was a least favorite of Tinka’s. When stacked, in her mind, against the gentle calm of Hundred Acre, Little Sanfransokyo was a tier of hell. She hated it’s constant buzzing, like flies beating themselves against a window but never dying; the raucous traffic that never seemed to slow. If it didn’t have the best chinese take-out known to Carthay, she wouldn’t bother with the trips across town at all.
Tinka liked to set her own pace-- but, shuffled into the crowd on the sidewalk, there was little room for her to take control. She was instead jostled complacently from one street to the next, her shoulders bumping with strangers’, her face hot from stress. She stared hard at the bouncing pom-poms of her flats-- always a welcome distraction when she was feeling overwhelmed-- and tried to picture the avenue on which she would turn, just a few blocks down, and officially be freed from the torment of this neighborhood. Her take-out bag swung lazily from one hand, the plastic rubbing against her jeans on every other swing of her arms.
In a sudden and desperate attempt to slip out of the crowd, Tinka ducked into a side-alley that one of the Lost Boys had once shown her, her first time visiting Little Sanfran. He’d claimed it a short-cut, and, even if it had actually made their escape longer, it offered relief from the press of bodies that the main streets carried, which was doubly worth it in the eyes of an introverted Tinka. Without paying much attention, Tink started scuffing her way through the alley, closed in on either side by tall brick walls, side-stepping murky puddles and brown paper bags as she went. Her gaze never left her shoes-- the soft bounce of those damp white pom-poms-- until, that is, she ran hard into a body rounding the corner. Startled and immediately upset, Tink blinked rapidly in way of recovery and waited with sudden fury for the stranger to apologize. Instead, they grabbed her by the sleeve of her jacket, pulling her face close to their own that all she could see was their eyes, their nose, and part of their cheek. “Give me your wallet,” the eyes, the nose, and the part of a cheek demanded. Tinka only stood, frozen in surprise, still cuffed into their grasp. She didn’t even own a wallet.
