Someone dropped something in the diner, and we both jumped.

I looked at him, and we laughed. We were both so tense.

“We need to shake it out,” I said, and we both rolled our shoulders and our heads and wiggled our arms.

“Wow,” he said. “I forgot about the ‘shake it out,’ you would tell us to do that all the time. And the mini dance breaks.”

He smiled as he took a sip from his cup.

“It was something I did with my kids all the time. When they would get frustrated or were angry at something, we would shake it out. If they were really frustrated, we would have a mini dance party. It always seemed to work with them, so I used it everywhere.” I explained.

We were quiet for a minute. Then he started his story again.

“After he said peek-a-boo, he dropped something. He laughed this creepy laugh, then he walked away, and kind of dissipated? He kind of just crumbled away,” he said.

He picked up his spoon and started swirling it in his cup, staring down into the cup like trying to read tea leaves. He said, “When he disappeared, I went and looked all across the sidewalk, and there were teeth.”