The Stars and the Cookie Jar

So this is the beginning of a scene (approximately 1937)  that lives nowhere, yet, but I like what I've got. I really think I only wrote it in response to that NYT article, sexless martyrs, and that load of tripe. There will be smut. Just not, you know, tonight.

   She couldn't see who they were tormenting, only a dark skirt twisting in the gap between their bodies. It was someone from the Lyceum, that much had to be; no one else took this road after the market stalls closed. It was the shortest way down to the Great Synagogue, and the Quarter, but it was old and the paving gone bad, and light only fell down through gaps between the archways.
   There was light now, as Raissa winced for the one being beaten, and curled her free hand into a fist for the Poles doing the beating. A bit of stone-filtered sunlight came and caught on red, red hair.
   "Violeta!" She had shouted, before she knew it. She was not big enough or quick enough to match three Polish boys down from the rye fields, and she had just lost all chance of ambush.
   She dropped her satchel over a garden wall, instead, and cast around for a sharp-edged stone. You get one throw, Lysiek had said, wrapping her hand around a smooth rock from the river; throw, and run.
   The stone flew, hard as she could send it, and it struck the tallest of them in the chest; and she was running, but downhill, into the cupped hand of the alleyway with grown boys blocking her escape. Raissa pushed through them at a dead sprint, clipping one shoulder against the elbow of a Pole as she found the space their astonishment made.
   Violeta, who called herself Stern, was flat against the wall at the bottom of the alley; her nose or her lip was bleeding down onto her neck, and her collars had been torn aside, jacket and blouse together. The half-moon of a kneecap showed past a rent in her skirt. Raissa saw that she was conscious, that she was standing, and then she did not take her eyes off the Poles.
   "Leave her alone," she shouted, in wild brave tones that were not what she felt, "fuck off out of here."
   "More to go around," one of them said, and reached for her, laughing, and Raissa was afraid.
   "Touch me, and my brothers will kill you," she said. "My brothers will kill you." Her arms were trembling, shrunk inside her sleeves. "But before they do, I will personally put your nose through the back of your head."
   They had not crossed close to her, yet; no one had dared the tight space of cobblestones and stucco, or the barrier of her shoulders. It meant they were uncertain; Loniek had told her so.
   "Threatening us now," one of them murmured. And "...fucking kikes."
   She lifted her voice. "Loniek! Loniek, Marek, they're hurting me, help!"
   Her white blouse was untouched, and her dark school tie stirred in the wind.
   The alley was empty.
   Raissa sagged back against the wall, her feet sliding until a stone stopped them, her hands raked far back in her hair. She wanted to put her head down on her knees. Something was pounding terribly hard in her throat.
   "Good evening," she said, like an idiot. She straightened, scraping against the wall; her shirt would bear mildew-marks.

   Violeta looked aside. She blotted the corner of her mouth. "You're walking this way late."
   "Doktor Professor Fyvash kept me," Raissa admitted.
   'Speaking out of turn again?"
   "Sleeping out of turn," she shrugged, brushing lichens from Violeta's shoulder. "Are you all right?"
   "Thank you."
   "You didn't answer me."
   Violeta laughed, short and hoarse. "I am all right, thank you, yes, it was nothing."
   The last of the daylight was running down the wall. Raissa ducked out of her uniform jacket and offered it into the chill. Violeta's hand, brushing hers, had ink stains on the second finger. It shook. She was not crying, only gasping sharp and quick as if the air cut her lungs; she held very still when Raissa's arms slipped round to brace her, shoulder and waist.
   "Violeta, Violeta," she spoke the name like river water.
   "I don't think you're supposed to know my given name," Violeta said, still that half laugh that was like sobbing.
   "You told me." Raissa paused. "I would have found out."
   "Raissa --"
   "I'm not letting go until you're all right."
   Violeta was two hands' span taller, and the curve of Raissa's half-undone corona of braids barely touched her chin, and there was space, now, empty and safe, to step out, into, away.
   She said, "You're sixteen years old."
   Raissa held up a hand, to the sunset, to Violeta's hair.