3

Amy Bains was smart, cute, and careful. She had had her tenth birthday last month. She had sprung up to almost five feet; her bright red hair was becoming a little darker. The only thing she really worried about, was getting pimples. Lots of the kids in the upper grades at her school had pimples and they were disgusting. She had learned to scrub her face. Her mom, Cece, told her there was medication she could get when the time came—those would help her keep away the pimples. So far, there were no pimples. Clothes were becoming more important, but not as important as being careful so as to not get pimples. She liked wearing skirts and sweaters more now, than her usual bluejeans.

She loved her mother and father, and did whatever they told her to do. If they told her certain things were not safe to do, that was enough for her. Those things wouldn’t be done. Period. She accepted their judgement. That didn’t mean Amy told her parents everything she was thinking of doing. Not by a long shot. Some things, Amy didn’t need to be told about. She used her common sense and just didn’t do them. Going into any of the abandoned buildings in the neighborhood, for example, was not a smart thing to do. Some of them were falling down—the stairs might collapse. Some of them had weird people in them—weird people were not safe people. Amy knew what a junkie was, and she knew that there were a lot of junkies using drugs in some of the abandoned buildings. She hated the junkies and stayed far away fromthem.

There were several buildings that her father, Buff Bains, took care of. These were safe. Things weren’t falling down. The tenants weren’t weird—at least, most of them. There were no junkies. Buff would chase them out of his buildings with a baseball bat. There were plenty of other buildings for them to go to. When he chased them, they didn’t comeback.

There were other things that she knew her parents didn’t worry about. She could talk to them about these things. They would let her do them. Peter, for example. They would let her play withPeter.

She and Peter had been friends since he had moved into the neighborhood five years ago. They were in the same grade and they walked to school together. That had started in kindergarten, and they were now in fifth grade. Each morning, Peter would pick Amy up at her front stoop and off they would go. Amy once tried to hold Peter’s hand as they walked, but he would have none of it. He said it made