"Get down on the floor!" she bellowed. Then, more rea.s.suringly: "The police will be here in no time. And we have a very good lock on that door."

"Open the door, Frances!" It was the voice of Danny, Fran's husband.

"Oh, cripes," said Fran. "It's Danny. He went down to the store for milk." She slid the chain off to let him in, then locked it again.

"What's going on?" said Danny.

Before Fran could explain, the front doorbell rang, and a deep voice announced, "Police!"

Tesey and Chrisanne and I were still crouching on the kitchen floor to avoid any bullets that might come flying through the windows. We stayed there while Fran spoke briefly to the policemen, who seemed to fill up the living room, though they were trying hard to fit on the foot-wiping rug by the door. After she sent them next door, we crawled up onto chairs and waited nervously. Fran filled a plate with cookies and slices of nut bread.

"Should I make more coffee?" she said to Danny. Then she said, "Our policemen are so excellent. Did you see how fast they got here? It didn't take them five minutes."

Cupcake's toenails clicked back and forth across the linoleum. He was keeping an eye on both doors. Danny sat down at the table with us and picked up a biscotti.

"I'd have a cup of coffee," he said to Fran. Then to Chrisanne he said, "So, tell me what happened now, sweetie."

Chrisanne told the story again, and by this time the intruder was wearing a tweed coat (probably stolen), and she thought he had looked at her through the crack in the door, but she had pretended not to see him before walking calmly down the stairs and leading Cupcake and me out of the house. I was getting ready to comment on the "calmly" part when the policemen returned to the front door.

Fran spoke to them for a few minutes, then came back into the kitchen for Chrisanne. "You're going to come back and stay with us until your mom and dad get home," she said gently. "But the policemen want to show you what it was that you saw."

Tesey and I looked at each other in suspense as the policemen led Chrisanne out of the house.

My mother had been in a hurry that evening. She had taken a quick bath to freshen up, dried off, and sprinted to her bedroom to dress herself. It was unusual, a once-in-a-lifetime event, for my mom to leave her clothes in the bathroom, but that's what she'd done. She left her Hush Puppy shoes on the floor, neatly placed side by side, perpendicular to the wall. Her gray wool slacks hung from the hook on the back of the door, bulged out a little by the blouse underneath them.

Look, you'll see what I mean: Chrisanne and Cupcake and I had made a dramatic escape from the threat of wool slacks and Hush Puppies.

The policemen were nice. They told Chrisanne that she had done exactly the right thing. One of them said he had teenage daughters of his own, and he would want them to get out of the house, too, if they ever even suspected that someone might be in there. Then I guess he went home and told the teenage daughters, when he could stop laughing for long enough to speak, all about us and how he had rescued us from our mom's pants and shoes.

The news spread like wildfire. You would think there would be some kind of law about confidentiality, but overnight Chrisanne and I became semifamous persons. This is not hard to do in Seldem, where you can become famous for having a hangnail. I was glad I could blame the whole thing on Chrisanne, but even so, by Iunchtme I was looking forward to college, where I hoped no one would know about it I wondered if I would have to go out of state. I carried my tray into the cafeteria and looked around for a hiding place.

"Hey, Debbie, look out!" someone yelled. "There's a pair of pants behind you!" It was Steven Heber and some of his dopey companions, sitting at the table in front of me. Well, when someone shouts, "Look out!" it's only natural for a person to jump a little bit. So I jumped. This was good for a few more peals of merry laughter. I bristled and walked past as if I had places to go and people to meet Through the noise and the lukewarm brown fog of Meat Cup, I moved toward the table where Alice Dahlpke was sitting with Connie Klemenko and Jane Haslett.

I was just cutting into my Meat Cup when a voice nearby said, "Debbie!"

I turned to see Patty Tsimmicz, who was sitting with the next clump of people at the table. "Hi," I said.

"Hi," Patty said back. Then she said, "Listen, I just wanted to tell you that it wasn't me who told about what happened at your house. It was my sister, Diane."

"What?" I said.

"My dad was one of the policemen," she said. "I wouldn't have told anyone, but Diane is kind of a blabbermouth."

"Oh," I said. "That's all right." What else could I say?

"You have to admit, though," said Patty, a smile coming to her lips. "It's a good story."

I braced myself to bristle, but then something happened. A lot of times when people say, "We're not laughing at you, we're laughing with you," it just isn't all that convincing. But Patty's smile seemed to say, "Hey, crazy things happen all the time, to everyone. Isn't it funny?"

I had to smile, too. "You should have seen it," I said. And as I told her the whole story, her laughter and then mine made it funnier than it probably even was. Suddenly I didn't feel stupid anymore. It was like the flying-up ceremony back in Girl Scouts, where all of us little Brownies walked over a wooden bridge set in the middle of the floor in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Presbyterian church, and when we got to the other side and stepped off, we were Junior Girl Scouts. Only this time Patty had helped me over an imaginary bridge from Stupidland to the Land of Knowing a Good Joke.

A couple of days later the phone rang at our house, but I didn't hear it. Or I didn't notice it, because I had forgotten that a ringing phone might ever have anything to do with me; it was just another sound, like a car going by on the street or the heater coming on in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

I didn't even notice the first few times Chrisanne called my name. I was sitting on the bedroom floor, listening to Chrisanne's records and knitting an eight-foot-long scarf, in burgundy and cream stripes.

I did hear a pounding on the stairs just before Chrisanne burst through the door, and said, "Debbie-telephone," and bounded back down to sit on the couch next to her new boyfriend, Dale. I figured somebody needed a baby-sitter and followed her down, wondering whose kids I would be giving baths to that evening.

But it was Patty, Patty Tsimmicz. She was inviting me to go to a movie. Maybe get pizza after.

I said, "Sure."

I hung up the phone. I looked at it for a minute. I rose onto my tiptoes. I bent my knees and did some dance-type leaps and spins around the dining room table and into the living room. I sang some opera notes for Chrisanne and Dale as I walked past them and out onto the porch. It was an exceptional day out there. Huge, wild gusts of wind were hurling the rain sideways, in buckets. Yellow leaves were being slapped onto the wet sidewalk and the street in tangled, cheery patterns. I worked my hands Chinese style into the opposite sleeves of my sweatshirt and watched some cars go by with their lights beaming out bright tunnels of raindrops, their wheels spinning silvery plumes of spray into the air. I was getting wet, not from the cars but from the rain blowing in under the porch roof. I inhaled one more gulp of the beautiful, cold, damp air and went back inside to the also beautiful dryness and warmth.

Something good was happening.

eleven.

SOMETIME IN OCTOBER MARIE HAD FOUND ANOTHER boyfriend with a car to drive her to school. Larry Hlotva was the only ninth grader who already had a driver's license. He was sixteen. He was big and bulky. He and Marie lurched around school with Marie tucked under Larry's armpit This can't have been all that pleasant for Marie, but she didn't seem to mind. She was wearing his chain and a fake cla.s.s ring wrapped in angora yarn. They were 'going together."

Larrys hair was the color of cornsilk, with sulfury highlights. It hung down over his ears in a limp, wavy helmet, and his bangs flipped up like a visor, just at eye level. Downy blond hairs sprouted over his lip and here and there across the pale, pocky skin of his puffy face. A group of them had burst through at his chin. Looks-wise, he was a few steps down the ladder from Don, but maybe he was nicer, who knows?

Marie and I still said hi, but I didn't see her much outside Larry's armpit When I did see her, I didn't think that she might be unhappy. I mean, I knew that her mother was living somewhere else and that she had big problems with her dad and some junior juvenile delinquent brothers. Maybe Larry Hlotva was "any port in a storm." But I thought Marie could handle whatever came along. I thought of her as someone who did whatever she wanted to. That's what she would have said. She skipped school a lot. and when she did come, no one seemed to care what she did. The princ.i.p.als and teachers at school had already given up on Marie. They hardly even saw her, except as some kind of blemish. She could have stood on her head wearing a burlap bag, and n.o.body would have noticed it all that much. They thought she was stupid. She wasn't stupid.

One Sat.u.r.day in November, I saw the FOR SALE sign in the Prbyczkas' front yard. Someone had mowed the gra.s.s, but everything else looked as ratty as ever. The car was not in the driveway, but I thought I saw someone moving past the window, and I thought it was Marie. All of a sudden I felt like talking to her. So I walked up the sidewalk and knocked. I stood there for a minute waiting. Then I heard footsteps, and Marie opened the door. No one else seemed to be at home. Marie wasn't wearing makeup, and I was surprised to see that she had freckles and fresh, clear skin. Her eyes looked naked and shy. She invited me in and offered me a pop.

I followed her from room to room with my gla.s.s of pop. She was packing the clothes of all the Prbyczka kids in boxes. There wasn't much to pack, and most of what there was, was scattered on the floor or hanging from doork.n.o.bs.

"But you just moved here," I said. "Where are you going?"

"Pine Township," she said. It wasn't that far away, but it was a different school. Probably I would not see her much. Maybe not at all. Maybe never.

There was a crescent-shaped redness just below Marie's lower lip. It looked raw or sore, like an injury. I was about to ask her what it was, or how it happened, when she bit down onto it, in a quick, nervous movement, like biting your fingernails. I looked away, down to where her hands were putting a little pair of slippers into a box.

"At least you won't have to live with your dad anymore," I said.

"I wish," she said. "Him and my mom are back together. They're acting like lovebirds. That should last a couple weeks." She tossed a balled-up sock into the box.

"Oh," I said. "So why are you moving then?"

Marie shrugged. "We can't afford this place, I guess," she said. "I don't care, though. People here are boring. And stuck up. Not you. But most of them are." She sat down on one of the beds and tapped a cigarette out of a pack that was lying there. She lit it and took a puff.

"You should see the dump we're moving into," she said. "You have to go outside to turn around." She grinned and knocked some ash into an empty gla.s.s on the windowsill. "My mom is calling it a cottage," she said, "but if you ask me, that's just another word for rathole."

She squinted at the smoke from her cigarette gracefully unfurling in a shaft of sunlight and dust in the still air. Her face was the face of a little kid under the spell of soap bubbles. Bobby's face, only prettier. She drew her knees up inside her sweater. I leaned back on my hands. We sat there watching the smoke make lazy, winding patterns.

The spell was broken by the sound of a car dragging its m.u.f.fler down the street outside. Marie bit down on her lip again. I winced. She caught me looking at her, and something pa.s.sed between us. Understanding or friendship or truth or something, I don't know quite what it was. Then, instantly, she was the usual Marie, breezy and tough. She crossed her legs and stubbed her cigarette out in the gla.s.s. "You don't have to feel sorry for me," she said. "I can take care of myself."

"I don't feel sorry for you," I lied, or half lied. And since one of the reasons that I felt sorry for her was Larry Hlotva, I asked, "Do you think you'll still go with Larry after you move?"

Marie nodded.

"Oh, yeah," she said. "He wants us to get married. We have to wait till I'm sixteen, but he can quit school next year and work at his cousin's garage."

This sounded like a really lousy idea, but then I wondered if my own probable future life as an old maid would be any better.

"Wow," I said. "I wonder if I'll even go out on a date by the time I'm sixteen."

Marie laughed. I liked making her laugh.

"Or ever," I said, and she laughed again.

"You will," she said. "It's too bad you have to wear gla.s.ses, though. Do you really need them?"

"Pretty much," I said. "But I'm hoping I can get contacts when I'm older."

"That will help," said Marie.

"I hope so," I said.

"It will," she insisted. "Take your gla.s.ses off for a minute." I did.

"That's so much better. You should go without them."

"I kind of like being able to see, though," I said.

"What for?" said Marie.

A wave of voices floated into the house, then footsteps. Then the whole horde of Prbyczkas was inside. I helped carry boxes out to the car.

"Drop by and see us," said Mrs. P. "We love it when Marie's friends come to visit."

"Okay," I said, even though in the first place, I didn't even know where it was, and in the second place, I had never even walked down the street to visit Marie, not before today. "Okay," I said. "Good luck.

"I'll miss you," I said to Marie. I meant it.

"Like fun you will," she said, but she was smiling.

Her dad smiled, too, through the windshield, a dazzling smile that I couldn't help smiling back at, even though I knew from Marie that he was kind of a jerk. Marie got in the front seat next to her mother and shut the door, m.u.f.fling the noise from all the little Prbyczkas in the backseat to a dull roar, which faded to silence as the big car rolled down the street and disappeared around the corner.

At least until they reached Pine Township, the car would hold them all together. Who knew what would happen once they got out of it? The furniture was still there inside the house, but by the end of the day that was gone, too.

The street breathed a sigh of relief. The house waited like a sc.r.a.ped knee.

twelve.

Thanks giving Monday "THE THING IS, ILIKED MARIE," ISAID TO PATTY. WE WERE WALKing down Pearl Avenue on Thanksgiving Monday, the first day of deer hunting. There was no school. We were going to Jim's Bargain Store for red thread, weather stripping, and green burlap. "So why did I, like, not be her friend? More than I did, I mean."

Patty thought it over. "Well, you're pretty different from each other," she said.

"Yeah, but can we be friends only with people who are just the same as us?" I asked. "Wouldn't that be sort of boring?"

"I don't think you have to be just the same," she said. "But there has to be something that's alike. Otherwise what do you do together? What do you talk about?"

We stopped to look at the revolving silver Christmas tree in the window of Tony Williams Shoes. Children's socks and slippers were hung on it like ornaments. The window on the other side had a New Year's Eve theme: a champagne bottle, confetti, and high-heeled patent leather shoes with buckles or ribbon roses or rhinestones that could be snapped on in front depending on the occasion or your mood.

Patty said, "I guess with anybody, there would be some things that are in common, just because you're both human beings. I mean, everyone has to eat and sleep. And breathe. Although breathing isn't something you usually talk about, unless for some reason somebody, like, stops breathing."

It was an interesting conversation, and it might have gone on for a lot longer, if I hadn't looked up just as we turned onto Pittsfield Street.

"That's George!" I said under my breath.

"What?" said Patty.

"That guy getting out of the car up there," I said, "I know him."

George circled to the pa.s.senger side and opened the door.

"And that's Mrs. Brown," I said as she stepped out onto the sidewalk, resplendent in sky blue ski pants and a white ski parka with a fur-lined hood. The ski parka had tags hanging from the zipper; leave it to people in Deer Church to know where to find snow while the rest of us sputtered along in the drab gray nothing that hovers between autumn and real winter. George was wearing a car coat and a brown plaid scarf. He looked great, too, just because he was George.

"Who are they?" asked Patty.

"It's a long story," I said. "I'll tell you later."

Maybe later I could also explain why happiness was spurting up inside me at the sight of them.

"George!" I called out. "Mrs. Brown!"

They turned, and there was that moment that happens before someone recognizes you. It can happen with your own family, if you catch them off guard. I helped them out.

"I'm Debbie," I said. "I came to your garden last summer-"

"Of course!" said Mrs. Brown. "And we've been waiting for you to come back ever since."

"I knew I had connections in this town," said George.

"What are you doing in Seldem?" I asked.