My father's face got hopeful as the puppies in the pet store window on Flatbush Avenue.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you." Under the table, I twisted the skin on my arms. "After the pumpkin pie, we made pancakes." I clasped my hands in my lap and gave him a big, happy smile. "With real maple syrup. We celebrated autumn. It was fun, Daddy. Really, really fun."

6.

Merry.

I raced up the steps of Duffy-Parkman, skidded down the hall, and then flew into my dormitory room. Olive was propped up on one elbow, lying on her cot and staring at the wall. I counted myself lucky it was Olive. She never bothered anyone, she just read, and read and read as though she was holding her breath until her parents came back, which they never would, since they'd died in a car crash. Olive didn't have a single family-person in the world, unless you counted an ancient aunt locked up in an old-person place.

All the Duffy dorms were the same, three cots lined up on one wall, three on the other. A tiny night table separated each bed. My lucky break was having an end bed so I could lean against the wall.

Seeing me, Olive retrieved her library book from where she'd hidden it behind her pillow. Only Lulu read more than Olive, but Lulu didn't have to pretend she didn't. Lulu scared most of the girls, except for the super-tough ones, like Kelli.

I stripped off my jumper and white blouse. After hesitating, I peeled off my sweaty kneesocks, too, which were disgusting from an entire day wearing the plasticky Mary Jane shoes Grandma had bought me back in September. I reached for my last clean socks, knowing they were the only ones left before laundry day, which wasn't for two more days. I'd have to wear them again tomorrow and Monday, but I wanted something clean right now. I sniffed my two pairs of pants to find the cleanest ones.

Lulu yelled at me for not planning things better, but sometimes I needed something that felt good so much, I couldn't stop myself.

I peeked over at Olive, who held Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Missing Heiress about an inch from her nose. "Hey, Olive, want to come hang out with us?"

Us was Janine, Crystal, and me. Janine, whose parents took her home every few months until they started drinking again, looked like a miniature Diana Ross. She had huge eyes and was superskinny-beautiful. Crystal's blond hair made me crazy jealous. It went down past her waist, and the counselors at Duffy liked to brush it and braid and twist it into fancy styles. Crystal's parents died in a fire.

We'd been together for over two years. When we were Bluebirds, the youngest and littlest, the floor mothers and counselors picked us to sit on their laps during TV hour. Now that we were Redbirds, n.o.body cuddled us much anymore, but we pa.s.sed out the popcorn, and sometimes we leaned against a counselor during Sat.u.r.day-night TV time.

"I think I'll just read," Olive said.

"Okay," I said. I didn't have to watch out for anyone teasing Olive. No group claimed her, but no one teased her either.

I looked both ways and ran to the art room. Mrs. Parker-p.e.c.k.e.rhead only allowed us to hang out in three places besides our dorms. One was the game room, an old cla.s.sroom with holes where desks had been unbolted. None of the games had all the pieces. Second was the lounge, which had a television and a radio. Everyone hung out in the lounge, but that's where the worst fights happened, too.

Third was the art room, where my friends and I went. An old pickle tub filled with crayons and colored pencils, outdated magazines, and stacks of used paper donated by some company made up our art supplies. We drew princesses and puppies on the backs of insurance reports and order forms.

Janine and Crystal bent over their pictures. Janine traced the outlines of the paper dolls we'd made from magazine ads, making the dolls new outfits. Crystal, the best artist of all the Redbirds, labored over the mountains she'd drawn coming up from behind a castle.

"How's your grandma?" Janine asked.

"Okay." I never complained about Grandma; at least I had someone to visit. Janine's parents only came when they took her home two or three times a year. We always believed Janine was leaving Duffy for good, and cried and hugged until a housemother pulled us apart. Then, when Janine came back two weeks later, Crystal and I pretended it never even happened, just as Crystal and Janine pretended that I didn't visit my father in prison, and Janine and I pretended we didn't notice the burn marks covering Crystal's legs from top to bottom.

"Here, I brought this from the room for you." Janine handed me the picture I'd started the day before. Part of my puppy series, gold, black, and red ones. Janine and Crystal kept all our drawings and any other special things. Duffy had two Redbird rooms, and they were lucky enough to be in the one without Enid and Reetha.

"We only have about fifteen minutes," Crystal warned. Crystal obeyed the Duffy rules as if she'd die if she even accidentally broke one.

I began slivering a little silver along the edges of a puppy. Not too much, since gold and silver crayons rarely appeared in the pickle jar, and I knew Crystal needed them for her castles.

The art door opened. We looked up, dreading company.

"Oh, look. Prison Girl's back." Reetha flounced in clutching a half-crayoned brown box.

Crystal put a protective arm over her paper. I nudged my puppies over to cover her castles.

"Why don't you crawl back under your rock?" Janine said.

I sucked in my breath at her words. Reetha did remind me of a slug, all sweaty with a face like the goop around gefilte fish. Jagged pink lines on her forehead showed where her mother had sc.r.a.ped her against a wire fence.

"Why don't you go eat s.h.i.t?" Reetha reached over and grabbed the silver and gold crayons.

"Hey, we're using those," I said, trying unsuccessfully to s.n.a.t.c.h them out of her hand.

"Why don't you have your grandma buy you some?" Reetha put her wormy face up to mine. "Look, Prison Girl! I found some new drawing paper. Maybe I'll use it to line my box."

I recognized the paper Reetha held, my father's handwriting, the blurry Richmond County Correctional stamp.

"Dear Merry," Reetha read aloud before I could grab the letter. "Grandma wrote me you got an A on your spelling test. Congratulations, Sugar Pop!"

Crystal tore the paper from Reetha, leaving Reetha with a sc.r.a.p corner of the letter.

"Oh, it's torn," Reetha said. "Don't cry, Sugar Pop! So, how bad was your mother that your father had to kill her? Was she a wh.o.r.e?"

Janine got between us. "How ugly were you that your mother named you Urethra?"

"My name is Reetha."

I grabbed at the crayons she'd s.n.a.t.c.hed. She screwed up her face to bite my hand, but I held on to the waxy tips anyway, tired of losing stuff to her. She clamped down on the tip of my thumb.

"Ow!" I screamed, letting go of the crayons.

"r.e.t.a.r.d," Janine said.

"Wino," Reetha screamed back as she grabbed the violet and red crayons next to Crystal. I hated her. I hated her so much I could have grabbed the scissors from the pickle container and shoved them in her throat.

"Ugly scar-face," I yelled. "Everyone hates you."

The next day I woke up with the kind of bad feeling you get when something is wrong, but you don't know what. It was seven-thirty on Sunday morning, and breakfast was in half an hour. Sunday's breakfast was the best meal of the entire week. Pancakes, three each.

I ran my finger along my chest. The smell of shampoo from my previous night's shower hung in the air. I reached up to fluff out my hair from the ponytail in which I'd slept.

My ponytail was gone. A short, bristly stump stuck out from the rubber band.

I tried not to cry, not to show anything, because crying only made things worse at Duffy. I tasted the tears in my throat. I touched my head again, patting the stump where my long ponytail had been.

Reetha smiled from her bed. I dug my nails deep into my palms. Enid sat cross-legged on the floor-probably looking for crumbs to eat, the porky pig.

Everyone in the room stayed silent.

"What's the matter?" Reetha asked. "Crybaby doesn't look so cute today?"

Curls from my ponytail lay scattered on my pillow. My hands twitched. I wanted to run to the mirror, but I wouldn't give Reetha that satisfaction. Instead, I s.n.a.t.c.hed a thick hardcover book, the largest I could find, from Olive's shelf and ran over to Reetha's bed. Her pajamas looked like a boy's, and she smelled like she never washed down there.

I grabbed the book with both hands, lifted it over my head as high as possible, and slammed it down on Reetha's head.

"Ugly s.k.a.n.k." I hit her again, aiming straight at her forehead scars.

Reetha rolled over and kicked me in the stomach. "Stuck-up Jew-girl."

"Stop it," Olive warned. "Someone's coming."

I ran back to my bed and leapt in, clutching Olive's book in my trembling arms.

Our housemother walked in. "What's going on?" She inspected us bed by bed. "Merry, what happened to your hair?"

I bit down on my lip. "I cut it," I said.

I faced the wall, tracing a doggy face on the dirty beige paint with my finger. Circle, circle, circle, tongue. Floppy ears. Everyone was in church. I pulled the stretchy headband Janine had lent me tighter, lower around my ears, pretending no one could notice how ugly I looked. Strings of long hair mixed with short curls sticking out like loose wires. The housemother said I'd have to get a pixie cut, which made you look like a boy. When the weekday housemother for the older girls, the one who took care of haircuts, came tomorrow she'd finish Reetha's job. I kicked the wall.

As soon as all the girls had left for church, I'd torn up my father's letters and flushed them down the toilet. My hiding place had turned out to be useless. I walked my feet up and down the wall. Quietly. Because if Mrs. Parker-p.e.c.k.e.rhead came in and found me doing it, she'd make me wash the wall down with the brown disinfectant that practically left holes in your hands.

You think people want to see your footprints on the wall, Meredith? Mrs. p.e.c.k.e.rhead would say as she handed me the scrub brush stuck in a pail of soapy water. When she made me move my bed from the wall and saw the real mess, she'd really punish me. Look at this, she'd yell. Candy wrappers. Where did you get those from?

I'd be in big trouble for having my own candy stash. We were supposed to give any treats we got to Mrs. p.e.c.k.e.rhead for the community box, but I tried to keep all Grandma's treats, except, of course, I gave half to Lulu. Anything you handed over to Mrs. p.e.c.k.e.rhead, you'd never see again, except for horrible things she didn't want, like the dried apricots one girl got from her grandfather.

The empty room reeked of poison brown disinfectant and talc.u.m powder that smelled like flowered feet. Duffy girls got it from John's Bargain Store on Flatbush Avenue-those who managed to beg money from relatives if they had them, or steal it from the girls who did, if they didn't-and sprinkled it under the cheap, scratchy dresses they wore to church.

Lulu walked in as I bicycled my feet in the air with my hands holding up my hips.

"Where are you going?" Lulu asked.

"Ha ha. Very funny."

Lulu sat next to me. "Are you okay?"

"Reetha will kill you if you sit on her bed," I said.

"I'm truly scared." As if to prove her point, Lulu lay down, even daring to put her shoes on the bed. Lulu had become tough since she'd turned thirteen. Grandma called her a juvenile delinquent in training.

"Really, get off," I begged.

"Okay, okay. Stop being a baby." She switched to my bed. "So, are you okay?"

She pointed her chin at my head, and I tried not to cry, instead air-bicycling faster and faster.

"I'll make sure they never do it again," she said.

"No," I screamed. "Don't. It'll just get worse. I know it. Unless you kill them. Ha ha." I reached up and felt where hairs popped out of the headband. "Why does she hate me?"

"Because of Daddy," Lulu said.

"You blame everything on him."

"How's Grandma?" Lulu always changed the subject the minute Daddy came up.

"She's okay." I banged my feet against the railing on the end of the bed. "Daddy said to say h.e.l.lo."

"Did I ask?" Lulu turned on her side, facing me, cradling her head in her hand.

I sat up and crossed my legs. "Lulu, do you think Daddy will be alive in twenty or thirty years?"

Lulu frowned. "Why?"

"Because he said maybe he'd get out then-in twenty or thirty years." I studied my sister's face.

"He'll probably be alive. Unless somebody kills him in prison."

"Don't say that." I drew up my knees and put my chin down, tucking in my face. "Don't you miss having parents, Lu?" I said to a scab on my knee.

"I just don't think about it." Lulu poked me with her foot. "Neither should you. Forget it. It's over. Come on down to the rec room. We'll play Clue."

"Do you think I might die here?" I asked.

Lulu grabbed my shoulders and pulled me up. "Why are you asking that?"

"What if someone here kills me?"

That wasn't what I really meant. What I really meant was, What if I killed someone? Then I really would be Prison Girl.

"I hate it here. I don't want to grow up here." I pushed Lulu away and fell back on my bed. "I'd rather be dead than live here."

7.

Lulu.

Merry drove me nuts as we walked toward Grandma's house. Every step I took, she insisted that I move faster. I couldn't rush enough for her, and she refused to copy my snail pace. I lifted my boots through the slush covering Caton Avenue as though I had bricks glued to my soles; that's how much I wanted to go to Grandma's house.

"Come on," urged Merry. She grabbed my arm. "We have to be there by twelve. For lunch."

"Quit it." I pulled away from her. "We'll get there when we get there."

Merry frowned from under the floppy hat hiding her pitiful haircut. Three weeks' growth hadn't helped her raggedy look, but more than her hair, I worried about her dying talk. She needed to leave Duffy. I could handle the place, but Merry wasn't tough enough.