Inside the houses around the circle there was light, light and noise seeping out the cracks around the windows. Outside, it was dark, dark and silent. If you didn’t want to get caught, you stayed out of the window light, out of the light and silent.

I could be quieter barefoot, but April in Connecticut was too cold for bare feet. On the toes of my orange Converse low-tops, I hardly dented the grass. Even my breath made no sound. I held my mouth open and breathed right up into my eardrums, letting the air in and out with no blows or puffs or sighs.

It was no use. The one chasing me stayed close. At the corner of the Rankins’ house I sank to my knees in the shadows and willed him away: Go. Go.

I saw the glint of his eyes. If it was Pete Asconti, he wouldn’t know it was me yet, couldn’t run to home base and yell, “I call Chérie in the Rankins’ bushes.” He wasn’t near enough to recognize me, not with my braids stuck down the back of my shirt, the blondeness hidden. I shrank
into the shadow of the house and waited, my heart pounding.

A crash, a crunch, and someone half dived, half fell through the bushes and landed behind me. He had me around the neck. I threw my elbows back hard into his chest. “Get off me!” I huffed.

I pummeled my attacker as silently as possible. Was I still invisible inside the forsythia hedge? Or had he given away my hiding place?

“I’ve come to suck your blood,” Dave said. He was always being some darn thing from whatever book he’d read lately. Guess this week it was
Dracula
again.

I elbowed him away. “Stay down!” I whispered.

“What do you think I am, a moron?”

I nodded. “Ass-conti,” I said. “You smell.” He did: of grass and ground and cherry Life Savers. He had straight, coarse dark brown hair and pointed ears like an elf’s, eyes so dark brown they were almost black. His brother, Pete, was high-school handsome, but Dave was seventh-grade cute, more my style.

I fingered a thin branch on the underside of the bush and broke it off silently in my fist, tucked it into the kangaroo pocket of my sweatshirt beside my pink rubber ball.

“It’s cold,” said Dave, sitting closer.

“So go get a coat.”

“And get caught?”

“You’re going to if you keep talking.”

“You’re the one talking.”

We leaned against the wall of the Rankins’ house and heard the theme music to the seven o’clock news, the clothes dryer bumping around in the basement. I tucked more twigs in my pocket.

At home base my third-grade sister, Aimée, ran past Pete, shrieking, “Get away from me!”

I nudged Dave with my elbow. He nudged back. “That’s all Martin Luther King was doing,” he said. “Going in for a coat.”

“A coat?” I thought about Dr. King in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was shot. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., ASSASSINATED, said today’s
Bridgefield Bell.

“He was cold.” Dave pointed an imaginary gun. “Then
ping! Blam!”

“You’re a pig,” I said. In the light from the Ascontis’ deck, I saw Pete looking toward us. I tucked my head down so there wouldn’t be any glint from my glasses, but Pete came walking our way. He was after us.

Dave scrambled behind me through the bushes, away from home. When Pete got to the Rankins’ bushes, we were gone. I could see his eyes, dark like Dave’s, but he couldn’t see us.

“Oh, lovebirds! Come out wherever you are!” That Pete, such a comedian. And that big goonball Sandy DeLuna snickered. Sandy was already home free. By now they all were. I stopped near the corner of the Rankins’ house and rested my hand on the wooden siding. Suddenly there was Dracula breath in my ear and Dave’s little finger touched mine, keeping track of me.

“Dave and Chérie are off in the bushes somewhere,” Pete announced to his audience. “And we all know what they’re doing, don’t we? Davey’s giving his darling Cherry a big wet kiss—” Dave yanked his hand away from mine.

Pete moved steadily away from home base, off to the right. On the left, I crawled through the damp leaves as though Vietnamese bullets were zipping over my head.
When Pete faced me, I held still on the ground. He turned. I leaped to my feet, Dave at my heels.

I pounded across the ground and bellowed, “Home free! Chérie!” Pete’s hand slammed against my back. He might have started arguing that I was It if Dave hadn’t crashed into him.

Pete hung over his brother, dark hair bristling above dark eyebrows, his cheeks pink the way Sandy’s older sister, Lucy, liked them, fist back, grinning. Dave kicked away and sprang to the top of the steps. Aimée and her little friend Pammy got out of the way. Pammy was giggling, but Aimée fidgeted, serious, worrying.

“Tie goes to the runner,” Dave said.

“You’re It,” said Pete. “And don’t try to cheat your way out of it. Your girlfriend can be It with you if you want.”

“I’m not—” I began.

“At least he has a girlfriend,” said Pammy. “Not like you, ugly creep.”

Aimée held her breath. Pete raised his fist over Pammy. Aimée pulled her friend away.

“Yes, Dave is one lucky guy,” said Pete.

I jumped off the steps and landed on his back, my arms around his neck tight enough to choke him, my knees in his ribs. “Take it back!”

Pete backed up against the house, laughing, pressing me into the splintery yellow shingles. I slid onto the deck, bounced up again. I advanced on Pete, my hands reaching like claws toward his middle.

“Get him, Chérie.” Dave laughed. “You know where.”

“Don’t, Chérie! You’ll hurt him!” Aimée’s face had a frantic look, her brown eyes wide and overflowing. “Don’t!”

Everyone stopped. Everyone sighed. Everyone watched to see what I would do.

I stood completely still. “We’re just fooling around, Em,” I said in my calmest, flattest voice. It never helped to act exasperated with her when she got like this.

Mr. Asconti opened the back screen door against Dave’s head. He was Uncle Joe to Aimée and me—not really our uncle but almost, the way Pete and Dave were practically our brothers. Our parents had all lived on Marvin Road since before most of us were born. Uncle Joe was a thin, handsome man with dry brown hair that stuck out in many directions, the way Pete’s would have if he’d ever let it grow out of a crew cut.

“What are you thugs doing to precious little Chérie?” he asked Pete. Anybody else would have guessed it was Aimée who was in trouble out here, but Uncle Joe knew how it went. He taught high school and always understood better than a normal adult.

I put up my dukes. “Who you calling precious?”

Pete ducked, falling dramatically away. Everyone except Aimée laughed. She bent over Pete as though she thought he might really be hurt.

“Can it,” Uncle Joe said to his boys. “Before your mother has a coronary.” The inner door closed with a thud, the screen door with a squeak and a bang.

Pete’s face was sour, pinched.
“She’s
having a coronary,” he said to Dave. “So
we
can’t play anymore?”

“No, you just can’t be an idiot anymore,” I said.

“It’s not Mom’s fault,” said Dave. Pete clenched his fist as if he wanted to hit
somebody.
But he didn’t; he just went inside.

Lucy DeLuna took a step away when the door closed behind Pete. “I have homework, don’t you?” she said.

“Mine’s all done,” said Aimée, calm now.

“Oh, yeah? Wait till high school,” said Sandy, who
wasn’t even out of eighth grade yet, but counted himself among the big kids just because of his height.

“Why do you get scared when they fight, Aimée?” asked Lucy.

Aimée’s head went down. She said nothing.

“She thinks if Chérie punches Pete, he’ll hit her back,” Pammy said.

“I’m not dumb enough to hit Pete, Aimée,” I said. “He’s bigger than me.”

“What do you think he’d do if you hit him?” asked idiot Sandy.

I watched Aimée’s face, saw the little pinch that showed she was biting her cheek.

“I’m going home,” Aimée said. So Pammy did, too. Now that the two little kids and the two big kids were gone, Sandy hung around with Dave and me for a few minutes. But we all knew that Sandy would rather be with Pete.

I took my ball out of my sweatshirt pocket and bounced it too hard off the curb. It sprang into the dark and would have been lost if Dave hadn’t snatched it from the air above his head.

“We ought to go over to Marvin Road,” I said. “It’s lighter there.”

As I’d known he would, Sandy shrugged and said, “Guess I’ll go in then.” He used to play with Dave and me plenty before he got big enough to go out for the high school football team with Pete. He couldn’t play until fall when he got to high school officially, but that didn’t stop him from acting as if we were babies just because we were in seventh grade.

Dave and I walked down the driveway, bouncing the ball between us. We were right under the kitchen window
when we heard Pete arguing. I grabbed Dave’s arm and leaned against the house to hear what Pete was saying.

“I’m sick of hearing about him!” Pete yelled.

Dave pulled away. “Who?” I asked him. I twined my hands into the Boston ivy that covered the house’s foundation. Was Pete yelling about Dave?

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