“Let’s go hang out,” I said to her. I didn’t even put her glass in the dishwasher or sweep up the sugar. Instead, I took a pack of graham crackers out of the cupboard. I opened it as we walked to the door. She followed me, just like a hungry stray.

  I felt safer as soon as I shut the door behind us. But now I was stuck outside with her on a cold and windy day. “Want to go to the library?” I offered. It was one of the few places Mom had approved for me to hang out on my own. Even then, I was supposed to say I was going there and phone again when I got back.

  “Naw,” Lonnie said. She took the package of graham crackers, shook out three, and handed the stack back to me. “I have to pick up some junk for my mom. But we can do my route before that. Come on.”

  I thought maybe she had a paper route. Instead it was her roadkill route. Lonnie patrolled for animal bodies. The only thing she found that day was a dead crow in the gutter. It had been there awhile, but she still painted around it and then moved the body reverently up onto the grassy strip. After that, we stopped at two Dumpsters, one behind Burger King and the other behind Kentucky Fried Chicken. They had concrete block enclosures and bushes around their Dumpsters. There was even a locked gate on Kentucky Fried Chicken’s, but it didn’t stop Lonnie. She made a big deal of waiting until no one was around before we crept up on them. “Warrior practice,” she whispered. “We could get arrested for this. You keep watch.”

  So I stood guard while she went Dumpster diving. She emerged smelling like grease with bags full of chicken bones and half-eaten biscuits and a couple cartons of gravy. It amazed me how fast she filled up bags with stuff other people had thrown away. At Burger King, she got parts of hamburgers and fries. “What are you going to do with that stuff?” I asked Lonnie as we walked away. I was half afraid she’d say that she and her mom were going to eat it for dinner.

  “Just wait. I’ll show you,” she promised. She grinned when she said it, like she was proud of what she carried.

  “I’ve got to get home soon,” I told her. “Mom sometimes calls me back and I didn’t say I was going out. I’m supposed to be doing homework.”

  “Don’t sweat it, sister. This won’t take long, and I really want you to see it. Come on.” She lurched along faster.

  She lived on the other side of the main road and back two blocks off the strip. The sun goes down early in October. Lights were on inside the apartments. The building sign said Oakview Manor, but there were no oaks, no trees at all. Some boys were hanging out in the littered parking lot behind the building, smoking cigarettes and perching cool on top of a junk car. One called out as we walked by, “Hey, baby, wanna suck my weenie?” I was grossed out, but Lonnie acted like he didn’t exist. The boys laughed behind us, and one said something about “Scarface.” She kept walking, so I did too.

  At the other end of the parking lot, three battered Dumpsters stank in a row. Beyond them was a vacant lot full of blackberry brambles and junk. Old tires and part of a chair stuck out of the brambles. The frame of a junk pickup truck was just visible through the sagging, wet vines. Lonnie sat down on the damp curb and tore open the bags. She spread the food out like it was a picnic, tearing the chicken and burgers to pieces with her fingers and then breaking up the biscuits on top of a bag and dumping the congealed gravy out on them. “For the little ones,” she told me quietly. She looked around at the bushes expectantly, then frowned. “Stand back. They’re shy of everyone but me.”

  I backed up. I had guessed it would be cats and I was right. What was shocking was how many. “Kitty, kitty,” Lonnie called. Not loudly. But here came cats of every color and size and age, tattered veterans with ragged ears and sticky-eyed kittens trailing after their mothers. Blacks and calicoes, long-haired cats so matted they looked like dirty bath mats, and an elegant Siamese with only one ear emerged from that briar patch. An orange momma cat and her three black-and-white babies came singing. They converged on Lonnie and the food, crowding until they looked like a patchwork quilt of cat fur.

  They were not delicate eaters. They made smacky noises and kitty ummm noises. They crunched bones and lapped gravy noisily. There were warning rumbles as felines jockeyed for position, but surprisingly little outright snarling or smacking. Instead, the overwhelming sound was purring.

  Lonnie enthroned on the curb in the midst of her loyal subjects smiled down upon them. She judiciously moved round-bellied kittens to one side to let newcomers have a chance at the gravy and biscuits. As she reached down among the cats, the older felines offered her homage and fealty, pausing in their dining to rub their heads along her arms. Some even stood upright on their hind legs to embrace her. As the food diminished, I thought the cats would leave. Instead they simply turned more attention upon Lonnie. Her lap filled up with squirming kittens, while others clawed pleadingly at her legs. A huge orange tom suddenly leaped up to land as softly as a falling leaf on her shoulders. He draped himself there like a royal mantle, and his huge rusty purr vibrated the air. Lonnie preened. Pleasure and pride transformed her face. “See,” she called to me. “Queen of the Strays. I told you.” She opened her arms wide to indicate her swarm, and cats instantly reared up to bump their heads against her outstretched hands.

  “Oh, yeah? Well, you’re gonna be Queen of the Ass-Kicked if you don’t get up here with my stuff!” The voice came from a third-floor window. To someone in the room behind him, the man said, “Stupid little cunt is down there fucking around with those cats again.”

  The light went out of Lonnie’s face. She stared up at him. He glared back. He was a young man with dark, curly hair, his T-shirt tight on his muscular chest. A woman walked by behind him. I looked back at Lonnie. She had a sickly smile. With a pretense of brightness in her voice she called up, “Hey, Carl! Tell Mom to look out here, she should see all my cats!”

  Carl’s face darkened. “Your mom don’t got time for that shit, and neither do you! Stupid fucking cats. No, don’t you encourage . . .” He turned from the window, drawing back a fist at someone and speaking angrily. Lonnie’s mom, I thought. He was threatening Lonnie’s mom. We couldn’t hear what he said. Lonnie stared up at the window, not with fear, but something darker. Carl leaned out again. “Get up here with my stuff!”

  Lonnie stood up, the cats melting away around her, trickling away into the shadows. A lone cat stayed, a big striper, winding and bumping against her legs. She didn’t seem to feel him. Shame burned in her eyes when her eyes grazed me. This was not how she wanted me to see her. She reached up to grip the little doll strung around her neck. Her eyes suddenly blazed. She squared herself. “I didn’t go get your stuff.” She put her fists on her hips defiantly. “I forgot,” she said in a snotty voice.

  Carl’s scowl deepened. “You forgot? Yeah, right. Well, you forget dinner or coming in until you get it, Lonnie. And it better not be short, or I’ll throw you outta this window. Get going, now!” He slammed the window shut. Across the parking lot, the boys laughed.

  She stood a moment, then stuffed her hands in her pockets and walked away. The striper cat sat down with an unhappy meow. I hurried to catch up with her. It was getting really dark. Mom was going to kill me. “Lonnie?”

  She didn’t look back. “I got to go,” she said in a thick voice.

  I ran after her. “Lonnie! Lonnie, your cats are really something. You really are the Queen of the Strays.”

  “Yeah,” she said flatly. She wouldn’t look at me. “I got to go. See you around.” She lengthened her stride, limping hastily away.

  “Okay, I’ll look for you at school tomorrow.”

  She didn’t answer. Darkness swallowed her. Rain began to fall.

  Before I got home, the headlights of the cars were reflecting off the puddles in the streets. I hurried upstairs, praying that Mom wouldn’t be home yet. She wasn’t. I hung up my dripping coat, kicked off my wet sneakers, and raced into the kitchen. The phone machine was flashing. Six messages. I was toast.

  I was cleaning up sugar and listening to Mom’s frantic, “Mandy? Are you there? Mandy, pick up!” when I heard her key in the front door. I was still standing in the kitchen looking guilty when she found me.

  She looked me up and down. The lower half of my jeans and my socks were sopping. “Where have you been?”

  I could have lied and said I was at the library, but Mom and I don’t do that to each other. And I needed to tell someone about Lonnie. So I told her everything, from the one-boobed Barbie to the cat-carpet and Carl. Her face got tight, and I knew she didn’t like what she was hearing. But she listened, while we fixed dinner. We didn’t have to talk about dinner. Wednesday was spaghetti. I chopped mushrooms and peppers, she chopped the onions and smashed the garlic. She put the water to boil for the pasta, I sawed the frozen French bread open and spread it with margarine.

  By the time everything was ready, she had heard all about Lonnie. Her first words were pretty hard on me. “I trust you to have good judgment, Mandy.”

  “I don’t think I did anything wrong.”

  “I didn’t say you did wrong. I said you used poor judgment. You let a stranger in while I was gone. You left without telling me where you were going or when you’d be back. If something bad had happened to you, I wouldn’t even have known where to start looking.”

  “Why do you always assume something bad is going to happen? When am I supposed to have friends over? I can’t have them in while you’re gone, and I can’t go out with them. What am I supposed to do, just come home and be alone all day?”

  “You can have friends over,” my mom objected. “But I need to know something about people before we let them into our home. Mandy, just because a person is your own age and a girl doesn’t mean she can’t hurt you. Or that she won’t steal from us.”

  “MOM!” I exploded, but she kept on talking.

  “Lonnie is probably a nice kid who’s just had a hard time. But the people she knows may not be nice. If someone knew that I’m at work all day and you’re at school, they could rip us off. I certainly couldn’t afford to replace the stereo and the television and the microwave all at once. We’d just have to do without.”

  “You haven’t even met Lonnie and you’re judging her!”

  “I’m not judging her. I’m trying to protect you.” Mom paused. “Mandy. There’s a lot of Lonnies in the world. As much as I’d like to, I can’t save them all. Sometimes, I feel like I can’t even protect you anymore. But I do my best. Even when it means . . .” She halted. Then she spoke gravely. “Mandy, if you hang out with Lonnie, people will treat you like Lonnie. Not that Lonnie deserves to be treated like she is; in fact, I’m sure she doesn’t. But I can’t protect Lonnie. All I can do is try to protect you.”

  She was so serious that my anger evaporated. We sat at the little table in the kitchen with our dinner getting cold between us. I tried to remember the big table in our old dining room with the hardwood floor and the wallpaper. I couldn’t. “Mom?” I asked suddenly. “What is the difference between Lonnie and me?”

  Mom was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “Maybe the difference is me. Someone who cares fiercely about you.”

  “Lonnie loves her mom, even if she did throw her out a window.”

  “Lonnie may love her mom, but it doesn’t sound like her mom cares about her. It doesn’t sound like anyone does.”

  “Only her cats,” I conceded. “And half of them are deaders.” And me, I thought. I care about her.

  In the end, we made compromises. I could have Lonnie over if I told Mom she was there. Mom had to get Lonnie’s phone number, address, and her mom’s name. If we went out, it had to be somewhere like the library, not just to walk around. I had to call Mom before I went and when I got back. I had to stay out of Dumpsters. And I wasn’t allowed to go to Lonnie’s house.

  “But why?” I ventured.

  “Because,” Mom said darkly, and that was the end of that.

  I looked for Lonnie at school the next day. I even went to the special-ed rooms. No Lonnie. Three days later, I found one cat-body outline, but I couldn’t tell if it was new or old because of all the rain. I was afraid to go to her building. Mom was right, it was a tough neighborhood. But on the fourth day, I screwed up my courage and took the long way home from school to walk through her neighborhood.

  I saw her from half a block away. She was standing at the corner of a convenience store parking lot, her arms crossed on her chest. There were three boys facing her. Two were our age, one looked older. They had her bike.

  It was so beat up I wouldn’t have recognized it, except for the Amazon Barbie. One of the boys sat on the bike possessively while the other two stood between Lonnie and the bike.

  “I don’t care what he said,” Lonnie told them. “It’s my bike and I want it back.” She tried to circle, to get close enough to get her hands on the bike, but the two boys blocked her lazily.

  “Your dad said we could have it.” The boy on the bike was cocky about it.

  “Carl’s not my dad!” Lonnie declared furiously. “Get off my bike!”

  “So what? He said we could have it for picking up his junk for him. Gave us ten bucks, too.” There was a sneer of laughter in the older boy’s voice.

  I froze, watching them. They moved by a set of unspoken rules. Lonnie could not physically touch the boys, and they knew it. All they had to do to keep her from the bike was to stand between her and it. She moved back and forth, trying to get past them. She looked stupid and helpless and she knew it. A man walked up to them and stopped. My hopes rose.

  “It’s a piece of shit bike anyway,” one of the boys declared laughingly as they blocked her yet again.

  “Yeah. We’re gonna take it down to the lake and run it off the dock into the water.”

  The light changed. The man crossed the street. It was as if he had not even seen Lonnie and the boys and the bike. He didn’t even look back.

  “You better not!” Lonnie threatened helplessly. She darted once more at the bike. And collided with a boy.

  “Hey!” he pushed her violently back. “Keep your hands off me, bitch!”

  “Yeah, whore!”

  Suddenly, in the physical contact, the rules of the game had changed. The boys pushed at her. Lonnie cowered back, and the one on the bike rode it up on her, pushing the wheel against her. Now instead of trying to grab her bike back, she was trying to back away from it. The other boys touched her. Her face. “God, you’re ugly!” Her chest. “She ain’t got no tits, just like her dolly! Your momma cut them off, too?” Her crotch. “Whoo, whoo, you like that, ho?”

  Across the street, a bus stopped and two people got off. They walked away into the darkness. Cars drove by in the gathering dusk of the overcast October evening. No one paid any attention to Lonnie’s plight. Deep in my heart, I knew why. She was already broken, already damaged past repairing. If you can’t fix something, then don’t worry about hurting it even more. The boys knew that. She wasn’t worth saving from them. It was like jumping on the couch that already had broken springs. She was just a thing to practice on.

  “Stop it, stop it!” She flailed at them wildly, trying to slap away the hands that darted in to touch her insultingly, pushing, poking, slapping her face. She had forgotten she was a warrior. She was just a girl, and that was a boy’s game. She couldn’t win it. Leaves in the gutter rustled by. I was so cold I was shaking. So cold. I should get home; I was cold and it was getting dark and my mom would be mad at me. One of the boys pushed her hard as the other one rammed her with the bike. She fell down on the sidewalk and suddenly they ringed her, the bike discarded on the pavement as they sneered down at her.

  Some tribal memory of what came next reared its savage face from my subconscious.

  “No!” I suddenly screamed. My voice came out shrill and childish. I flew toward them, gripping my book bag by its strap. A stupid weapon, my only weapon. “Get away from her, get away from her!” I uttered the word I knew Lonnie could never say. “Help! Help me, someone, they’re hurting her! Help! Get away from her!”

  I waded into them, swinging my book bag, and they suddenly fell back. Abruptly their ugly faces turned confused and surprised. Like magic, they were only boys again, just teasing boys who always push you as far as they can, especially if the playground teacher isn’t around.

  “Look out, it’s Wonder Woman!” one yelled, and a man who had come to the door of the 7-Eleven across the parking lot laughed out loud. They grabbed the bike and ran away, shouting insults at one another—You pussy! You wimp! You sissy!—as they ran. No one came to help as I took Lonnie’s hands and dragged her to her feet. The knee of her sweatpants was torn, and her backpack was muddy. There was mud on the side of her face, too.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked her as she stood. I tried to hug her. She slapped my hands angrily away.

  “They got my damn bike! Shit! Shit, shit, shit, why didn’t you grab the bike while it was laying there!” Her eyes blazed as she turned on me. I fell back in surprise before her anger.

  “I was worried about you! The bike wasn’t that important!”

  “That’s easy for you to say. A bike isn’t the only damn thing you’ve got!” She lifted her sleeve to wipe mud off her face. She might have wiped away tears as well. I stared at her, speechless. I thought I had been brave, almost heroic. She seemed to think I had been stupid. She glanced up from examining a bleeding scrape on her knee and knew she’d hurt me. She tried to explain. “Look, it’s like this. If we had gotten the bike, we would have won. Now I got all bruised up and I lost, too. So they’ll tease me with the bike again. I got to fight them all over again tomorrow.”