RAPER (eBook)

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 blue jeans.

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 from them.

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 come back.

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 with Peter.

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 him look like he was blind. Amy never tried it again.

Her parents liked Peter and knew he would not let anything happen to Amy. She knew that if she asked to go someplace with Peter, they would probably let her go.

It was Saturday morning and she was waiting for Peter now. As soon as he showed up, they would go to their new clubhouse. Her parents didn’t have to know about the new clubhouse. She and Peter had had several clubhouses—one had been in Peter’s clothes closet, another had been in a little room off the furnace room downstairs in Amy’s apartment building. This new clubhouse was bigger and fancier. It was on the fourth floor of the building her father took care of, across the street.

Her father had told Amy that she should not go into any of the abandoned buildings in the neighborhood. For the most part, she and Peter didn’t. But the building across the street wasn’t really an abandoned building. Amy knew that her father had some tenants in at least one of the apartments. She had seen them moving into an apartment on the third floor.

Amy thought there were at least five of them. She and Peter had sat on the stoop of the building as they were moving stuff in. They seemed to have a bunch of mattresses, but Amy didn’t see any beds.

“Hi,” Amy said, “Welcome to the neighborhood. I’m Amy.”

A guy with a gruff voice said, “Get out of the way, kids, before you get hurt.”

“Hello, pretty little girl,” another of them said. “Could you move over by the edge of the stoop so we don’t hit you with any of this stuff. We wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

“Sure.” As Amy moved, she thought to herself that he seemed like a nice man. Then one of the others came over to him and said, “No talking, remember?”

“Sorry Paco, I forgot,” the nice guy replied, meekly.

As they were finishing moving the stuff in, the one called Paco came over to Amy and Peter and said, “You don’t live in this building, do you?”

“No, we don’t,” Amy replied.

“Good, then I don’t want to see you around here anymore,” he said, and walked away. They all got into a car and drove down the street.

“Wow!” Amy exclaimed. “He sure wasn’t very friendly.”

“I’ll say. He was sort of scary. What about our clubhouse? D’you think we should move it?” Peter asked.

“No, we’re up on the fourth floor. I’ll bet you they never go above their place on the third floor. We will know if they are around because we’ll see their car. We will just stay away from them. What do you say we go up and take a look at their place?”

“I don’t know, Amy—maybe we should stay out of the building. That Paco guy worries me.”

“Come on, Peter, don’t be such a scaredy-cat.” Amy got up and walked into the building.

******

They went up to the third floor. “Look, the thirdies have put a padlock on the door. We can’t get in. That sucks,” Amy said.

Peter laughed. “The thirdies—I like that name. That’s what we will call them. I’m just as glad we can’t get in. Let’s go up to our clubhouse.”

They walked up to the fourth floor. Their clubhouse was not directly over the thirdies’ apartment—it was on the other side of the hall.

Later that evening, just before dinner, Amy was in her room lying on her bed, thinking. Maybe I should tell mother and father about what happened today with the thirdies. She knew her father wouldn’t be happy. She also knew that they would have to forget about the clubhouse. Maybe the fact that her father wouldn’t be happy was enough of a reason to get out of there. She was concerned because she didn’t know what to do. Finally, she concluded she would say nothing, at least for now. She would see how things developed. If there were any problems, she and Peter could always just close the clubhouse, move their stuff out, and find someplace else. Let’s take one thing at a time, she thought. Decision made, she got up and went into the dining room for dinner.

******

Now it was Amy who was scared—really, really scared. She and Peter had gone to their clubhouse around 6:30 pm, right after their dinner. They had agreed to meet at her stoop and look for the thirdies’ car. Seeing none, they went into the clubhouse building and climbed quietly up the stairs. As they passed the thirdies’ apartment, Peter checked and saw the padlock on the door. They continued up to their clubhouse. Each floor had four apartments—two in the front facing Avenue B and two in the back. It was the back apartments which had the air shaft. The thirdies’ apartment was at the back, on the downtown side. The clubhouse was in the front on the uptown side. Amy thought this was good—it meant that they could walk around without anyone hearing them on the floor below. They had both brought some comic books along with them which they had been reading when Amy said, “It’s getting late. I think we should be getting home.”

Peter agreed and stood up to leave when they heard the sound of people coming into the building. Amy quietly maneuvered over to the edge of the stairwell where she could look down without being seen. It was the thirdies—all five of them—and they had two girls with them. They came up to their apartment, unlocked the padlock and went inside.

“Come on,” Peter said. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Not yet,” insisted Amy. “If they come out of the apartment, they will see us. What will they do to us if they see us?”

“They’ll grab us and beat us up, maybe even kill us. You’re right. We heard that guy when he told us to stay away from the building—he wasn’t kidding. Fine, let’s go back into the clubhouse where we can listen. If they get quiet, maybe we can tiptoe down the stairs and get out of here.”

The thirdies didn’t get quiet, they only got louder. There was laughter, and even shouting at some point. It sounded like they were watching the TV. Then in a couple of minutes, Amy heard a girl say “No!” and “Stop it!” and “You’re hurting me!” and “Enough, I said ENOUGH!” And then there was crying and sobbing—and a sound of someone almost screaming. Amy looked at Peter.

“My god, what is going on down...