• -----Jamal Andric slumped in his chair at the kitchen table, staring unhappily at the bland, faded purple and white striped wallpaper. He grumbled to himself about Saturdays, boring, uneventful Saturdays-uneventful only to the point of his older twin brothers, Weston and Carson, chasing him around the house until Jamal agreed to do their chores for them. Or sometimes they just forced him to play a key role in that day's dirty work-Weston and Carson were criminals, though no one believed Jamal, of course.
    "Damn weekends," he mumbled and his mother bustled around the claustrophobic kitchen area.
    "Watch you'self, Jamal," she warned uncaringly.
    "Its James, Mom!" Jamal protested. He hated his name-Weston and Carson had received decent names; no one would ever suspect them to be the horrible bullies that neighborhood children knew them to be. But 'Jamal'...that was so...exotic. "James.James.James," he murmured angrily.
    At that moment he heard his name being called. Immediately recognizing the two identical voices cooing his name, Jamal leaped up, out of his chair, and headed for the front door. He knocked over his bowl of cereal and bananas in the process, and his mother did not help his cause by shouting after him, "Jamal, clean it up this minute! Don't you run 'way form me-get-back-here-right-now!" Jamal groaned in frustration; now the twins would know where he was. Jamal changed course and bolted toward the staircase to the basement. By the time he realized that if they caught him, he would be cornered down there, he was already at the bottom of the stairs. Sighing in early defeat, he slumped against the dirt stained wall and looked around, feeling sorry for himself.

    Jamal


    -----I looked out the basement window, the long, thin opening at the top of the dirty gray, cobweb smothered wall. It was hard to see through the grime and dust coating the dirty glass, and the long-dead insects compressed against the mesh screen. But some of the late afternoon summer sun filtered through, and in it I could just see a small figure not too far away. The shape moved in small fits, wobbling closer to the tiny window. As it neared, i noticed with a shock that it was a young girl, maybe no older than seven. She wore a pale, dirt flecked yellow dress and no shoes; her grubby toes showed scrapes and some blood. Her dark blonde hair hung lank and unwashed, and it surrounded a starch white but pretty face-which was the most shocking item of her appearance. A large bruise covered the left side of her face, by her ear. Below that, running along her hairline, was a long but shallow cut, bloody, with strands of hair matted to it. All I could do was stare, and by the time she had stumbled straight into the wall, grasping blindly at something to hold on to, I had no idea what was happening. She collapsed on her knees against the window, and her small hand slipped down the filthy pane; she was unconscious.
    -----I was ten. Moments after the bloodied girl collapsed, my senses woke and i rushed up the staircase, past the dull gray kitchen and into the dreary, unwatered lawn. Around the back of the house, to where the one basement window lay at ground level. I stopped dead at the corner of the house, looking at the scene. I slowly turned in a wide circle. No one around, the thick bushes separated our house from the next subdivision; the only sign of any strange activity was the gap in the bushes where the girl must have stumbled out of. I paced slowly and nervously towards the girl on the ground and knelt a few feet away from her head. I was so afraid that if i touched her she would lash out at me, regain consciousness and attack me! But when i reached out my shaking arm to nudge her arm, nothing happened. I could feel her bones so close to the skin, and she nearly flopped over when i poked her harder. Taking a deep breath, I grasped her shoulders and lifted her into my arms.
    -----I carried the girl in the pale yellow dress back into the house and presented the body to my mother.