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took an oath of secrecy.”
    â€œYou’re kidding!”
    â€œIt’s true.”
    Candy thought for a few seconds; then she said, “You’re allowed to break an oath for one minute if it’s for someone’s good. But you have to circle the room three times widdershins.”
    â€œYou’re making that up. I don’t believe you.” Mickey looked at her to see if she was serious. She was. She was Irish. Her parents were killed in a car crash. They had that in common. Mickey’s parents were also killed in a car crash when he was only seven. He’d been in foster homes ever since. The Hobbits’was his fourth. And his last, he hoped.
    â€œWhat’s widdershins?”
    â€œYou circle to your left.” She pointed a handful of knives and forks at the kitchen floor. “Do it.”
    Mickey did it. He walked three times in a circle around the kitchen. Then he told Candy about the girls who attacked Birgit and what the Hit Squad did to them.
    â€œWhat’s this got to do with Heck?”
    Mickey said, “If you bothered to go to school I wouldn’t have to explain all this.” He told her about Joey Washington. Candy listened without interruption.
    â€œSo we need Heck as backup muscle. These guys are big and mean. Look, the minute’s up. I can’t tell you anything else.”
    â€œWhat do you plan to do to these guys? Cut off their hair and paint their heads, same as those poor girls?”
    Mickey shrugged. “Probably. It’s not all figured out yet. Why are you being so sarcastic?”
    Candy frowned as she let the last pot dropwith a clatter onto the drain board. “Sounds to me like you really enjoyed doing it to those girls, cutting off their hair and everything. You enjoyed it, Mickey, didn’t you?”
    Mickey shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    â€œGave you a feeling of power, right? You enjoyed making those girls suffer.” Candy’s eyes glittered like pins.
    â€œThey were pigs. Bullies. They had it coming.”
    Candy grabbed a towel and helped with the last of the drying. She said nothing and wouldn’t meet his eye.
    After a while he couldn’t stand her silence.
    â€œWhat?”
    She said nothing.
    Louder. “What?”
    She gave a sniff. “Well.” She stopped. “I don’t see much difference between you and the bad guys. Seems to me your so-called Hit Squad is just as bad as the bullies you’re out to get.”

Chapter Eleven
    Mickey usually ate alone in the school cafeteria, but today Peter and Whisper joined him. They discussed the hit on Tweed and Bibby, Joey Washington’s attackers.
    â€œKeep your voices down,” warned Whisper.
    Mickey felt good that he now had Grand-view friends. He’d noticed in the last few days that other members of the football teamwere starting to give him friendly smiles and nods and call him by name. “Hi there, Michael,” they said. Had Whisper or Peter been telling other football players about the hit on the three girls? If not, why had they become so friendly all of a sudden? What about that oath of secrecy? He remembered talking to Candy. She had sure fooled him with that widdershins garbage. But was he really fooled? Or had he just used it as an excuse to talk about something that had been worrying him? Used it as an opportunity to get something off his chest?
    But he had broken Birgit’s secrecy oath, he knew that. And this made him feel bad too.
    Then Mickey saw something that made him feel sick. He gave Whisper and Peter a nudge and pointed. Over on the other side of the cafeteria their two future victims, Tweed and Bibby, were giving Billy Rudge a hard time.
    Everyone knew Billy Rudge. Billy was mentally challenged. Everyone liked him because of his constant smile and his eagernessto please. He cleaned and waited tables during the lunch hour and was paid a free lunch. He was wearing his Canucks T-shirt and