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anybody.
    He could see Mars Bar's foot sticking out, trying to trip him up as he circled the bases for a home run.
    He could see Mars Bar charging from behind to tackle him, even when he didn't have the football.
    He could see Mars Bar's bike veering for a nearby puddle to splash water on him.
    He could see these things, but he couldn't see what they meant. He couldn't see that Mars Bar disliked him, maybe even hated him.
    When you think about it, it's amazing all the stuff he didn't see.
    Such as, big kids don't like little kids showing them up.
    And big kids like it even less if another big kid (such as Hands Down) is laughing at them while the little kid is faking them out of their Fruit of the Looms.
    And some kids don't like a kid who is different.
    Such as a kid who is allergic to pizza.
    Or a kid who does dishes without being told.
    Or a kid who never watches Saturday morning cartoons.
    Or a kid who's another color.
    Maniac kept trying, but he still couldn't see it, this color business. He didn't figure he was white any more than the East Enders were black. He looked himself over pretty hard and came up with at least seven different shades and colors right on his own skin, not one of them being what he would call white (except for his eyeballs, which weren't any whiter than the eyeballs of the kids in the East End).
    Which was all a big relief to Maniac, finding out he wasn't really white, because the way he figured, white was about the most boring color of all.
    But there it was, piling up around him: dislike. Not from everybody. But enough. And Maniac couldn't see it.
    And then all of a sudden he could.
     
    *¤* nihua *¤*

 
     
    Chapter 17
 
    It was a hot day in August.
    It was so hot, if you stood still too long in the vacant lot, the sun bouncing off a chunk of broken glass or metal could fry a patch on your hide.
    So hot, if you were packing candy, you had soup in your pocket by two o'clock.
    So hot, the dogs were tripping on their own tongues.
    And so hot, the fire hydrant at Green and Chestnut was gushing like Niagara Falls (courtesy of somebody wrenching off the cap).
    By the time Maniac and the rest of the vacant lot regulars got there, Chestnut and Green was a cross between a block party and a swimming pool. Radios blaring. People blaring. Somebody selling lemonade. Somebody selling Kool-Aid ice cubes on toothpicks. Bodies. Skin. Colors. Water. Gleaming. Buttery. Warm. Cool. Wet. Screaming. Happy.
    The younger you were, the fewer clothes you had on. Grownups sat on the sidewalk and dangled their bare feet in the running gutters. Teenagers stripped down to bathing suits and cutoffs. Little kids, underwear. Littlest kids, nothing.
    Maniac danced and pranced and screamed with the rest. He learned how to jump in front of the gusher and let it propel him halfway across the street. He joined in a snake dance. He got goofy. He drenched himself in all the wet and warm and happy.
    When he first heard the voice, he didn't think much of it. Just one voice, one voice in hundreds. But then the other voices were falling away, in bunches, until only this one was left. It was a strange voice, deep and thick and sort of clotted, as though it had to fight its way through a can of worms before coming out. The voice was behind him, saying the same word over and over... calling... a name... and even then Maniac turned only because he was curious, wondering what everybody was staring at. But when he saw the brown finger pointed at him (not a speck of icing on it), and the brown arm that aimed it and the brown face behind it, he knew the name coming out of the can-of-worms mouth was his: "Whitey." And it surprised him that he knew.
    He just stood there, blinking through the waterdrop sun blur, the hydrant gusher smacking his thin, bare ankles. The radios, the people, were silent.
    "You move on now, Whitey," the man said. "You pick up your gear and move on out. Time to go home now."
    The man was close enough to be catching