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for Alyssa. She was dropping something into a mailbox down at the corner. Buster was yapping and jumping as if he thought he could leap right over myhead and snatch my sandwich if he just tried hard enough. Alyssa didn’t even notice that he was gone.
    I kept the sandwich out of Buster’s reach as I scooped up the end of his leash.
    â€œCome on, Buster,” I said.
    I led him over to Alyssa.
    â€œYou lose something?” I said.
    When she turned around, I saw that she had been crying. She looked at the leash in my hand and at Buster, who was still yapping and jumping for my sandwich.
    â€œThank you,” she said. She took the leash from me.
    â€œAre you okay?” I said.
    Stupid question. Her eyes were all watery. Her cheeks were wet. Her lips were trembling. I could see she was trying hard not to cry in front of me.
    She stared at me for a moment. Then she said, “I just heard. My brother is in the hospital.”
    â€œIs he okay?”
    â€œHe was beaten up.” Her eyes burned into me.
    â€œThat’s terrible,” I said. “what happened? Does he know the guys who did it?”
    Here yes went from burning to freezing.
    â€œHe was trying to protect me,” she said.
    That confused me.
    â€œI thought you said he was out of town,” I said. I wondered how he could protect her when he wasn’t even around.
    â€œRight,” she said. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”
    The way she said it, it sounded like she didn’t believe me. What was going on? Why did she always act like she thought I was lying to her?
    â€œCome on, Buster,” she said. She wheeled away from me. I watched her march down the street, moving so fast that Buster’s little legs were a blur trying to keep up with her. It was only when I was back on my bike heading home with my sandwich that another question occurred to me: What was her brother trying to protect her from?I kept an eye out for Alyssa the next day and the day after that. But I didn’t see her.
    So I concentrated on my work and what I thought was a good plan—convincing Stike that if the company could catch the person doing all the graffiti, they could save a lot of money. My mom laughed when I told her about it.
    â€œIf they catch whoever is doing it, you won’t have a job,” she said.
    I told her about the kid who used to work in Hillmount.
    â€œThey’d send me to someplace else,” I said. “And anyway, if it was nice graffiti, if it was done by someone who really knew how to draw, I wouldn’t care so much,” I said. “But this is ugly—just stupid initials by someone who’s probably trying to make people think there’s a gang involved. But there isn’t. I know there isn’t.”
    I turned out to be wrong about that.
    For a while things were going along so smoothly that I started to think my biggestproblem for the rest of the summer was going to be how not to die of boredom.
    Then it happened.
    I was cleaning a utility pole on a street I had never been on before. I had just removed another one of those stupid triangle markings when a cop car zipped by me. It didn’t have its lights or siren on, but it was moving fast. It pulled up to the curb halfway up the block.
    A woman came out of the house where the cops had parked. She hurried toward them, and they all stood there for a while. The cops had their notebooks out, so I guess the woman was making some kind of report. She kept waving her arms around, and I could hear her voice from where I was standing even if I couldn’t make out what she was saying. She sounded upset.
    Then she looked out into the street. She looked right at me. She must have said something to the cops, because they turned too. The woman started down her driveway away from the cops. At first she was walking fast. Then she began to jog in my direction. I turned and looked all around, trying tofigure out what had