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that?”

    “How you’re the oldest and have to set a good example.”

    “ Bor -ing.”

    “Well, honey, it’s true. Now that you’re twelve—”

    “She’s still eleven-going-on-twelve!” said Garth. “Until Saturday when there’s a party. I get to go to it, too!”

    “You want my opinion?” said Miami conversationally. “This family is crazy. Two crazy parents, one perfectly sane preteen, one crazy brother, and two crazy baby sisters whose names sound like diaper rash!”

    “Miami!”

    “Well they do ! Nobody has a baby named Fanny ! Fanny and Rachelle! Fanny rash!” As if they had heard their names, the girls woke up from their afternoon nap and began to wail. “Now, Miami, that’s just enough of that,” said Mrs. Shaw. “Fun is fun, but I won’t have you picking on your brother and sisters. Frances was my grandmother’s name, and Fanny was a common nickname years ago. Fanny can choose to be Franny or Fran when she grows up. If she wants.”

    Miami murmured something rude under her breath.

    “What is eating you?” said Mrs. Shaw. “Are you worried no boys will come to your party?”

    “Of course not!” shouted Miami. “I can’t stand here and talk nonsense all day!” She shot out of the living room and up the stairs to the tower.

    But of course that was it. What if no boys came? What if they thought she was just a stupid girl? If she had to have one more party with just girlfriends she’d scream.

    It was a relief to have the tower. Mrs. Shaw called it the Alone Room. Mr. Shaw called it Shaw’s Folly. Garth wasn’t allowed up in it. Fanny and Rachelle were too young to know about it. So Miami swam through the dusty shadows of the main attic, past skis and cardboard cartons of Christmas decorations and a couple of strap-bound steamer trunks, to the ladder that led to the tower. Each time, she put her foot on the bottom rung and tested. There was a screech of rusty nail against a stubborn old board somewhere. She imagined the ladder coming loose, as if a knight on a castle battlement above were pushing the ladder away from the castle walls. But each time it held. She emerged into the cool octagonal area as if climbing out of a pool—or a moat.

    Eight small windows. One of them could be jostled open. Miami hadn’t yet had the nerve to climb out onto the roof. It was so high. She would bounce, how many times, if she slipped and fell? On the sloping roof, tiled in chipped slate; on the front porch roof; on the small, level front yard where Garth had his baby wading pool all summer; on the long overgrown slope down to South Allen Street. Four times. She’d be dead as JFK by the time she came to a rest.

    She leaned on the windowsill. The trees were still bare, and the square top of Saint Peter’s Hospital could still be seen all those blocks away. From here you could see the street was streaked with the runoff of last week’s snowfall. She imagined the fuss if she fell. Mrs. Shaw running out on the porch. Is that—it can’t be! Oh my God …Her hand put tremblingly up to a quivering mouth. Garth trailing along like the leech he was. Don’t look, it’s too, too horrible, darling! Maybe she wouldn’t be dead yet. Mr. Shaw could be walking over the hill from where the bus dropped him off on Western Avenue. Oh, sweet Jesus—it’s my baby—He would run, long, slow-motion strides, his London Fog belted raincoat flapping open. His briefcase would be flung aside. With any luck it would smack old crabby next-door neighbor Mrs. Jenkins on the noggin and good-bye Jenkins. He would get to his daughter’s neat, oddly bloodless near-corpse just as Mrs. Shaw arrived, scrambling down the wooden steps to the street level. They’d be sorry they hadn’t had those steps painted last fall when they showed up on the news on channels six, ten, and thirteen. News crews would just happen to be coming along South Allen Street. Here’d be a great story! An innocent little adopted girl, fallen to