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amenities. I frowned and widened my eyes.
    “Excuse me?” I said.
    She looked up at me and grinned. “Can I help you, young lady?”
    Boy, howdy, could she. “Gosh, I hope so. I thought my parents would be back in our room by now, but they haven’t arrived yet and I don’t have a key. Could you let me in?”
    Her smile widened. “Of course.” She produced a ring of keys and inserted one into the door. With a click, she turned the lock and gestured me in. “Now make sure you lock it behind you,” she said.
    “I will. Thanks. That was awfully swell of you.” I kept up the little-girl act until I was inside. Fortunately, the bedroom area wasn’t immediately visible to the door—there was a sitting area that one had to pass through. I quietly shut the door and armed myself with my Brownie. Then, after taking a deep breath and begging my arms to stop their shaking, I rounded the corner and captured the couple just as Mrs. Wilson was removing her brassiere.
    I was out the door before she screamed.

CHAPTER
     
    4
     
    I DIDN’T WANT TO TELL POP what I’d done until I had the pictures in hand. The only problem was, I was broke. The year before, I never left the house without a little walking-around money in my pocket or purse, always placed there by Mama in case I needed anything. It wasn’t essentials she was thinking of, but a trip to the subway arcade, a picture show at the Rialto, or a new 78-rpm disc or comic book I just had to have that afternoon. Pop was either unaware of the financial needs of fifteen-year-old girls or simply didn’t have the money to share. Either way, it was too uncomfortable a subject to broach. I would find a way to get what I needed without bothering him.
    The next morning, my Brownie in hand, I sought out the school newspaper office.
    At Chapin, the newspaper had been run by everyone in rotation, the bulk of the work falling to the seniors. The paper was a privilege we all looked forward to, the information it contained a handy way to spread gossip and anoint who was worth talking about and who wasn’t. I expected something similar at P.S. 110, a sort of blind worship of the printed word, but as I neared the office, I noticed the teetering stack of untouched newspapers that remained outside the cafeteria and auditorium.
    It was a shame, because what I saw as I leafed through the pages on my way to the newspaper room was a wealth of information. This wasn’t insider scoop about an exclusive school and its airy alumni. The stories were commentary on the media’s claims that ours was a generation of layabouts who would never contribute anything worthwhile. There were opinion pieces written for and against lowering the minimum age for the draft to eighteen, and profiles on the students who’d already signed up and shipped out.
    I knocked on the newspaper door and waited for someone to invite me to enter. Through the small pane of glass set in the door I could see several desks with typewriters and a chalkboard covered with story ideas that someone had already marked up with lines and check marks to indicate which they’d keep and which they’d toss. Two people were at work in the room. A girl hunched over a typewriter, hunting and pecking her way through an assignment. And a boy stared down at a folder with such intensity you would’ve thought it contained Axis war plans.
    The boy was familiar. He’d been the kid with the camera who’d caught me up to speed when Tom Barney was arrested.
    Neither responded to my knock. I turned the knob and walked inside.
    The girl continued to ignore me. Her task was so strenuous that her Coke-bottle glasses practically met the page she was trying to type. The boy looked up at my entrance and then returned to the folder he had been looking through. From my new vantage I could see that it was full of glossy photographs. He wore a hat on his head, a fedora similar to one Pop owned. The band across it held a piece of paper in place that read