Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job Read Online Free PDF Page B

hands and knees, groping around, coming up with an old sweatshirt and an empty box that had held crackers.
    â€œPlaying house is always more fun if you have something real to eat,” I said, remembering. “This is fairly cozy, isn’t it? Bushes on three sides so it’s almost like walls. Bobby and Jimmy would like it.”
    Irene sat down, holding up the sweatshirt. “This isn’t kid size. I think someone’s hiding here, Darce.”
    Sometimes a grunt like Tim makes is as good a way as any to answer Irene. You can’t talk her out of ideas, so you just wait until they wear off.
    â€œHey, look! There’s a book!”
    It was a paperback, well-worn and dogeared. I remembered it from school; it was one our class got from a book club for free reading time. “I read this. It’s about a girl who’s abused by her mother. Isn’t it one of the ones MissStanton said was missing from our homeroom bookshelf?”
    We were sitting there staring at each other, thinking it out and not saying anything, when we heard rustling in the bushes outside. And then a head popped through the opening at the end of the plastic tarp shelter.

Chapter Five
    For a few seconds Diana Hazen’s surprised face stared at us, and then she yelped and scrambled backward on her hands and knees. She wasn’t fast enough, though. Irene reached out and grabbed her wrist, and they struggled silently, until Diana suddenly collapsed on the ground and started to cry.
    â€œHey! Diana, don’t cry! We won’t tell anybody where you are, will we, Darce?”
    I hadn’t decided on my answer to that when Diana lifted a wet face and studied us.
    Diana would have been pretty if she hadn’t been so skinny, and if somebody’d told her what to do with her hair. She had red hair, too, but it was the frizzy kind, and she let it grow too long, so it stuck out sort of like a brush pile around her face.
    She had very fair skin with more freckles than I have and eyes that were pale blue. She pushed herself into a sitting position and wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. “How’d you find me?”
    â€œWe saw the plastic and figured some kids built a shelter. We were just checking it out. How long have you been here?” Irene asked.
    Diana inhaled deeply. “Two days.”
    â€œWe met a cop yesterday,” I told her. “He was asking about you, if we’d seen you.”
    â€œWhat did you tell him?” There was a stubborn defiance in the delicate face.
    â€œTold him we didn’t know where you were, of course,” Irene said, and I added, “And that you’d probably run away again because you weren’t treated very well at home. That’s true, isn’t it?”
    It was crowded in the little hiding place. Diana looked around and reached for the paperback book and the sweatshirt, then held them as if she didn’t know what to do next. “Are you going to turn me in?”
    â€œWe said we wouldn’t rat on you,” Irene said. “We told the cop it wasn’t your fault youran away, that you had to because your dad hits you. Why don’t you talk to him? I’ll bet he’d investigate.”
    Diana didn’t have a handkerchief, so she sniffed. “It wouldn’t do any good. The police talked to me before, and they called the protective services, but my dad told them I lied, that I was incorrigible, and he only hit me when I sassed him back.”
    â€œHe leaves bruises on you,” I said, imagining what that would be like, glad my dad never touched me except to give me a hug once in a while. “If they saw the bruises—”
    â€œHe says I get hurt by being clumsy, running into things, falling down.”
    Irene’s mouth was slightly open. “You mean they believe him, even when you tell them he hits you?”
    Diana spoke very softly. “I don’t tell them. It doesn’t do any good. He