Melanie is like the “bad boy” even though she’s a ten-year-old girl.  Or maybe she’s nine.  I don’t remember.  But she’s slick, lean and cool, her dirty blonde hair in a sort of shoulder-grazing bob, parted in the middle, and she leads me and my sister around our apartment complex, where we pull hood ornaments from their perches, and where I pry off a Mercedes emblem that I daydream about wearing as a pendant.

In the company of this oh-so-bad boy-girl, we also ring many doorbells and run.  We fancy that we’re magnificent mischief-makers, outrageous outlaws, hooligans hellbent on mayhem.