He burst into tears as soon as he saw us.

"What's wrong?" 1 asked. I sat down beside him and put my arm around his shoulders.

"I'm locked out," he wailed.

"What happened to your key?"

David Michael shook his head. "I don't know." He wiped his eyes, hiccuping.

"Well," 1 said, "it's all right." I got my own key out of my purse.

David Michael burst into fresh tears. "No, it's not! It's not all right. I couldn't get in and I have to go to the bathroom."

I unlocked the door. When David Michael gets like this, it's best just to sort of ignore his tears and pretend everything is fine.

Mary Anne and I held the door open for him and I ushered him into the bathroom. Our

collie Louie tore outside as we went in. He was frantic to get outdoors after being locked in the house since breakfast time.

"While you go to the bathroom," I told David Michael, "I'm going to fix us some lemonade, okay?"

David Michael actually smiled. "Okay!"

I'm good with children. So is Mary Anne. Mom says so. Both of us get lots of afternoon and weekend baby-sitting jobs. In fact, I'd been offered a job for that afternoon, but I had to turn it down because of David Michael.

That reminded me. "Hey," I said to Mary Anne as I turned on the air conditioning, "Mrs. Newton asked me to baby-sit for Jamie this afternoon. Didn't she call you after she called me?"

Mary Anne sat down at the kitchen table and watched me put lemonade mix in a big glass pitcher. She shook her head. "No. Maybe she called Claudia."

Claudia Kishi lives across the street from me. She and Mary Anne and I have lived onBradford Court since we were born. We've grown up together, but somehow Claudia has never spent as much time with us as Mary Anne and I have spent with each other. For one thing, Claudia's really into art and always off at art classes, or else holed up in her room