The girl takes a little plastic change-purse from the pocket of her jeans. It’s the kind you squeeze open. Inside are two crumpled dollar bills and a few pennies.

“Ask Margrit the Maggot where the other three bucks went!” the boogersnot trumpets. He’s a regular little public address system. “She used it to buy a maga zine with Eeeeeeethan Hawwwwke on the cover!”

Ellen goes on ignoring him, although her cheeks are starting to get a little red. As she hands over the two dollars she says, “I haven’t seen you before, have I?” “Probably not-I just started in here last Wednesday. They wanted somebody who’d work eleven-to-seven and stay over a few hours if the night guy turns up late.”

“Well, it’s very nice to meet you. I’m Ellie Carver. And this is my little brother, Ralph.”

Ralph Carver sticks out his tongue and makes a sound like a wasp caught in a mayonnaise jar. What a polite little animal it is, the young woman with the tu-tone hair thinks.

“I’m Cynthia Smith,” she says, extending her hand over the counter to the girl. “Always a Cynthia and never a Cindy. Can you remember that?”

The girl nods, smiling. “And I’m always an Ellie, never a Margaret.”

“Margrit the Maggot!” Ralph cries in crazed six-year-old triumph. He raises his hands in the air and bumps his hips from side to side in the pure poison joy of living. “Margrit the Maggot loves Eeeeethan Hawwwwwke!”

Ellen gives Cynthia a look much older than her years, an expression of world-weary resignation that says You see what I have to put up with. Cynthia, who had a little brother herself and knows exactly what pretty Ellie has to put up with, wants to crack up but manages to keep a straight face. And that’s good. This girl’s a prisoner of her time and her age, the same as anyone else, which means that all of this is perfectly serious to her. Ellie hands her brother a can of Pepsi. “We’ll split the candybar outside,” she says.