The girls walked up a slight incline to the Real Whipped Cream Puff stand—the owners, two junior high school teachers from Maplewood, had gone round and round whether to have “cream” appear twice in the name. Kris knocked on the shuttered stand. The booth was empty, hollow as a carcass. Above them the Skyride’s teal blue cars swayed in a breeze.
“Let’s go,” Sher said. The hollow sound of Kris’s palm on the wood made her nervous. “Let’s get outta—” She stepped backward into a man’s chest.
He grabbed her. “You didn’t think you were going to get away, did you?” the Tilt-A-Whirl man from the bus depot said. He twisted her arm. “The street always finds you.”
A second man covered Kris’s mouth. “Quiet,” he whispered.
The Tilt-A-Whirl man stuck a knife into Sher half an inch to the right of he
