"Sidekick!" she said feircely, hurrying back out and snatching the paper, writing a little more in a sloppy, nearly illegible script of a child with no formal schooling. "And they've been doing this for longer than two years, but I didn't know about them till now. If the cops put out a call they might find other girls, who'd be older by now, but might still interested in proving how little these guys deserve to live at all."

"And I have to go in dark alleys now, before I get old again. These two wouldn't have come after me if I hadn't been alone and little. That's why I couldn't catch them before."