As she crossed the little plaza toward her friend's five and dime, Marissa felt surprised to hear a man call her name. She really only knew a couple of people in this neighborhood, and in her experience, when someone in St. Louis called out to her across a plaza, the results were not good. Shaking herself, she turned to see who had called her, working under the hope that Sam Lincoln didn't frequent the "lower-class" neighborhood.

When her eyes encountered the face of the man who had hailed her, they lit up and a huge smile spread across her face. Leonard, she gushed silently. Marissa loved people; she really did. Most of the time though, people didn't respond well to her different way of thinking. Mario and Barbara seemed to like her, and most people would consider her "nice," but rarely did she meet someone who seemed to "get" her.

The girls she had known in her life seemed to spend their energies obsessing over one of two things: either their appearance, including the latest fashion and the prettiest people, or gossip relating to their friends or those prettiest people. With men, at least ones her age, Marissa spent all her time either secretly in love with them or secretly praying they didn't fall in love with her.

She tried to assure herself that she had grown out of the whole boy insecurity but a measure of the sentiment remained despite her best efforts.

With Leonard, however, Marissa sensed a camaraderie that aspired to true friendship. Why was it, she wondered, that the whole culture in this foreign neighborhood seemed to accept her in a way her own culture never had? Perhaps the hardships that the community had suffered stripped away a measure of superficiality. Marissa really didn't know how to deal well with those who couldn't see past the surface.

Ironically, every time Marissa saw Leonard, she thought about how beautiful he was. Though the shape of his head seemed unfamiliar to her, perhaps squarer than she was accustomed to, it wasn't distracting or unpleasant. His eyes seemed large and black as night, more beautiful for their onyx-like reflectivity as their surface caught every hint of light and sent it mirroring back to their viewer. Not only did his skin color almost match his eyes, but underneath his skin, muscles bunched and rippled in his white t-shirt, the new fashion that some young men in his neighborhood had started wearing.

Of course, Marissa observed his beauty as an artist observes the painting of a master. Objectively and impersonally. Leonard belonged heart and soul to his fiancée Doris, and Marissa wouldn't have considered him in a romantic light regardless. She considered him too much of a friend.

Unfortunately, when she moved close enough to make out Leonard's expression, her smile began to fade. He looked worried, unhappy, and maybe a little angry. To Marissa, the first two emotions stirred her compassion, but the last made her want to turn and run. She forced herself to continue her trek across the square.

"Hi, Leonard," she ventured.

He seemed uncharacteristically reluctant to speak. "Hi, Rissa," he mumbled.

Since his discomfort seemed greater than hers, Marissa's compassion won out over her fear, and she began to encourage her friend.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

He fidgeted, kicking his toe against the tiny pebbles in the dirt. "Well, Rissa, remember that story you asked me about?"

"Sure," she nodded. "Did I tell it wrong?" Marissa knew Barbara had published the first issue of the Covert Chronicles two nights earlier, and though nothing dramatic had happened as a result, she had heard a few people talking about it. Marissa had felt fairly proud of what she and her friends had done.

"Did you approve of what was published?"

Now the anger seeped through his tone.

"Well," she stammered, "I did, but I let you read it, too. You seemed okay with it." She really couldn't comprehend why he was mad.

"I approved the story you wrote," he hissed. "I didn't know you'd have all this other stuff in it."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the rolled-up periodical. The paper only contained six printed pages with a few pictures. Nothing seemed particularly heinous to her.

"I don't understand," she pressed.

"I agreed that you could print Marcel’s story as long as you changed the names. I thought that people might learn somethin' from reading it. I didn't know you were going to attack my uncle on the next page."

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"What?" she couldn't believe it. Her genuine surprise seemed to mollify Leonard, and he opened the paper to a page, bending it backwards and holding it out to her. Then he offered her a weak smile as he nodded toward the page.

Scanning, Marissa took in the bottom of her article, then a piece about the psychology of war that Mario had thrown in, a couple of small news items – most from neighborhoods often skipped by the newspapers. Interspersed with these she saw several feel-good stories that filled the majority of the space. Then, she saw it. It started in the bottom right corner of the page and after a few sentences read "continued on back cover." Marissa flipped it over to the back and read aloud.

"'The Rats have bought out many local patrons so that no one will sell certain goods unless bought from the Rats' suppliers. This means that you and I pay twice the price with no guarantee of quality. We need to boycott these stores until they cease doing business with the local gangs. If we cut off the rodent's air supply, it will eventually suffocate. We at the Covert Chronicles have provided a list of store owners who have benefited from their unethical association with the Rats.'"

She scanned the list of about fifteen shop owners, most of whom she knew, until she reached the place where his finger rested, the fourth name from the bottom. "Barry Johnston," she spoke the name in a trembling voice. “You know him?”

“He’s my uncle – a saint of a man.”

Despite her usual benevolence, acid rage bubbled up from inside Marissa, and she felt as if someone had punched her in the gut. Everywhere she walked Marissa seemed to spread mercy, but usually, when her good intentions required that she run counter to her friends, friendship usually won over principle. Marissa always felt horrible for choosing her friends over defending an innocent victim, but defense wasn't really her specialty.

Standing and facing Leonard, however, Marissa felt the conflict between her usual positions. How can I show kindness to one friend by turning my back on two? she complained silently. Marissa knew what the article meant. Mario and Barbara had published the list without her consent. Though she didn't think the paper had contained the article when she approved it, she couldn't know for sure. Pathetically, she had felt so enthralled to see her article on the front page that she felt no confidence in her ability to say whether she had approved the paper with or without the offending list of names.

"I told my whole family that Auntie Selma was gonna be in the paper. Now they look in and there's my uncle accused of being in cahoots with the Rats. Do you know what that's gonna do to his business?"

Biting her lip, Marissa just blinked up at him, not really sure how to respond without either sounding nonchalant or condemning her friends.

To her relief, Leonard shrugged. "I know you didn't write that stuff, Rissa, and I know why you wanted to publish the article on Selma, but you're going to have to be more careful where you point the finger. Just doing it at all is dangerous, not from me and my friends, but from some of the other names on this list. And pointing fingers at the wrong people is just criminal."

Marissa felt so angry with Barbara and Mario that she wanted to run back to the office and scream at them. Kick them. Something. She sighed.

When Marissa was a child, before her brother had learn not to hit girls, Jackson would run at Marissa, laughing hysterically when she would scream and start to cry. On the few occasions when she grew angry enough to lash back at him, her attempts had proven so impotent that he would laugh harder at her anger than he had at her distress. Jackson had grown up and grown kinder, but Marissa had learned one truth about herself. She was not a fighter. Her anger was largely impotent, and so she knew she wouldn't drudge up much resistance to her friends.

"I'm so sorry, Leonard," she tried to restrain her tears since she didn't want to make him feel guilty. He was just the messenger, after all.

"Look, Rissa," he said in a comforting tone, "I'll talk to my family, tell them to keep your identity under wraps. But you gotta talk to your friends, stop this kind of thing from happening again."

"Did you tell them I wrote it?"

"Just my pop, and I don't think he would go spreading bad stories, but I'll talk to him just in case."

Marissa could hardly look at Leonard by the time he made his promise, so she didn't see his indulgent smile.

"I'll go talk to him right now. Do you wanna go see Doris? She's at Marcel's having some coffee, and you can talk to her while I explain everything to my pop."

Though she tried not to flinch, Marissa knew that her face had scrunched up just before she could turn it to the ground. She prayed he wouldn't be offended. "I'm so sorry; I'd love to, but I'm still working."

In reality, work had little to do with her rejection. Sheltered and conscientious, Marissa had early on determined that she would, at all costs, avoid the more lascivious aspects of life in a big city. She had heard too many stories around the park and the bookstore about the goings-on at places like Marcel's. Rats, drinkers, other things that Marissa had heard of but didn't understand.

To Marissa, if one speakeasy promised manifold acts of licentiousness, every speakeasy might promise the same. Though Marissa knew that the worst characters stayed out of the sunlight, and the sun rose high over the noontime sky at the moment, she couldn't quite shake her fear of Marcel's regardless of time of day.

"Tell her I said hello, though, and maybe we can have lunch at the deli tomorrow. I'm off work for the day."

"Sure," he allowed, though Marissa could hear suspicion in his voice. She hated that sound, but she didn't yet feel competent to deal with it. Even if he felt a hint of personal rejection at her refusal, Marissa couldn't cross that bridge yet; she needed a little more time to grow up before she entered such a foreign and challenging world as Marcel's presented. She had just left home for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

As he turned his back to her and started across the plaza, he shook his head, and Marissa thought she caught a frustrated sigh escape his lips.