Lost Boys by Orson Scott Card

of ashes wherever he goes."
    Step had to laugh. He liked this kid. Maybe a lot. Though if Dicky had overheard their conversation about royalties and credit for programmers, both of them would probably be in trouble. "Hey, uh, how soundproof is this office?" asked Step.
    "How the hell should I know?" asked Gallowglass. "But with all these games on, who do you think can hear us?"
    Step thought, but did not say, that the games in the room made them talk louder, while the noise they made wouldn't interfere half as much with someone outside the room who wanted to listen in.
    Someone knocked on the door.
    "Come in!" yelled Gallowglass.
    It was Dicky, and for a moment Step felt that rush of guilt that comes when you've just been caught. Dicky had been listening.
    "So there you are," said Dicky. "I've been looking all over for you.'
    "Me?" said Step.
    "I wondered if you wanted to go for lunch with me."
    "He can't," said Gallowglass immediately. "He's going to lunch with me, so I can get him up to speed on the new features in Scribe 64."
    "And I have to get him up to speed on everything else," said Dicky, looking a bit stern.
    "Hey, leave me out of this," said Step. "This is my first day I'll go wherever I'm told."
    But Dicky and Gallowglass gazed at each other for a few long moments more, until at last Dicky said,
    "Come see me after lunch."
    "Sure," said Step. "But you're my supervisor, Mr. Northanger, so my schedule is yours to command."
    "Call me Dicky," said Dicky.
    "Not Richard?" asked Step.
    "Is there something wrong with Dicky?" asked Dicky.
    "No," said Step. "I just thought-"
    "Dicky is not a nickname for Richard," said Dicky. "It's the name I was christened with."
    "I'm sorry," said Step.
    "And meeting with you after lunch is what I prefer." Dicky closed the door behind him.
    "Man, you're a champion suck-up," said Gallowglass.
    Step turned on him. "What are you trying to do, get my supervisor permanently pissed off at me on my first day on the job?"
    "Don't take Dicky so seriously," said Gallowglass. "He can't touch a program without introducing a bug into it. The guy's worthless."
    Apparently Gallowglass had no concept of the kind of trouble that Dicky could make for a man in Step's position. This kid's relationship was with the owner, and he was the programmer of the bread-and-butter program that was paying everybody's salaries, so he really could treat Dicky however he liked. But that didn't mean Dicky liked it. In fact, if this had gone on very long, by now Dicky probably seethed at anything Gallowglass did or said. And he'd take it out on whoever was closest to Gallowglass who actually needed his job.
    "Do me a favor," said Step. "Don't do anything to get Dicky any more ticked off at me than he is."
    "Sure," said Gallowglass. "Don't get mad. It's really OK, I promise you. You're in like Flynn around here, everybody's really excited you're actually here. You'll see, it'll be great."
    "No sweat then," said Step, though Gallowglass was probably wrong.
    "And I really would be glad to tend your kids for you."
    "Thanks," said Step.
    "I'm really good at it. And I'm not afraid to change diapers."
    "Sure," said Step. "I'll talk to DeAnne about it."
    "OK. Squeet."
    "What?"
    "Squeet. It's just a word we use around here. It means Let's go eat, only the way you say it when you say it real fast. Squeet."
    "Sure, fine," said Step. "Squeet."

4: Yucky Holes
    This is why DeAnne, a westerner all her life, was unpacking boxes in the family room of a house in Steuben, North Carolina: Her earliest memories were of growing up in Los Ange les, in a poorer part of town back in the fifties, when gangs did not yet rule and blacks were still colored people who were just starting to march and had not yet rioted. Her neighborhood and school friends were of an array of races and nationalities. She barely noticed this until she left.
    Her father got his doctorate and went to teach at Brigham Young University-the "Y." She was eight years old when she