The Planet of Junior Brown by Virginia Hamilton Page B

with me and I’ll show you where she live,” he told them. He threw a fit until finally one said, “We can walk around there, leave the car, we’ll get it later. Let’s find out about the other child, his sister.”
    That was how Buddy had won them over. They all had walked around the corner. Buddy had walked in front, planning which building would be the one where his aunt lived. There were three good buildings which had courtyards connecting with buildings on the next street. If he could get on the next street, two streets over from the street on which they had parked their car, Buddy knew he would be free. He could run in and out of buildings so fast, they never would find out which way he’d gone.
    Buddy’s plan had worked like the charm he knew it was. He had lost them in the maze of tenements in his neighborhood. Only hours later, when he had stumbled into an incredible, new world, did he wonder why he had run away from the only people in the whole city who might have taken good care of him.
    â€œ Come listen to my sto-ray … Did you ever want a brother? ” Buddy made his way down to Broadway and 42nd Street, singing his song as he walked part of the way, or humming when he had to take a subway to keep warm. He had to get over to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where he kept his things. Close to dawn, Buddy would start making his way back uptown to end up outside Junior Brown’s house. But during the night he never once thought of Junior, whom he had seen safely home.
    Buddy had to keep his mind on himself and what he was able to do. He avoided walking on Eighth Avenue, where he knew too many people, especially sticks who sometimes followed him around all evening bumming from him what little money he kept for his work. He knew every kind of hustler there was on Eighth Avenue, and his instinct warned him away from those vacant-eyed young sticks walking the streets.
    Buddy made his way quickly across Eighth Avenue over to Ninth and then Tenth. He had a place on Tenth Avenue in a boarded-up building that was due to be torn down in some vague future. He had chosen the building with care. The first floor had caved in on the basement. It had been necessary for Buddy to fashion a ladder out of rope, which he used to lower himself into the rubble. He had knotted the rope ends of the ladder tightly around the first-floor cross beam. The ladder hung down into the middle of the basement next to a mountain of debris. Although the upper floors of the building were used occasionally by all kinds of wandering men, never did any of them stumble on the hiding place in the basement.
    Buddy entered the building through a window on the first floor, at the side away from the corner. The building next door was quite close and the space between it and the window was pitch black. Buddy felt along the window until he found the loose boards he had crossed in such a way that they could not be pushed in. He uncrossed them and set them on the ground. Then he yanked at the planks covering the window opening. They came out in one piece. Buddy eased himself gingerly through the opening and sat on the ledge inside, replacing the boards and the planks. He could accomplish this feat in about twenty minutes, but there had been a time when getting into the window opening had taken him most of an hour.
    Buddy relaxed on the ledge a moment. Beneath his feet was a section of floor extending around a small bedroom for about a foot before it caved in to make a jagged hole seven feet across. Buddy gripped the window frame and stretched his leg straight out. He swung his leg back and forth through the air until he had located the rope ladder. He stretched out his other leg and caught the ladder between his ankles. After a minute he was able to loop the ladder around one foot, bringing it back to where he sat.
    Buddy let go one hand from the window frame to grab the ladder. Leaning back out of the window so he