TONY, DARNELL, AND PILAR ALL WATCHED SOME kind of game in the big room, but mostly to see the messages when the game wasn’t going on. Smooth and satisfying. Better mileage. Do you suffer from irritable bowel syndrome? Extra-crunchy. May cause flu-like symptoms.

But they stood up so that we could stand in the hall and talk. Whisper, really.

“Something is wrong here,” I told them, but not too loud.

“I’ll say,” said Darnell, who was louder.

But Tony asked, “What’s wrong?”

“All the people who get sick,” I told them.

“Who’s sick?” said Tony.

“Laurence,” Darnell reminded him.

“Laurence died,” Pilar remembered, and Darnell made a face like something spilled.

“That’s really sick,” he said.

“And Julius,” I reminded them.

“One, two,” said Tony.

“And remember Stevie,” I told them.

Tony did.

“The old girl with a boy’s name,” he said.

“She was short,” Pilar remembered.

“She went somewhere,” said Darnell.

“They said she was sick,” Tony recalled.

“Sick, and then we never saw her again,” I told them.

Then Darnell remembered something—or someone else.

“Julie-ahna. Julie-anna. Or something.”

“She went away, too,” said Tony. “They never said she was sick.”

“I was around the corner from the kitchen and heard Esther and Lon,” I said.

“Our friends,” said Darnell.

“Yes. Our friends,” I said, and dropped my voice real low and got closer than ever to Tony, Pilar, and Darnell.

“Esther and Lon,” I told them. “I heard them say old food can hurt people if they take pills.”

Tony asked, “Old food?”

“I eat food,” said Darnell. “Food doesn’t get old with me.”

“I take pills,” Pilar said.

“We all do,” Tony pointed out.

“We all do,” I agreed. “Conrad read the labels on cans of food. In the kitchen.”

“Apples and peaches?” asked Pilar. “Pears?”

“Anything,” I told them. “Everything. The man who brings us the cans put new labels on old cans. Conrad saw that they’d put bad labels on old cans. The food inside was old. Conrad was mad—almost as mad as I’ve seen. He put the cans next to the garbage. He said that’s where they should be. But Conrad didn’t hear Esther and Lon. He didn’t hear them talk about how old food can make us sick.”

“If we take pills,” said Pilar.

“We all take pills,” said Darnell.

“We have to tell someone,” said Tony. “Not just each other.”

“Someone who can do something,” I agreed, and then paused. “Esther. Lon.”

“They won’t believe us,” said Tony. “No one outside believes us. You see that. You know what I mean. People come in here and smile at us. Then they laugh at us. Or get scared of us. Or say we’re sweet. Or make fun of us. They don’t believe us.”

I held out one of the labels and said, “They have to believe us. They see this, they have to believe us. What they need to know—it’s right here. Esther and Lon can see that.”

“That’s just paper,” said Darnell. “Itty-bitty paper. Anyone can put anything on paper. We have to show them cans.”

“The cans are on the shelf in the kitchen,” said Pilar. “I can’t reach them.”

“I can,” said Darnell. “On the little ladder.”

“But we can’t take any cans,” Pilar pointed out.

“We won’t open them or eat them,” I told her. “We’ll just show them to Lon and Esther. Tonight.”

“Tonight?” said Darnell. His voice got louder. “I go to bed at night.”

“Before we brush our teeth and go to bed,” I told everyone. “Esther says quick. Soon. Because if something is wrong here, we might not be able to stay.”

Everyone looked at each other, then everyone looked at the floor, then everyone looked back at each other.

“My mother would get me,” Pilar said finally. “Maybe. If she could. If she could, I’m sure she’d come get me. If she knew.”

There was a long silence before Darnell said, “My momma would come get you. And me too. If she knew. She’d come get all of us. But I don’t know who cares about us. We got to get some of those cans,” he said.

“They close the kitchen. At night. It’s locked now,” said Pilar.

“Dorothy locks the kitchen,” Tony agreed. “We can’t get any cans.”

“Dorothy locks the kitchen,” I said. “But Conrad hides a key.”

Everyone looked at me. They waited for me to say something more.

“Above the door. I know where, I think. Conrad always says, ‘What if Dorothy gets stuck in snow? What if Dorothy is sick? What if she just forgets?’”

“What if we go downstairs,” said Darnell, “and see what we can do.”

We left everyone in the big room, watching and watching. We heard voices boom from the room down the hall. Fresh new look, same great taste! You can’t beat our prices. We must be crazy! Fights gingivitis. Adds bounce and shine.

“We sure must be crazy,” Darnell whispered as we stepped softly down the 4 times 8 plus 4 steps to the bottom floor and the kitchen.

“Look up there,” I told everyone. “Count 4 tiles over from the corner.”

“I don’t count,” Darnell said.

“One, two, three, four,” said Tony. “So?”

“I’ve seen Conrad put a key up there. On that steel shelf.”

Pilar pulled over a chair. Darnell said, “Guess you want me to do something, don’t you?” He chuckled and took 1, 2 steps up, put a hand against the white tiles of the wall, and the other on top of the shelf.

“I feel nothing,” he told us.

“Move your hand over,” Tony told him. “Toward the doorway.”

Darnell did and told us, “Nothing.”

“Now back the other way,” I told him, and we heard a scuff and a scrape and then Darnell said, “Ouch.” He turned and smiled down at us.

“Caught a key,” he told us.

Darnell came down from the chair and held out his hand. There was a gold key on a chain with a small pink pig and red marks or letters on it that I didn’t know.

“I love that pig!” said Pilar.

“The pig is cute,” said Tony. “But I don’t know what to do with a key.”

“People tap numbers to open doors,” said Pilar.

“There aren’t numbers on our doors,” said Tony. “Or keys. I don’t know about keys.”

What did any of us know about keys? We didn’t use keys. We didn’t carry keys. There were no locks on our doors to open or close. Keys were only in the world out there, where people kept things behind doors.

I asked everyone, “Did you ever use a key?”

No one answered.

“I’ve seen it,” said Darnell. “Plenty of times. You stick it in the handle like…”

Darnell poked the key in the handle 1, 2, 3 times and stopped.

“It doesn’t go.”

Tony bent down and looked at the handle, with 1 eye very close.

“The hole is small. Give it here.”

Tony pushed the key into the handle 1 time, 2 times, and then we heard an iron crunch.

“Got it!” he said. “What now?”

“You push, you pull, you jiggle the key up and down,” said Darnell. He put his hand on the fat end of the key and pushed. Then he pulled. Then he jiggled up and down.

We all laughed, but after I laughed, I told them, “Quiet. We don’t want Dorothy or anyone to hear us.”

Then we all got quiet. But Pilar whispered loudly, “You don’t open a door just by wiggling your butt-butt,” and we all made coughing sounds when we tried to stop from laughing.

Darnell wiggled the key back and forth again and pushed with his shoulder into the door.

He grunted.

“Dorothy must be really strong,” he said. “Stronger than me.”

Darnell groaned and grunted and wiggled his butt-butt again.

“I’ll try,” said Pilar.

She put a hand on the knob and the other on the key and wiggled it a little, but just a little.

“Let me try,” I said, and wiggled the key and leaned against the door with my shoulder.

We heard a click. I turned the knob in Pilar’s hand, and the door groaned. Pilar took a step back, and then the door squeaked and scraped along the floor as it slid back slowly with a new groan and we saw lights from the street through a window shine on pots and pans and in our eyes. It was dark, but we were in the kitchen.

“Quick,” I told everyone. “Quiet. So no one hears us.”

Tony dragged the small ladder over to the kitchen counter and Darnell took 1, 2, 3 steps up the ladder. He put a hand on Tony’s shoulder.

“Got a can of pears here,” he said, and handed it down to Pilar. “Apples,” he said then, and held out the can. I took it from his hand and held it to my chest.

“Tomatoes, too,” said Tony, and Darnell told him, “I get these. Something orange here, too.”

“Oranges?” asked Pilar. “We don’t get oranges.”

“Maybe it’s pumpkin,” I told them. “You know—Christmas.”

“Peaches,” said Darnell. “Got to be peaches.” He handed down another can, and I told everyone, “We’ve got what we need.”

We closed the door. Pilar locked it—quickly. Tony had his hands on a can of pears, Darnell had a can of tomatoes in his arms, I had apples, and Pilar had peaches. We all wondered, but didn’t have to ask, “What do we do now?”

I told everyone, “We have to get these cans to Esther and Lon.”

“They’re at the police station,” Darnell said.

“Yes. There,” I told him. “We have to get them there. Now.”

“Where is that?” asked Tony.

“It’s close. I know that,” I said. “It’s also near the ballpark. It’s near the ballpark that’s near here, so it’s near here.”

“There’s a lot near here,” said Pilar. “It’s the city. But how do we get there?”

“We walk,” I said, and we all stopped a moment to look at each other in the dark of the hallway.

“You mean… out there?” asked Tony.

“We don’t go out there,” said Pilar. “Not by ourselves.”

“We have to now,” I told them. “If we’re going to get these to Esther and Lon in time.”

We all stood and looked at each other. Then Darnell started to walk through the dark hallway to the front door of Sunnyside Plaza, and Pilar went behind him, and then Tony.

And then me.

We looked at the back of the front door. It was bright yellow, with big chips of paint chipped off, so there were also chips of brown, and there was the eyehole in the center, as high as an eye. Dorothy and Mrs. Byrne sometimes let us look through the eyehole to see the chins of people who rang to get in, or to see people walk by on the street.

And there was a lock.

“It’s locked,” said Pilar. “We can’t get out.”

“Sure we can,” Darnell told us. “Here’s what Dorothy does.”

Darnell put his hand on a small knob and turned it. We heard a pop and a click and the door opened a crack.

Darnell turned around and smiled.

“I watched her,” he said.

Pilar took a step and stood in front of the door.

“I didn’t know,” she said. “I didn’t know it was so easy.”

“The lock is easy,” Darnell told her. “Walking out into out there—that’s not easy.”

Darnell pulled back on the door. The sounds of feet and buses and voices began to float in, and we knew that if we were ever going to walk out, we would have to walk out before all the sounds could float upstairs.

We all took the first step more or less at the same time. We saw a bus go by, with bright white lights inside and people sleeping, reading, and looking out the window. There were blinking red lights next door, and yellow lights across the street, and silver streetlights above us, and buildings to the sky, and people hurrying by, and above all that were silver-white clouds, and twinkle-twinkle silver stars, and a silver moon that spilled light on our hands and faces. We were all by ourselves in the world outside.

I was scared. I was excited. I took a step.

And then another. I was so excited, I stopped counting steps.