I looked at the woman's close-set eyes as she sat in my cluttered office here at Tulsa Child Services. Was she trying to smile? Clearly she didn't remember me.

"Mr. Curtis, I don't know why we're here. Janelle is a disobedient girl. My husband and I might have spanked her, but there's no cigarette burns…might have happened at school. Could a teacher have done that to her legs?"

I thought of Johnny. My best friend. I thought of growing up with him, seeing bruises, marks, and yeah—tons of cigarette burns all over his body and how much this evil woman and her husband had done…how could they have reproduced AGAIN?

I'd come back to town after a decade—the Air Force, college, grad school. Darrell, my formerly athletic, brilliant brother was an overweight chain smoker with a resentful wife in a local trailer park.

Sodapop, my second brother pumped gas and banged area widows and married women, and had little more than a greasy smile for me now and then…and most of my pals were out of town or dead, except Two-Bit, who'd gotten sober and actually was renting me a room in his house with his wife and family.

"Mrs. Cade, I'm afraid I have more familiarity with your case than I'd like. I grew up with your son, John. Some years ago. It's your poor luck that I'm Janelle's caseworker, but I know too much to let this one go under the rug, I'm afraid."

No one's family was as vicious as the Cades. Tim Shepherd, the biggest greaser and hardest fighting thug in the neighborhood…his parents were gentler (not by much) than these evil people.

The happiest time Johnny Cade ever had was our time in Windrixville, after he'd murdered that Soc idiot that tried to drown me in the fountain. When we were hiding out, and then when we saved the little kids in the fire, with the late Dally Winston—that was the time of our lives, until, of course, Johnny was hurt, and then he died in the hospital.

I wondered why the hell I returned to this shitty little town. I'd taken off right after junior year high school—traveled a bit, and then signed up to be an airman. Why come back? I had two degrees in Russian lit—I could be a translator or something.

But, as I looked at the evil Cade woman's narrowing eyes, and realized I had her in a box…I knew why I'd returned.

It would be hell for little Janelle if I got her out of that awful house—the foster care system here in the Midwest was no picnic—

But it would be well worth it!