"No, you can't!" Muffy exclaimed angrily. "He's your baby!"

Angela put her hands on Muffy's shoulders and gazed at her somberly. "Please try to understand. I can't afford to support a baby in my situation."

"But you could support me when we lived together," Muffy insisted, anguish filling her voice.

"That was for three weeks," Angela pointed out. "And don't forget you had your credit cards."

Muffy tasted salty tears in her mouth as she searched for words to dissuade Angela from giving her child to another.

"I'll be perfectly frank with you, Muffy," Angela continued, pulling her hands away from the girl. "You forced yourself on me. I enjoyed having you around, but I knew I couldn't support both of us, if I kept getting minimum-wage jobs." She took a deep, hesitant breath. "If your little duck friend hadn't turned you over to the police, I would have."

Muffy's heart twisted like a sponge. It shocked her to hear such an admission from a woman she had loved almost as much as her own mother. Unable to bear any more painful disappointment, she burst into tears and fled from the apartment.

She cried bitterly and wrung one of her braids as she walked along the street toward the Crosswire condo. She had nearly sacrificed everything to give Angela a shot at a new life, and this was all the gratitude she received? She wished desperately that she could help the woman and allow her to keep the baby, but she no longer commanded the same financial clout as before.

In the midst of her lamentations, a boy's voice called out to her. "Muffy? What's the matter? Why are you crying?"

Muffy glanced about. Through the tearful haze she made out the image of an owl face belonging to the new sixth grader, Charles Vincent Oberlin, better known as C.V. He stood behind a chain-link fence in front of a small, pastel-green house with a thatched roof. "What's wrong?" he asked again.

Muffy pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, dried the tears from her cheeks, and cleaned the mucus from her nostrils. "I...I..." was all she managed to say.

C.V. pulled open the gate and motioned to her. "Come inside, you can tell me all about it."

Thinking that discussing her woes with someone else might make her feel better, Muffy followed the owl boy through the front door of his house. She sniffled and looked around. Decor-wise, it resembled many other houses she had seen. What struck her as remarkable was the extreme cleanliness and order--everything from the candles on the mantle to the pillows on the couch was positioned in perfect symmetry, as if it were a model home in a new development.

"Wipe your feet, Muffy," said C.V., pointing at the floor.

Out of politeness she made a habit of wiping her feet upon entering a house, but this time she had neglected the chore due to her emotional distress. She dutifully began to scrape her shoes on the floormat.

"Dad goes crazy when people come in without wiping their feet," C.V. explained.

Muffy noticed the presence of two owl people in the living room, presumably C.V.'s parents. The bespectacled woman sat in an easy chair reading a news magazine, while the much taller man watched football on TV from the couch. They turned their heads when C.V. announced, "Mom, Dad, this is my friend Muffy, from school."

"Pleased to meet you, Muffy," said the owl woman, rising. The owl man remained seated.

Encouraged by C.V., Muffy walked slowly into the living room, seated herself on the couch next to Mr. Oberlin, thoughtlessly picked up one of the pillows, and dropped it in her lap. "Put the pillow back, please," the owl man ordered gruffly.

As the slightly confused Muffy replaced the pillow in its original location, C.V. explained to his parents the reason for Muffy's arrival. "She was walking by the house, crying. I thought I'd invite her in."

"Fine," said Mr. Oberlin grumpily, "as long as she doesn't get snot everywhere."

The man's unwelcoming tone made Muffy feel like a stray dog who had wandered in. He stared at the beer commercial that had interrupted the football game, hardly paying attention to her.

"I'm sorry my husband isn't more friendly," said Mrs. Oberlin, taking her seat again. "He's been struggling with OCD since the accident."

"What's OCD?" asked Muffy.

"Obsessive-compulsive disorder," Mrs. Oberlin replied. "Five years ago he was fighting a fire, and a tank of chemicals exploded in his face. He was catatonic for weeks."

"He was a fireman?" Muffy inquired.

"Yes," the owl woman answered. "He's on disability now. We get by on my income. I'm a manager at a department store."

"Why don't you tell us what you were crying about?" asked C.V., who stood by the couch. "Is it because you aren't rich anymore? Or did you break up with your boyfriend?"

"No, it's neither of those things," said Muffy as she mopped her eyes with her handkerchief.

"You don't have to tell me," said C.V. "I'll just read it from your mind using my powers of telepathy." He placed his fingers over his temples. "Let's see...it's not money, it's not love...wait, I've got it. You have a friend who's in trouble."

"Yes, I do," Muffy confirmed.

"Your friend is a girl."

"Uh, she's female, yes."

"And she broke up with her boyfriend."

Muffy let out an exasperated sigh.

C.V. lowered his hands. "Your brain is hard to read, Muffy."

"Then I'll just tell you," said Muffy bitterly. "My friend is going to put her baby up for adoption because she thinks she's too poor to raise him."

The faces of both Mr. and Mrs. Oberlin lit up with intrigue.

"She isn't married," Muffy went on. "Her family doesn't care about her. She can't get a good job. I wish I could find a way to help her, so she can keep her baby."

Mrs. Oberlin pulled open a drawer in a nearby end table, and plucked out a pen and a pad of paper. "I should talk to your friend," she offered. "Maybe I can help."

Hope sprang up in Muffy's heart. "Her name's Angela Ratburn," she said, then repeated Mrs. Stiles' telephone number as C.V.'s mother scribbled on the pad.

When this was done, C.V. invited Muffy to take a look in his bedroom, and she followed him. The room was entirely unlike the rest of the house--the bed linens were in disarray, and dirt and crumbs littered the hardwood floor. Posters of various comic book superheroes covered the walls and ceiling.

"Whoa," marveled Muffy, trying to conceal her distaste. "This is the most, uh, super bedroom I've ever seen."

C.V. chuckled. "That's funny because it's true."

Muffy scanned the room further. A few of the dresser drawers were hanging open, with socks and undergarments dangling over the sides. Ragged stacks of old comic books lay on top of the dresser and reflected in the mirror.

"That's Infinity Man," said C.V., waving his finger at various posters. "And that's Dragon Goddess. She's a girl superhero, but I like her anyway. And that's Dr. Droid. He's a really cool villain who wants to destroy all humans and repopulate the Earth with robots."

"Uh, that's nice," Muffy muttered indifferently.

"And that's the League of Super Freaks," C.V. continued. "They're the world's worst superheroes. Captain Credenza is the leader. He can turn into any kind of furniture. And there's Weed Woman, who can make weeds do her bidding. And Sinus Man, who can shoot lasers out of his nostrils."

"Ewww," groaned Muffy.

"Yeah, it's pretty gross," C.V. remarked. "My favorite is Infinity Man. He's an alien who was raised in the jungle by apes."

"That's nice," said Muffy. "You know there are no superheroes in real life, right?"

"Wrong," replied C.V. with a straight face. "Some people have special powers. Like me. Someday I'll be a superhero, and I'll use my powers for good, just like Infinity Man."

After a moment of astonished rumination, Muffy stepped out of C.V.'s room and closed the door. The Oberlins were still in the state in which she had found them. Retaking her seat on the couch, she watched a few seconds of the football game and then announced, "Your son is crazy."

C.V.'s parents gazed at her with expressions of mild interest.

"What makes you say that?" asked Mrs. Oberlin, lowering her news magazine.

"He thinks he has super powers," Muffy answered.

"Well, maybe he does," said the owl woman calmly. "One can never know about these things."

"But that's ridiculous!" Muffy retorted. "People only get super powers in comic books. You shouldn't encourage him to believe that rubbish."

"It's none of your business how we raise our own child," Mr. Oberlin snapped at her.

A deathly silence fell over the room, broken only by the sportcaster's excited ramblings.

C.V. burst through the door of his room, clutching a few comic books in his hand. "Do you want to borrow some Dragon Goddess issues?" he asked Muffy.

"Uh, no thanks," the girl responded, pushing herself off the couch. "I was just leaving."

"I'll call your friend," Mrs. Oberlin promised.

Muffy walked out of the house without a word, leaving C.V. dumbfounded.