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Mildred Wortham and Brenda Stephenson, social-service counselors whose office is on the first floor, tell me they know all the boys hanging around the front of the building, as well as many of the 11,000 other Rockwell residents.
“They usually say, ‘It’s gonna pop, it’s gonna pop,’” says Stephenson. Apparently the teenagers who are about to start a gunfight sometimes warn people who happen to be in the vicinity. Stephenson says no one warned her daughter several years ago when she was on the playground. She was shot in the back of the head, though she didn’t die. After he was caught, the shooter said his target was on the other side of the playground.
More waiting. I’m well back from the window, but I feel as if my face were pressed against it. A figure flashes past the window, a foot from the glass. I jump.
