It happened at Rashel's birthday party, the day she turned five years old. "Can we go in the tubes?" She was having her birthday at a carnival and it had the biggest climbing structure of tubes and slides she had ever seen. Her mother smiled. "Okay, kitten, but take care of Timmy. He's not as fast as you are." They were the last words her mother ever said to her. Rashel didn't have to be told, though. She always took care of Timmy: he was a whole month younger than she was, and he wasn't even going to kindergarten next year. He had silky black hair, blue eyes, and a very sweet smile. Rashel had dark hair, too, but her eyes were green-green as emeralds, Mommy always said. Green as a cat's. As they climbed through the tubes she kept glancing back at him, and when they got to a long row of vinyl-padded stairs-slippery and easy to slide off of-she held out a hand to help him up. Timmy beamed at her, his tilted blue eyes shining with adoration. When they had both crawled to the top of the stairs, Rashel let go of his hand. She was heading toward the spider web, a big room made entirely of rope and net. Every so often she glanced through a fish-bowl window in