The memory made her sigh. Lola had been so much fun. She’d moved away last Christmas because of her dad’s stupid job. Sally missed her bunches. Lately, she’d been hanging with Fayrene Ehrlich, who’d just moved to Painters Mill from Columbus. Fayrene was pretty and popular (her mom let her wear lipstick and shave her legs), and she’d already scored a place on the softball team and the girls’ glee club, two things Sally hadn’t managed, and not for lack of trying. Everyone thought Fayrene was the best thing to hit Painters Mill since the new ball diamond out by the middle school. Sally thought Fayrene was a bigmouth and a know-it-all. And she knew for a fact Fayrene wasn’t that smart, because she’d copied Sally’s homework twice already.

But with Lola gone, Fayrene was the only friend she had. The truth of the matter was Sally needed to up her game. Prove her courage and her worthiness for fifth grade. Her mom had told her to stay away from the Amish people next door; they didn’t want English kids sneaking around in their barn. But that was exactly the thing Sally needed to do to show everyone she was a lot braver and twice as interesting as Fayrene Ehrlich. All she had to do was come back with a cool story for the lunchroom and maybe with a souvenir to prove she’d done it.

“Easy peasy,” she whispered as she made her way up the rise from the creek. In the back of her mind she wondered what Fayrene would do if Sally came back with Rebecca Schneider’s scalp. That would shut her up for good.

Making sure the coast was clear, she darted across the dirt path to the barn. It was built on a slope, with the front on the uphill side. The downhill side faced the pasture, and there were stalls tucked underneath and a bunch of hogpens outside. There was a big sliding door in front, where the Amish people backed up their wagon to unload hay. But Sally couldn’t go in that way because she’d be visible from the house. There was no side door, so she was going to have to go in through the stalls in the back.

Keeping an eye out for someone approaching from the front, listening for voices, she sidled right. She could smell the pigs now, that nose-burning ammonia stench her mom and dad complained about every time the breeze carried it over to their house. Back pressed against the foundation, Sally peered around the corner. The row of stalls on the underside of the barn had dirt floors, and a foot or so of manure was built up at the rear. There were holes where groundhogs had dug burrows. Those things creeped her out, too, especially the big ones. Her mom said they looked like giant rats.

Not giving herself time to chicken out, Sally slipped around the corner and looked up. The barn was two stories high, three if you counted the stalls underneath. There was only one way to get up to the second level: through the hay chutes cut into the ceilings of the ground-level stalls. All she had to do was shove one of the hatches aside and climb up.