answer:There was a kid in the wider neighborhood, a little boy named Frankie. His last name sounded like Ma-LINN, and I never could figure out how it was spelled. He was in the other first grade class when we were both six, so I didn’t really know him. I remember him as being cute and dimpled, with a very round head, dark brown hair, and freckles. He spoke with a lisp and had a kind of swagger when he walked. One day somebody who knew us both told me that he had died. This friend knew where he lived, and we went to look at his house. We stood on the sidewalk and stared at second floor of the old double-decker for a long time. I don’t know what we thought we’d see, maybe a ghost, maybe an answer to the mystery, but we didn’t see anything, other than, for the briefest moment, a woman’s face behind the curtain at the window. I was really scared by that because I thought only old people died. My grandmother had died when I was five. If Frankie M. could die, so could I. There was no safety in being a little kid. We weren’t invulnerable, as I had thought. It was a frightening revelation for me. I think I was too scared even to tell my parents about it.