Twelve-year-old friends Margaret and Elizabeth enjoy their last weeks of summer before starting sixth grade. It is 1944, and both girls have older brothers fighting overseas in WWII. They display blue stars in their windows, indicating a family member in the service. Margaret hopes to never get a gold star, which signifies that a serviceman was killed.

The girls jump on sidewalk cracks to “break Hitler’s back” (2). Margaret hates Hitler because he started the war that took her brother away, makes her mother (Mother) cry, and stops her father (Daddy) from laughing. Otherwise, the distant war does not greatly impact the girls’ lives.

Biking through town, the girls run into Gordy—a “dirty, smelly” bully—and his two flunkies, Toad and Doug. Elizabeth, Gordy, and Margaret have been enemies since kindergarten. Gordy boasts that his older brother Donald has killed more Nazis than Elizabeth’s brother Joe. He calls the girls by the unwelcome nicknames “Lizard” and “Baby Magpie,” pulls Margaret’s hair, and grabs Elizabeth’s arm and tries to kiss her. A neighbor intervenes. Gordy threatens that he will find Elizabeth again.