about-face /əˌboutˈfās/

I was perhaps seven or eight years old; Eddie significantly older. He was our leader. The two of us left the stairwell on an arbitrary floor and immediately the posse appeared ahead of us coming around the corner at the end of the long hallway: the dark-skinned girl and her sister and her mother who held a page in her hands. It was Eddie’s note with the F-word scrawled in extra big letters. I didn’t know what all the small writing said. We spun 180 degrees and fled back to the stairwell to try another floor.

But the rouse was in vain. I had to go home and face the music. We had earlier spied our pursuers at my apartment door, speaking with my parents.

At my bedside, my parents had a talk with me. “No,” I said. “It wasn’t my writing. Eddie wrote it. I don’t know what it said.”

The next day I apologized to the Indian girl and her family. She remained fond of me, and I never played with Eddie again.