My Unfair Godmother (8 page)

“And the second time you came, you had that tattoo of snakes coiling down your arm.”

“It was just henna,” I said. “It washed off.” Nick leaned against his dresser. “Yeah, but you didn’t tell your dad that. You stepped off the plane and said, ‘How do you like my new tattoo? My boyfriend and I got matching ones.’ ”

“If my dad had called and talked to me at all beforehand, he would have known I was joking. I didn’t have a boyfriend at the time.” Nick drummed his fingers against the top of his dresser. “And since it wasn’t enough to have a fake idiot boyfriend, the first thing you did when you moved here was date Bo, the genuine article.” That was the thing about Nick. He thought my dad was great, so he was bound to take his side on everything.

“You’re a smart girl.” Nick waved his hand at me like it was an accusation. “You get As in math and physics, but what is your grade in English?”

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I didn’t answer. He knew as well as I did that I had pulled nothing but Ds in English since my dad left us. It went along with my refusing to read books. I wasn’t about to excel in anything Dad loved.

“And now you claim to have conjured up Robin Hood from the past,” Nick went on. “I admit I don’t quite see the angle on this one.

How is this supposed to make your dad nuts?” Robin Hood. The reference brought my mind back to the problem at hand. I stood up. “I’ve got to get ahold of my fairy godmother.” She would be able to put a stop to this medieval crime spree. “Chrissy!” I looked for an eruption of sparkles, but nothing happened. “Chrysanthemum Everstar!” I called.

Still nothing.

“Clover?” I asked, remembering the leprechaun’s name. No one appeared in the room.

Nick pressed his lips together, still questioning me. “Great fairy godmother you’ve got.”

Clover had said she was only fair. I was beginning to see his point.

“Well,” I said, “this means I’ve got to find Robin Hood myself. He thinks we have poor villagers who need his help. He’s probably out somewhere wondering why no one is thrilled to be the recipient of nickels, pennies, and a used nose ring.” Nick went through the stack of clean laundry on his dresser, putting some socks into a drawer. “Your dad isn’t going to let you go anywhere for a long time.”

“Then I’ll have to sneak out. This is important.” Nick let out an overlong “Ohhh …” as he turned back to me. “Now I get the whole Robin Hood angle. You have to sneak out to stop the Merry Men.” He picked up his jeans and put them into one of the drawers. “You’re creative, I’ll give you that. And you have a really impressive knack for getting guys to take revenge for you. First Bo 73/356

vandalized city hall, and now the Robin Hood dude is messing with the police. But as your little Frisbee there says, you think criminals are cool.” Nick shoved his T-shirts into another drawer. “I bet the city council totally wishes they hadn’t ticked you off now.” I didn’t appreciate his sarcasm, but what could I say? He didn’t believe me about the magical stuff, and the only proof I had was a pathetic-o-meter. “You won’t tell on me when I sneak out, will you?” I asked.

He grunted. “I’m not going to mess with you. You might set your battalion of evil boyfriends on me.”

“Thanks,” I said, and walked out of his room.

It wasn’t hard to sneak out. I went to my room and turned on my music loud enough so it seemed like I was in there, but not loud enough that my dad or Sandra would knock on the door and demand I turn it down. I didn’t know what to take with me, so I slung a small purse over my shoulder and put my cell phone, wallet, and the pathetic-o-meter inside. Since it was magic, I vaguely hoped it would be able to do something to help me, like contact my fairy godmother if my pathetic reading went high enough. At any rate, I didn’t want my dad to find it in my room. He would not be cheered by its pronouncement that I think criminals are cool.

Dad had bought a sheet of plywood and leaned it against my window. It moved easily enough, and I slipped outside into the warm September night. I went around to the side door of the garage. I couldn’t take one of the cars. I had grown up in New York with its sub-way systems, so I didn’t know how to drive very well. This left a bike as my only means of transportation. Bike riding isn’t the fastest way to track people, and it was probably a hopeless venture from the start, but I had to at least try to find Robin Hood and his men. I had brought 74/356

them here, and if I didn’t explain things to them, they would keep robbing people, and someone would get hurt.

I set out through the neighborhood, peering at people’s lawns as I rode by. Would Robin Hood try to find a place like Sherwood Forest?

We didn’t have any forests around, but a lot of trees grew in yards.

Maybe the men had climbed some and were hiding there. I looked up at every tree I passed but I didn’t see them. Maybe they had found a deserted building. I headed toward the center of town, riding through street after street, searching for any sort of clue.

Everything seemed normal.

Navigating around downtown was hard. Cars zipped past me impatiently, driving by so closely that I kept jerking away from them.

After a while, I headed into another neighborhood. There was nothing unusual there either, except for me, riding aimlessly around in the dark. I was getting tired. I stopped my bike to rest and took the pathetic-o-meter out of my purse. “Look,” I told it, “I need to find Robin Hood before he runs somebody through with a sword or the police shoot him. Can you help me?”

As I watched, the lettering changed on the dial. I held my breath, thrilled for the magical help, until I read the new sentence:
Talks to inanimate objects
.

I was now 83 percent pathetic.

“Great,” I said. “Just great.” I shoved the pathetic-o-meter back into my purse. “See if I ever speak to you again.” I didn’t check to see if yelling at inanimate objects had made the pathetic-o-meter go up. I might as well head home. I didn’t have the stamina to keep pedaling for much longer.

I rode back to town sullenly, mumbling Chrissy’s name every once in a while. I wasn’t sure how her job interview as a muse had gone, but she certainly wasn’t inspiring anything but stomach ulcers for me.

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As I passed a Walgreens I saw them. I was so used to looking up in the trees that I scanned the roof without thinking about it. One of the Merry Men lay up there, bow drawn back, ready to shoot anyone who threatened him. My gaze dropped to the parking lot. There, crouched among the parked cars and moving in, was Robin Hood and the rest of his men. He should have looked ridiculous—a guy in a tunic squatting behind a parked car—but somehow with his muscular frame and handsome features, the tunic thing worked.

I rode my bike slowly up to them. “Robin!” I whispered.

He turned and saw me. “Not now, wench, we’re about to liberate some wealth from the gentry.”

I climbed off of my bike and wheeled it over to him. “My name is Tansy, and you can’t hold up this store.” He raised an unimpressed eyebrow in my direction. “I read your Robin Hood book, but I refuse to believe it.”

“Yeah, well, I’m having my doubts about it too.”

“It says I die because a nun poisons me. A nun.” I had forgotten about that, but he glared at me as though I had written it into the book myself. “So avoid nuns from now on. They’re easy enough to spot—long black dresses and wimples. Very few of them sneak up on people.”

He went back to staking out the parking lot. “Women,” he said with disgust. I wasn’t sure whether he was referring to me or nuns.

I lowered my voice. “We need to talk. You see, you don’t need to rob anyone here. We have agencies that take care of the poor, and if you keep holding places up, someone will get hurt.” He didn’t look at me. He waved at some of the men, and they ran forward, still crouching and darting between cars. “Never worry, no harm shall come to me. I am more than a match for the menfolk here.

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My arms will remain unbound and will hold you in their embrace soon enough, just as you wished.”

Several of the men chuckled knowingly at that.

My cheeks burned from embarrassment, but I kept my voice even.

“I’m not worried about
you
—I don’t want you to injure anybody
else
.

You’re attacking people who don’t carry weapons.”

“Such foolishness is astounding,” he said. “But a fool and his money are soon parted. Our swords only speed the process.” The first two of Robin Hood’s men had reached the Walgreens’

front entrance. They pressed themselves against either side of the door, looking inside.

“Robin, this isn’t stealing from the rich and giving to the poor; this is just stealing.”

Robin Hood glanced at the building behind us, a Laundromat. On the top of it, a Merry Man lay on his stomach, a bow in his hands. “Ah, but you’re wrong. Everyone here is rich, and my men and I are poor.

It’s fitting we should relieve your village folk of some of their goods.” He motioned to the men nearest him, and then he and the men left their hiding places and sprinted toward the store doors.

They timed their surge wrong, piling up at the entrance, and had to wait for the automatic door to open all the way before they rushed inside.

I leaned my bike against a car and strode after them. When I walked into the store, Robin Hood already had his sword drawn and held it only inches away from a startled store clerk. He was a thin teenage boy who’d gone completely pale. The Merry Men walked along the aisles, dumping things into their sacks. A small group of shoppers were lined up, hands in the air, by the photo counter.

Maybe some stories have more sway than fact. Maybe they carve themselves into our minds and slant the way we see things. Because 77/356

even then, I saw Robin Hood as a hero, as someone who cared about right and wrong. I marched over and tried one more time to make him understand. “You’ve got to stop. This is wrong.” Robin Hood didn’t take his eyes off the clerk. The muscles in his arm flexed. “Hold your tongue, wench. I asked not for your blessing.” He moved his sword tip close to the clerk. “Your jewelry, my good man, hand it over forthwith.”

The teenage boy held his hands up higher. “I don’t have any jewelry,” he croaked.

I took a step closer to Robin Hood, frustration banging around inside of me. “You were supposed to be the good guy, the defender of the common people. But you’re not—you’re terrorizing innocent shoppers.”

“Your beauty notwithstanding,” Robin Hood said, glancing at me for a moment before he turned his attention back to the clerk, “you had best hold your tongue before I’m tempted to hold it on the blade of my sword.”

I let out an incredulous gasp. “You’re threatening me?” Friar Tuck snorted as he dumped a box of Snickers into his bag.

“The lady is quick-witted as well as beautiful.” I opened my mouth to say more, but someone took hold of my arm and yanked me sideways. I turned, expecting to see one of the Merry Men. Instead Mr. Handsome Undercover Policeman had a hold on me. In his jeans and T-shirt, he had blended in with the rest of the shoppers who stood over at the photo counter, and I hadn’t seen him before. The police guy towed me over to the counter, keeping his gaze not on me but on Little John, who stood nearby. He held a sword loosely in our direction while he walked along an aisle, shoving Dori-tos into his bag.

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I hated that I noticed, at a moment like this, that the hot police guy was every bit as tall and good-looking as I’d remembered. He was probably six foot two. His wavy brown hair looked mussed, and his deep brown eyes were intent, serious.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“I’m being held up like everyone else, and I suggest you leave the crazy men alone.”

That’s when the reality of the situation hit me. I was as powerless to stop Robin Hood as everyone else who was being held at sword-point. “This can’t be happening,” I said numbly.

The police guy’s gaze slid over me. “You’re brave; I’ll give you that. But right now it’s better to stay still. I know these guys’ MO.

They’ll take a few things and go. There’s nothing here worth risking your life for.”

Of course he knew their MO—modus operandi, or method of operation—the police had studied the surveillance tapes. They’d been searching for these men. I noticed an open cell phone lying on the dis-posable cameras behind us. I whispered, “You called the police, didn’t you?”

“Everything will be okay,” he said.

Two older ladies dressed in polyester outfits stood by my side.

One of them whimpered, and the other pressed her lips together in an angry grimace. Next to them, a teenage girl shivered. She was blinking back tears.

Everything would not be okay. I was already processing the outcome. Robin Hood and his men had never seen firearms. They wouldn’t care when the police pointed guns in their direction. Robin Hood wouldn’t listen when the police told them to drop their swords.

And the police wouldn’t expect archers on the tops of buildings. Even if the police somehow did capture the entire group of Merry Men 79/356

without bloodshed, what could Robin Hood tell them that would make sense? And what would happen when the Merry Men told detectives that I had brought them to Rock Canyon?

The police were probably not going to be particularly understanding about that part.

Robin Hood and Friar Tuck strolled up. Robin Hood smirked at us. “Now, if you good folk would be so gracious as to take off your jewelry and any coin you have on you. Put them in the good friar’s sack and we’ll be much obliged.”

Friar Tuck held out a rough-hewn sack to the girl. From the look of it, they had brought the sacks with them from the Middle Ages. It figured. They must travel with them. After all, you never know when you’re going to meet someone you want to rob.

The teenage girl pulled off two earrings shaped like ice cream cones. She dropped these and a pinkie ring into the sack, then pressed herself as far away from the men as she could get. Friar Tuck turned to the older ladies. The first trembled as she put her wallet into the sack.

The second sneered. “You remind me of my ex-husband, except he didn’t smell quite as bad.”