Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street (14 page)

“So,” my dad said, “it, uh, seems to have taken you a while to get home from school today.”

“I left a message.”

“Right,” my dad said. “Good, as far as it goes.”

“What Chas is trying to say,” said my mom, “is that the message was vague.”

“On my way home with Ashanti is vague?” I said. Uh-oh. Maybe that sounded a little too confrontational. Was confrontational the way to go right now? Probably not.

“I’m not sure I understand your tone,” Mom said.

I waited for her to go on. She didn’t seem to be going on. Did that mean she was waiting for me? My mom, although not a brilliant writer like my dad, was very smart, a fact that sometimes slipped my mind.

“Tone?” I said, and right away knew that was the wrong word, kind of ironic, tone being the issue and the word
tone
digging me in deeper.

“Is something funny?” Mom said.

“No.” But I knew my face had betrayed me.

“Let us in on the joke,” said my dad.

“No joke,” I said, although an insane pressure to laugh and laugh was building inside me and I had no idea why. “Sorry,” I said again.

I wasn’t one of those kids who got in trouble a lot with their parents; in fact, hardly ever, which added to my confusion. And confusion was at the center of everything, because any account of my after-school activities would lead to what Ashanti and I had agreed were
secrets. And for good reason, I could see now:
What were we doing? Oh, not much, just flying around town, that kind of thing.
Now it would sound insolent and disrespectful on top of being flat-out unbelievable.

My mom put her hands in a little steeple, tapped her fingertips together. I’d seen her do that before, pausing over a big stack of papers she was reviewing, and knew it meant she was thinking hard. But now I had the impression that a specific kind of thinking was involved, planning maybe, as though she was tapping into place some structure, like a lobster trap, for example.

“Are you saying we don’t have a right to be concerned with your safety?” she said.

“No,” I said, and meanwhile that urge to laugh kept growing stronger.

“Good,” said Mom. “Because you’re twelve years
old.”

“Albeit a savvy city girl,” said Dad.

Mom gave him a look, and before she’d finished giving it to him, his cell phone rang. He squinted at the screen. “Got to take this,” he said, and left the room. She watched him all the way, her face unreadable, and then turned back to me. Hey! Was I causing some sort of problem between them?

“Savvy for twelve doesn’t mean savvy period, correct?” Mom said.

“Correct.”

“So where were you?”

“With Ashanti, just hanging out.”

“Hanging out where?”

“Around the school. In the neighborhood.”

“Doing what?”

“Nothing special. Hanging out.”

Mom had been gazing at me over that little steeple. Now she lowered her hands, rested them on the table. “If something was wrong, you’d tell me?” she said.

Maybe on paper that would have looked like a question, but it sounded more like an order. For some reason, that was enough to set off the laughter. It came bursting out, completely unstoppable. But big surprise: not in the form of laughter. In fact, it came in the form of sobbing. That shocked me and shocked Mom, too: I could see it on her face.

“Robbie?” She rose, hurried around the table. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Mom. Nothing’s wrong.”

She took me in her arms. Sobbing turned to normal crying, and then quickly petered out, my mom hugging me. It had been some time between parental hugs; was the lengthening of those nonhugging interludes part of growing up?

I pulled away, wiping my face on the back of my
sleeve. My mom didn’t quite let go, still had her hands on my shoulders.

“Obviously something is wrong,” she said. “What happened tonight?”

“Nothing.”

“At school?” she said. “Did something bad happen at school?”

“No.”

“Oh, God. Don’t tell me you had another one of those headaches?”

“No, Mom. I feel fine.” And I did, physically. Emotionally, I felt horribly weak and stupid on account of my little sobbing jag. Would Ashanti ever have melted down like that? No way.

“Did you get into conflict on the way home? Did someone… bother you? Harass you? Interfere in
any—”

“No, no, no.” I stepped further back, out of her grasp.

“Then what were you crying about?”

“I don’t know, Mom.”

She folded her arms. “You were with Ashanti?”

“Yes.”

“The whole time?”

“Yes.”

“I’m calling her parents.”

“No!”

“No? Why not?”

“Because you’ll embarrass me.”

“Tough,” Mom said, opening a drawer and taking out the Thatcher book. The next moment, she was punching numbers on the phone. I ran up to my room, slammed the door, threw myself on the bed. I thought of texting Ashanti to give her a heads-up, get our stories straight, but didn’t bother. I’d had enough conspiring for one day.

I heard my mom’s footsteps a few minutes later. She knocked on my door.

“Yeah?” I said.

She came in. “I spoke to Ashanti.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Because her mother couldn’t come to the phone, Robbie, so don’t jump to conclusions. But the point is Ashanti confirmed your story, said you just lost track of the time. She takes responsibility, by the way, specifically asked me not to blame you. Also, her mother grounded her, something about missing dance.”

Her mother grounded her? That surprised me. Ashanti’s mom hadn’t seemed like the grounding type. Also, how weird—the whole concept of someone who could actually get airborne being grounded.

My mom took a deep breath, smiled a smile that
seemed forced but was still a smile, meaning the worst was over.

“So,” she said, “all I need from you is some assurance this won’t happen again. Home by six, unless you’ve got prior permission. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said.

Dad appeared, looking pretty excited. “That was van Slyke—his agent wants to meet me,” he said. His gaze went to Mom, to me, back to Mom. “Everything sorted out here?”

Mom nodded.

“Excellent,” Dad said, rubbing his hands together. His gaze returned to me. “What’s that on your wrist?”

“Uh, this?” I said, my arm rising against my own interests to better expose the bracelet.

“It’s called a friendship bracelet, Chas,” said my mom.

“Yeah?” said Dad. “Who’s the friend?”

“Well,” I said. “Um.”

Mom leaned in for a closer look. “Is that a heart? How adorable.”

“Whoa,” said Dad. “Meaning the friend is a boy?”

I felt myself suddenly blushing—no idea why, since boyfriends were not in the picture, but it turned out to be the right move.

“Chas?” Mom said, and she laid her finger across her lips to shut him up.

“The robber barons,” said Mr. Stinecki in history class the next day, “is the name given to a group of industrialists and financiers in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Can we name some of them?”

“Rockefeller.”

“Carnegie.”

“Morgan.”

“Vanderbilt.”

“Duke.”

“Gould.”

“Flagler.”

“Flagler?” said Signe Stone. “I think I’m related to him.”

“Does the development office know?” said Mr. Stinecki.

Maybe that was a joke; if so, no one laughed. Mr. Stinecki was in his second year at Thatcher. There were rumors that he wasn’t being asked back for a third.

We spent the rest of the period on the robber barons. We learned that Morgan swatted photographers with his gold-tipped cane, that Gould tried to kidnap a Scottish lord named Gordon-Gordon, almost starting a war between the U.S. and Canada, and that Rockefeller once said, “God gave me the money.”

“Any questions?” said Mr. Stinecki.

There were none.

“For homework, in that case—” he began.

And then my hand went up, first time in Mr. Stinecki’s class, first time at Thatcher.

“Ah,” said Mr. Stinecki. “Robbie?”

“Um,” I said. “Are there, like, any robber barons around today?”

“Interesting question. Opinions, people?”

Nobody had opinions.

“Got anybody in mind, Robbie?” Mr. Stinecki asked. “Russian oligarchs, perhaps?”

Russian oligarchs? That zipped right by me. I plunged on. “How about Sheldon Gunn?”

Mr. Stinecki’s eyebrows rose. “And what can you tell us about the good Mr. Gunn, Robbie?”

The good Mr. Gunn? Did Mr. Stinecki mean that, or was he just being sarcastic? I didn’t know, felt a bit flustered. “Driving people out of their rentals can’t be good,” I said.

“Can you elaborate?”

Elaborate
meant more info, right? “Like Bread.”

“The soup kitchen?”

“He raised their rent, so they had to leave.”

“You’re talking about the New Brooklyn Redevelopment Project?”

“Yeah.”

“The somewhat Orwellianly named New Brooklyn Redevelopment Project, might we say?”

What was that? Missed it completely. I heard kids moving in the hall, sensed restlessness at the desks around me. The period was over. I shrugged.

“Not so very far, on second thought,” Mr. Stinecki said, “from ‘God gave me the money.’ So, yes, Robbie, I believe that robber barons still walk among us.” He checked his watch. “
À demain,
everybody.”
À demain
was how Mr. Stinecki said good-bye. He’d led last year’s tenth-grade trip to Provence, supposedly where things started getting shaky for him.

After a slight hesitation—hadn’t he been about to give the homework assignment?—we all began filing out. He’d forgotten the homework! There was homework in every subject every day at Thatcher. He was a goner for sure.

“Do you volunteer at Bread?” Mr. Stinecki said as I went by.

“Yeah.”

“Excellent. I heard, by the way, that they’re staying open, at least for now. Some anonymous benefactor stepped up.”

“Yeah?” I said. Was Mr. Stinecki looking at me extra closely? Or was I just paranoid? “That’s nice,” I said.

Ashanti and the other eighth-graders had to stay after school for a meeting about their science projects. Eighth-grade science projects were a big deal at Thatcher. A few years before, one kid, now at MIT, had built something that was now in satellite orbit around the earth. Pretty cool, but cooler than Silas’s lock-picking project? Not to me.

I walked home by myself, taking the long route by Joe Louis, my mind on Silas’s project. Tut-Tut was alone in the school yard again, but not drawing, just squatting there and watching the street. He got right up the moment I appeared and came through the gate. Was he waiting for me? I noticed he wore my old white sneakers with the navy trim.

He stopped a few feet from me and waved, a little circular wave accompanied by a smile. Tut-Tut had beautiful teeth—white, even, not too big or small.

“Hi,” I said. “Nice sneaks.”

He stopped waving, stuck his hands in the hand-warmer pocket of his hoodie. “Th-,” he said. “Th-th-
th—”

“Didn’t mean for you to thank me,” I said. “Just noticing, that’s all.”

“It-it-it—”

“It’s okay?”

“Y-y-y—” He nodded yes.

We stood there for a moment. I could tell Tut-Tut felt uncomfortable, but I didn’t feel at all uncomfortable with him. Was that the reason his stuttering no longer had any effect on me? Meaning, his stuttering no longer roused the power, but also that it had no effect on the powerless me, either. I liked Tut-Tut.

“Where do you live?” I said. “Maybe we could walk together.”

He pointed down the street, same direction I was heading.

“Let’s go,” I said.