“Don’t forget tomorrow,” Mrs. Ashdale said after supper that night.
“Tomorrow?” I said.
“Check the fridge.”
I went to the big calendar on the fridge, and there it was. Ethan, Dr. Finstead, 11:00 am. Ethan and Anna, Eaton Centre, lunch. I groaned. Dr. Finstead was a dentist. When I lived with my dad, I never went to the dentist. The first thing Mrs. Girardi had done when I went to live with her was make an appointment. It turned out I had a lot of cavities. It took three visits to get them all filled. That’s when I decided that I didn’t like going to the dentist. I hated the sound the drill made. I also hated the smell that filled the air when the dentist was drilling my teeth. It made me sick to my stomach. But Mrs. Ashdale was even more fanatical about dentists than Mrs. Girardi had been. Her rule was that all of us had to go twice a year for a checkup and cleaning. She was also very big on flossing.
So I went to the dentist. The dental hygienist scraped the plaque from my teeth. Next, she cleaned them with a little machine that made a high-pitched sound. Then she polished them. By the time she had finished, I was rinsing blood out of my mouth. But my teeth felt terrific. I couldn’t stop running my tongue over them.
Then the dentist checked me out. I held my breath as she poked and prodded to see if I had any cavities.
“You’re all good, Ethan,” she said finally. She sent me on my way with a new toothbrush, a little container of dental floss and a follow-up appointment in another six months.
From there I headed to the Eaton Centre to meet Mrs. Ashdale. Alan’s birthday was coming up, and she wanted me to help her pick out a present for him. We were going out for lunch after. Believe it or not, I was looking forward to it. I liked spending time with Mrs. Ashdale. Not only was she nice, but she was also interesting to talk to. I always learned something new. Most of the time she said things that made me think.
I was supposed to meet her outside the mall entrance. I glanced at my watch. I was ten minutes early. But I headed down there to wait anyway. There was always something going on outside the mall—guys doing sketches of passers-by for ten or twenty bucks, musicians, some of them actually pretty good, busking for coins, chalk artists putting together huge sidewalk “paintings,” that kind of thing.
I strolled down the sidewalk, looking at the charcoal portraits of Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, John Wayne and Brad Pitt that one of the artists had laid out to show people how good he was. Then, I’m not even sure why, it was just one of those things, I glanced across the street. There was a big square there with a stage at one end. Sometimes there were free concerts sponsored by a local radio station. But most of the time people just hung out over there, eating street dogs or take-out food from the mall if it was a nice day. Maybe that’s why I glanced over there—to see if there was anything special going on. My heart slammed to a stop at what I saw.
It was the guy who had chased me onto the bus back in Mrs. Girardi’s neighborhood.
He wasn’t alone.
The two guys I had tripped were with him. So were four or five other guys, all of them from the Nine-Eights. They were standing in front of the square, not caring that they were blocking the whole sidewalk. They didn’t notice the dirty looks people gave them when they had to step out onto the street to get past. They were too busy scanning the crowd on my side of the street, like they were looking for someone. I ducked my head immediately. I had to get out of there.
Still with my head down, I turned and glanced up the street. Mrs. Ashdale was standing at the corner on the other side, waiting for the light to change. Everything happened fast after that.
I was thinking that I should make a run for the corner so that I could head off Mrs. Ashdale. Then I heard someone shout, and I couldn’t help myself. I turned toward the sound. Some of the people on my side of the street were standing like statues and staring at the other side of the street. Other people were scurrying away. I looked across the street and saw why. Standing right in among the Nine-Eights was a scruffy-looking guy with a hat pulled down low over his head. He had a gun in his hand. It was pointed across the street. And it went off.
Blam!
People screamed. People ran. Traffic ground to a halt. I heard a loud bang. This one was different—it sounded like two cars colliding.
Blam!
Something whizzed by me.
“Ethan!” someone yelled. Mrs. Ashdale.
I threw myself to the sidewalk.
The Nine-Eights were still in front of the square, but now they were looking around, like they couldn’t figure out what had happened. The scruffy man with the hat had disappeared.
Sirens sounded.
The Nine-Eights looked at each other. Then they ran.
A cop car showed up. Then another and another.
I got to my feet. Mrs. Ashdale rushed toward me and grabbed me by the shoulders. She looked me over, then threw her arms around me and hugged me. It wasn’t until later that night that I realized why she had done that. She’d been scared that I was hurt, and when she saw that I was okay, she was relieved. She really cared about me.
“Someone could have been killed,” she said. She kept saying it, like she couldn’t believe what had happened.
I couldn’t believe it either.
“Those Nine-Eights don’t care about anyone who isn’t one of them,” I said.
“What?” Mrs. Ashdale looked at me, surprised. “You know who did the shooting?”
“I didn’t recognize the guy with the gun,” I said. “But those guys he was with, those were Nine-Eights.”
More sirens sounded. People were swirling around us. Cops were getting out of cars. They spread out, trying to get everyone calmed down and, I guess, trying to find people who had seen what had happened and might be able to tell them about it.
“Officer,” Mrs. Ashdale called. “Officer!”
A cop turned toward her.
“My son saw what happened,” Mrs. Ashdale said.
Son? I had never heard her call me that before. It sounded good when she said it.
I wasn’t the only one who heard her.
“Well, well,” a familiar voice said. “Look who’s here.”
It was Officer Firelli.
“The kid saw what happened,” the first cop said.
“Did he?” Officer Firelli nodded to Mrs. Ashdale. “Ma’am,” he said, one of those people who was polite to adults but not to kids. “You saw who did the shooting, Ethan?”
I nodded.
“Do you know their names?”
“No.”
“But you’ve seen them before?”
“Yes.”
Officer Firelli looked around. “Show me exactly where you were standing.”
I went back to where I had been when the shooting started.
“Okay, Ethan,” he said. “A detective is going to want to speak to you.” He told the first cop to keep an eye on me. He said he’d be right back.
An hour later, I was at the police station with Mrs. Ashdale, giving a statement to a detective named Catton. Officer Firelli was listening. After I had finished talking, Catton said, “So you recognized at least three of the guys on the other side of the street, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And as far as you know, those three and the others they were with are all members of the gang called the Nine-Eights?”
I nodded.
“But you don’t know their names?”
“No.”
“Officer Firelli tells me you had a run-in with some of those guys a few weeks ago. Do you think they were shooting at you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I sure hoped not.
“Did you see any of the gang members with a gun?”
“No.”
“But you did see another man with a gun, a man with the hat whose face you didn’t see, but that you’re pretty sure isn’t a gang member, is that right?”
“Yeah. He wasn’t dressed right. And he seemed older.”
“I thought you didn’t see his face.”
“The way he dressed—it looked like an old guy,” I said. “Maybe around your age.”
Detective Catton leaned back in his chair and sighed. He glanced at Officer Firelli before turning back to me.
“I understand you’ve had some gang involvement, Ethan,” he said.
“That’s in the past,” Mrs. Ashdale said firmly.
“Please, ma’am,” Catton said, as polite to her as Officer Firelli had been. “Ethan needs to answer these questions himself.” He looked at me.
“I used to hang around with some guys,” I admitted.
“Who were rivals of the Nine-Eights,” Catton said.
“Yeah. But I was never a gang member. I got out of that.”
Another cop waved at Officer Firelli, who got up and went over to him. He was back a few minutes later, whispering in Catton’s ear. Catton was silent for a minute. Then he fixed me with a somber look.
“Are you sure you’ve told me everything, Ethan?” he said.
What was going on?
“Yes,” I said.
“And you answered all of my questions truthfully?”
“Yes.” I really had.
“I know how it is with gangs, Ethan. I know that people don’t like to speak out about what they’ve seen when there are gangs involved. They’re afraid what might happen to them.”
“I’m not afraid,” I said.
“But you told me you didn’t see any of the Nine-Eights with a gun,” he said. “Just some man with a hat that you’ve never seen before. Is that right?”
“Yes.” What did he want from me? Did he want me to make up stuff?
“We have other witnesses who saw one of the gang members with a gun, Ethan.”
“That’s not what I saw.”
“We also have a preliminary report from the firearms examiner. And another from the crime-scene boys. There were two guns, Ethan. We recovered the bullets. We found them a few feet from where you were standing. It looks like you were the target.”