NOBODY WAS AT 5446 when we went by. The back door was locked. A fierce wind was blowing, and it was colder than Alaska behind the house.
“I thought you said he’d be here,” I said. I was starting to shiver.
“He was. Something must’ve come up. It’s all right. I’ve got a key.”
“You live around here?”
“Down the street.”
“You go to school around here?”
“Over on Amstell Ave.”
It wasn’t my school, but I knew some kids who went there. We compared notes. She was in the sixth grade like me, but one year older. They’d held her back when she moved up from Virginia with her mom a couple of years ago.
“Where’s your dad?” I asked.
“Still in Virginia,” she said.
Something about the way she said that made me know what it meant. All of a sudden, I liked her a lot more.
We went downstairs to the hangout. Nobody else was there. The big cellar room smelled bad when you first went in, but after a while you didn’t notice. Raven started picking up trash that was lying around, emptying ashtrays.
“What a dump. Nobody picks up after themselves,” she said. “They’re kids, that’s why. The Night Riders look tough, but they’re a gang of dumb kids, really. They aren’t even thinking how Cat Man is using them. They just want the money.”
“Then why are you in with them?” I asked.
“I was stupid,” she said. “But now I’m working on it.”
That really struck me. Here was this girl who was younger than everybody but she acted a lot older. I liked that about her. I felt that way, too. It seemed to me I had a wider perspective on life than most kids my age.
Writers have that sometimes. They can look past the edges and see the bigger picture. I mean, that’s what writing is kind of all about, the bigger picture. Not that writers are smarter than other people. A lot of times they’re pretty bad in school. They just have another way of looking.
“I want to be a writer,” I told Raven.
“No kidding,” she said. “Are you writing anything now?”
“Yes, I am,” I told her. The next thing I knew, I was telling her everything about The Mysterious Mole People, even that there was someone named Raven in it. I don’t know why, it just came pouring out. Somehow, I knew Raven wasn’t going to say anything to wreck it.
I was right, too. She didn’t. She got really interested and started asking me questions about the Mole People’s beliefs, how long Amory Ellington and the Raven character were going to stay down there with them, what effect it would have on them—stuff I hadn’t thought too much about myself.
“What’s with this turtle, Alphonse?” she asked me.
I said I wasn’t sure exactly. “In the beginning, I only put him in the story so Amory would have someone to talk to. But now they’ve gotten really close, like soul mates. Amory’s very worried about where he went.”
“Where DID he go?” Raven asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. The strange thing was, I really didn’t.
While we talked, I helped her clean up. It was a good way to look around. Since I was there, I thought I might as well keep an eye out for Oggie’s wallet. I was about to ask Raven if she’d seen it when we heard the sound of feet coming down the hall. Raven put a finger on her lips.
Cat Man strolled in with some of the Night Riders. He was having an argument with two of them and didn’t look at us.
These two were only about fourteen, but I’d noticed them before. They were big talkers who thought a lot of themselves. Whatever anyone said, they’d laugh and put the person down. They were the creeps who’d called Oggie and me “baby brothers” the time we ran into them on the sidewalk.
This time, they had some new idea they wanted the gang to try. Cat Man didn’t like it. I guess he must have had trouble with these two before. He began swearing at them and they started cursing back. Finally, he got up and pushed one. The kid fell backward over a chair. He was lying on the floor with a bleeding head.
“Get out,” Cat Man told him.
“Hey, you got no call to do that, man,” the other kid said. “All we say is, there might be a better way. You’re thinking small. You could pick up this operation and go places.” It was obvious he was trying to make Cat Man look bad.
“You pick yourself up and get out of here!” Cat Man yelled. He was red-hot.
“Hey, you’re crazy, you know that?” the kid said. “The whole gang thinks it. Just nobody ever dares to say it to your face.”
When I looked back at Cat Man, I saw how crazy he was. He had a knife. He must’ve been the guy Oggie saw with the blade in his belt, because it came out of nowhere. The kid with the bleeding head took one look and began to drag himself backward on the floor.
“Okay, okay. We’re going,” he said, but the other guy wouldn’t back down.
“So, now what? You’re going to kill us?” he asked Cat Man. “You’re going to kill us because we speak up with the truth? You ask anyone in this room; they all think the same. You aren’t using all your resources, man. I got contacts that could work with you.”
“Could take my business, you mean.”
“No, man, no. You got to get over that way of thinking.”
The kid was going to say something else, but right then, Cat Man stepped forward and zipped him with the knife across the front of his shirt. The cut wasn’t that deep, but the kid screeched. He looked down at himself. A thin stripe of blood was coming through his shirt. He looked up, surprised.
“Get out,” Cat Man said.
The two kids ran for it. Suddenly they weren’t so tough anymore. The one on the floor got up like a rocket. They ran out the door and along the hall. You could hear their feet pounding up the stairs. Then it was really quiet. Cat Man looked around. Everybody in that room was scared stiff, not even breathing. He still had the knife out.
“Anybody else got some bright idea for running this show?” Cat Man asked.
Nobody said a word.
I looked over at Raven. We’d both been pressed up against the wall the whole time. With one hand, she flashed me a hang-in-there sign. She didn’t look that worried. Maybe this happened all the time at 5446, who knows? For myself, I was going hot, going cold, going weak in the knees. I couldn’t tell if it was the sickness coming on stronger or I was just petrified.
Cat Man laid his knife on the table and sat down in a chair. He sent a couple of guys out for coffee and donuts. When they came back, he talked privately to some of the gang at the table for a while. Then he called Raven and me over. He’d finally noticed we were there.
“Hey, kid, where’ve you been all this time?” he asked me. “I was worried about you.” He sounded friendly, but I knew he was listening for my answer.
“I got sick,” I lied. “This is my first day back.”
Raven nodded to back me up.
“Get lost, honey,” he told her. “I’m talking to the soccer star here.”
He turned back to me and said, “Yeah, you don’t look so great. I thought it was something like that. I knew you were too smart to quit on me.”
He gave me the eye, as if he really didn’t think that at all. The next second, he flashed his big smile. He was one scary dude.
“You up to a job?” he asked. “I got one that just came in. No sweat.”
“Okay,” I kind of chirped. It was the last thing I wanted.
“You sure? You don’t sound like you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” I told him, loud and clear. I didn’t want him guessing how spooked I was.
Cat Man smiled again.
“It’s like I’ve been telling people ever since I saw you drop that punk in Wong’s. You’ve got potential, kid. You’re a creative thinker.”
That really surprised me. I am?
“You got it up here.” Cat Man pointed to my forehead. “You can handle yourself. Stick around and you’ll find out how good things can get.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t believe him for a minute, but on the other hand, I kind of liked the idea that I had potential.
I wished Raven could’ve heard what he said, but she was watching some gang members look up addresses in a telephone book. She didn’t have the same status as everybody else in the Night Riders. You could see she wasn’t respected. It didn’t seem to bother her, though. One thing I was noticing about Raven, she was a pretty cool customer in her own right.
When I had the information about the job and was ready to leave, I looked over at her again.
“Bye,” I called.
“See you around,” she answered without even glancing up. It was a good act. Nobody would ever guess we had anything special going with each other. We did, though. Raven and I had joined forces.