I KNOW I SHOULDN’T HAVE felt so set up by what Cat Man said, but I was. It had been a long time since anyone told me anything good about myself. To hear I had potential and was a creative thinker, well, even if the guy who said it was a maniac who’d just sliced somebody with a knife, it was about the best thing I could hear right then in my life.
All I could think was maybe I did have potential after all. It was just that regular people, like everybody else in my life, hadn’t noticed it yet.
The job Cat Man gave me was easy. It was over on my side of Washington Boulevard again, in the opposite direction from where the cop had seen me before. I had to look out for a black Volvo four-door this time.
I was nervous, but everything went down much better than before. No traffic, nobody watching. I got there early again and while I waited, I peeked inside the brown paper bag. Two credit cards and a gold wristwatch were in there. I didn’t want to think where they came from.
Finally, the Volvo showed up. A woman was driving. She could have been somebody’s mother. She smiled when she handed me her paper bag, and I smiled back. That’s how good I was feeling, to dare to smile back, kind of carefree, as if nothing unusual was happening at all.
Right then was when I crossed back over the line with Cat Man and decided to work for him again. I can’t say exactly what changed me, maybe a combination of Cat Man thinking I was so great and getting to know Raven. Whatever, I thought I’d just hang in a little longer, one or two more jobs, and try to get some of Oggie’s stolen money back. I completely forgot how I’d sworn off Garden Street. All of a sudden, Garden Street didn’t look so bad.
I rode back to 5446, handed the bag to Cat Man, picked up my ten bucks and biked over to get Oggie.
“You are going to be really happy soon, because I’m getting your money,” I boasted to him while we walked to Saturn. “A few more days and I’ll have it. I might even have your wallet.”
I looked over, expecting him to say something, but he didn’t. He had on his gray, ex-Pinkerton look, only worse than usual.
“Hey, didn’t you hear me?”
He nodded a little.
“But you don’t believe it?”
“I don’t feel so good,” Oggie said. “I feel dizzy.” He knelt down all of a sudden in the middle of the sidewalk. I dumped my bike and got down beside him.
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
He didn’t want to say. Finally I got it out of him.
“A kid hit me. On the playground at school. With a big rock. Here.” He pointed to the back of his head.
I couldn’t see anything at first. Oggie has a ton of hair back there. I lifted some up. A huge bloody place was underneath. All the hair around it was matted down and dark with blood. It was sickening just to look at.
“Oh, Oggie. We’ve got to get you home.”
I sat him on my bike and wheeled him along as fast as I could. We’d been going to Saturn, but we changed direction and headed for Jupiter. Cyndi wasn’t always around in the late afternoon. I could count on Mom being there at 5:30.
“Hold on to me,” I kept saying. “Just hold on tight.” Oggie did. But when we were about halfway there, his eyes started to fill up with tears and the yeeks came on. He began to shiver all over.
“What is it?” I cried. “Does it hurt? What’s the matter?”
He couldn’t say anything. His throat was closed up. Then he got his voice back and said, “Archie? Is it all right if I tell Mom? This time, I really want to tell Mom.”
The way he said it made me feel like a skunk. I could see what a toll it had taken on him not to tell her before, when he got mugged.
“Of course you can tell her,” I said. “She might have to take you to the doctor. How come you didn’t tell Mrs. Pinkerton? You should’ve gone to the school nurse.”
“I went in the bathroom,” Oggie said. “I tried to fix it myself.”
“But that’s crazy! How could you fix something like this? You probably need stitches. Didn’t you know it was bad?”
“It felt bad,” Oggie said in a quivery voice. “I knew it was bad. I wanted to tell, but I thought you’d be mad, so I went in the bathroom and tried to fix it myself.”