“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN all this time?” Raven asked me while we were walking up to the living room. “I tried to keep Cat Man on hold, but he’s double worried now. He thinks you might be a mole.”
“A WHAT?” I cried. Oggie, who was standing on the landing listening, just about fell over. You can probably guess why.
“A spy,” Raven said. “For another gang. He’s worried somebody’s trying to take him over. All this getting sick or whatever, he doesn’t buy it.”
“But I AM sick! This is Oggie, my little brother.”
Raven gave him a thumbs-up and said hi.
“Are you from the underworld?” Oggie asked, totally in awe. You could see he was about to start re-believing in Mole People and underground kingdoms in about five seconds. Little kids can go back and forth on stuff like that with no problem.
It was a while before we got him straightened out. He had to hear the whole story—of the Night Riders and how I’d seen his wallet in Cat Man’s pocket; of meeting Raven and my jobs on Garden Street, which, right about then, I was beginning to be sorry I’d started up again. I’d be sorrier, too, before I was through.
“You named Raven in The Mysterious Mole People after THIS Raven?” Oggie asked me when we’d finished.
He was pretty disgusted. He had a glamorous image in his mind of the character Raven because she’d saved Amory’s life and could shinny up ropes and speak in Mole language after a year of living underground. By comparison, here was this ordinary, real-life girl in a worn-out sweatshirt and jeans.
“Listen, I’m not that bad,” the real Raven told him. “I can walk on my hands, want to see?”
Oggie clamped his teeth together and stuck out his chin. He thought we were jerking him around. That’s what happens when writers try to model their characters on a real person. Everybody is furious because they think you didn’t get it right—which is usually true, you didn’t. Who wants to be tied down to boring facts about people when you can make up things about them that sound ten times better?
Oggie’s wallet was a big revelation to Raven. She hadn’t known that was how I got dragged into the whole mess of the Night Riders.
“You should’ve told me,” she said. “I’ve seen that red wallet. It’s there, at 5446.”
“You saw my WALLET?” Oggie screeched.
“It’s in the bathroom, thrown up on a shelf.”
“Where’s the bathroom? I never saw one,” I said.
“On the right going down the hall, before you come to the meeting room. That wallet’s been in there for days. It’s kind of beat-up, so nobody wanted it.”
“Oh, no! My wallet is beat-up?” Oggie yelled. “I’ve got to get it back!”
“Cool off, I’ll get it,” I told him.
“You always say that, then you never do!”
“I will, I will. Right now we’ve got bigger problems on our hands.”
“The biggest one is that Cat Man has found out where you live,” Raven told me. “He probably knows your telephone number, too, and where Oggie goes to afterschool. Cat Man’s good at research.”
The phone rang suddenly. We all froze. Oggie had hung it back up when I wasn’t looking. I didn’t want to answer, but he said, “What if it’s Mom?”
I picked up. It was the lady next door asking how we were doing. I said fine. She said she wouldn’t bother to come check us then, that Mom wanted her to call to say she’d been trying to get through to us. She was in a meeting now and would be a half hour late getting home. I said that was okay, and we hung up.
“Mom will be a half hour late,” I told Oggie.
“So what?” he snapped. He was mad about something. I didn’t have time to find out what.
Outside, a car roared down Dyer Street. Raven and I ran to the window. It wasn’t Cat Man this time, but just thinking he’d been out there looking for me, in person, gave me the creeps.
“What should I do?” I asked her.
“You can’t hide, that’s for sure.”
“I guess I’d better check in at Garden Street again. What if he sets me up like Tommy?”
“That’s what I’d do,” Raven said, “but be careful. Cat Man’s jumpy. He’s got problems with the gang.”
When she said that, a dark sense of forboding swept over me. Suddenly, the last place in the world I wanted to be was back on Garden Street. I knew something bad was waiting to happen there. Something really bad, like … well, I couldn’t even think. I didn’t want to think. I wished this were a story instead of real life.
When you’re writing a story, a good trick is to give your characters a dark sense of forboding as the plot starts getting tight. It raises the suspense and sets up the reader for the shocker that’s going to happen next. Wherever you find dark forboding, you can bet, almost one hundred percent, that a terrible event is on the way. In books, that is. In real life, it’s probably about fifty-fifty.
I went upstairs to get my shoes and a sweater. When I came back down, Oggie had his pointy-eyed look on. I should’ve known right then that he was cooking something up.
“Oggie? You’ve got to take care of yourself for a while.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. He was sitting on the couch watching TV in his pj’s. Who would’ve guessed what he had on his mind?
“Keep the front door locked. I’ll be back in an hour. If Mom calls and wants to tell me something, say I’m in the bathroom.”
Oggie looked at me. He didn’t say anything.
“Sorry, I have to go, too,” Raven told him. “I’ve got another delivery to make for Cat Man or I’d stay and keep you company.”
Oggie turned his eyes on her, same accusing stare. Then he watched, looking pointier by the minute, while Raven and I put our coats on and walked out the door.