Socko clutched Junebug’s nursing book to his chest as they tramped down the stairs. Damien hadn’t stopped talking since the gang leader had left the roof. “Was I some kind of crazy taking on Rapp?” The towel Junebug had been sitting on draped his shoulders. “I gotta lie low. Make myself scarce. Go invisible. To kill me he’ll have to find me first.” Damien gripped the ends of the towel and tugged hard.
“Next time I’ll have your back. Promise.” Socko was already reimagining the scene on the roof. “I’m big. I can fight him if I have to.”
“You, fight Rapp? Get real!” Damien jerked the towel from around his neck and tossed it at him. “Never gonna happen. You’re the panda man!” Damien’s footsteps echoed as he ran down one more flight of stairs to his own floor.
Socko put a shaking hand on the knob that opened the door to the fourth-floor hall. His friend was right: He might be big enough to take on Rapp, but he was nothing but a leaf eater.
“Going through!” Damien called.
They always opened the doors to their separate floors at the same instant so each knew the other was safe—which seemed pathetic to Socko all of a sudden. He’d probably just run away if his friend needed help. “Going through,” he mumbled.
He nudged the stairwell door open an inch and scanned the hall on his own floor. Empty. By now Delia would be dozing in her chair, so he let himself into the apartment quietly. He didn’t want to talk anyway.
Socko was easing the door shut when his mother yelled, “Guess what?”
He fell against the door, jabbing himself in the back with the lock knob. “Mom! Don’t scare me like that!”
“Nancy called!” she yelled again from the recliner.
“So?” His grandmother, who insisted they call her by her first name because “Mom” or “Grandma” made her feel old, ignored them for months at a time. “It isn’t your birthday, is it?”
Delia leaned forward in her chair, her eyes bright. “This is way bigger than a lame-o happy birthday. Sit down.”
All Socko wanted to do was hole up behind the pull-down classroom map of the thirteen original colonies that walled off the corner of the living room where he slept, but something about the way she was looking at him made his heart beat faster. He fell onto the loveseat he and Damien had rescued off the curb. “Okay, spill.”
“Do you remember me telling you about the General?”
Socko scrambled to get his bearings.
“You know, my grandfather on my dad’s side.”
“You mentioned him a few times. He’s a grumpy guy, right? And he’s not a real general.”
“Nope. Just an army cook in World War II. You never met him. I haven’t seen him myself since my parents got divorced all those years ago.”
He tried to look interested.
“Remember, he had a store called ‘General Starr’s General Store’?”
“Yeah. In some touristy place near … somewhere way north.”
“Stowe, Vermont.” Her eyes were really sparkling now. “And he sold it—which is huge for us.”
“Huge?” Socko wondered what Damien was thinking about one floor below. “Huge how?”
“His wife died a few weeks ago.” Delia frowned. “I know I should feel bad, but I barely remember her. The last time I saw either one of them I was in second grade.”
The General had sold the store … his wife had died … Socko still didn’t get it. “And this is huge because …?”
“Luckily the General sold the store before the economy went down the tubes. So he’s got money.”
“And he wants to give it to us?” Socko asked, trying to hurry things along.
“Yes, well, kind of.”
He fell back against the cushions. “You’re kidding!” A stupid idea popped into his head, but for one second it seemed reasonable. Money for bodyguards. One for him, one for Damien.
“Nancy says that without his wife around, he’s not taking good care of himself.” Delia folded her hands in her lap. “He’s eighty-eight now, plus he has emphysema.”
Socko had seen a gory photo in Junebug’s nursing book of a chunk of lung covered with black splotches. The word “emphysema” was printed under it.
“His sons—my dad and his brother—are ready to stick him in a nursing home. He doesn’t want to go. So, here’s the deal. We take him in and—”
“Wait, whoa!” Socko threw his hands up like a crossing guard stopping a car about to mow down a bunch of kindergarteners. “Take him in?” He eyed the hanging map that was the “wall” of his bedroom. “Where are we gonna put him? In the tub?”
“Would you listen a minute? Here’s the deal. We let him live with us, he buys us a house. A house of our own, free and clear once he …” She ran her thumb back and forth over the tape on the arm of the chair. “You know, once he’s gone.”
For the second time in half an hour Socko felt breathless—this time with relief. A house, away from here. Just like that, no more Rapp—no more tingling at the back of Socko’s neck warning that something bad was about to happen.
But the relief burned off fast. If he left, it was just like the roof all over again. How could he do that to Damien? He’d promised—the next time he’d have Damien’s back.
He twisted a button on the loveseat’s upholstery. “We don’t need a house.” The button came off in his hand.
“Of course not. Who could leave all this?” Delia spread her arms. The bluish light from the neon sign across the street fluttered on her pale skin.
“It’s not so bad here,” he bluffed, pushing the all-night neon flicker and the leaky faucet and the nuked roach out of his mind.
“You’re allergic to here, for Pete’s sake!”
“I used to be. I’m fine now—I haven’t had an asthma attack for years.”
“Please, Socko.” Delia clasped her hands and held them out to him. “No more hairy spiders. No more worries about the rent. No chance you’ll end up like Frankie …” She let that one sink in.
Socko had been the first to see Frankie G. lying dead in a pool of blood by the dumpster behind the Kludge. “The guys who did it weren’t even from around here,” he protested, trying to erase from his mind the picture of Frankie G. with a hole in his chest.
“But it happened here! We’ll move someplace safe, someplace where no one ends up dead on the ground. You’ll go to a new school—a better one.”
“I don’t want a better one!” Even at GC, where most of the students slept through class, Socko had to bust his butt to get Bs. If the competition was awake, he didn’t stand a chance. “Don’t I get a vote?” he gasped, his outgrown asthma threatening to make a sudden comeback.
“Not this time, Socko. You and me are getting out of here.” She slapped the arm of her recliner. “C’mere. Sit.”
Hadn’t she noticed he was way too big to perch on the arm of her chair like he used to? He walked over, but didn’t sit down. He took a breath and pulled out the big guns. “We can’t do it, Mom. I gotta stay here for Damien.” He couldn’t tell her about Rapp and the roof, but he had plenty of other ammunition. “Damien’ll starve if we leave! And you have friends here too. Don’t forget Mr. Marvin, and that old lady in 3C. And what about Junebug, your special project?” He couldn’t believe she was so ready to dump the people she had come to call family.
“I gotta put us first.” She reached up and grabbed his hand. “I’ve never been able to give you anything. I was fifteen when I had you—just a kid raising a kid.” She squeezed his hand hard. “I’m not gonna blow this. This is our one shot, Socko. Our jackpot lottery ticket!” Her voice softened. “Come on!” She squeezed his hand again, more gently this time. “A house of our own. Think about it!”
How was he supposed to think about it? He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been inside a house.
But Delia smiled as if she were standing in front of one. “A house with a lawn … and a hedge … I’ve always wanted a hedge.”
Socko flashed to the burnt plane sticking out of the scruffy bushes hunched between the front of their building and the sidewalk. “We got a hedge.”
“That doesn’t count. Our hedge will be tall and green and at Christmas we’ll put white lights all over it.” Delia’s free hand danced in the air. “The little kind that blink.”