Our quarry is in sight. Scrawny Rolf and his sidekick are leaning against the brick wall at the corner store, sucking back slushies. Shahid and I have taken up position across the street. We’re lurking behind a mailbox.
“Now what?” Shahid asks.
“Well,” I say, “we continue to observe.”
“You don’t know what to do, do you?”
He’s right. I don’t know what we should do. Part of me wants to march over there and demand that Scrawny Rolf hand over Ella’s sketchbook. But clearly, he doesn’t have the sketchbook on him. He’s so skinny, if he held the book to his chest it would stick out on either side of his rib cage. The surprising fact is, I’m bigger than him.
The same can’t be said about his buddy. That guy isn’t much taller than me, but he’s as wide and solid as a bulldog.
“Angus?” Shahid asks. “What do you want to do?”
“I’m thinking,” I say. “On the one hand, we could go over there and interrogate him right now. Or we could wait until they split up.” I realize I like my second idea very much. “They’re bound to go home sooner or later. And when they do, we’ll follow Rolf.”
“And then what?”
“Jeez, Shahid. What do you think?” I ask.
Shahid emits his weary sigh.
“If you don’t stop that,” I say, “I’m going to get very annoyed.”
“Stop what?”
“All that sighing. It’s getting on my nerves. You sound like an old man who’s…I don’t know. Tired of the world.”
He says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Forget it,” I mutter. “Look, all we have to do is follow Rolf. If he’s still got the sketchbook, he probably stashed it at home. So we’ll have to go there to get it anyway.”
“What do you mean, ‘if he’s still got it’? Why wouldn’t he have it?”
I answer in a somber tone. “We have to be prepared for the possibility that he destroyed it.”
“Oh,” Shahid says. “That would suck for Ella.”
“It would.” I glare across the street at Scrawny Rolf. “He’d better not—Look! They’re leaving.”
“Yeah,” Shahid hisses. “And they’re coming straight for us.”
My first impulse is to duck behind the mailbox. That’s a bad idea. The mailbox isn’t big enough to hide us. “Start walking,” I urge. “Now.”
And so it goes for a time, with Scrawny Rolf and his buddy following us.
“Put on the sunglasses,” I tell Shahid.
“I don’t have them.”
“What?” I don’t wait for him to answer. “You forget them now, when we could really use them? We’d be able to maintain a proper distance. Keep an eye on them. Observe when they change direction. All that, without ever looking over our shoulders.”
“How was I supposed to know this was going to happen?” he asks. “There was no point in bringing them to school. If I put them on there, a teacher would confiscate them.”
I emit a Shahid-worthy sigh. “Never mind. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll take turns looking sideways and use our peripheral vision to see what they’re doing. I’ll go first.” I whip my head over to the right and pretend I’m looking at something across the street. Then I whip my head back into the forward position.
“So?” Shahid asks.
“I think I may have given myself whiplash,” I say.
“Casual,” Shahid chides. “Wandering.”
I refuse to respond.
“Fine,” he says. “Be like that. I’ll look.”
From the corner of my eye, I see him ease his head to the side. It’s quite impressive. Anyone observing him would believe he was simply gazing at the hedge we’re passing by. His pace suddenly slows.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“They’re gone.” He comes to a complete halt and turns fully around. “I can’t see them anywhere.”
“No way.” I turn too and scan the sidewalk behind us. He’s right. Our quarry has vanished. “That’s impossible. Where could they go?”
“We passed an alley back there.”
“Oh. Really? Well, okay then. Good stuff. Now we can go back and follow them.” We retrace our steps until we come to the mouth of the alley. There, we pause at a solid fence bordering the sidewalk. “This is a blind corner,” I whisper. “We shouldn’t enter the alley until we know how far down they’ve gone.”
“They can’t have got too far ahead,” Shahid whispers back. “But they couldn’t be too close anymore either.”
“Sounds perfect,” I say.
But both of us are reluctant to move. And it’s a good thing we don’t. Very likely, some instinct warned us to maintain our position, because the fence suddenly wobbles. At the same time, we hear the squeak of hinges and a gruff voice calls, “Later, Rolf.”
Rolf replies, “Yeah.”
And then the alley gate slams shut and the fence goes into a major wobble.
We wait, listening for Rolf’s footfalls. Will he come back this way or proceed down the alley? When it’s obvious that the crunching sound of feet on gravel is fading, Shahid and I finally exhale.
“Phew,” I breathe. And then I realize that this is exactly what I’d hoped for. I motion Shahid forward. “Let’s go.”
“He’ll notice us following him in the alley,” says Shahid.
“So?” I feel brave and reckless. “There are two of us and only one of him. And we’re bigger. Let’s go get Ella’s sketchbook.” With that, I step boldly into the alley.
I see Rolf at once. He’s only made it past the next yard down. He’s shuffling along, hands in pockets, narrow shoulders hunched. I decide it’s best to put a bit more distance between us and his large buddy, so I don’t call out to him. Instead, I match my pace to his and keep following.
It takes me a moment to realize Shahid isn’t with me. I turn to find him still peeping from behind the fence. I jog back. “What are you doing?”
He shakes his head. “I am not the gangsta type, Angus.”
I blink a few times before I answer. “And you’re telling me this because?”
“Because I have no intention of ganging up on Scrawny Rolf.”
I find I need to blink some more before I can answer. “Shahid. You know me better than that. Did you honestly think I plan to hurt him? All I meant about us being bigger is that it seems unlikely he could hurt us.”
“Oh. Okay. We better get going then. It looks like he’s in a hurry.”
“What?” I turn, and sure enough, Scrawny Rolf has picked up his pace. “He must have noticed us! Come on!” I launch into a run. This time, Shahid gallops beside me, arms flapping wildly.