“How do you know my name?” I asked.
“Somebody told me. I just moved here from California.
My dad got transferred.”
“Are you a senior?” I figured she was, since the car was parked in the senior lot.
She nodded. I thought this was it, a perfect example of the luck-o’-the-Kropp: I get a lift by a gorgeous senior and nobody’s around to see it.
“Why were those guys beating you up?”
“Kropping.”
“Kropping?”
“You must be new,” I said, “if you’ve never heard of Kropping.”
“Why don’t you turn them in?”
“It’s not the code.”
She glanced at me. “What code?”
“I don’t know. The code of chivalry, I guess.”
“Chivalry? What, you’re a knight or something?”
I started to say “No, I’m descended from one,” but then she might peg me for a freak, which I kind of was, I guess, but why give that away now?
“There aren’t any knights anymore,” I said. “Well, except certain guys in England, like Paul McCartney; I think he’s a knight. But that’s more an honorary title.”
Suddenly, the left side of my face felt warm while the right side, the side unlooked at by Ashley, felt cool—cold even. It was weird.
I told her where the Tuttles lived, and she pulled next to the curb to let me out. We sat there a minute, looking at the house slouched there behind the weed-choked lawn and overgrown shrubbery.
“This is where you live?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Just where I exist.”
I got out of the car. “Thanks for the ride.”
“No problem. See you around.”
“Sure. See you.”
I watched her little yellow Miada rip down Broadway.
Then I went inside and found some ice for my head.
6
Over the next couple of weeks, I saw Ashley, the tall, tan, blue-eyed senior, all over campus. One day I looked up and there she was, sitting across from me at lunch. She smiled and I smiled back, but I was a little disturbed, for some reason.
“Hey, Alfred,” she said. “How’s it goin’?”
I glanced around. “You sure you want to be seen with me?”
“Why not?”
“It could have an adverse effect on your social life.”
She laughed and flipped her hair. Maybe I’m wrong, but blond girls seem to flip their hair more than brunettes or redheads. “I’ll risk it.”
“I know what it’s like,” I said, “being the new kid. Only when I came last year I wasn’t a senior, I didn’t drive a hot car, and obviously, I wasn’t much to look at.”
“Why do you put yourself down all the time?”
“I don’t put myself there. I just recognize that I am there.”
I noticed she was hardly touching her lunch. When she did take a bite, she balanced the food on the very end of her fork.
“I guess you’ve heard the rumors by now,” I said. “That I’m a terrorist or CIA agent, or the one about me being crazy.”
She shook her head. “The only thing I heard was that your uncle was murdered last spring.”
“He was.”
“I’m so sorry, Alfred,” she said, and sounded like she meant it too. Then she changed the subject.
It wasn’t until sixth period, right before the final bell rang, that something odd about that whole encounter struck me: the lunch period for seniors was thirty minutes after mine.
That afternoon I saw Ashley on the way to my bus.
“Hey, Alfred,” she said.
“Hi, Ashley,” I said.
“Where you goin’?”
I pointed at the bus. She said, “You want a ride?”
“Really?” I couldn’t have been more surprised if she had asked if I wanted another head.
“Really,” she said. So I followed her into the senior parking lot and climbed into the Miata. Ashley tended to drive too fast and tailgate, but the top was down, the afternoon was sunny, and she was tan, so I could live with it.
“We had this neighbor in Ohio where I grew up,” I said, raising my voice to overcome the rush of wind. “This old lady who took in every stray dog in the neighborhood.”
“Why?”
“She felt sorry for them.”
“You think I feel sorry for you?”
I shrugged.
“Don’t you think you’re a little young to be so cynical, Alfred?”
“Girls like you don’t usually notice guys like me,” I answered. “Much less eat lunch with them and give them a ride home.”
“Maybe I think you’re interesting. Hey, I’m starving,” she said. “You want to swing through Steak-N-Shake?”
She didn’t wait for an answer but pulled into the drive-through lane and ordered two large chocolate shakes, two double burgers, and two large fries.
After our order arrived, she pulled into a parking place beneath the explosion of red leaves of a Bradford pear tree. The milk shake made me shiver and gave me one of those stabbing pains behind the eyeball. Ashley ate that burger and those fries like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. She wasn’t the first thin girl I’d known who could do that.
“You’re really tan,” I said. “Aren’t you afraid of getting skin cancer?”
“I live for the sun,” she said, which I took to mean she didn’t give a flip about skin cancer.
“My mom died of skin cancer,” I said.
“Your mom is dead too?”
I nodded. “My mom. My dad. My uncle.”
“I guess I’ve lived a sheltered life,” Ashley said. “I’ve never had anything like that happen to me. I mean, your mom and dad and your uncle.”
“Oh, it was more than just them. I’ve lost count now. No, that’s a lie; I count ’em up all the time. I’ve never told anybody this except my therapist, who doesn’t count, but I died too.”
“You died?”
I nodded. “Yeah, but I came back—only sometimes I feel like a zombie, but I don’t have any interest in eating people and I dress better. I guess that’s the price I have to pay for sticking around. You know how spiders eat by sucking the juices out of their prey? The body or husk or whatever stays, but all the life’s been sucked out. That’s how I feel. Husk-o’-Kropp.”
She took a long pull from her shake, studying me over the straw.
“Alfred,” she said softly, “nothing ever stays the same. It’ll get better.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re a knight. One of the good guys.”
I wanted to believe her. There were no knights left, but plenty of good guys.
Thinking of knights reminded me of Bennacio, the Last Knight, and his daughter, Natalia, who was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She had kissed me the last time I saw her. I thought about Natalia a lot, wondering where she was and if she was okay, because she was an orphan now like me—but mostly because she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen.
We drove back to the Tuttle house. Ashley put her hand on my arm before I stepped out of the car.
“Here,” she said, digging into her purse. “I want to give you my phone number.”
“Why?”
“So you can call me, silly.”
“Why?”
“Because I like you.”
“You like me like me or just like me?”
“I like you.”
My chest tightened and I got out of the car, then turned back and leaned close.
“Listen, I get it. You’ve taken me on as a project. Poor, big, stupid Alfred Kropp. Well, I don’t need your pretty . . . I mean pity. Find some other loser to feel sorry for.”
I turned away before she could say anything, jogging across the yard to the front door. I missed seeing the gnarled old oak root sticking up in front of the sidewalk, tripped, and sprawled flat on my face in the cool dirt. Could it get any worse? I had been waiting for a sign and, as
I pushed my big slobbery bulk from the ground, I realized this was the sign I was waiting for.
It was time to leave.
7
Horace was standing in the entryway holding a gray suit on a hanger.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Your suit, Alfred.”
“I don’t own a suit.”
“You do now. You need to try it on to see if it fits. Tomorrow afternoon is the hearing. And you gotta look nice for the judge, Al,” he said.
I brushed past him, went into the bathroom, and proceeded to floss. After a second there was a soft knock and Horace whispered from the other side.
“Hey, Al, I think you forgot the suit. I’ll just hang it here on the knob. We’re having fried chicken for dinner. Isn’t that your favorite?”
I didn’t answer and Horace went away.
I went into the bedroom and pulled my old duffel bag from the closet. It took about five minutes to pack because I didn’t have much. The door opened and Kenny came in.
“What are you doing, Alfred Kropp?”
“Packing,” I said.
“You’re leaving!”
I looked up at him. He started to cry.
“Don’t do that, Kenny. I don’t want Horace and Betty to know.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.”
“Take me with you.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I just can’t, okay? Look, it’s going to be all right. I can’t live here, Kenny. Horace is plotting to adopt me and take all my money and I can’t let that happen.”
He climbed onto the top bunk and refused to come down for dinner, but I ate to keep up appearances, plus I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from. I planned to slip out the window as soon as Horace and Betty went to bed.
Around eleven I heard the Tuttles go to their room.
“Alfred Kropp is leaving me to die,” Kenny muttered in the top bunk.
I sighed. “Look, when I get to wherever I’m going, I’ll call you to make sure everything’s okay. And if it’s not okay I’ll come back and rescue you. How’s that?”
“You’ll rescue me? You promise?”
“I promise.”
I guess that satisfied him, because he quieted down. It was time to go, but I didn’t move. What was I waiting for? I had thought Ashley’s pity was the sign I needed, but now leaving was the last thing I wanted to do.
Looking back now, I wonder what would have happened if I had gotten off my big butt and left that moment. If I had snuck out ten or even five minutes earlier would the horrors I was about to unleash on the world have been averted?
I’ll never know, because I didn’t leave that moment. I was waiting for Kenny’s breathing to even out. It must have been close to midnight when he yelled, “What’s that? I heard something, Alfred Kropp, outside the window.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“I heard it. I—” He stopped himself, then hissed: “There’s someone outside our window.”
“Look, Kenny,” I said. “There’s nobody outside the window.”
But he wouldn’t settle down until I checked the window. I pulled up the blinds and squinted through the glass, resting my hands on the sill. I turned my head toward the top bunk.
“See, Kenny? There’s nothing—”
Suddenly, the window exploded inward, just like it would in a horror movie, when the teenager turns and says, “See, there’s nothing there.” Two large, black-gloved hands shot through and grabbed my wrists. I was dragged through the broken window before I could even make a sound.
8
I saw a flash of night sky, a swaying tree branch, and the lawn as it rushed up to meet me. I landed face-first in the grass and something hard pressed into my lower back. I heard someone screaming; I guessed it was Kenny. I had fallen with my mouth open, and now I could taste grass and dirt as a voice whispered hoarsely in my ear.
“Don’t fight me.”
I twisted to my right, bringing my left elbow up and back, a glancing blow to the guy’s head as he leaned over me. He fell away and I pushed myself up, and then he was back on me, throwing his forearm across my neck, pulling back hard, cutting off my oxygen. Black flowers bloomed before my eyes.
He dragged me toward the back corner of the house and whipped me around.
“Settle down!” he hissed. “Settle down!”
He held my arms behind my back and pushed me toward a dark convertible sports car parked by the curb.
He threw me into the passenger seat and brought his face close to mine. I got a heavy dose of spearmint.
“Hey, Al,” Mike Arnold said.
I couldn’t believe it: Mike Arnold, the OIPEP agent who had betrayed the knights and nearly gotten me killed. Abby Smith had told me they fired Mike for turning double agent. So this wasn’t an OIPEP operation. And if this wasn’t an OIPEP operation, what was it?
He raced around the front and leaped into the driver’s seat of the Porsche Boxster. The car gave a throaty roar and Mike punched the gas. My head snapped back against the headrest. He whipped the car into a U-turn, the back tires locking up and squealing, sending plumes of smoke boiling into the air.
“What’s going on?” I yelled. He swerved into the right-hand lane, making for the on-ramp to the interstate.
“This is what’s known in the trade as an ‘extraction’!”
Mike had cut his hair since I last saw him in Merlin’s Cave, wearing it now in a buzz cut, like a marine. He still dressed like a frat boy, though: Lacoste shirt, Dockers, the New Balance running shoes. I could see his 9mm Glock tucked into his belt.
There was hardly any traffic in the westbound lanes of I-40, and Mike pushed the car up to ninety, his eyes darting between the road and the rearview mirror. I glanced behind us. Somebody wearing a black jumpsuit was pacing us on a motorcycle.
“Who’s following us?” I shouted over the wind.
“Well, it ain’t the Publishers Clearinghouse Prize Patrol!” His lips pulled back and he showed me his big white teeth.
He ran up on the bumper of a lumbering Chevy Suburban, whipped us into the emergency lane with less than an inch to spare, and floored the accelerator.
“Excuse me, Al,” he said. He pulled the Glock from his waistband, swinging his right arm in my direction. I ducked, his arm pivoted over my lowered head, and I heard the sharp pop-pop-pop of the gun as he fired at the rider behind us.
We jounced over the rough pavement as the speedometer needle hovered around a hundred. I looked behind us again, but the black motorcycle was nowhere in sight.
“You lost them!” I yelled.
He barked out a laugh and cut back into the right lane, right in front of a Best Buy semitruck. Up ahead was the exit for the highway that connected Knoxville and Alcoa.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Safe house!”
“A house safe from what?”
He faded onto the exit ramp, going way too fast for the curve, and I grabbed on to the door handle to keep from flipping over the door. The highway was deserted, and Mike took the opportunity to push us to 120. My eyelashes felt as if they were being torn from my lids.
“Slow down, Mike!” I yelled.
I heard a rumble that sounded like thunder behind us: two big black attack helicopter gunships came straight at us, screaming out of the night sky, their sleek bodies glistening in the glow of the streetlamps.
“We’re not going to make it!” I shouted.
He gave another of those sharp barking laughs. Tall hills rose on either side of the highway; we were heading due south, toward the Smoky Mountains. About a mile ahead the hills parted, allowing the Tennessee River to pass between them.
As soon as we reached the bridge, Mike slammed on the brakes. We went into a skid, spinning clockwise until his door smashed against the three-foot-high concrete wall separating the edge of the road from the hundred-foot
drop to the water below.
“Here we go!” he shouted as he scooted over the back of the car and ran to my side. Suddenly the night lit up all around us: the gunships were training spotlights on the bridge. They had dropped to only a hundred feet or so above the ground as they bore down.
He flung open my door and yanked me onto the pavement. “Oh, no,” I said. “Mike, I can’t swim.”
“Good thing I can!”
He forced me over to the concrete barrier.
“It’s pretty simple, Al! Jump and live or stay here and get your head blown off!”
I stared at him for a second. “Okay,” I said. We climbed onto the barrier. Mike gave me a nudge in the small of my back, and we plunged a hundred feet down, into the murky waters of the Tennessee River.
9
I hit the water feetfirst and just kept sinking, my eyes clinched shut, thinking, This is where Alfred Kropp buys the farm. I flailed my arms and kicked my feet, but I just kept sinking. My lungs began to ache and my movements slowed down, and then a great sense of peace settled over me like a comfortable blanket. This wasn’t so bad. Maybe I’d take a nap. My chin dropped to my chest and I thought of cold winter nights in Ohio where I grew up, snuggling under the warm covers, drifting off to sleep while Mom sat in the kitchen, working her calculator as she balanced some business’s books.
A hand grabbed my collar and I slowly started to rise. Whatever was left in me that still wanted to live took over, and I began to kick my feet again. My head broke the surface and I took a huge gulp of air.
“Shhhh,” Mike Arnold whispered in my ear. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
He gently rolled me onto my back so I was lying on top of him, his arm around my chest as he backstroked toward the south shore. I could hear the thumpa-thumpas of the helicopters as they patrolled the river, swinging the searchlights right to left and back again, looking for us. Just our faces were out of the water, though, and Mike pushed us along slowly, causing barely a ripple.
“Nice night for a swim, huh, Al?” Mike murmured into my ear. “Okay, real quiet now; we’re almost at the shore. I’m gonna set you down easy. About twenty yards south we’ve got some cover, but it’s gonna be a long twenty yards, Al. Easy now. Almost there.”