“You won’t get away with this!” he bellows from above us. “I will hunt you down like the cutpurse you are!”
Apparently, Justice Jack doesn’t have a grappling hook or a lasso on his utility belt, because the guy running away from him is already halfway down the escalator and Justice Jack is just hollering over the railing at him.
And maybe a real superhero could vault the railing and land like a cat on the moving steps, but this is Justice Jack—a guy in a mask and motorcycle boots.
“Look!” Marissa cries, pointing to the man charging down the escalator. “He does have a woman’s purse!” She looks around. “Someone has to stop him!”
Now, it’s pretty obvious that that someone isn’t going to be Justice Jack. And it sure doesn’t look like it’s going to be any of the people the purse snatcher is shoving past. Or any of the people who are just standing around staring. And since the purse snatcher is wearing shades and a sweatshirt with the hood up, it’s not like anyone’s going to be able to ID him later, either.
So Marissa’s right—someone’s got to stop him. But when I get up, Marissa pulls me back. “I didn’t mean you! Why you?”
I grip Grams’ umbrella. “Because I’ve got this.” Then I charge forward.
It’s actually only been a few seconds from the time Justice Jack first shouted, but the purse snatcher has been flying down the escalator and he manages to get off before I can reach it. So since I can’t block him with the umbrella like I was planning, or jab him in the stomach with the big, fat point, I lunge after him with the crook of the umbrella handle.
What’s funny is, the umbrella seems to know exactly what to do. It loops around the guy’s ankle, and before you can say, Holy flying felons, Batman! he’s splat-flat on the ground and the purse is skidding across the floor.
Behind me I can hear motorcycle boots pounding down the escalator, and in no time Justice Jack is towering over the purse snatcher with one boot on his back.
“Nice work, citizen!” he booms so the whole mall can hear, then says to me through his teeth, “I can’t believe you don’t wear a mask! Aren’t you worried people will come after you?”
I unhook the umbrella and tell him through my teeth, “I’d feel like a dork in a mask!”
His eyes go all mushy and hurt.
“Look, I’m not a superhero. I don’t need a mask!”
Now his chest totally puffs up, and he stretches a gloved hand into the air with his finger pointed. “Villains, I give you fair warning!” he announces. “Justice Jack is fighting back!”
In the movies this would probably have gotten big cheers and a round of applause, but in the Santa Martina mall?
There was one handclap.
One.
And then the purse snatcher starts squirming.
“Down, you despicable thief!” Jack bellows at him. “Unless you want a tour of Stomp City!”
Over by the big glass entry doors, I notice a man and a woman in uniform hustling into the mall. It’s sort of my survival policy to leave when cops arrive, so I start to, only then I see it’s these two bumbling cops Marissa and I know all too well. So instead of just leaving, I hightail it back to Marissa. “Let’s get out of here!”
“Is that Squeaky and the Chick?”
“Yes!”
Now, the fastest, easiest way for us to escape is to go up the escalator. So while Justice Jack bellows, “At your service, fair citizen!” to a lady in a fuzzy orange scarf who’s retrieving the purse, we hurry up the steps.
“I feel like I’m in a really bad cartoon,” Marissa whispers, glancing back at what’s going on below. She chases after me as I hurry down the main corridor. “So where do you want to go?” Then she adds, “I’m sorry I dragged you out here in the rain. I’m sorry about everything!”
And just like that, it all comes back about Billy. “I don’t know,” I tell her, and, really, all of a sudden I want to get away from her as much as I want to escape being interrogated by Squeaky and the Chick.
Marissa hustles to keep up. “You hate me, don’t you?” she says, all dejected-like.
“I don’t hate you,” I tell her. “But I am mad.”
“I knew you would be,” she says, and she’s obviously feeling really sorry for herself.
“Come on, Marissa! Billy’s a sweetheart! I know he’s goofy, but I think he acts like that to cover up other stuff.” I look at her. “Has he ever talked to you about his dad?”
She shakes her head.
“Have you ever asked?”
“I don’t want to ask him about his dad!”
“Why not?”
“If I ask him about his dad, he could ask me about mine!” She drops her voice waaaay down. “And there’s no way I want people to know my dad’s got a gambling problem.” She moves in closer. “Or that he’s joined Gamblers Anonymous!”
“Gamblers Anonymous?”
She backs away. “See? Even you’re shocked. And you knew he had a gambling problem!”
“I’m not shocked, but …” I look at her. “There’s such a thing as Gamblers Anonymous?”
She snorts. “Of course there is. They’ve got Anonymouses for everything.”
We walk along for a minute without really knowing where we’re going, and finally I say, “So what do you and Billy talk about?”
“Sometimes school. Sometimes TV shows.” She shakes her head. “But mostly he just acts silly. You know—trying too hard to make me laugh.”
I think about this, then shake my head. “Wow.”
“Well, what do you and Casey talk about?”
I laugh. “Mostly our problems! His mom and sister, my mom, his dad being with my mom … There’s never a shortage of things to say.” I look at her. “I actually think it’s why we’re so close.”
Marissa looks down. “I feel terrible saying this, but I think I liked Billy more before we started going out.”
“So why didn’t you mention any of this before?”
“I don’t know. I think hearing from Danny … it just made me realize what I didn’t feel for Billy.”
“So that’s it?” I ask. “You’re breaking up with Billy?”
Her face crinkles. “I have to, don’t you think?”
Now, I’ve been walking really fast, so we’re already about at the end of the corridor, which means we’re either going to have to go inside the gaping entrance of a big department store or loop around and head down the other side of the mall.
Well, unless we do a sharp U-turn and go back the way we came, but that would feel really stupid.
And since I like department stores about as much as overcooked broccoli, I automatically start to loop around.
And that’s when I spot the mall cop.
He’s not strolling, let me tell you. He’s waddling toward us as fast as he can, and he’s looking all amped, talking sideways into the walkie-talkie on his shoulder like he’s about to take down a serial shoplifter.
I nudge Marissa. “Mall cop, ten o’clock.”
Marissa automatically looks ahead and a little to the left. “He’s looking at us? How could he—” She turns to me. “The umbrella!”
The guy’s definitely acting like a hound dog after squirrels. And even though we haven’t done anything wrong, I sure don’t feel like being cornered and caught—or even barked at. So I tell Marissa, “Follow me,” and ditch it into the department store.
“Where are we going?” Marissa whispers.
Now, when you’re thirteen and broke and living in a town like Santa Martina, you sometimes wind up snooping around places that maybe you shouldn’t—like the crazy maze of hallways and stairs that happens to be behind the mall’s Employees Only doors.
So knowing we could escape that way, I grabbed Marissa and zigzagged her through the men’s department, over to appliances—where the refrigerators made for great cover—then past the photo studio, around the corner to the gift wrap counter, and straight for an Employees Only door.
“Not the
roof!” Marissa whispers as we slip through.
I laugh because it’s true—usually when I drag Marissa through an Employees Only door, we wind up on the roof. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t go up there in the rain. Even with the Awesome Dome of Dryness.”
“Then where?”
“Out of here!” I head down the corridor. “You know, down.”
She chases after me. “Why are we even doing this? I hate acting guilty when I’m not!”
“Look, there’s no way that mall cop is after us so he can pin a Good Samaritan medal on me. He probably wants to give me a mall-cop ticket for interfering with mall-cop business!”
“Aw, c’mon, Sammy.…”
“I’m serious! You saw the way he was coming at us!” I start down a set of cement steps. “Or what if that purse snatcher is saying he’ll sue because he broke something when he went splat? And if the mall can’t find me so he can sue me, he’ll sue them for letting me get away!”
“What? Wait—could he really do that?”
“Hudson says people are sue-crazy. He says burglars will sue for getting hurt in the house they broke into.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Exactly! But Hudson says sometimes they win. Or they get the charges against them dropped because they’re causing so much trouble.”
“So you think that’s why the mall cop’s after you? Because a purse snatcher wants to sue you?”
“How should I know? But even if it’s as simple as Squeaky and the Chick having an APB out for the girl with the umbrella because they want to get to the bottom of what happened, I do not want to deal with all their nosy questions. The first thing cops always want to know is your name and address.”
“Oh, right. I forgot about that little problem. Sorry.”
We’re at the bottom of the steps now, and I take a left down another corridor. “Yeah, well, I can’t afford to forget about it.”
“Sammy, I’m sorry. I’m sorry about all of this. Making you come to the mall in the rain, not listening to you when you warned me not to hurt Billy …”
I stop and turn to face her. “Look, it’s not just hurting Billy. It’s Danny hurting you. I don’t trust him, and I don’t want you to get sucked back into the Danny Vortex.” I point the umbrella at her. “Are you going to meet him at church tomorrow?”
She pulls a face like she’s worried I’ll skewer her. “Yes?”
I start marching again. “Then I’m going with you.”
EIGHT
Getting out of the mall’s back-corridor maze reminded me a little of sneaking into the Highrise. A lot of zigging and zagging, and when we finally found a door, we were really careful to peek around it before making a move.
“Where is this?” Marissa asked, because the walkway outside went straight to a hedge, then turned left. And with the rain pouring down the way it was, we couldn’t see much.
I opened the door a little wider, but I still couldn’t figure out where we were. “I’m not sure. Do you want to stay here and wait for the rain to let up?”
“There’s no way I want to get caught back here!”
“So where do you want to go?”
“Hudson’s? The library?”
“The library’s way closer.”
Which was true. Once we found Cook Street, all we had to do was cross over and go half a block down McEllen. “Okay! The library it is.”
So I whoosh open Grams’ umbrella and Marissa puts up her little collapsible jobbie, and off we go, through the pounding rain.
“The library’s over that way!” I call after we get out of the mini hedge maze. Then I notice that two of the metal arms of Marissa’s umbrella are sticking out like small skewers. “That thing’s a joke!” I tell her. “Get under here!”
So she ducks inside the Awesome Dome of Dryness and collapses her broken-armed umbrella. “Oh, thank you!”
“I can’t believe you walked all the way from your house with that thing!”
“It wasn’t broken like this when I left. And it wasn’t raining this hard! This is crazy!”
We hurry along a walkway to a little road that cuts between the mall and the parking structure. And we’re getting near Cook Street when all of a sudden a cop car pulls up and cruises right beside us with its lights flashing.
“I cannot believe this!” I moan.
“Just talk to them!” Marissa says. “It’s not like we can escape!”
But I keep right on walking because I don’t want to talk to them. Besides, what kind of idiot tries to pull over pedestrians in the pouring rain? The whole thing is stupid! And what if I ignore them? Or ditch them? What are they going to do? Get out and cuff me?
But then the siren chirps, and even though it makes me jump and makes me mad, I know Marissa’s right—there’s really no escaping this.
So I stomp my foot and go, “Maaaaaan!” and turn to face the police car. And that’s when I see that it’s not Squeaky and the Chick.
It’s Officer Borsch.
“I was afraid it was you!” he hollers through the open passenger window. “Get in!”
“We didn’t do anything wrong!” I holler back at him.
The passenger door swings open. “Just get in!”
So we dive into the front seat, and after I’ve collapsed the umbrella and closed the door, he stares at the Dripping Dome of Dryness. “Where did you get that thing?”
“It’s my grandmother’s,” I tell him.
“Ah,” he says—like that explains everything.
He powers up the window, and then we just sit there with the wipers flapping back and forth while he looks straight ahead, not saying a word.
Marissa eyes me like, Now what? and I give her a shrug like, I have no clue!
“So,” he finally says. “Where to?”
“Where to?”
“Where were you going?”
This kind of throws me because it’s not at all like Officer Borsch. Usually, he jumps right in telling me what he wants me to do or where he wants me to go or how much trouble I’m in for what I’ve supposedly done. So at first I just blink at him, but finally I blurt out, “We were on our way to the library.”
“Ah,” he says again, and looks straight ahead like he’s driving.
Only he’s not.
He just sits there.
Going nowhere.
Finally I say, “Walking would definitely be faster than this.”
This seems to snap him out of his little body freeze. “I don’t know how you did it,” he mutters as we start moving, “but you sure gave them the slip.”
I slouch a little. “Look, I didn’t want to waste all afternoon answering nosy questions. Especially not from Squeaky and the Chick.”
His eyebrows go flying. “Squeaky and the Chick?”
“They’re idiots, Officer Borsch. I can’t believe you let them on the force.”
He sighs. “I had nothing to do with it.” He eyes me. “They transferred from Reno.”
“From Reno?”
“They came highly recommended.” He frowns. “And now we’re stuck with them.”
I hesitate, then ask, “So you understand why we ditched them, right?”
“No comment. I’m more concerned about you teaming up with that madman.”
“With Justice Jack?” I ask.
“Please don’t call him that. It just feeds into his whole superhero fantasy.”
“Well … what do you call him?”
“Besides the Masked Moron? His name—Jack Wesley.” He eyes me. “Something I shouldn’t have told you, but there you go.”
“Why are you so down on him?” Marissa asks. “I mean, he’s trying to help out, right? Isn’t that a good thing? And he did stop a purse snatcher today!”
Officer Borsch sucks on a tooth, then says, “According to radio traffic, a mysterious girl with a big black umbrella did that.”
“I didn’t really do anything,” I tell him. “The guy was getting away and I just tried to help out
. I probably wouldn’t have noticed him at all if it wasn’t for Justice Jack.”
“Don’t call him that!”
“Wow, Officer Borsch. Why are you so down on him? The guy may be kinda cartoonish, but he wants to fight crime, not commit it, right?”
“That may be so,” Officer Borsch says with a sigh, “but petty crime has gone way up since he’s decided to ‘help out.’ ” He looks at me. “Up, not down!”
“Like what kind of petty crimes?”
“Missing dogs. Stolen bicycles.” He shakes his head. “There have been ten stolen bicycles in the last two weeks! And everywhere I turn, there’s Jack!”
“And you think it’s his fault?”
“Maybe the petty thieves are goading him. Maybe they want to see the guy appear out of a phone booth or rappel down a building. Maybe they’re baiting him so they can have a good laugh.” He shakes his head. “Why else would someone break into City Hall and steal the softball statue?”
“They really did?” I ask, because it seems so … stupid. I mean, if you’re going to break into City Hall, there’s got to be better stuff to steal than a bronze statue of a bunch of people down on one knee, gazing up at a softball. The statue is probably supposed to be inspiring, but when you first see it, you go, What the heck? And then when you get closer, you kind of shake your head and go, Wow, really? And then you start to notice the little mounds of supposed dirt around the people and you think, Is that bronzed barf?
Plus, the eyeballs of the people are creepy. Like the artist used marbles for the pupils, then popped them out.
So even though Santa Martina is nuts for softball, having a statue like that inside City Hall is so over-the-top that everyone’s kind of embarrassed by it.
Well, everyone except Mayor Hibbs. Rumor is, he thinks it’s the most amazing statue ever.
Which is probably why it’s in the foyer of City Hall.
Anyway, Officer Borsch sucks on a tooth, making a big ol’ tisking sound, then says, “They unbolted it from the base and dragged it through a side door. What we can’t figure out is why the alarm didn’t go off. It should have when they broke the window to get in.”
“Why would anyone want that thing?” Marissa asks.