“No,” Riley said. “Why?”
“Well, money for a new Guitar Hero might be nice,” said Mongo.
Jake nodded. “Or a flash drive.”
“I need a new pair of vampire fangs,” said Briana.
“You guys?” said Riley, cocking up his left eyebrow.
“Sorry,” the other three said in unison.
Riley rubbed his hands together. He was ready to do this thing. “We know the fifth grader’s name?”
“Wilson,” said Briana. “Jamal Wilson. And Riley?”
“Yeah?”
“Hurry up. With his head buried in the deep freeze, the poor kid looks like an eighty-pound sack of human ice cubes!”
3
RILEY LED THE WAY THROUGH the Quick Pick Mini Mart’s sliding glass doors.
Mongo stumbled in behind him and started moaning, “Oh, my face. He punched me in my face. Jamal gave me a bone taco.”
Riley figured Mongo wouldn’t win best actor in his category this year, but he was doing just fine. The gentle giant was totally focused, like he always was whenever they set out to take down a bully—even though back in fifth grade, when Riley first met Mongo, everybody thought Mongo was the class bully because he was so immense and would seriously mess up anybody dumb enough to make fun of the teddy bear trinkets he had dangling off the zipper of his backpack. One day, in the cafeteria, Riley gave Mongo his snack pack of Teddy Grahams cookies. Chocolatey Chip flavor. They talked. Riley suggested that maybe Mongo should redirect his rage. Mongo said he’d give it a try if people quit making fun of his teddy bears, which Riley said he’d take care of. They’d been pals ever since.
Now Riley led Mongo to a spot where his bulk would block Gavin Brown’s view while Jake scampered off to hide behind the checkout counter.
“That does it!” shouted Mr. Karpinksi, the manager. “I’m calling the cops!”
“Fine,” bellowed Gavin. He looked like somebody had dropped him out of his crib face-first, leaving him with a flat nose, flatter eyes, and a permanent smirk plastered on his flat lips. Sort of like a flounder with a bad attitude. “Go ahead. Call the police! They’ll be on my side. They always are!”
“Wow!” said Riley. He and Mongo waltzed up the potato chip, CornNuts, and beef jerky aisle toward the freezer cases. “Is that Jamal Wilson?”
“What?” Gavin twisted around, keeping one arm locked on the scrawny fifth grader’s skull. Riley could see that the kid was shivering. “Who the heck are you?”
Riley gave Gavin a brisk two-finger salute off the tip of his eyebrow. “Riley Mack. We’ve met.”
“Oh, yeah. You’re the punk who’s always looking out for the losers. What’re you doing here, punk?”
“Trying to protect you, Gavin.”
“What?”
“When you call the cops, Mr. Karpinski,” Riley shouted over his shoulder, “let them know we found Jamal Wilson.”
“Okay!”
Riley could hear the manager beeping out a phone number. Sure, it had more notes than 911 should, but Riley was banking on the fact that Brown, being a bully, was likely an idiot, too. Probably had trouble counting above one and two.
“Hello?” he heard Mr. Karpinski say. “Is this the police?” It came out stilted, but Briana had only fed him his lines, like, five minutes ago.
Gavin laughed. “I told you wimps—I’m not afraid of the cops.”
“They’re not coming to get you, pal,” said Riley. “They want him.” He gestured toward the flailing legs dangling out of the freezer case.
“What?”
“That’s Jamal Wilson!”
“So?”
Riley nodded toward Mongo. “You know my man Mongo?”
One of Gavin Brown’s sunken eyeballs twitched; probably remembering the last time Mongo sat on his chest and flicked at his earlobes.
“Yeah. I know Mongo. The teddy bear freak. What happened to his face?”
“Jamal Wilson!” said Riley.
“This wuss? No way. This skinny little wiener is a walking vending machine. I hit him up for two iPods last week. Now he’s got a brand-new one and it’s got my name on it, too.”
“No it d-d-doesn’t!” came a muffled voice from inside the freezer case. “It’s m-m-my dad’s!” Riley figured the kid was shuddering out of frostbite as much as fear.
“Shut up! I want his cell phone and cash, too! He coughs ’em up, maybe I let him live.”
Riley chuckled, shaking his head from side to side. He was enjoying this. “Gavin, Gavin, Gavin. Will you never learn?”
“Learn what?”
“I told you: that’s Jamal Wilson!”
“So?”
“The Jamal Wilson?”
“Am I supposed to know him or something?”
“New kid in town, am I right, Jamal?”
“Y-y-yes!”
“Featherweight Golden Gloves champion. Three years running. Right, Jamal?”
“W-w-w…”
“His fists are registered as lethal weapons. Isn’t that right, Jamal?”
“I-I-I don’t…”
“…wanna talk about it? Of course you don’t. On account of what you did back in Pinedale. You remember Pinedale, don’t you Jamal?”
“I-I-I…”
Riley moved in close on Gavin. “His family had to move here because Jamal kept getting kicked out of schools. Pinedale, Poughkeepsie, Pittsburgh, Paducah…”
“Piscataway!” added Mongo, who must’ve thought they were playing some kind of alphabetical geography game.
“A lot of places,” Riley said quickly. “And, yes, the Wilson family prefers towns that start with the letter P.”
Gavin raised his eyebrows with interest. “Why’d they kick him out of all those schools?”
“Incorrigible fisticuffs.”
“Huh?”
“He knocked out too many kids with his bare knuckles. Took down some teachers, too. Sent a principal to the hospital!”
Gavin laughed. “This little worm?”
“That’s right. He’s wormy. He slithers into a new town. Lets everybody think he’s a wimp. Strings you along. Then, bam! He sucker punches the toughest kids in town, takes over their territory. Tell Gavin how it went down with you, Mongo.”
Mongo pointed to his bloody nose and lip. “He did all this with one punch.”
Now a radio started squealing and screeching. There was even some feedback. Under the checkout counter, Jake Lowenstein was working his technomagic.
“That sounds like my police scanner!” said Mr. Karpinski, who had memorized his lines perfectly.
“One Adam-Twelve, One Adam-Twelve,” squawked a very nasal police dispatcher as played by Briana Bloomfield out in the parking lot with her handy talky. “See the man. Quick Pick Mini Mart. We have Jamal Wilson cornered in the frozen food department. Approach with extreme caution.”
“Who’s that?” asked Gavin, a hint of panic in his voice. “That’s not the dispatcher!”
“Mr. Karpinski called the state police,” said Riley.
“I thought he was calling the Fairview Police Department!”
“No way,” said Riley. “This is a job for the Staties!”
“One Adam-Twelve requesting backup,” came a new voice over the radio. This time Briana sounded like an angry man with a nasty frog in his throat. “Listen, sister—if you expect us to apprehend and arrest Jamal Wilson, we’re gonna need the SWAT team! Tell them to bring their biggest bazooka! Tell them to bring a tank! Tell them to say their prayers!”
Riley pulled out the wad of cash Mr. Karpinski had loaned them. Started peeling off bills. “What’s it going to take for you to leave my friend Mongo alone, Wilson? Huh? One hundred? Two hundred?”
Gavin’s jaw dropped. “You’re paying him off?”
Mongo took one step forward. “It is the only way for me. To walk the streets. Without constantly looking. Over my shoulder. In fear!” Mongo usually memorized his part of a script in chunks.
Riley
stuffed the money into the short kid’s trembling fist.
“Enjoy, Jamal. You might consider paying him off, too, Gavin. After all, now he knows your name is Gavin Brown. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew that you live at Forty-eight Crestwood Drive.”
“So?”
“He’ll hunt you down like a dog and hurt you, Gavin. He’ll hurt you bad!”
Gavin finally took his hand off Jamal’s head, which was still stuffed between tubs of ice cream. “No way. My dad won’t let Jamal Wilson or anybody else hurt me.”
“Your dad, my dad—they can’t be everywhere every minute of every day, can they?”
Gavin shook his head. “No. They can’t.” He gulped once. Then his fishy eyes nearly popped out of his face in fear. “I gotta go!”
Breaking into a run, legs flailing, he scuttled backward up the snack aisle. He banged into a big cardboard display and sent several dozen candy bars skittering across the floor.
“Daddy!” they heard him scream from out in the parking lot. “Daddy!”
Riley tapped Jamal Wilson on the shoulder.
“It’s okay, kid. He’s gone. You can pull your head out of the freezer.”
“I’m thuck.”
“What?”
“I’m thuck. My thongue.”
4
MEANWHILE, A FEW BLOCKS SOUTH of the Quick Pick, Riley’s mom, Mrs. Madiera Mack, was gearing up for the Friday afternoon rush at the First National Bank of Fairview on Main Street.
It was 4:30 p.m. and Mrs. Mack, who worked at the bank as a teller, knew the lobby would soon be crowded with folks eager to cash their weekly paychecks—just like it was every Friday after five.
“Good afternoon, Maddie.”
It was her manager, Chuck “call me Chip” Weitzel. He was about the same age as Riley’s mom, maybe thirty-five, and carried himself like the swaggering college football star he used to be. His smile was so syrupy sweet, it made Mrs. Mack’s teeth hurt.
“Busy?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
The bank manager checked his watch. “Rush hour will be starting soon. Let me slide in here, give you a break.”
“That’s okay, Mr. Weitzel. I can handle it.”
“Please, Maddie—call me Chip.”
He told her that every time they talked but Mrs. Mack didn’t want to call him, or any other middle-aged man, “Chip.”
“Of course my working your teller window is in no way a reflection on the fantastic job you’re doing for FNBOF.”
Only he pronounced it “Fin-boff.”
“Every now and then,” he continued, “I just like to take over a teller cage and spend some quality time with our customers.”
But why does it always have to be my window? Riley’s mom wondered as “Chip” continued his spiel.
“Working the window gives me a chance to listen and respond to the voice of our consumers….”
Apparently, that last bit was something Mr. Weitzel had learned in business school. Riley’s mom never went to business school. In fact, she had never even gone to college. Instead, right out of high school, she’d married Riley’s dad and set out to “see the world.” Riley’s father was in the military.
Mrs. Mack stepped aside. Mr. Weitzel spritzed his mouth with an aerosol blast of minty freshness and moved up to the brass bars of the old-fashioned teller cage.
A sweet little old lady, one of Mrs. Mack’s regulars, toddled up to the window.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” said Chip.
“Good afternoon, Maddie.”
“Um, Mrs. Rollison?” Riley’s mom waved over her boss’s shoulder. “Yoo-hoo. I’m over here.”
“Oh, hello, dearie. These darn glasses. All I see are shadows and lumps.”
“Mrs. Rollison, I’m the bank manager. Chuck Weitzel. I’m filling in for Mrs. Mack this afternoon.”
“Oh.”
“And please—call me Chip.”
“Okay, Chick.”
“Chip.”
“I’m Rada Rollison.” Mrs. Rollison was elderly, hard of hearing, nearly blind, and so short that all Riley’s mom ever saw when she came to her window was a fluffy cloud of pinkish white hair.
“Well, Mr. Rollison is certainly a lucky young man,” said Mr. Weitzel with a wink. “To have such a beautiful bride!”
“Mr. Rollison passed away in January,” Riley’s mom whispered quickly.
Mr. Weitzel kept smiling. “I mean he used to be lucky…before he died…that wasn’t very lucky…the dying bit….”
Mrs. Rollison, deaf to everything the bank manager mumbled, hoisted an envelope stuffed with cash up to the counter. “I’d like to deposit this two thousand dollars in my savings account, if you please.”
“No problem.” He stamped the deposit slip, handed her the pink copy. “You have a great weekend, okay?”
“Why, thank you, Chick.”
As Mrs. Rollison tottered away, Mr. Weitzel slipped her envelope, fat with cash, into the teller drawer.
“Um, you didn’t count it,” said Riley’s mom.
“Come again?”
“Her deposit. You didn’t match what she gave you with what she wrote down on her deposit slip.”
“Good eye.” He folded his arms across his chest and smiled, the way a crocodile does before he bites your leg off. “So, Maddie—how’s your boy?”
“Riley? Fine.”
“I take it he’s staying out of trouble?”
“Mr. Weitzel, my son hasn’t been in trouble for a long, long time.”
“What about that shoplifting thing?”
“That was three years ago. Right after his dad left. He hasn’t done anything like it since.”
“Still, shoplifting is what the police call a gateway crime. Leads to bigger felonies down the line. That’s why Chief Brown calls Riley a KTM.”
“A what?” A KTM sounded like a cash machine for kittens.
“Known Troublemaker. They have his mug shot up at the police station.”
“His mug shot?”
“Well, maybe it’s his class photo. He is smiling. People don’t usually smile for their mug shots. Anyway, redheaded Riley is right there, smack-dab in the middle of the bulletin board.”
“Mr. Weitzel, my son paid for what he tried to steal. He was punished.”
“Good, good. Guess it’s awfully hard rearing a boy without a man around the house, huh?”
“Riley talks to his father almost every night.”
“You worked that out?”
“Yes.”
“Good, good.” The bank manager spritzed some more minty freshness into his mouth. “So, where’s Riley now?”
“With his friends. Down the street at the Pizza Palace. Doing his homework.”
“Awesome. So, you wouldn’t mind working a little late tonight, right?”
“Well, we were planning on…”
“I need to catch a plane. Bank manager conference out west.”
“But…”
He pulled the teller drawer out from under the counter.
“Tell you what—I’ll count out your tray; you take care of whatever comes in over the next hour, then lock up at six.” He flashed her his high beam smile.
“But…”
“Deal?”
Riley’s mom smiled back. Her beams weren’t nearly as bright.
“Deal,” she said.
Unfortunately, she needed this job. She needed her paycheck more than anything in the world, except, of course, Riley’s dad coming home. Alive. From Afghanistan.
5
RILEY USED A CUP OF warm water from the coffee and tea bar to help Jamal Wilson loosen his tongue from the icy grip of the metal freezer racks.
Even though Jamal’s fingers were nearly frozen into french fries, he kept fidgeting with some kind of tiny screwdriver gizmo sticking out of his miniature Swiss Army knife.
“That was awesome!” howled Mongo, wiping his face clean with a napkin from the hot dog counter. “I thought Gavin was
going to pee his pants!” Mongo was laughing so hard that he snorted fake blood up his nose.
Jake hopped over the counter with his handheld radio. “Excellently played, Riley! You okay, kid?”
“Y-y-yeah,” said Jamal, his teeth chattering. “N-n-n-now.”
“Here you go,” said Jake, peeling off his insulated hoodie, a garment he rarely removed because he had cowlick issues—a bad case of kindergarten-nap hair. “I believe, right now, you need this even more than me.”
“Th-th-thanks.”
Jake draped the sweatshirt over Jamal’s shoulders, while the kid kept working on something where the freezer door met the side of the case.
“You guys are good,” added Mr. Karpinski.
“Thank you, Mr. K.,” said Riley. He was feeling good.
“Y-y-yo, Mr. K.?” stammered Jamal. “While I was spending f-f-face time in your f-f-freezer, I noticed the door h-hinges were a little loose so I m-m-made some adjustments. Loose hinges could s-s-seriously throw off the t-t-toggle switch contacts and make your evaporator f-f-fan run even w-w-when the door is open.”
And then he shivered some more. His teeth chattered.
Riley, Jake, and Mongo stared at the little dude in surprise. Mr. Karpinski nodded, impressed.
“Thank you, Jamal.”
“My p-p-pleasure.”
“So, Riley,” said Mr. Karpinski, “is this how you guys rescued Alex Junior?”
“Same basic principle, sir,” said Riley. “Bullies are cowards. They just need to be reminded of that fact from time to time.”
Briana burst into the store. “That was so incredibly fabtastic! Did you like my second cop? That’s the first time I ever did that voice. Was it okay?”
“It was ‘fabtastic,’” said Riley.
“You’re sure?”
“You were great, Briana,” said Jake.
“I thought you were really two people,” said Mongo, his mouth full of hot dog. The three pepperoni slices he’d had at the Pizza Palace weren’t enough to hold him over till dinner. “Oh, I think I forgot to pay for this,” he said to Mr. Karpinski, examining the half of the hot dog he hadn’t chomped off with his first bite.
Mr. Karpinski waved it away. “Today, Mongo, the hot dogs are on me!”