His father leaned down and whispered, “It’s okay. Why don’t you go and give your gram a hug?”
“I know. I look like something out of a movie, hooked up to all these contraptions. Robo-Gram,” she said.
Daniel’s initial trepidation melted away when he saw Gram wink in his direction. She might not look as strong as he remembered, but she sounded just like her old self.
He walked over and wrapped his arms around her. His gram used to smell of stale perfume and hair spray, but now she smelled of something he didn’t recognize, something mediciney. Daniel could feel the bones of her rib cage through her shirt.
She must have read Daniel’s mind. “Yeah, I’m as skinny as a bird, aren’t I? It’s the food they’ve got me on. No one around here understands the healing power of fat and grease! But together, maybe we can convince them. What do you say to some burgers and fries?”
Daniel smiled as she patted his cheek. “You bet!” he answered. “Milk shakes?”
“Well, of course! Milk shakes go without saying.”
They went on like that for a while, with Gram teasing and making Daniel laugh. It wasn’t until Georgie started to get restless that Daniel’s mother decided to break up the fun.
“Daniel, why don’t you take your little brother outside for a bit? Let us talk for a while.”
Georgie looked up hopefully at Daniel and said, “Ball.” So far Georgie had been slow to talk—he only knew a few dozen words that weren’t baby talk, and ball was definitely his favorite.
“All right,” answered Daniel. “C’mon.”
“Watch the traffic,” called Daniel’s mother as they turned and walked down the long hallway to the front door.
Daniel told Georgie to wait on the porch while he got his brother’s favorite toy out of the car. Playing ball with Georgie was really quite simple—it consisted of watching Georgie drop the ball on the ground, squeal and then pick it up again. If you clapped every now and then, he was happy as could be.
When Daniel came back with the ball—a big blue-and-white-striped one—Georgie jumped up and down and started shouting, “Ball! Ball! Baaaallllll!”
“I think he wants that ball,” said a voice behind Daniel.
He turned around and found himself face to face with a girl. She was close to his age, with straight dark hair cut short and holes in the knees of her jeans—a good sign that she was somebody who wasn’t afraid to get dirty. As a rule, Daniel didn’t put too much stock in girls, but this one looked as if she might be sort of okay. “Hey,” he said.
The girl didn’t say anything right away. She just kind of squinted at him instead. Daniel didn’t know why, but he felt suddenly self-conscious. He straightened his shoulders and ran his fingers through his tangled curls. He’d had a cap on all morning and his head looked like a matted sandy-brown mop.
Finally she spoke up. “If you don’t give him that ball pretty soon, I think his head might explode.”
Daniel had forgotten all about Georgie. His little brother was on his tiptoes, reaching up, trying to bat the ball out of Daniel’s hands. Georgie’s little face was growing bright red as he strained to grab it.
“Oh shoot!” said Daniel. “Sorry, Georgie. Here you go.”
Georgie’s giant frown turned to a grin as he took the big blue ball with both hands and plopped it on the ground. He laughed and made a bunch of squawky two-year-old noises as he chased the ball down the sloping yard.
“So is your family moving in with Mrs. Stewart?” asked the girl.
“Yeah, she’s my gram. She’s been sick, so we’re here to take care of her,” answered Daniel. “You live around here?” The girl shrugged and half pointed over her shoulder. She seemed not to care about much of anything, and that included answering Daniel’s questions. “Across the street,” she said.
Again there was that uncomfortable silence. Maybe Daniel had been wrong about her. Maybe the dirty jeans were a ruse and she was just as weird as all the other girls his age. She might even have a doll hidden on her somewhere.
Well, she could stand there and stare all day long. He would just play ball with Georgie until she got tired of watching and went home to wherever it was she came from. “Across the street” somewhere, he supposed.
That was when Daniel noticed that Georgie had followed his rolling ball a little too close to the edge of the yard. If Mom saw him playing that far away from the house, she would throw a fit.
“Georgie!” Daniel called. “Come on back away from the street, okay?”
But Georgie wasn’t listening. He threw the ball up in the air and laughed as it bounced off the curb and out in front of the truck. Georgie toddled after it, chasing it into the street, not paying attention to the car that was barreling toward him.
“Georgie!” Daniel screamed as he raced to his brother, knowing he would never make it in time. As Georgie disappeared into the street, Daniel heard a loud popping sound as the car came around the corner.
“GEORGIE!”
“BALL!” shouted Georgie’s voice behind him.
Daniel turned to see the girl standing there, holding his little brother in her arms. Georgie was clapping. She set him down and looked past Daniel into the street.
“I think his ball just got run over,” she said. “Looks like he’ll need a new one.”
Daniel was so relieved to see his brother safe and in one piece, he couldn’t speak. But how was that possible?
“Well,” she sighed, “I’d better get back. It’s almost lunchtime.”
Georgie gave one of his giggly little squeals, and the girl looked down at him and smiled. It was the first time Daniel had seen her do that.
“Keep a good eye on your little brother here. I think he likes trouble.”
And with that she started to walk away.
“Wait!” called Daniel, breathless. His mind was racing, trying to catch up to what had just happened. He needed to stall, to have time to think. “Um, I mean … what’s your name? I didn’t get your name.”
She squinted back at him again and paused before answering.
“It’s Mollie,” she said. “Mollie Lee. See you around, New Kid.”
Then she turned and walked off toward the little yellow house directly across the street.
Chapter Two
The Bus Stop
The only thing worse than your first day in a new town, thought Daniel, is your first day in a new school in a new town.
On that morning his parents offered to drive him, but Daniel knew it was hard enough being the new kid without getting chauffeured around by your parents. He knew better than to give in to the butterflies in his stomach. The first day at a new school was like the first swim in a cold lake—it was better to just dive in and get the initial shock over with. So after a quick breakfast, Daniel grabbed his brand-new backpack and walked bravely to the bus stop at the end of Elm Lane.
As he waited, he tried to distract himself by reflecting on the mysterious Mollie Lee. It had been several days since their strange meeting, and he hadn’t seen so much as a glimpse of her since then. No matter how many times he replayed the scene in his head, he could not figure out how Mollie had gotten into the street, rescued Georgie from the oncoming car, then returned to her original spot that fast—and all without Daniel seeing a thing. As something of an amateur sleuth, Daniel had carefully worked out three possible explanations:
The first and most likely (if least interesting) solution was that Daniel was just flat-out wrong—that when he thought he’d seen Georgie run out into the street, he had simply been mistaken. Perhaps it was just Georgie’s big blue ball that rolled out there, and Daniel mistook that flash of color for his brother. The only problem with this was that Daniel had clearly seen Georgie run out into the street!
Which brought Daniel to the next, and somewhat more interesting, possibility—he was going insane. Perhaps he had contracted some kind of rare tropical brain fever like in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Adventure of the Dying Detec
tive,” and now he was seeing things. The upside of brain fever would be that you probably got to miss a lot of school, but the downside was, well, you had brain fever. That couldn’t be all that fun. And the fact that, other than his one little hallucination, Daniel felt fine pretty much ruled out the rare disease theory.
Which left explanation number three, by far the most exciting one: that somehow Mollie really had been quick enough to run over and save Georgie from the oncoming car and then carry him back, all before Daniel could take a single step. Either she was that fast or she made it appear she was that fast. Perhaps Daniel was the victim of some kind of crazy practical joke? In the Holmes stories, anything that defied explanation or seemed in some way supernatural was always a hoax.
Whatever the answer, all the evidence told him there was something very interesting about Mollie. Not the least of which was the sight of her standing right in front of him. He’d been so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t even seen her approach.
Some detective.
Mollie looked to be wearing the same pair of dirty jeans as before, though Daniel suspected that all of her jeans looked this way, since she didn’t seem the type to let a good pair of jeans go undirtied. Standing next to her was a small boy about their age but a good several inches shorter. He was wearing a pair of thick glasses and a little-boy-sized tie. In stark contrast to Mollie, the way this boy was dressed reminded Daniel more of a tiny adult than a kid.
Mollie nudged the boy in the ribs. “Rohan, look, it’s the new kid I told you about.”
The short boy stared at Daniel, squinting at him from behind bottle-thick lenses.
Daniel waved at them.
Rohan looked back at Mollie. “Seems perfectly nice to me.”
“I liked his brother better,” she said.
“I thought you said his brother was, like, two?”
“Yep,” she answered. “Exactly.”
Daniel found this talking-about-him-as-if-he-wasn’t-there thing very unsettling. “Daniel,” he said. “Excuse me?” asked Rohan. “Daniel. My name’s Daniel. Not ‘New Kid.’”
“Whatever.” Mollie smirked.
“Oh,” said Rohan, blinking. “Of course. Pleased to meet you, Daniel.”
This Rohan kid even talked like a little adult, and sure enough, the next minute he was shaking Daniel’s hand. A firm, professional handshake.
“Don’t mind Mollie,” said Rohan, smiling big. “She’s a bit territorial, and she doesn’t like it when new people show up in her neighborhood. Bears are like that, too, you know. Big, stupid bears.”
Mollie just rolled her eyes and snorted, but it made Daniel relax a little to see Rohan poking fun at her without getting hit.
Rohan stopped, sniffing the air. He made a face. “Uh-oh.”
“Speaking of big and stupid …,” said Mollie, pointing to something coming down the street.
Daniel turned to see two rough-looking boys walking toward them. Something about them just said “trouble.” It was the way they walked, maybe, or the fact that they weren’t carrying book bags, or books at all for that matter. They just looked tough, like the kind of boys who plan to pay for lunch with someone else’s money.
“Crud,” said Rohan. “It’s Clay Cudgens. He and Bud must’ve missed the bus and decided to hike up here to our stop.”
“Or they just decided to start their day off with a little ‘fun,’” said Mollie. “Watch yourself around those two, New Kid.”
“Yeah,” echoed Rohan. “Same goes for all of us.” For some reason, Rohan had put on a nose clip, the kind that you wear for swimming. Daniel had never seen a sillier sight than little Rohan standing there wearing a tie and nose clip, but he didn’t have the time to comment on it, because Clay and Bud were upon them.
“Well, lookee here! It’s Mollie and her girlfriend, Rohan!” shouted one of the boys. Physically he was the skinnier of the two, but something in the look of his eyes said that he was definitely the meaner. He was wearing a grotesque concert T-shirt decorated with skulls and decapitated bodies. His enormous friend’s shirt was plain except for the word “Bud,” which was stenciled unevenly on the front.
Daniel heard Rohan whispering to Mollie, “Just ignore them, Mol.” But Mollie didn’t look as if she were about to go along with Rohan’s plan. Daniel could practically hear her teeth grinding together.
“Aw, yeah, Clay!” said Bud. “Rohan is Mollie’s girlfriend, because Rohan is such a girl! Good one, man!” Bud’s arms were a little too thick and his head was a little too small. He looked like a bald ape with a Twinkies problem.
Then there was the smell. This Bud character stank. At first Daniel wondered if there was some kind of roadkill nearby, or perhaps an open sewer, but before long he realized that the stink was coming off Bud. The kid had a stench that went way beyond regular body odor. It smelled like rotten garbage, if you buried it in a pile of raw fish. Then left it out in the sun. In summer. Somewhere in the Land of Stink. Rohan and Mollie were openly covering their noses. Daniel now wished he had a ridiculous-looking nose clip of his own. Even Clay seemed to have had all he could take of his friend’s smell.
“Yo, Bud. Stand downwind, man. You’re going to make me lose my breakfast!” said Clay.
“Sorry, dude. It gets worse when I get excited,” said Bud as he stepped back a few feet from the rest of them.
“So,” said Clay, sizing up Daniel. “Who’s this?”
Daniel’s legs turned soft and jellylike as Clay’s beady eyes focused on him. It was like being looked at by a strange, mangy dog. You don’t trust it, and you don’t dare turn your back on it, so you just stand there—frozen.
Daniel had once read that when facing a wild animal, you should never show fear because animals can smell weakness and it only makes them hungrier. Bolstering his courage, he took a deep breath and answered, “My name’s … uh … er ………”
Oh no! Had he just forgotten his own name? “Uh, I’m the n-new kid,” said Daniel, sounding just like lunch.
“His name’s Daniel,” answered Mollie, much to Daniel’s surprise.
“Daaaaniel, huh?” Clay sneered as he stepped closer. He was a good several inches taller than Daniel. “So are these your new best friends, Daniel? A crazy Buddha and a girl?”
“I’m Hindu, not Buddhist,” Rohan chirped.
“Shut up, no one’s talking to you,” said Bud from several feet away.
“So, what’s the story, New Kid?” asked Clay, putting one of his long arms around Daniel’s shoulders. “Are these losers your friends or what?”
Daniel immediately recognized what was going on—Clay was giving him a choice. In Clay’s eyes, Daniel was a blank slate, a new kid with no allegiances. He could become friends with anyone—with Rohan, Mollie, a couple of bullies like Clay and Bud. Trouble was, in order to befriend a bully, you had to become one.
Daniel was going to have to go with the short kid and the tomboy.
“Yeah,” he said, gesturing to Mollie and Rohan. “I guess they are my friends.”
Clay’s eyes narrowed to tiny slits. “Too bad for you, New Kid,” he said. “Just for that, I think I’ll take that nice new backpack you’re wearing. I left mine at home.”
Clay gave Daniel’s backpack a little tug. Daniel held firm. He knew he wasn’t a match for these two, but that didn’t mean he was going to give in this easy.
“C’mon, New Kid,” said Bud, leering. “You don’t want to get hurt, do you?”
Still, Daniel wouldn’t let go. He wasn’t a fighter, but if he gave up now, these two would hound him for the rest of the year. Daniel had no intention of being marked as an easy target.
An ugly look crept over Clay’s face. “Warned you.”
Clay pulled again, only this time much harder. Impossibly hard. Daniel felt his feet leave the ground, and when his head finally stopped spinning, he realized that Clay had thrown him twelve feet at least. This boy was stronger than a grown man—stronger than ten grown men.
/> Mollie came to his rescue. Daniel didn’t even see her move but there she was, standing face to face with Clay, yelling at him to return Daniel’s backpack. Bud began giggling like a hyena and the air grew thick with his stench.
Daniel was bruised up a bit, and his head was still ringing from being thrown around like a rag doll, but he wasn’t about to sit by and let Mollie fight this fight for him, no matter how strong Clay might be.
“I can handle this,” said Daniel, getting to his feet. “Give me back my bag, Clay.”
“Oh, the new kid’s a scrapper, huh?” said Clay, looking over Mollie’s head. “Okay, tell you what—if you can take this backpack from me, you can have it. I’ll even let you have the first punch. Bud, grab me one of those rocks.”
Bud reached down and picked up a fist-sized rock from the side of the road. Daniel swallowed hard. A rock like that could seriously hurt someone, or worse.
“Give it to him,” said Clay.
Bud tossed the rock to Daniel, who caught it awkwardly with both hands.
What was this kid up to? Was he crazy? “Okay, give me your best shot.”
Daniel hesitated, staring at the heavy rock in his hand.
“C’mon, Daniel. I’ve even given you a weapon! Hit me as hard as you can.”
Daniel felt sick to his stomach as Clay smiled a wicked smile.
“Of course, then it’ll be my turn,” said Clay. “But I promise I’ll only use my fist.”
This was turning very serious.
“That’s enough, Clay!” shouted Mollie.
“This is none of your business, Mollie,” answered Clay evenly. “It’s between me and Daniel here.”
“I’m making it my business,” said Mollie through clenched teeth. “He lives on my block, so I’m gonna look out for him. Give him his backpack. Now!”
Clay paused. There was a flash of something almost like worry across his face, and Bud was no longer laughing. Then Clay spat on the ground in front of Mollie.
“Fine! You want to get into it, too? I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. Let’s see just how fast you are, little girl!” Clay took a step forward and balled his hands into fists. Mollie stood firm, but Daniel could see the fear in her eyes. There had to be some way to stop this.