Free My Unfair Godmother by Janette Rallison Page B

know what to take with me, so I slung a small purse over my shoulder and put my cell phone, wallet, and the pathetic-o-meter inside. Since it was magic, I vaguely hoped it would be able to do something to help me, like contact my fairy godmother if my pathetic reading went high enough. At any rate, I didn’t want my dad to find it in my room. He would not be cheered by its pronouncement that I think criminals are cool.
    Dad had bought a sheet of plywood and leaned it against my window. It moved easily enough, and I slipped outside into the warm September night. I went around to the side door of the garage. I couldn’t take one of the cars. I had grown up in New York with its sub-way systems, so I didn’t know how to drive very well. This left a bike as my only means of transportation. Bike riding isn’t the fastest way to track people, and it was probably a hopeless venture from the start, but I had to at least try to find Robin Hood and his men. I had brought 74/356
    them here, and if I didn’t explain things to them, they would keep robbing people, and someone would get hurt.
    I set out through the neighborhood, peering at people’s lawns as I rode by. Would Robin Hood try to find a place like Sherwood Forest?
    We didn’t have any forests around, but a lot of trees grew in yards.
    Maybe the men had climbed some and were hiding there. I looked up at every tree I passed but I didn’t see them. Maybe they had found a deserted building. I headed toward the center of town, riding through street after street, searching for any sort of clue.
    Everything seemed normal.
    Navigating around downtown was hard. Cars zipped past me impatiently, driving by so closely that I kept jerking away from them.
    After a while, I headed into another neighborhood. There was nothing unusual there either, except for me, riding aimlessly around in the dark. I was getting tired. I stopped my bike to rest and took the pathetic-o-meter out of my purse. “Look,” I told it, “I need to find Robin Hood before he runs somebody through with a sword or the police shoot him. Can you help me?”
    As I watched, the lettering changed on the dial. I held my breath, thrilled for the magical help, until I read the new sentence: Talks to inanimate objects .
    I was now 83 percent pathetic.
    “Great,” I said. “Just great.” I shoved the pathetic-o-meter back into my purse. “See if I ever speak to you again.” I didn’t check to see if yelling at inanimate objects had made the pathetic-o-meter go up. I might as well head home. I didn’t have the stamina to keep pedaling for much longer.
    I rode back to town sullenly, mumbling Chrissy’s name every once in a while. I wasn’t sure how her job interview as a muse had gone, but she certainly wasn’t inspiring anything but stomach ulcers for me.

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    As I passed a Walgreens I saw them. I was so used to looking up in the trees that I scanned the roof without thinking about it. One of the Merry Men lay up there, bow drawn back, ready to shoot anyone who threatened him. My gaze dropped to the parking lot. There, crouched among the parked cars and moving in, was Robin Hood and the rest of his men. He should have looked ridiculous—a guy in a tunic squatting behind a parked car—but somehow with his muscular frame and handsome features, the tunic thing worked.
    I rode my bike slowly up to them. “Robin!” I whispered.
    He turned and saw me. “Not now, wench, we’re about to liberate some wealth from the gentry.”
    I climbed off of my bike and wheeled it over to him. “My name is Tansy, and you can’t hold up this store.” He raised an unimpressed eyebrow in my direction. “I read your Robin Hood book, but I refuse to believe it.”
    “Yeah, well, I’m having my doubts about it too.”
    “It says I die because a nun poisons me. A nun.” I had forgotten about that, but he glared at me as though I had written it into the book myself. “So avoid nuns from now on. They’re easy enough to