Free Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street by Peter Abrahams

strokes. His voice rose. “No attachment! Fax!” He clicked off, swept the peppers into a bowl, turned to us.
    He blinked, then smiled, a strange smile, what with his forehead still being so tense.
    “Hi, Mr. Nok,” said Ashanti.
    “Hello, Ashanti.” He glanced at me. “And you, young lady always for the
kaeng phet ped yang.
” For a second or two, I didn’t get what he was talking about; Mr. Nok’s pronunciation of the dish was a lot different from mine.
    “Yeah, it’s awesome,” I said. “I’m Robbie. Is it true you’re moving or something?”
    His smile vanished. Mr. Nok had one of those unlined faces that made it hard to see his true age, but now he looked pretty ancient. “They close me down,” he said. “No more
kaeng phet ped yang.
” He turned to Ashanti. “No more Mel Gibson.”
    “Why—” I began, but at that moment a fax machine at the end of the counter whirred into action. Papers began shooting into a tray—and spilling out, since the tray was full, and fluttering to the floor at my feet. I bent down, picked them up, and placed them on the counter, but not so quickly that I missed the letterhead on the topsheet—Jaggers and Tulkinghorn—hey! Mom’s firm! Before I could read any more, Mr. Nok reached over and grabbed the sheet of paper. He scanned it, wincing like he’d felt a sudden pain inside. Then he laid it down behind the bowl of peppers and out of my view.
    “But, Mr. Nok,” Ashanti was saying, “what about somewhere else? There must be other places you could rent.”
    Mr. Nok shook his head. “Here is perfection,” he said, looking around the small space, low-ceilinged, not well lit, smoky-smelling, and even a bit dirty, to tell the truth. “This is my dream, my American dream.” His eyes welled up, and two tears rolled down Mr. Nok’s smooth face, leaving glistening tracks.
    I leaned close to Ashanti and spoke in her ear. “Can you read that letter?” I said. She rose on her tiptoes, trying to see over the bowl of peppers, then shook her head. “It might be important,” I said.
    At that moment, Ashanti did something I didn’t expect at all. Her eyes on Mr. Nok’s unhappy face, she grabbed me hard by the wrist—the bracelet wrist. The shock followed at once, and this time it brought the power, although the electric ball came and went in seconds, and so did the blurring of my vision. I got the feeling, rare for me, that I knew exactly what was coming next. All the power, the power in the bracelet, or inme, or both, was about to pass into Ashanti, and this time the red-gold beam would shine from her eyes.
    But that was not what happened. Oh, maybe the power-passing-from-me-to-her part was right, because I felt a slight weakness in my knees, but no red-gold beam shone from Ashanti’s eyes. Instead she suddenly… grew? Was that it? Not wider or bulkier, just taller, by about six inches or so. I glanced down and saw that her feet were off the floor. She was hovering in the air, with no visible means of support. And the expression on her face, that face so seldom smiling—I’ll never forget it: astonishment blossoming into joy. Mr. Nok, wiping his damp cheeks on the back of his sleeve and reaching for another bright-orange pepper, didn’t seem to notice. Ashanti rose a little higher, without the slightest effort, and peered over the bowl at the letter. The hovering went on for maybe another ten seconds or so, and then she settled slowly back to the floor—down to earth, was what I actually thought at the time—and landed softly.
    We looked at each other. “Did you see that?” Ashanti said, so quietly it was more like mouthing the words.
    “Wow,” I said, also quietly.
Wow
didn’t seem like a good enough word for the occasion, but nothing else came to mind.
    Mr. Nok’s cell phone rang, and he moved down the counter to talk.
    “Let’s go,” said Ashanti.
    We headed toward the door. The lone customer was watching us. Was there suspicion in his eyes? I