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

thought so, but some adults always looked at kids that way.
    Out on the street, I said, “You… you levitated.”
    “Yeah.”
    “What did it feel like?”
    “Totally sick,” Ashanti said. “Is that your mom’s firm, Tulkinghorn and Jaggers?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Who’s Egil Borg?”
    “Never heard of him.”
    “He’s the one who signed the letter. It says that because Mr. Nok hasn’t paid the New Brooklyn Redevelopment Project, they’re suing him for treble damages.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “Something bad.”
    We started walking home.
    “How come you wanted to see Mr. Nok?” I said. “Did you know what would happen?”
    “No way,” Ashanti said.
    “You said you had an idea.”
    “More like an urge,” Ashanti said. “I just had to. There was this pressure building in my head, building and building, and I thought the red-gold beam would happen, but it didn’t.”
    “So you believed me about that? The beam and all?”
    “Yeah.”
    “No doubts?”
    “Nope.”
    “But why?” I said. “It’s actually not so easy to believe. I’m still having trouble myself.”
    Ashanti flicked my shoulder with the back of her hand. “Hey! What’s wrong with you? Trying to get me to doubt you? A little too late, don’t you think, now that I’ve got this hovercraft thing going?”
    I laughed. So did Ashanti. She gave my shoulder another one of those backhand flicks.
    “Any pressure now?” I asked. “Inside your head, I mean.”
    “I know what you mean,” Ashanti said. “And the answer’s no. The moment I rose up it was all gone,
pffft,
just like that.”
    “Do you think you could do it again?”
    Ashanti closed her eyes, took a deep breath. A moment passed. “No,” she said. Her eyes opened. They turned yellow in the headlights of a taxi passing by, then went back to normal, an effect I’d probably seen many times at night, but now inspired a new thought, probably crazy:
there’s magic in the world.
“What about you?” Ashanti said. “Can you make the beam happen?”
    “No.”
    “Try.”
    I tried my best, if trying my best meant squeezing my eyes shut, scrunching up my face, and praying for a headache. No electric ball, no currents, no beam, no change of any kind. I shook my head.
    “What if we both touch the heart?” Ashanti said.
    “We’ll get a shock.”
    “So what?”
    We both touched the heart. Surprise: no shock. Also no beam, no levitation.
    “Something extra has to be in the mix,” Ashanti said. “Some outside thing makes it happen.”
    “The New Brooklyn Redevelopment Project?” I said. But that couldn’t be right: the New Brooklyn Redevelopment Project had nothing to do with the foul on the basketball court. And what about Tut-Tut? How could there be any connection between those skateboarders and Sheldon Gunn? What did all those events or situations or whatever they were have in common? I didn’t know.
    “Poor Mr. Nok,” Ashanti said. “Comes all this way for his dream, cooks the greatest food in town, and then gets kicked onto the street. There’s no justice.”
    “Whoa! Say that again.”
    “About Mr. Nok and the American dream and—”
    “No. The last part.”
    “There’s no justice?”
    “Exactly.” I was getting excited. “That’s the outside thing, what makes the magic happen!”
    “Magic?”
    “Or whatever this is. Maybe not magic, but something special.” And didn’t it have to be special, because of all the injustice around? I suddenly felt the weight of the injustice, as if the whole huge city and all its buildings were pressing down.
    “Injustice is the outside thing?” Ashanti said.
    “Any other explanation?” I said.
    “Sure,” said Ashanti. “We’re both out of our minds.”

A shanti lived across the street from me and three or four stoops down. Her apartment was on the ground floor, but it looked a lot like ours: we even had the same kind of fridge. One big difference was all these professional-type photos on the living-room