Sammy Keyes and the Power of Justice Jack (12 page)

Then all of a sudden Justice Jack appears inside the apartment and tells me to hide. So I squeeze under the couch, where I’m all hot and smooshed. Like a grilled cheese sammich being flattened with a spatula.

“Be gone!” Justice Jack cries through the window at the old biddies, and just like that,
poof
, they’re gone.

“Beware, young one,” he says, hanging upside down to look at me under the couch. “Evil is out to destroy you!” And then,
poof
, just like that,
he’s
gone, too.

But I’m still stuck under the couch, and can’t seem to move. And I get this total panic attack where I’m struggling like mad to get out from under the couch but I’m not getting anywhere and I can’t
breathe
.

And then, just like that,
poof
, I’m sitting up, gasping for air.

Awake.

Grams is standing over me holding Dorito, shaking her head. “We really need to do something about this cat sleeping on your head.” She looks up and down the length of the couch and tisks. “You can’t even stretch out anymore, can you?”

“It’s fine, Grams,” I tell her, but she’s right. The couch seems smaller every night.

And Dorito’s sure not helping.

Anyway, maybe it was all the feeling boxed in, I don’t know, but I was actually happy to be on my way to school. Happy to be free and
moving
.

The great thing about a skateboard is, you can pump hard, just cruise, or mix it up. Normally, I ride hard to school because I’m late, but I do like to mix it up. It feels good to really push yourself, and then go,
Ahhhhhh
, and enjoy it. And since for once I
wasn’t
running late, I had a lot of fun riding to school.

All that feel-good goes away, though, when I shuffle up the school steps and run into Billy. “Hey, Sammy,” he says, and it sounds really flat. Like he’s been steamrollered and can’t peel himself up.

I tell him hey back, and after standing there a minute, I blurt out, “Look, Marissa may be my best friend, but she’s crazy and she’s wrong and she’s
stupid
when it comes to this.”

“I just don’t get it,” he says as we walk along together. “I thought everything was fine.” He looks at me. “I thought everything was
good
.”

And that’s when it hits me.

He doesn’t know about Danny.

And I realize I have to make a decision.

Am I Billy’s friend, too?

Or just Marissa’s.

Does this drag out until he finds out the hard way?

Or do I rip the Band-Aid off and just get it over with.

Holly’s always telling me to listen to my gut, so that’s what I do. “She got a call from Danny, Billy.”

“What?”

He looks shocked, so I snort and say, “Yeah, exactly. But what’s stupid is, she’s falling for his smooth-talking apologies and she thinks he deserves a second chance.”

He’s quiet for a long time, and finally he says, “So they’re going
out
?”

“No. He’s just snowed her into thinking there’s a
chance
they’ll go out.”

He shakes his head. “So we’re back to the top of the slide.”

“Yeah. We had a big argument about it. I think she’s being an idiot.” I give him a little shove. “
We
might have broken up over
you
.”

He stops walking and squeezes me with a hug. And when he finally lets go, he seems to be more like his old self. “So why didn’t you?”

I grin. “You can thank Justice Jack for that.”

“Justice Jack,” he chuckles. “That dude is awesome.”

“Yeah, well, he was handing out ‘Justice Jackets’ to the homeless at the police station when Marissa and I were walking by fighting about you, and it sorta distracted us.”

“Justice
Jackets
?” He full on laughs. “That dude is
righteously
awesome.”

So I felt better about Billy’s state of mind when we split up to go to our homerooms, but later when we converged outside of history, he was back to being bummed out.

“Aw, Billy.”

He gives a little shrug and is about to say something, but then all of a sudden Lars is there whooshing his hair, hovering, making everything totally awkward. “Hey,” he says, then just stands there.

“What’s up?” I ask him.

Whoosh.

Then he looks down and says, “Sasha says thanks.”

My eyebrows take a little stretch. And I want to say, Oh,
really
? because Sasha isn’t exactly the thanking kind. But for some reason what comes out of my mouth is, “So everything’s okay?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know what to do. She’s trapped and her parents are, like, jail keepers. She cries all the time.”

He’s actually not being annoying or condescending. At that moment he just seems like a guy who’s miserable and kinda desperate. So I ask, “How do you know? Do they let you talk on the phone?”

He pulls a mini-book of folded papers out of his back pocket. “We write notes.” He unfolds the papers and shows us. The writing is scrawled, single-spaced, and double-sided. “This was just from this morning!”

“I wouldn’t call that a
note
,” Billy says. “And how did she get it to you?”

“We have a secret rock. I rode out there before school.”

I look at Lars. “So, like, at six-thirty this morning you rode out to Sisquane?”

He nods. “My parents think I’ve joined the cycling team.”

The bell rings, and as we start filing up the ramp, I ask, “Have you tried talking to her parents? Like maybe you could get, I don’t know—supervised visits, or whatever?”

He snorts. “Just like jail.” And suddenly he’s back to being Lofty Lars, acting like he’s smarter than everyone around.

“What could it hurt?” I ask, but he just shakes his head like it’s the stupidest idea ever, and with another head whoosh he bolts up the ramp ahead of us.

“Rock of Loooove,” Billy snickers like a lounge lizard, and for that instant he seems like the old Billy again.

And then Heather rushes by to beat the bell. There’s still actual cigarette smoke coming out of her mouth as she turns and says to Billy, “Your girlfriend’s two-timing, you know.”

I wanted to shove her over the guardrail. What kind of person gloats about something like that? But she was already at the door, so I just called, “Your life’s an ashtray, Heather.”

Whatever
that
was supposed to mean.

Anyway, I was
really
glad that I’d followed my gut and told Billy about Marissa and Danny. It hadn’t even crossed
my mind that Heather would knife him with the news, but of course she did.

That’s just Heather.

During class I kept trying to catch Billy’s eye and give him a smile or whatever, but Sad Billy was back and by the end of class he looked like Eeyore with a dark little cloud hanging over him.

I tried to give him a pep talk between classes but he didn’t want to hear it. Then at lunch he didn’t show up at our usual meeting place, and since Holly and Dot were in the dark about Marissa’s little relapse, lunch was small-talky and awkward, with Marissa being a little too chatty and cheerful and me being quiet and glum.

Finally Holly asks, “What’s going on?” because obviously something’s not right.

I stand up and collect my garbage. “Ask Marissa.” Then I take off. And since Billy’s in both my classes after lunch, I got to see him sit through them all quiet and bummed.

Got to watch his little cloud get heavier and darker.

Unfortunately, Heather is also in those two classes, so I got to see her be all smug.

Got to watch her eye Billy and sneer.

And because
Marissa
is in sixth period, too, I got to watch
her
act like nothing was wrong.

“You’re being just like your parents!” I finally hissed at her.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she hissed back.

“Their whole world is falling apart because your dad has an addiction, and they try to pretend like nothing’s wrong!”

“I don’t have an addiction, and the world isn’t falling apart!”

“Yes, you do, and Billy’s world sure is!”

Well, she didn’t want to hear about
that
, so she huffed off and never came back. And after school she just cut out a side door.

So I ended school the way I’d started it—on the steps with Billy and my skateboard. “You meeting up with Casey?” he asked, but it sounded all choked. Like he was trying really hard not to break down.

“I’m thinking I’ll hang with you for a while.”

He stops moving and his head wobbles a little, and then he just sits down. Right there in the middle of the school steps, he just sits down. “She didn’t even say hi.”

So I sit down next to him, and, really, I don’t know what to say.

She’s a jerk?

She’s an idiot?

You deserve way better?

Finally I say a real lame “I don’t think she handled it very well, that’s for sure.”

He just gives a dejected shrug.

“Look, I don’t understand it, but she’s stuck on Danny, and I don’t see her getting unstuck.”

He shakes his head and stands up. “I need to go
do
something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” He thumps down a few steps and says, “I wish I could find Justice Jack. I’d get in his sidecar and
ride
.”

And that’s when it hits me that I know something that’ll totally take Billy’s mind off of Marissa.

Something that’ll have him jumping up and down with excitement.

Something I know I should absolutely
not
tell him.

But he’s my friend.

And totally miserable.

So I do.

“You know where he
lives
?” Billy squeals. “Can we go?”

“I don’t know, Billy,” I tell him, trying to build up the suspense. “It’s top-secret.”

Billy drops his voice. “So how do
you
know?”

I drop mine, too. “I can’t tell you.”

He turns on the puppy-dog eyes. “Take me to the secret hideaway, please, please, pleeeeeeease?”

I frown at him. “You’ve got to
swear
to secrecy.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die-aye-aye!” he says, making a great big
X
over his heart.

In the back of my mind I
am
having doubts, but I try to block those out. I mean, what can it hurt to take a peek, right?

After all, he’s crossed his heart and hoped to die-aye-aye.

“Okay,” I tell him, and then ask him to get a message to Casey to call Billy’s cell when the high school’s dismissed so I can let him know that I won’t be meeting him at the graveyard. But also, since I’m on kind of a reckless roll, I’m thinking maybe he can meet us at Justice Jack’s secret hideaway. For one thing, I want to see him, but I’m also thinking
that it might be a good idea to hand Billy off to him afterward so Billy’s not alone when he comes crashing down again about Marissa.

Getting ahold of Casey is really complicated because his mom decided she could keep us from talking to each other by taking away his phone. So now we have this elaborate relay system, which includes people Billy knows at the high school, code names, and pay phones.

Anyway, after a few minutes of texting, Billy closes his phone and says, “Done!” Then he looks at me with happy eyes. “Lead me to my leader!”

I cock my head. “Doesn’t that make
me
your leader?”

Billy thinks a minute. “Very well, then. Leader, lead me to the
supreme
leader!”

“He’s not
my
leader,” I grumble. “And we’re only going to his secret hideout, not him, got it?”

“Got it! Now lead on!”

So I set off, saying, “I’m trusting you, okay? No sharing this with anyone anywhere anytime.”

He gives me a snappy salute. “Your wish is my command!”

“I don’t know if you’re going to like seeing it, Billy.”

“Why?”

“Well … what do you think his secret hideaway’s like? A cave? A hidden underground laboratory with a thick steel door? A penthouse suite?”

He squints at me. “In Santa Martina?”

I blink at him. “Okay. Good. Because it’s none of those things.”

“So? What is it?”

I pick up the pace. “A pink trailer.”

“A pink trailer?” He does a little dance around me. “Are you serious?”

“That’s what I’ve been told.”

“A pink trailer would be
perfect
.”

“It would?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

He’s still dancing. “He drives a dirt bike with a sidecar!”

“So?”

“He shoots paintballs with a slingshot!”

“So?”

“He has a
Jackhammer
and gives away Justice Jackets!”

“So?”

“
So
? Don’t you get it? It’s perfect!”

Well, I don’t really, but if it makes Billy happy, then great.

Now, according to my little mental GPS, we’ve got about two miles to walk. And they
would
go a whole lot quicker on a skateboard, but since Billy’s got nothing but his dancing feet, I just walk along holding my skateboard, listening to him, uh,
prattle
for at least fifteen minutes about the awesomeness of life as a superhero. And he’s in the middle of saying something about Justice Jack being “pure of heart” when he interrupts himself to answer his phone. “Ya-lo?” He listens a second, then in a very nasally voice he says, “Please hold while I transfer your call,” and hands the phone to me with a grin.

“Hey!” I say into the phone, and all of a sudden I feel stupidly happy.

“Hey,” Casey says back. “Change in plans?”

“Billy needs a little post-breakup pick-me-up, so we’re going to check out Justice Jack’s secret hideaway.”

“Whoa, wait, what? Marissa broke up with him?”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

“I’ll give you one guess.”

There’s a short pause. “Danny?”

“Bingo. And since the secret hideaway is a trailer way out in the sticks, it should be safe for you to meet us.”

“Way out in which sticks?”

“It’s right after the junkyard. You know where all those eucalyptus trees are? Turn in there, on Harmon. Sandydale Ts off of Harmon. It’s at three-fifty-seven Sandydale.”