That I can believe.

  “So, what’s up with you? Cat got your tongue?”

  I look at her and all I can think to say is, “I’m not a bad person.”

  She nods. “Good. Now can you get over yourself?”

  “What I did was, like, an inadvertent bad thing. Dierdre goes out of her way to do bad things. It makes me so angry.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do lots of things — on purpose — that really get under people’s skin because lots of people are complacent and smug and self-satisfied and if anyone says stuff that reminds them of what they don’t want to think about, they get angry. They’re not angry at me, I tell myself. They’re angry at themselves, even though it sure feels as if they’re angry at me. But it’s worth it, you know, if I’m getting the message out there.”

  “Is there a point you’re trying to make?”

  “Yes!” she says. “You can’t waste your time moping around because people don’t like you or think you’re someone you’re not. In fact, the more I stir people up, the more I know I’m getting something done. Do you get that?”

  I don’t know what to say. I think maybe it’s the bravest thing I ever heard. I nod.

  “Don’t be dumb,” she says.

  “Hey!”

  She rolls her eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant don’t get all silent and hurt. You’ve got words, use them. But use them for a reason, okay? Use them to fight back.”

  “Yeah,” I say, although I am still dumbstruck.

  “So, are you ready for action?” she says.

  I slam my locker door. It’s a cliché, I know, but there it was hanging open in front of me and something had to be done.

  “You’re angry,” she says. “Angry is good.” Then she looks around. My locker door slam got people glancing our way. Samantha moves in close enough to whisper. “You want to get angry at something way more important than some sneaky mean girl?”

  “Yes,” I say. It sounds better than “yeah,” like I really mean it. It’s just one word — one syllable — but it sounds good coming from my mouth. So good I say it again. “Yes.”

  Her face brightens just a bit. “You’d better mean it, because this is really important. Adults think we’re just going to drop the whole thing. They don’t know how serious we are.”

  “That you didn’t need to tell me.”

  “And what about you? Are you serious?”

  “I think so. I mean, I get it, but …”

  “But what, Anthony?”

  Don’t call me that, I want to say to her — shout at her. I’m just an ant. I’m so small and insignificant. I can’t do this!

  “Are you okay?”

  I shake my head. Who am I kidding? Even if I can carry a hundred times my weight, that’s hardly anything when you look at the big picture.

  “Anthony?”

  “I’m afraid,” I say and flinch like she’s going to yell at me. But instead her face softens a bit — not so much granite anymore but soapstone.

  “Do you ever get called names?” she says. I stare at her. “Because I sure do. Stretch, Skyscraper, Spaghetti Legs.”

  I grin. “Trade you for Mini-Me, Peanut, Squirt.”

  “Statue of Liberty, Sky High?”

  “How about Shrimp, Small Stuff, Ankle Biter?” We both laugh. “Sky High’s not too bad,” I say. “As in ‘the sky’s the limit.’”

  Then there is silence between us. Which is interesting, considering it’s just a few minutes before the bell, and the whole school seems to have gone dead quiet. Maybe it’s the end of the world and all the oxygen has been sucked right out of it so there’s nothing left to hear, no birds singing, no creatures stirring, not even a mouse. Still, I hear her just fine when she speaks again.

  “I’m afraid, too,” she says.

  I stare at her. “Really?”

  “Yeah. But I can’t let that stop me. This might be the last chance we have. I mean, politicians are all about winning elections and what the polls say. They don’t do anything. We can’t wait around. It’s now or never. You know?” I nod but I guess she senses my hesitancy. “You’ve got to, got to, got to care.”

  I look down, give my neck a break. All I can think of is that I’m twelve and suddenly I’m supposed to drop everything and help save the world because adults can’t be bothered. Then I look up again and see this hope in her face and I know, somehow, that she’s right and it’s got to happen.

  “I do care,” I say. “I’m caring the best I can.”

  Then she smiles. It’s the first smile I’ve ever seen on her. “You want to march this Friday?”

  I swallow hard. Nod. Then nod again. Vigorously.

  “Good,” she says. “Let’s do it.” She looks away and then does a double take. “It’s not a date, okay. Got that?”

  “As if,” I say.

  “Maybe you can come up with some clever slogans.”

  I nod. “Yeah, sure. I wonder what Greta Thunberg’s creature name is?”

  “Don’t you —”

  “Kidding!” I say. “But here’s something, anyway: ‘Greta is Great.’” I print it in the sky as if they’re words on a poster.

  “You’re right,” she says. “My hero.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Not you, her. Oh, wait!” Her eyes light up. Good, she finally got it.

  “There’s all kinds of things hidden in a person’s name,” I say.

  Then we just look at each other. It’s silent but not because the world has ended, simply because the bell rang some time ago now, and we’re the only ones left in the hall.

  “Friday,” she says.

  I salute. She rolls her eyes and starts off down the hall.

  “I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up with you,” I call after her.

  She swings around. “No long-legged jokes, please,” she says.

  “Okay,” I say and cross my heart. Truth is I’m really not sure I’ll be able to keep up with her. But I’m going to try.

  The Pledge

  “Dinner time,” I said through the door of my dad’s office.

  No response.

  “It’s meat loaf,” I said.

  “I thought we were having chicken.”

  “Nope,” I said and turned to go.

  “I’ve been looking forward to roast chicken all day,” he called after me.

  I stopped. Would I tell him? I wanted to like crazy, but it was Mom’s story. “There’s a good reason for no chicken,” I said.

  * * *

  “Where’s Dad?” said Randy, helping himself to meat loaf and baby potatoes and creamed corn and ketchup and bread and butter and pickles.

  “Dead,” I said.

  “Can I have his meat loaf, Mom?”

  Mom made that irritated tsking noise and started feeding the baby, who didn’t want mashed potato and carrot and whatever other mashed up things she had in her bowl. She pointed at Randy’s plate and said, “Dat, dat, dat!” until Mom airplaned a spoonful of mush into her mouth to shut her up.

  Dad finally joined us, tapping the top of his wristwatch.

  “I know, I know,” said Mom. “You’re dying of hunger. It couldn’t be helped.”

  Dad sat and looked glumly at the table as if there were an open casket there and his dearest friend was lying in it.

  “What happened to the roast chicken?” he said.

  Mom stopped feeding the baby, got up and plopped portions of everything on a plate for Dad.

  “This morning you promised me roast chicken with stuffing and gravy and all the trimmings.”

  Mom came around the table and banged the plate down in front of Dad with such force that one of the potatoes escaped, bounced and rolled under the table, where Ginger barked at it.

  “There was a robbery at the grocery store,” said Mom.

  “A what?”

  “Ginger, out from there. Out!” said Mom.

  My four-year-old sister crawled out from under the table, the runaway potato in her mouth, and climbed into her seat. She was going through a phase of thinking she was a dog.

  Dad looked at his plate and shook his head. “Did they take all the chicken?”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sakes,” said Mom, feeding Belinda, or trying to.

  “It’s true,” I said. “That’s why Mom was late and we don’t have chicken. She was a witness and had to talk to a detective and everything.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” said Mom.

  “At Safeway?” said Dad.

  “Doesn’t sound all that safe,” said Randy. “More like Dangerway.”

  “It wasn’t all that much of a business,” said Mom.

  Then Baby Belinda brought her hand down — SMOOSH! — right in the middle of her bowl and wiped the smile right off Mom’s face. Well, not really. It was just that mashed food covered it up. The smile, I mean.

  “Tell us, Mom,” I said. I had learned only so much when she got home, before she shooed me out of the kitchen.

  She sat back and sighed. She looked around the table, and we were all staring back at her, except for Belinda, who was all hands in and having a great time, splattering potato and who knows what every which way. Even Ginger stopped licking her plate to look up.

  “Were you in any danger?” said Dad.

  Mom finished wiping the mush from her face with her napkin and managed a fragile little smile. “Not really. The robber was in line ahead of me at the cashier.”

  “Holy crap!” said Randy.

  “Yap, yap, yap,” said Ginger enthusiastically. I patted her on the head.

  “He pulled out a gun once the —”

  “He what?” said Dad and Randy and me all together. Ginger whimpered. Belinda just laughed. Her face was barely visible through the food encrusted there.

  Mom threw down her napkin. “Would you please let me finish?” she said. She stared at her plate, as if she was sorry for the all the work she’d put into making a dinner that nobody was going to get around to eating. “He pulled out a gun once all his groceries were packed up and said he wasn’t going to pay for them because he didn’t have any money. Or something like that. Then he walked out.”

  “Whoa!” I said.

  “I’m not sure it was a real gun,” said Mom.

  “How do you know?” said Randy.

  “Well, I don’t,” said Mom, suddenly frowning.

  “But they were real groceries?” said Dad.

  “The poor cashier fainted,” said Mom.

  “Then I guess they were real groceries,” said Dad.

  “I don’t think anyone else noticed what was going on. It was busy. There was the usual hubbub — you know — and he was very soft-spoken. For a robber. Not that I’ve ever encountered a robber before.”

  “So you were the only one who saw him?” I said breathlessly.

  “Apart from the cashier,” said Randy. “But did she, like, hit her head on the counter as she fell and couldn’t remember anything when she recovered, not even her name or where she lives, so that you were the only witness?”

  Mom frowned again. “It was Agnes,” she said. “You know, the one with the big mole. And she knew perfectly well who she was. She just didn’t know who the robber was.”

  “Did you?” said Dad.

  Mom shook her head. “He was wearing a long coat in very bad repair. Gabardine. Honey-colored. I’d been looking at the hem while I waited for him to place his things on the conveyor belt. I thought someone should fix that coat. It was old but had a lot of good wear left in it. A Burberry, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Burglary?” said Dad. “That’s when you enter a building with intent to commit a theft.”

  “Burberry,” said Mom again. “His coat. Must have got it at the Sally Ann.”

  “So was he, like, a street person?” said Randy. “Was he all grotty and unshaved, with crud down the front of his coat and, like, boots with holes in them and no laces?”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sakes, Randy,” said Mom, shaking her head in despair. “What a dreadful, dreadful generalization.”

  “So, what did he look like?” I asked.

  “Well, he was wearing a red hat.”

  “Aha!” said Randy. “A Canadiens fan. A lot of street people are Canadiens fans.” We all stared at Randy. “It’s true,” he said. Then, when we didn’t stop staring, he shrugged and went back to eating his dinner.

  “It wasn’t a hockey toque,” said Mom. “And it wasn’t meant to be red. It had been white at one time, but it was filthy and had a big red smear across the top of it.”

  I had started eating again, but now I put down my fork and stared at my plate.

  “Hmm,” said Dad. “You can bet that hat won’t surface again. Probably dropped it in the nearest dumpster.”

  “Did you see the getaway car?” said Randy.

  “He doesn’t have a car,” I said.

  “How would you know?” said Randy.

  I didn’t answer.

  “What is it, Joseph?” said Mom.

  I didn’t answer. And then I said, “Can I call Danny?”

  * * *

  I wasn’t allowed to call until we’d eaten and helped to clean up.

  “We’ve got to talk,” I said.

  “I’ll be right over,” said Danny.

  We sat out back at the picnic table. I didn’t want anyone to overhear us.

  “It’s about Mr. Gower,” I said.

  “Oh, no,” said Danny. “Why now? It was so long ago! Did he go to the cops? I told you he saw us. He saw us, right? I knew it, I knew it.”

  I waited for Danny to finish. He’s very anxious and you can’t really interrupt him when he’s having one of his panic attacks, even if what you’ve got to say would relieve him of his anxiety.

  “It was so stupid,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “We were so stupid. Why did we do it, Joe? It’s not like he’d ever done anything to us.”

  I waited and watched him squirm. I looked up and saw Mom at the kitchen window watching us. Sometimes Danny gets pretty loud when he’s freaking out. I waved and she turned away.

  Danny took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut. “Tell me,” he said, as if I was a judge and he was only wondering whether he was getting Life or the Electric Chair.

  “He robbed a grocery store,” I said.

  Danny’s eyes opened. He stared at me with this confused expression on his face as if I’d completely changed the topic of conversation. “He what?”

  So I told him Mom’s story, and when I got to the red hat, he gasped.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “Right.”

  His forehead wrinkled, as if he was forty or something — real old. “So what do we do?”

  I wasn’t sure. I had a kind of a plan but I didn’t know if Danny’s anxiety disorder could handle it. Then again, we had a deal. We’d made a pledge. I wasn’t about to do it alone and nobody else could help. The big question was whether we’d keep our promise to each other. Me and Danny.

  * * *

  Out past the train tracks that run behind the mall, out where the county road scoots out of town to the southwest, just past the place where the old people live and the veterinary clinic where doctors look after real dogs, not imaginative four-year-old girls, there’s a rusted and overgrown Quonset hut. It’s the only thing that’s left of the once-upon-a-time stockyards, and out past that, there’s a rundown old farm that nobody lives on. Dad once told me the land was probably valuable, that eventually Ladybank would expand out that way and whoever was sitting on that property would make a pretty penny.

  I told Danny about it. We told each other everything back then — still do. And then, one Saturday when Danny wasn’t feeling too anxious, we decided to go looking for this patient person who’d been sitting on the land, waiting so long for Ladybank to grow. Which is when we discovered Mr. Gower.

  “Is that him?” Danny whispered.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He isn’t sitting.”

  “Well, he couldn’t sit all the time,” said Danny. “It’s just an expression.”

  Mr. Gower was walking when we saw him, walking along what had probably once been a road — the driveway — leading up to the fall-down farm. The grass was almost as high as he was and higher than we were, but we’d taken up a position in a tall maple and Danny had brought his father’s binoculars.

  “He looks just like that guy in the movie,” Danny said.

  “That narrows it down,” I said.

  “You know. The Christmas movie. The one where the kid goes through the ice and there’s an angel trying to earn his wings and a banker and —”

  “It’s a Wonderful Life?”

  Danny nodded, and I took the binoculars from him.

  “The drugstore guy,” he said. “The one who almost poisons someone by mistake.”

  “Mr. Gower,” I said, pulling the old man in on the binoculars.

  But what Danny meant was this guy looked like the bad Mr. Gower, the one who had become a drunk after he’d gone to prison for poisoning the guy, because there was no young George Bailey to stop him. That was how he looked, all right. A moment later he walked right under the tree where we were perched. He didn’t see us, didn’t look up. He was singing a song, but you couldn’t make out the words.

  Cats started appearing out of the high grass. They must have heard him singing and followed him down the road toward the farmhouse. Bunches of them.

  * * *

  We were about nine, then, Danny and me. It didn’t take us long to realize Mr. Gower didn’t own the farm and he wasn’t expecting to make a million dollars anytime soon. He wasn’t “sitting” on the land, he was squatting, living there illegally — but nobody seemed to know, except us. You’d see him around town sometimes. He had an old bike with a box on the back of it. Sometimes there’d be stuff in the box, mostly junk. We’d never seen him in the honey-colored coat my mom described, the one he was wearing when he robbed the store, but we knew the hat, all right. Danny and I were the reason his white hat was splotchy red on top.