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“Wow,” she said, and looked at me as if I was some sort of celebrity myself. “Where are you going to go?”

“I have to have a dent in my head fixed.”

“Huh?”

“I didn’t tell you the truth when you asked me how I had gotten home last night. I went to see Keefer Dawson and he drove me here.”

“You didn’t?”

“All right, I didn’t.”

“Wow,” she said again.

Yes, I thought. Wow.

She sat with me until I was finished with my sheet and blanket and pillowcase. Now that she knew more about what had happened, she had a laundry list of questions to ask about my life in Ohio. I told her as much as I could. I wanted her to think I was taking her into my confidence because I had a favor I needed from her.

“You weren’t going anywhere tonight, were you?” I asked her.

“No. Why?”

“Can you do me a little favor?”

“Sure,” she said, excited that I was taking her into my confidence.

“Come up to my apartment to hang out.”

“Oh, sure. I’d like that.”

“And when my sister calls to see if I’m there, if she should, tell her I’m in the bathroom. As long as you answer the phone, she’ll believe it.”

“You mean you won’t be there?”

“No, silly,” I said. “I’ll be fixing my dent.”

She made an O with her mouth and nodded, and then she smiled at me.

“Wow,” she said.

Maybe that would become my new name, I thought. Wow.

After I made the bed with the fresh sheet, pillowcase, and blanket, I joined Mother darling and Cory, who were eating take-out Chinese Cory had had delivered. Mother darling was not much of a cook. I was a better cook than she was, in fact, because I was around Grandma more when she made our meals, and she taught me. “Your mother was never interested in learning any of this,” she said. “All she wanted to do was sing and hang out with nobodies.”

I smiled to myself, remembering that.

“You better sit down and eat ‘fore it gets cold, Robin,” Mother darling told me.

I plopped onto a seat, petulantly. Cory was feeding his face as fast as he could scoop the noodles, chicken, and shrimp into his mouth.

&n

bsp; “You’re really in serious trouble now, Robin. I hope you appreciate the situation and behave.”

I picked up a fork and started to serve myself some food. Cory glanced at me and then burped.

“What she needs is a job,” he said, “but with her history, I don’t know nobody who’d hire her, except a pickpocket.”

“He’s right, Robin. That’s somethin‘ we should think about. You have weeks and weeks yet before school starts here.”