17
The Reunion
Bronson returns to the shop. Bronson returns to the hideout. Bronson returns to his school. The team plans their attack.
A few hours later the bell above the door rang again. Bronson stepped in.
“Hello?” he said. “Mr. Horum? Door’s open. Look, I wasn’t trying to be a jerk or nothing before. I—”
A moan rose up from behind the counter. Bronson ran back and jumped over the counter. Mr. Horum was still, wheezing with his hand over his wound. Bronson leaned down and held his hand.
“No,” Bronson said, “Wake up. It’s me. Bronson.” Mr. Horum took in a big breath and opened his eyes.
“Magician’s son,” he said, “what you do to Horum now?”
“I swear I didn’t have anything to do with this,” Bronson said. “I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.”
Mr. Horum pulled himself up onto his elbows. “We ask your friend if you do this. Guy wears mask. Like you.”
Andrus. Bronson knew they’d come after him, but it never occurred to him that they would know who his friends were. If they knew Mr. Horum who else did they know?
“How bad?” Bronson asked.
“He buy cheap gun, your friend,” he said. Mr. Horum moved his hand and showed Bronson the wound. Deep, but stop at bone I think.
“Come on,” Bronson said. “We need to get you someplace safe.”
“Your friend come back, you think?”
Bronson smiled at the old man. He led him to the door. “That guy? Maybe. But you’re my friend, Mr. Horum. No matter what happens we’ll cover each other, right?”
Mr. Horum grunted and let go of Bronson. He took a few steps on his own. Bronson moved back in to help him, but Mr. Horum waved him off.
“Yes, boy-oh,” he said. “We cover each other. Where we go?”
“Well, I’m a superhero,” Bronson said, “so I say we go to my secret hideout.”
“You got hideout?” Mr. Horum asked.
“You call this hideout?” Mr. Horum asked.
Mr. Horum laid in the far corner with his bloody shirt beside him. Bronson sat next to a small fire near the entrance. A small kettle sat on a metal grate above the fire. Bronson tore an old t-shirt into strips that he sterilized in the boiling water before using them to clean Mr. Horum’s wound.
“You live here whole time?” Mr. Horum asked. “Right around corner whole time. Crazy pants.”
“Not the whole time,” Bronson said. He picked up the kettle and knelt down beside Mr. Horum. “Just since my uncle kicked me out. This is going to hurt, okay?”
Bronson took one of the steaming rags and laid it on the gash in Mr. Horum’s chest.
Mr. Horum winced. “You right about that,” he said. “You crazy? Where you learn first aid? Internets?”
“The scouts,” Bronson said as he cleaned the wound. “This’ll keep it from getting infected. Hopefully.”
“Heesh. I get no infection if you kill me too, hmmb?” Mr. Horum leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He breathed slow and hard through his nose.
“Bronson,” he said, “why you no tell me you need home? I give you place to stay no problem.”
Bronson threw the rag into a plastic bag. He grabbed another cloth then applied it to the wound. A small rat ran up and started sniffing the bag. Bronson shooed him away then went back to cleaning the wound.
“Aww, I didn’t want to bug you or nothing,” he said. “Besides, who would want to leave all this, right?” He put the cloth in the bag. “So what did that man say to you?” he asked.
“He say he need you back,” Mr. Horum said. “Said he will hurt… girl I think?”
“That’s what I figured,” Bronson said. He put a bandage on the wound.
“You have girlfriend?” Mr. Horum asked. He winked at Bronson. “Hootcha, hootcha.”
Bronson stuck his tongue out at him. “She’s just a girl I know. From school.”
“No questions from me, boy-oh. Except… how you know this guy?”
“He tricked me,” Bronson said. “He told me we’d save the world, but I guess that’s what most bad guys think… that they are doing the right thing. Maybe I wanted it to be true a little too. Living like this… it’s so hard. When somebody offers you a path out of that… I had to give it a shot. He promised me a family. It seemed like he wanted to help, but if I’d known it would come back and bite the people I care about I never would have even thought about it. I never wanted things to be like this.”
Bronson knelt down to give Mr. Horum a pillow and a blanket. Mr. Horum reached out for Bronson’s hand.
“You be the one to get the bad guy, I betcha.”
Bronson crept between the lockers. Considering he’d had some attendance problems the last couple weeks he didn’t want to get caught. He didn’t imagine he could just play off showing up on the last day before summer break. He turned the corner. Principal Kane stood next to the boy’s bathroom looking at a poster on the wall.
Bronson ducked back out of sight. His foot fell back on a snack pack wrapper that crinkled under his foot. Bronson winced as Principal Kane whipped around.
“Mr. Black, fancy seeing you here,” Principal Kane said.
“Well, I was heading to class now, sir,” Bronson said.
“Do that, but come see me at the end of the day. I think you know we have some business to discuss.”
“Yeah. Okay, sir. Sure,” Bronson said. As he walked away he couldn’t help but think Principal Kane was acting a little strange, but he put it out of his head and went to find Cindy.
Cindy picked up the script for that day’s newscast then went around the room and switched on each of the lights. The door opened and Bronson walked in. He checked the hallway one more time then shut and locked the door behind him.
“Sit down,” he said. “We need to talk. Now.”
“Freak,” Cindy said. She hoped this latest distraction would take a hint but he held his ground. She pulled up a chair. “You’ve got two minutes,” she said. “It’d better be real important.”
“Okay. There’s a bad, bad guy who’s trying to get to me.”
“Who? Bugs?” Cindy asked. “I thought this was going to be something exciting.”
“No, not Bugs,” Bronson said, “somebody worse, and he knows you know me so he might try to get you too.”
Cindy waved her fist at Bronson. “What’d you tell him twerp?” she asked.
“Nothing. Nothing. He just found out I know you. And Horum. But that’s it I think. ‘People I know in the city’ is a pretty short list.”
Cindy put down her fist. “Well, why would somebody be after a nobody like you anyway?”
Bronson thought it might come to this. He bowed his head then looked up in what he hoped was a dramatic fashion. “Because… I’m Dogboy.”
Cindy laughed. A lot. She laughed standing up. She fell down to the floor and laughed some more. She got up on her knees still laughing. “You?” she asked. “Dogboy? Ha! Wait’ll I tell the ot—”
“No,” Bronson said. “Don’t tell people. The police think I’m a bad guy now. Do you want to get me arrested or something?”
“Do you really expect me to believe you’re being for real?” Cindy asked.
“Yeah,” Bronson said. “For really real.”
“So, are you a bad guy? They said on the news you’ve been robbing people.”
“I thought I was doing a good thing. This guy who is after me kind of leads a bunch of thieves from underneath the city. He calls them–”
“—the Guild of Thieves,” Cindy said. “I knew they were real.” She grabbed a notebook from her desk. “How many members would you say this guild has?”
“We don’t have time for this,” Bronson said. “We need to go.”
“Look, kid,” Cindy said, “this is big. There’s always time to cover a big story. You came here to rescue me, Dogboy? Don’t bother. I can take care of myself.”
He took her notebook, then ripped out the page she’d started writing on and ripped it up.
“Hey, that’s mine,” Cindy said.
Bronson handed the notebook back to her. “Cindy,” he said, “I didn’t come here to save you. I need your help to bring him down.”
Back at Dogboy’s secret lair Mr. Horum, Cindy, and Bronson sat around a collection of items Bronson had taken from Mr. Horum’s shop as well as a crudely drawn copy of the blueprints Bronson had seen in Andrus’s office.
“So,” Bronson said, “we all know our jobs?” Bronson picked up a rope and some new throwing knifes and put them in the pouches in his cape. He pulled his mask down over his face.
“Come here, boy-oh,” Mr. Horum said. He pulled out a dingy brown handkerchief from his shirt pocket. He unfolded it in the palm of his hand. There was a small silver dollar, which he picked up and handed to Dogboy. “This my lucky coin. Was gift from my Bala’s papa. He give it to us when we leave for America. You take it. Maybe it help you out.”
“Aw, Mr. Horum,” Dogboy said, “I couldn’t.”
Mr. Horum took Bronson’s hand and placed the silver dollar on his palm. He closed Bronson hand and held it with both of his. “You take it. You take it. You may be big time hero guy but still we can help.”
Bronson took the silver dollar and put it in his pocket. He walked over to Cindy, who was looking through his trunk. She looked up and eyed his superhero costume.
“That outfit is awful,” she said.
Dogboy straightened his cape. “I kind of threw it together,” he said.
“So you lived down here?”
“It’s not too bad after the first couple of nights. Better than sleeping outside anyway.”
“And this whole superhero thing? A little crazy, right? You okay up here?” She tapped her temple.
“My dad left me this stuff. Called it my legacy. He wants me to do this. I can’t let him down.”
“Sorry, kid. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“It’s fine,” Bronson said. “I think about it a lot anyway. You didn’t remind me of it or anything.”
Cindy took Dogboy’s hand. “You came up with a pretty decent plan, kid, but be careful. You need to make it out of there alive if I’m going to get that exclusive interview, right?”
Maybe it was her concern for him, maybe it was because they were about to try to bring down a lot of bad guys and he was feeling pretty courageous, but Dogboy thought it might be a good idea to lean in for a kiss. He got about two inches from her face and chickened out. He patted Cindy on the shoulder. “Just joking,” he said. “Come on, gang. Let’s go.”
Dogboy ran over to the entrance and climbed out into the alley.
Mr. Horum walked up beside Cindy. “You know he like you, right?” he asked.
Cindy blushed. “I dunno. Maybe,” she said.
Dogboy stuck his head down through the entrance. “Guys, enough standing around. The day isn’t going to save itself.”
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