I didn’t run away that night. Or the next night. Or the night after that. The last time I ran away from Knoxville I left with just the clothes on my back and no planning whatsoever (at least on my part), so this time I was determined not to leave without some clean socks and underwear and a firm destination in mind.
A couple of days after Mr. Needlemier’s visit, Horace informed me a court hearing had been scheduled to hear the merits of his petition to make me Horace Tuttle Jr. Then he proceeded to shower me with gifts. He bought me an iPod, clothes, and a cell phone. He started calling me “my boy,” as in, “Good morning, Alfred, my boy!” When he wasn’t following me around like a puppy desperate for attention, he and Betty were out house hunting, mostly in the fancier neighborhoods in Knoxville. I knew I had to escape from the Tuttles as soon as possible.
Still, I couldn’t think of a single place I would run to or what I would do once I got there. England was a possibility: since my father had come from there, I figured there must be relatives around, but I couldn’t imagine myself just showing up at their door and announcing, “Hi there! I’m your cousin Kropp!”
On my way to the bus one afternoon, I got seriously Kropped. Four football players jumped me, ripped my backpack from my shoulder, and knocked me upside the head with it a couple times. They took off, leaving me rolling in the grass.
I heard a girl’s voice above me.
“Hey, are you all right?”
I peeked at her through my fingers. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Tan.
“You’re Alfred Kropp, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“I’m Ashley.”
She had a round face and blue eyes—very blue, maybe the bluest eyes I had ever seen, big too, about the size of quarters.
She sat down beside me. We watched as my bus pulled from the curb, belching black smoke.
“Wasn’t that your bus?” she asked.
I nodded.
“You need a ride?”
I nodded again. Nodding made my head hurt.
“Come on. I’m parked right over there.”
I followed her to the car, a bright yellow Mazda Miada convertible. I dropped my backpack into the tiny backseat and climbed in.
“How do you know my name?” I asked.
“Somebody told me. I just moved here from California.
My dad got transferred.”
“Are you a senior?” I figured she was, since the car was parked in the senior lot.
She nodded. I thought this was it, a perfect example of the luck-o’-the-Kropp: I get a lift by a gorgeous senior and nobody’s around to see it.
“Why were those guys beating you up?”
“Kropping.”
“Kropping?”
“You must be new,” I said, “if you’ve never heard of Kropping.”
“Why don’t you turn them in?”
“It’s not the code.”
She glanced at me. “What code?”
“I don’t know. The code of chivalry, I guess.”
“Chivalry? What, you’re a knight or something?”
I started to say “No, I’m descended from one,” but then she might peg me for a freak, which I kind of was, I guess, but why give that away now?
“There aren’t any knights anymore,” I said. “Well, except certain guys in England, like Paul McCartney; I think he’s a knight. But that’s more an honorary title.”
Suddenly, the left side of my face felt warm while the right side, the side unlooked at by Ashley, felt cool—cold even. It was weird.
I told her where the Tuttles lived, and she pulled next to the curb to let me out. We sat there a minute, looking at the house slouched there behind the weed-choked lawn and overgrown shrubbery.
“This is where you live?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Just where I exist.”
I got out of the car. “Thanks for the ride.”
“No problem. See you around.”
“Sure. See you.”
I watched her little yellow Miada rip down Broadway.
Then I went inside and found some ice for my head.