Also Known as Rowan Pohi (15 page)

"Her lawyer did."

"Do you know where she is?"

He shook his head. "Nope. And she don't want me to know."

I took a few moments to try to digest all that.

"What are you going to do about the divorce papers?" I finally asked.

He rubbed his face, which looked crumpled and beaten. "I already signed them and sent them back."

We were quiet for almost a minute. For the first time I understood that Cody and I weren't the only ones who'd lost someone important.

"That suit looks tight," I said, to break the silence.

He unbuttoned the top button on his shirt. "I can't wait to get it off. When I die, whatever you do, don't let 'em bury me in a suit and tie. Okay? I want to be comfortable in my coffin."

"Okay."

"Promise?"

I nodded. For some reason, I almost felt like crying.

Mom wasn't here when I really needed her. But he was. My father showed up. To defend me. I felt an unexpected surge of gratitude.

"Thanks, Dad."

He looked at me warily. "For what?"

"For coming here. For speaking up for me."

He swallowed. "Welcome."

We could hear the sound of voices inside LeClerc's office, though it was impossible to make out any words.

"They're going to expel me."

"They might do that," he said casually. "But that might not be their smartest move, because if they do, I will sue the ass off this fancy school."

"You will not."

"Oh, yes, I will. I'm a fighter, Bobby. I may go down, but I always go down swinging."

I thought about what he had said in LeClerc's office:
Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining.
That line was an instant classic in my book. I couldn't wait to share it with Marcus and Big Poobs.

The office door opened, and LeClerc appeared.

"You can come in, Bobby. Mr. Steele."

I followed him inside and went to the table. Four people gazed up at us, poker-faced, every one of them. This time I realized I was glad to have my father standing beside me so I didn't have to face the committee alone.

"Your ID card." Dr. LeClerc held out his hand, palm up. "Please surrender it to me."

My heart plummeted at that word:
surrender.

I pulled Rowan's card from my wallet and handed it to him. LeClerc dropped it into the trash.

"You're going to need a new ID card, Bobby."

Smiles suddenly broke out everywhere. Even my father was grinning. I was the only one who had a case of the stupids. I wouldn't allow myself to believe what was happening.

"What you did was wrong, and very serious," Dr. LeClerc declared formally. "But under the circumstances, looking at the bigger picture, this committee has decided not to expel or punish you. Welcome back, Bobby. You've got yourself a fresh start."

He shook my hand, and my father's too.

"Thanks." I didn't know what else to say.

"You can get a new ID during lunch period," Ms. Ryder said. "And if you hurry, you should be able to make your third-period class."

"I expect that you will let your teachers know your real name," Dr. LeClerc said gently, putting his hand on my shoulder. "If they have any questions, they can contact me."

I turned to my father, but he was waving as he hurried out the door.

Still dazed, I floated down the hall in the general direction of biology. My first selfish thought: I couldn't wait to run into Seth and Brogan.

I ran into Heather instead. Our eyes met, so she couldn't pretend she hadn't seen me.

"Hey," I said.

"So what happened?"

"I didn't get expelled. They're letting me stay." Try as I might, I couldn't suppress a huge grin. "They didn't even punish me."

"Congratulations." But there wasn't a sliver of warmth in her voice. "I've got to get to class."

"Wait!" I said.

She froze. I moved a step closer and put my hand on her arm. It was one of those awkward situations that Rowan Pohi would have known how to handle. But Rowan was gone; I was on my own.

"Listen, Heather, I'm real sorry about this. I know I deceived you, but I swear I'll never do that again. Could I have, like, a do-over?"

She looked at me like I was crazy. "A do-over?"

I nodded and smiled. "I have this fantasy that I could walk up to you and introduce myself: 'Hi, I'm Bobby Steele.' And we could start over again."

Her blue eyes were beautiful but cold.

"That's why they call it a fantasy. Because it doesn't happen that way in real life."

"C'mon, Heather, I'm still the same guy you hung out with in your pool, aren't I?" Sheepishly, I smiled. "I'm throwing myself on the mercy of the court."

Trying to make a joke of it, I knelt down in front of her.

"Get up." She wasn't amused, so I stood up.

"You know what you are?" she said slowly. "You are like one of those bugs that imitate other bugs we studied in science. You snuck into this school by wearing a disguise. You acted like us. You dressed like us. You pretended you were one of us. But you were never one of us. Never."

"It's way more complicated than that," I told her, but she had already walked away.

I
WAS LOOKING FOR ROBIN. INSTEAD I RAN INTO SETH
,
standing in front of his locker.

"Did you get expelled?" he asked eagerly.

"Change of plans!" I spread my arms wide, feigning disbelief. "Believe it or not, they decided to let me stay. What's up with that, Seth?"

Seth's smile died. "Bullshit."

"Word," I told him. "You can take it to the bank, Seth. I'm not even getting punished. Put that in your pipe and smoke it."

Seth's face looked pained, like I'd just struck him.

"This isn't over," he warned.

"Yes, it is." I took a step toward him. "I haven't told LeClerc that you guys were trying to blackmail me. Yet. I'll keep quiet about it, so long as you leave me alone."

I put my hand on Seth's shoulder; he violently shook it off. I could feel him staring as I walked away, whistling "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah."

By the time I found Robin, I felt like I was punch-drunk, emotionally exhausted. But today was a reckoning day. I needed to talk to her.

"What's all the commotion?" she asked.

"I'm not Rowan Pohi," I blurted out. "I'm Bobby Steele. Seriously."

"But, when, you said ... How?"

"It's way too long and complicated for me to explain now."

She folded her arms. "Okay, I'll take the condensed version."

I took a deep breath. "See, my friends and I created an imaginary kid. We filled out an application, faked a letter of recommendation, and got him accepted to Whitestone. Then I pretended to be him."

She nodded, like that sort of thing happens every day. "Oh."

"Someone squealed on me, and I almost got expelled," I added. "There's a lot more, but I'd need a couple hours to explain it to you."

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"So your name is...?"

"Bobby Steele."

"Bobby." She said the name slowly, trying it out on her tongue.

"Do you hate me, Robin?"

She shook her head. "I thought you were interesting the first time I met you, and you're even more interesting now." She paused. "But I do feel kind of sad about one thing."

"What?"

"I'll never talk to Rowan again." She blinked. "I liked that kid."

For the second time it hit me that Rowan Pohi had really and truly gone out of existence.

"Rowan was cute too," she added. "That boy was baberrific!"

"That isn't a word!"

"Listen to you!" She sounded indignant. "You invent a whole new person and you're giving me a hard time for making up a puny little word?"

I laughed, feeling grateful that at least one kid at White-stone was going to accept me as Bobby Steele.

I found Throckmorton sitting at his desk in his office. He froze when I told him. He started to speak, then seemed to change his mind.

"Well, I guess you must have had your reasons for doing what you did."

"I did."

He regarded me thoughtfully. "Can I still call you Ro? As a nickname?"

I shrugged. "Fine with me."

"Go see the trainer, Ro," he told me. "He'll fit you for a helmet and pads. We're doing full-contact drills today."

Later that afternoon, after practice, I met Marcus and Poobs at the IHOP and told them I would buy the sundaes.

"How come you're treating?" Marcus wanted to know. I told them what had happened that day, and they leaned forward, hanging on every word. When I finished, they laughed in amazement. Then we traded high-fives all around.

"So Big Bobby came through," Marcus said with grudging admiration. "When it was crunch time, he had your back."

"Yeah."

"You dodged a major bullet, dude," Poobs put in. "And now you're officially a Stony."

I scooped up the last puddle of hot fudge. "I hope I don't turn into a snotty preppy."

"Not an option," Marcus assured me. "We're going to bust on you just like before."

"I do feel bad about a couple of things."

"What?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. It doesn't seem right. I'm going to Whitestone, and you guys are still going to Riverview."

"Who says life is fair?" Marcus replied.

"Thing is, it didn't have to be me who went to Whitestone. It could have been either one of you."

"No, it couldn't," Marcus replied emphatically. "There was no way in hell I was going to walk into that school."

"Me neither," Poobs put in.

"Don't kid yourself, Bobby," Marcus said. "You were the one. It had to be you. And you'd be an idiot to feel bad about it."

T
HAT NIGHT DAD GRILLED SIRLOIN STEAKS. WHEN THE
three of us sat down to eat, I noticed that something was different.

"Where's your Indian feather?" I asked Cody.

Dad and I stared. Cody's feather was gone.

My brother shrugged. "Being Spider-Man is way cooler than being a Indian."

My father put down his fork. "Spider-Man? So you're not an Indian anymore?"

"Nope." Cody put a chunk of steak into his mouth and started to chew. I glanced over at my father, who raised his eyebrows but said nothing more. I was thinking of that expensive Indian necklace I'd gone back and bought at Kopsky's. When I surprised Cody with it, he was totally blown away, almost knocked me over with a hug. Good thing I gave it to him before his Indian phase wore off.

"I used to wear Spider-Man pajamas when I was in second grade," I said. "Remember, Dad?"

He smiled. "Sure I remember."

Cody almost choked with excitement. "You did? Can I wear them, Bobby?"

"I think Mom packed them away in my closet," I told him. "I'll look for them after supper."

 

For months and months I'd been obsessing about my mother. I constructed elaborate and detailed scenes in my head, exciting adventures where I would search and finally find her in some distant city. We would fall into each other's arms in a tearful reunion.
Bobby, Bobby, if you only knew how much I missed you and Cody...

I knew now that those were pipe dreams, fantasies.
That's why they call it a fantasy,
Heather told me.
Because it doesn't happen that way in real life.

I was only beginning to realize how angry I was at Mom for leaving us like that. I had cast Dad as the bad guy and Mom as the innocent victim, but it wasn't that simple. She was the one who walked out on us. But she was paying a huge price for it. She was missing all the important stuff from Cody's life: loose teeth, dumb jokes, birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese, the zany finger-paintings he did in kindergarten. She'd miss my first football game against Phillips Exeter. She was missing everything.

Still, some things are so real, so vivid, they can't easily be erased from memory. Like Mom's hermit cookies, just out of the oven. I can still taste them. I can still see the dreamy look she got stirring her morning coffee. Those little things, and a million others, make it hard to face the truth.

Goodbye, Mom.

Then there's Heather. I doubt I'll ever forget that afternoon we spent in her pool. For nearly an hour I had the whole world in my hand—two lush planets actually, or binary stars—but that world is gone. I will never get back in that pool with her or touch the trunk of that indoor tree. I will never get to ride Onyx down a wooded trail. Heather had cut me loose. Early release. I could still see the final, closed look on her face, like a deserted beach house before a hurricane with every door and window boarded up.

Goodbye, Heather.

Robin Whaley was surprisingly sympathetic when I told her about it later. We sat outside on the stadium stairs, watching the cheerleaders practice.

"I'm real sorry she broke up with you, Bobby. Really, I am. It's her loss."

"Apparently not," I said with a wry smile.

"Well, you've still got me," Robin murmured after a moment. "Unfortunately, I don't have legs up to my eyeballs like Heather."

"Overrated," I told her.

She smiled. "No, it's not. But thanks for saying that."

When she turned to look up at me, I noticed the pretty sparkle in her eyes.

"There's a film festival at Whitestone this Saturday," she said.

"I already have tickets," I said.

Her eyes narrowed. "Oh, okay."

I pulled two tickets out of my wallet and showed them to her. "One for me, and one for you."

"Oh." She tried to play it cool but couldn't suppress a big grin.

Things got back on track at Whitestone, though I had to spend a lot of time explaining to teachers, coaches, and other kids who I really was. In grade school I once had a friend named Jake Goodwin whose mother remarried. All of a sudden his name changed to Jake Baver. That was weird enough, but at Whitestone my entire name changed. I had to bid farewell to someone who had been with me his whole life.

Goodbye, Rowan.

But not entirely. Once in a while teachers and kids still called me Rowan. Old habits are hard to break; I still answered to that name.

And maybe some of Rowan's confidence—his chutzpah—had rubbed off on me. Case in point: That girl Robin and I observed from the library conference room, the goddess with red hair, transferred into our English class. She sat right behind Derrick.