The Seal of Solomon (4 page)

“I'm sorry, Alfred Kropp. Please don't be mad at me.”

I was running my fingertips along the flat smooth part of the black sword. “Don't bother it anymore, okay?” I said.

“Okay, Alfred Kropp.”

I slid the sword beneath the bed. When I first got back from London, I took Bennacio's sword from its hiding place under my bed every day. But as the months went by I took it out less and less. Looking at it created this hollow feeling in my chest. The last time Bennacio wielded this sword it was in defense of the whole world, and now it was just a keepsake. I imagined myself as an old man showing it to the neighborhood kids and croaking, “Look at this, boys! You know what this is? This is the sword of the last knight who ever walked the earth, the bravest man I ever knew.” And they would probably laugh and run away from crazy ol' Kropp with his tall tales of magic swords and doomed knights and the singing of angels.

“What are you thinking about, Kropp?” Kenny whispered above me.

“What would you do, Kenny, if you just found out you're going to inherit a billion dollars and Horace Tuttle has plans to adopt you so he can get his hands on it?”

Kenny was silent for a while, thinking about it, I guess.

“I would run away, Alfred Kropp.”

“Exactly,” I said.

5

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.

6

Over the next couple of weeks, I saw Ashley, the tall, tan, blue-eyed senior, all over campus. One day I looked up and there she was, sitting across from me at lunch. She smiled and I smiled back, but I was a little disturbed, for some reason.

“Hey, Alfred,” she said. “How's it goin'?”

I glanced around. “You sure you want to be seen with me?”

“Why not?”

“It could have an adverse effect on your social life.”

She laughed and flipped her hair. Maybe I'm wrong, but blond girls seem to flip their hair more than brunettes or redheads. “I'll risk it.”

“I know what it's like,” I said, “being the new kid. Only when I came last year I wasn't a senior, I didn't drive a hot car, and obviously, I wasn't much to look at.”

“Why do you put yourself down all the time?”

“I don't put myself there. I just recognize that I
am
there.”

I noticed she was hardly touching her lunch. When she did take a bite, she balanced the food on the very end of her fork.

“I guess you've heard the rumors by now,” I said. “That I'm a terrorist or CIA agent, or the one about me being crazy.”

She shook her head. “The only thing I heard was that your uncle was murdered last spring.”

“He was.”

“I'm so sorry, Alfred,” she said, and sounded like she meant it too. Then she changed the subject.

It wasn't until sixth period, right before the final bell rang, that something odd about that whole encounter struck me: the lunch period for seniors was thirty minutes after mine.

That afternoon I saw Ashley on the way to my bus.

“Hey, Alfred,” she said.

“Hi, Ashley,” I said.

“Where you goin'?”

I pointed at the bus. She said, “You want a ride?”

“Really?” I couldn't have been more surprised if she had asked if I wanted another head.

“Really,” she said. So I followed her into the senior parking lot and climbed into the Miata. Ashley tended to drive too fast and tailgate, but the top was down, the afternoon was sunny, and she was tan, so I could live with it.

“We had this neighbor in Ohio where I grew up,” I said, raising my voice to overcome the rush of wind. “This old lady who took in every stray dog in the neighborhood.”

“Why?”

“She felt sorry for them.”

“You think I feel sorry for you?”

I shrugged.

“Don't you think you're a little young to be so cynical, Alfred?”

“Girls like you don't usually notice guys like me,” I answered. “Much less eat lunch with them and give them a ride home.”

“Maybe I think you're interesting. Hey, I'm starving,” she said. “You want to swing through Steak-N-Shake?”

She didn't wait for an answer but pulled into the drive-through lane and ordered two large chocolate shakes, two double burgers, and two large fries.

After our order arrived, she pulled into a parking place beneath the explosion of red leaves of a Bradford pear tree. The milk shake made me shiver and gave me one of those stabbing pains behind the eyeball. Ashley ate that burger and those fries like she hadn't eaten in weeks. She wasn't the first thin girl I'd known who could do that.

“You're really tan,” I said. “Aren't you afraid of getting skin cancer?”

“I live for the sun,” she said, which I took to mean she didn't give a flip about skin cancer.

“My mom died of skin cancer,” I said.

“Your mom is dead too?”

I nodded. “My mom. My dad. My uncle.”

“I guess I've lived a sheltered life,” Ashley said. “I've never had anything like that happen to me. I mean, your mom and dad and your uncle.”

“Oh, it was more than just them. I've lost count now. No, that's a lie; I count 'em up all the time. I've never told anybody this except my therapist, who doesn't count, but I died too.”

“You died?”

I nodded. “Yeah, but I came back—only sometimes I feel like a zombie, but I don't have any interest in eating people and I dress better. I guess that's the price I have to pay for sticking around. You know how spiders eat by sucking the juices out of their prey? The body or husk or whatever stays, but all the life's been sucked out. That's how I feel. Husk-o'-Kropp.”

She took a long pull from her shake, studying me over the straw.

“Alfred,” she said softly, “nothing ever stays the same. It'll get better.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you're a knight. One of the good guys.”

I wanted to believe her. There were no knights left, but plenty of good guys.

Thinking of knights reminded me of Bennacio, the Last Knight, and his daughter, Natalia, who was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She had kissed me the last time I saw her. I thought about Natalia a lot, wondering where she was and if she was okay, because she was an orphan now like me—but mostly because she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen.

We drove back to the Tuttle house. Ashley put her hand on my arm before I stepped out of the car.

“Here,” she said, digging into her purse. “I want to give you my phone number.”

“Why?”

“So you can call me, silly.”

“Why?”

“Because I like you.”

“You
like
me like me or just like me?”

“I like you.”

My chest tightened and I got out of the car, then turned back and leaned close.

“Listen, I get it. You've taken me on as a project. Poor, big, stupid Alfred Kropp. Well, I don't need your pretty . . . I mean
pity
. Find some other loser to feel sorry for.”

I turned away before she could say anything, jogging across the yard to the front door. I missed seeing the gnarled old oak root sticking up in front of the sidewalk, tripped, and sprawled flat on my face in the cool dirt. Could it get any worse? I had been waiting for a sign and, as I pushed my big slobbery bulk from the ground, I realized this was the sign I was waiting for.

It was time to leave.

7

Horace was standing in the entryway holding a gray suit on a hanger.

“What's this?” I asked.

“Your suit, Alfred.”

“I don't own a suit.”

“You do now. You need to try it on to see if it fits. Tomorrow afternoon is the hearing. And you gotta look nice for the judge, Al,” he said.

I brushed past him, went into the bathroom, and proceeded to floss. After a second there was a soft knock and Horace whispered from the other side.

“Hey, Al, I think you forgot the suit. I'll just hang it here on the knob. We're having fried chicken for dinner. Isn't that your favorite?”

I didn't answer and Horace went away.

I went into the bedroom and pulled my old duffel bag from the closet. It took about five minutes to pack because I didn't have much. The door opened and Kenny came in.

“What are you doing, Alfred Kropp?”

“Packing,” I said.

“You're leaving!”

I looked up at him. He started to cry.