Chopped! Read online

  Copyright ©2013 by Saddleback Educational Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher. SADDLEBACK EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING and any associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Saddleback Educational Publishing.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-62250-002-4

  ISBN-10: 1-62250-002-4

  eBook: 978-1-61247-686-5

  This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was pitch-black chaos in the storage room.

  The gunshots fired by the two Ninth Street Rangers gangstas echoed off the cinder block walls. The gangstas were screaming, crying, and cursing in agony from the pepper spray that fourteen-year-old Robinson “Robin” Paige had just fired at their faces. Off to Robin’s left, his friend Karen “Kaykay” Knight was bellowing too. Robin thought she might be shot. As for Robin’s ace, Sylvester “Sly” Thomas, Robin heard nothing. He feared his homeboy could be dead, face down on the cold floor in a pool of his own blood.‘’

  Why did we come here, Robin asked himself. Why, why, why? I just assed us out. What was I even thinking?

  Robin knew he had just a few seconds to assess, react, and get him and his friends out of the storage yard. Otherwise, the gangstas would fire at them again. The pepper spray wouldn’t stop them for long. Only moments stood between him and his friends living or dying.

  That is, if they’re even alive.

  But Robin couldn’t think. Not only had the gunshots deafened him, but the events of the night also spun willy-nilly through his head like a helicopter with a busted blade.

  The decision to come out here, to this storage room where the Ninth Street Rangers kept their drug money and loot. Not to steal money from the Rangers and give it to a righteous cause, but to recover a set of candlesticks that the Rangers had stolen from an old lady friend of his grandmother’s.

  Getting through the gate of the U-Store. Picking the Rangers’ storage room lock again. Finding the candlesticks that were now in his backpack.

  And then the angry voices of the gangstas as they surprised Robin and his buds. Hitting the floor and killing their flashlight. The click of guns being cocked. Shooting pepper spray at the Rangers at the same time they fired their handguns.

  The Rangers screaming.

  Kaykay screaming.

  It was too much.

  Robin forced himself to think. He crawled across the hard concrete. There was Sly!

  “You with me?” he hissed.

  Sly squeezed Robin’s bicep to indicate he was okay. Robin took his homeboy’s hand in his and kept crawling. They moved toward the sound of Kaykay’s sobs. When they reached her, Robin felt no blood.

  “How are you hurt?” He kept his voice low. The Rangers were still cursing and bellowing from the burning pepper spray, but it would be disaster if they heard him and his buds.

  You don’t have to be able to see to fire a Glock at a noise, Robin thought.

  “Tried—tried—tried to spray ’em,” Kaykay gasped. “Got myself!”

  Oh no. Kaykay had pepper-sprayed herself by accident. Her face had to feel like it was on fire—eyes tearing crazily, her nose running like a thief in the night.

  But she’ll be okay.

  He stood. “Let’s get her out of here,” he whispered to Sly.

  “But the Rangers!” Sly hissed.

  “Shut up and do what I do!” Robin hissed back.

  He lifted Kaykay to her feet. Sly helped. Then the two boys picked up their friend and crossed to the open door of the storage room. The Rangers weren’t there—they’d stepped outside, hollering into the darkness.

  Robin realized they could get away, as long as the Rangers didn’t see them.

  Gotta move. And fast!

  Kaykay was whimpering. Sly was chubby and out of shape, while Robin was just five feet tall and skinny. But somehow, the two guys half dragged and half carried the panicked Kaykay out of the storage room and toward the gate. The further they got, the heavier Kaykay felt, and the harder it was for her to contain her crying.

  “Water!” she gasped. “Gotta wash my eyes! Help me wash out my eyes!”

  “Hang in there,” Robin told her.

  He heard the Rangers’ boss screaming in pain again. “Day-um! Day-um! Mah eyes! Mah eyes!”

  A few moments later they were outside the yard. Kaykay was really suffering. At least the Rangers hadn’t come after them. They had to be suffering too.

  “What we gonna do now, guys?” Sly demanded.

  “Get her home,” Robin said. “Let’s get to the bus.”

  Kaykay moaned. “I can’t go home! My parents will kill me! And then they gonna kill you!”

  Robin nodded. Kaykay had a point. Her parents would flip if they heard what they’d been doing at the U-Store. Kaykay would be grounded for life and forbidden to hang with Robin and Sly.

  There was no time to think about that, though. If they didn’t get out of here, the Rangers could still find them.

  We have pepper spray, and they have Glocks. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they win.

  “Come on,” he ordered. “Kaykay, we’re hauling you again.”

  Together, Robin and Sly carried her down Decatur Street to the bus stop.

  Robin prayed that when they got there, the bus would come before the Rangers did.

  At least I’ve got the candlesticks, Robin thought grimly as the bus rolled along. He touched his backpack. Yep. There they are. But we totally blew it otherwise. We had the key to the Rangers’ bank of badness. We could’ve gone back there whenever we wanted to make a “withdrawal.” We used their money to save the Center, and we used it to save our school library from closing. Now, they’re gonna move their loot someplace else.

  We’ll never find it.

  I blew it, I blew it, I cold blew it.

  He sighed. At least Kaykay was okay. She sat between Sly and Robin in the back of the bus. They’d found a water bottle under their seat, and after making sure it was water, used it to wash out Kaykay’s eyes. That had helped a little. Robin had taken off his hoodie and told Kaykay to blow her streaming nose into it. It was disgusting. He’d have to throw the hoodie away. But at least she wasn’t gushing snot on herself anymore.

  Their plan had been for them each to get home by bus. To clear time for the operation, Robin had lied to his grandmother and said he was studying at the Barbara Jordan Community Center with Kaykay and Sly; Sly’s father would drop him home. Kaykay and Sly had told versions of the same story, except with different parents doing the pickup.

  The plan had obviously changed. Robin knew they needed some good cover story for why Kaykay was so messed up.

  He had it.

  As the bus turned onto Marcus Garvey Boulevard, he took Kaykay’s cell and pressed Home on her speed dial.

  I dunno if I can get away with this. But I gotta try.

  Mrs. Knight answered. “Hey, baby girl! Everything okay?”

  “Hi, Mrs. Knight,” Robin tried to keep his voice even. “It’s Robin Paige. I’m with Kaykay at the Center, and she’s had some kind of allergic reaction to something she ate. I think you need to come get her.”

  Robin hated to lie, but after nearly dying at the hands of the Rangers, he figured he had a good reason.

  “Oh my God! What happened?” Robin heard Mrs. Knight yell for her husband. “Clyde! Get the car! We need to go the Center! And bring me an EpiPen! Kaykay’s in trouble.”

  Too late, Robin remembered that Mrs. Knight was a nurse’s aide. He had to be really convincing, now.

  “Nah, Mrs. Knight. I think
she just needs to get home,” Robin invented. “She can breathe fine. It’s just that her eyes are swelled and her nose is runny.”

  “We’re on our way,” Mrs. Knight promised. “Be there in ten minutes. Do you know what she ate?”

  “I think a roll with meat in the center.”

  “Meat? My baby girl’s vegan!”

  “She didn’t know. Maybe she’s allergic to meat now,” Robin suggested.

  “Don’t go anywhere, Robin,” Mrs. Knight instructed. “Clyde and I are on our way.”

  Mrs. Knight clicked off. Robin breathed a little easier as he watched the street signs roll by. The bus passed the scary blocks of Thirtieth Street and Twenty-Eighth Street, which were big drug dealing hangouts—not as dangerous as Robin’s own block of Ninth Street, but still plenty dicey. The Center was only five minutes away, now. They’d beat the Knights there for sure.

  “You hear that?” Robin asked Kaykay. She was still blowing her nose into his hoodie.

  “I heard it. I ate a meat pie.” Kaykay’s voice was hoarse from wheezing and crying. “Can you stick to that story?” Robin demanded.

  “You have to,” Sly told her.

  Kaykay nodded. “I can do it.” She blew her nose loudly again.

  They rode the rest of the way in silence, got off the bus at the Center, and waited for Kaykay’s parents. The Knights got there five minutes after they did, gave Kaykay two useless Benadryls, and loaded her into their old bomber of a car. They didn’t question the crazy story about the meat pie allergy.

  “Nice lie,” Sly told Robin when Kaykay was gone.

  Robin nodded. He felt exhausted, as he realized again how close they’d come to dying. All over a pair of candlesticks.

  Never again, he told himself. Never, ever again. Sly called our taking money from the bad and giving to the good, “Robin in da hood.” As of right now, Robin in da hood is out of business.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Thursday morning, Robin woke up feeling not like he’d been hit by a truck, but by a space shuttle. His whole body hurt. He couldn’t figure out why, until he realized his muscles had been so clenched for so long the night before that he was cramping. It took him twice as long as normal to put on his Ironwood Central High School blue uniform and drag himself to school.

  He sleepwalked through his morning classes. The ordeal from the night before played over and over in his mind. It also played in his ears—they kept ringing from the gunshots.

  Still, he found the energy to go to the library during his study hall. He wanted to help Ms. Herald, the school librarian, get her books back on the shelves. These were the same books that Robin had helped to box up last week when it looked like the school library was going to have to close. Robin was a big reader. The idea that the library was going to close was bad news.

  A big donation from the bank of badness saved the library. Their friend from the Center, old Mr. Smith, had pretended that he was giving fifty thousand dollars of his own money. Actually, he was donating Rangers’ money.

  And now the bank of badness is closed. Stupid me. Stupid, stupid me!

  Sly and Kaykay came to the library too. It was the one place left at school where they could actually talk because Kaykay was pretending that she hated Robin and Sly and had fallen in love with Tyrone Davis. Tyrone was a Ranger, and Kaykay was actually spying on him to get information about the Rangers for Robin in da hood.

  Of course, there’s no need to do that anymore.

  They were confident Tyrone would never set foot in the school library. Or any library, for that matter.

  Robin saw Kaykay a few stacks away. He joined her, thinking that for someone who’d inhaled pepper spray the night before, she looked fly. An inch taller than he was, slim, with tawny skin, long dark hair, and hazel eyes. “How you doin’?”

  She managed a smile. “Okay. I can see, I can breathe, and I’m alive. Which is saying a lot considering what went down last night.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Robin told her.

  “Don’t be.” They were in the fiction section, in the S area. Kaykay replaced three books by Anne Schraff on the shelf. One was A Boy Called Twister, which Robin had liked a lot.

  “I almost got us killed!” Robin bent to help her.

  “Hey. We tried, we got the sticks, whatchu gonna do?” Kaykay retorted. She had a fast mouth; her words piled up like snow in a blizzard. “The way I see it, I almost got the whole crew killed. Shootin’ myself with pepper spray. That’s wack! Who does that?”

  “Someone scared to death, thas’ who.”

  Robin turned. Sly was at the end of the stack. He wore the same Ironwood Central High School uniform as Robin and Kaykay: blue pants and a light blue shirt.

  “You got that right, bro’,” Robin agreed. “And I never want to be scared like that again.”

  Sly made a funny face. “Really, Robin? Then I suggest you move to Fancyville, ’stead of living here in the hood.”

  “The worst block in the hood,” Kaykay added. She put a few more novels on the shelf.

  Robin didn’t argue. He did live on the scariest street of the scariest hood in the very scary city of Ironwood. The Rangers dominated Ninth Street. They ran the block with an iron fist, collecting “protection” money from all the businesses.

  Robin’s grandmother, whom everyone but Robin called Miz Paige, owned a joint on Ninth Street called the Shrimp Shack. Every Friday, the Rangers collected a hundred bucks from her in protection. Protection meant that the Rangers wouldn’t torch her shop. Since Robin and his grandma lived in a crappy apartment right above the restaurant, it was important that the shop not go up in flames in the middle of the night.

  We’d get turned into roasted African American marshmallows, Robin thought grimly. He realized today was Thursday. That meant he would be taking a payoff to the Rangers tomorrow.

  Ironwood was a tough city that had seen much better days. Robin and his grandmother were poor, but his friends didn’t have it easy, either. Kaykay’s mom was a nurse’s aide, while her father had been laid off at the auto parts plant and hadn’t worked in two years. She had a bunch of brothers and sisters, and her family got SNAP help.

  Sly’s family did just a little better. His daddy, James “Tex” Thomas, was a preacher, and his mom ran the church music. But it wasn’t like the Thomases were rolling in chip. They lived in a small house near Randolph Park. Sly’s dream was to be a rich, famous magician in Las Vegas. If he couldn’t get that, he’d settle for rich.

  “You sayin’ Robin in da hood gonna retire?” Sly asked.

  “As of last night, we are done. I want to live.”

  “Word to that,” Sly agreed.

  “That’s all very nice,” Kaykay opined. “But who’s gonna tell Mr. Smith?”

  Robin winced. Mr. Smith was their best friend at the Center and part of Robin in da hood too. He was in his mid-seventies, a retired locksmith whose niece had died in a Rangers’ drive-by. Mr. Smith hated the Rangers. When Mr. Smith found out about what happened last night, Robin was sure he would blow a gasket.

  “I’ll handle it,” Robin said reluctantly. He was the leader. It was his responsibility.

  “Good luck.” Kaykay gave his arm a little squeeze.

  Robin liked that. A lot. He and Kaykay had gotten close over the last few weeks. If he didn’t have to worry about taking money from gangstas, maybe they could get even closer.

  “Let’s get back to work,” he advised.

  They went to different parts of the library. Just in time too. Robin hadn’t been away from Sky and Kaykay for two minutes when Tyrone Davis—of all people!—stepped into the library.

  “Hey, Shrimp!” Tyrone boomed. “You seen mah super-fine bee-yotch ’round anywhere?”

  Robin had been shelving some dictionaries. He fumed at Tyrone calling Kaykay “mah super-fine bee-yotch” like she was a cut of beef at the grocery store.

  “Excuse me?” Robin asked.

  Tyrone hooted. He was nearly six feet tall,
with a soul patch. A former football player, he’d recently started dealing for the Rangers over on Twenty-Eighth Street. Tyrone had hated Robin forever. He’d nicknamed him “Shrimp” back in fourth grade, both because of Robin’s height and because his grandmother ran the Shrimp Shack.

  “Oh! Sorry, Shrimp. I meant, you seen mah fine-hot-fly girlfriend, Kay-kay, who used to be your homegirl but done dumped your sorry behind, ’round anywhere?”

  Robin grunted. He didn’t want to piss Tyrone off too much, since he liked his head attached to his shoulders just the way it was. “I think she’s in the fiction section.”

  “Good! She ain’t gonna be there for long! Thanks, Shrimp.”

  Tyrone bounded toward the back of the library. Robin seethed. That Kaykay had to hang out with this sub-human anymore was just so wrong.

  I gotta put an end to this, Robin told himself. But if Tyrone sees her with us, he’ll realize we’ve been playing him. Then the Rangers’ll come after us all over again. And who’s to say they won’t do what they wanted to do last night. Wax us!

  After school, Robin walked home. It took twenty minutes to get from school to Ninth Street. He figured that he’d do his homework and then go help his grandmother in the Shrimp Shack. She had a big party to give on Sunday; there was a lot of prep work. Since Miz Paige had just been released from the hospital after a bout of Lyme disease, Robin knew she could use the help.

  Robin’s route took him down Marcus Garvey to Ninth Street. Garvey had a lot of car traffic but very few businesses because of all the shootouts and gangbanging that happened on this corner. The only people who ever hung out here were the Rangers’ drug sellers.

  Today, though, Robin saw a new business was opening. There were a few guys—some white, some black—in mechanics’ coveralls painting the garage door. Then, as Robin watched, a late-model sports car—maybe an Audi, maybe a Beemer, Robin didn’t know cars that well—pulled up. The guys opened the garage door to admit the sports car, then shut it quickly.

  Huh. Robin thought this a very odd place for a car repair shop.

  Good luck to them, he thought. They’re gonna need it.