“What ball?” I asked.
“We’re adopting you, Alfred, you adorable big-headed lug.”
4
Mr. Needlemier gave me his card and said he’d be in touch in a couple of weeks. He told me he was sorry for my loss. I didn’t know if he knew about my father being the head of a secret order of knights charged with protecting Excalibur, the Sword of King Arthur, so I decided not to mention it to him. I didn’t have the chance, though, even if I wanted to, because Horace was hovering right next to him from the time he stood up till the good-byes at the front door.
After Mr. Needlemier left, Horace barked at Betty to stop sweeping and vacuuming and running a wet cloth over the floor where the glass broke, and get started on dinner.
“We’re making your favorite, Al,” he told me. “Steak and potatoes!”
“That’s not my favorite,” I said.
“What do you mean that’s not your favorite?” he snapped, then caught himself and said, “Then you name it, Al, whatever you want!”
“I’m not hungry,” I said, and I went to my room and closed the door.
Kenny was lying on the top bunk in semidarkness; the blinds were drawn. He muttered softly above me as I stretched out on the bottom bunk, trying to wrap my Kropp brain around the fact that I was now a billionaire.
Kenny whispered, “What are you doing, Kropp?”
“Trying to figure out how I’m going to avoid becoming Horace Tuttle’s son. What are you doing, Kenny?”
“Nothing, Alfred Kropp.”
I rolled onto my stomach and glanced under the bed. I flopped back over and said, “All right, Kenny, give it back.”
“Give what back?”
“You know what.”
After a second I could see the faint light gleaming off the black metal of the blade as he lowered my sword from the top bunk. I knew it was very sharp, so I took it from Kenny carefully. “I told you not to touch it,” I said as I held it against my chest.
“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?