Sidekick: The Misadventures of the New Scarlet Knight by Pab Sungenis Page A

heard the rest of the principal’s spiel about how the suspension would last pending a full investigation by her, confiscation of the weapon, recommendations, blah, blah, freakin’ blah; it wasn’t worth listening to.
    “Here, let me make this easier for you.” I unslung my knapsack from my shoulders and opened it up. The cop jumped up and reached for his weapon. “Chill, Kojak, I’m not packing.” I took out my textbooks, which were technically school property, and laid them on the desk. All I had left in the bag, which I showed to both the cop and the principal, were some notebooks and a dog-eared paperback of King Dork , which I’d been working my way through in study hall. “I’m a legally emancipated minor, and I’m older than sixteen. As far as this state’s laws are concerned, I can legally drop out if I want. I’ll go apply to take the GED and get out of your way. And if Mrs. Carr and Officer Krupke here will accompany me to make sure I don’t take anything that doesn’t belong to me, I will go collect my coat and my gym bag from my locker. Those are the only pieces of personal property not on my person right now. Once I have them, I will gladly let myself be escorted off school grounds.”
    The principal was dumbstruck. Maybe she thought she’d been doing me a favor by not shit-canning my ass immediately, but as far as I was concerned, she was just prolonging my agony. Even though it was probably the most reckless and stupid thing I’d done in a very long time, it felt nice to be able to make a decision instead of waiting for circumstances to make them for me.
    “Bobby, there’s no need … ”
    “Yes, ma’am, there is a need. It’s one I can’t explain to you right now, and you probably wouldn’t understand even if I could.” I wasn’t going to tell her I needed to get out before I started thinking about doing to her what I’d done to Squiddly-Diddly a couple of days before. Hell, if I hadn’t been on the job, there wouldn’t be a school for her to throw me out of. Talk about gratitude. I picked up my knapsack, zipped it shut, and motioned to the cop. “If you’d lead the way, officer? Or would you rather stand behind me to make sure I don’t do anything stupid?”
    “You go first.” He turned to Mrs. Carr. “Do you want to come? I really should have someone from the staff come along for this, unless you don’t think it’s safe.”
    “I’ll come. I trust Bobby.” She was a little more hesitant in the way she said that than I would have liked, but I was willing to take any support—no matter how half-hearted—without complaint.
    As we started the miniature Bataan Death March to my locker, trudging along single file with the cop at full alert as he watched my back and Mrs. Carr nervously eyeing us both, kids drifted into the hall to watch the parade. No one was sure exactly what was going on, and I had no idea how much was going to be disclosed by the administration and how much was going to be covered up, but I was pretty sure the entertainment value of watching us going through the halls was miles ahead of whatever was supposed to be going on in the classrooms. Within minutes, the gossip mills would be churning out fascinating rumors upon which a whole new mythology would probably be assembled. I had a sneaking suspicion that while I was not the kid who would be voted “most likely to be escorted out of school by an armed police escort,” I probably wasn’t near the bottom of that list, either.
    “I know you, don’t I?” I doubted the cop was the kind to make small talk, so there had to be a reason for the comment. “I’ve seen you before.”
    “Probably.” Yeah, Sergeant R. Simpson. I was the guy in the metal tights and the high-tech coffee can on my head who knocked the gun out of the bank robber’s hands when he went to shoot you last week. You’re welcome. Now shut up and finish running me out of school on a rail.
    “You’re Jack Horner’s boy, aren’t