The Bronze King by Suzy McKee Charnas Page B

The Abandoned Station
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    A PLAIN BRASS-COLORED KEY with a jigsaw-jaggedy edge and a flowery design stamped on the round part that you hold. I had no more doubt of what it was than of my own, well, my name.
    The thing had bounced off my cretinous, hard little head right into my open bookbag. I was so relieved I almost whooped out loud.
    I sat down on the bed to write.
    First I had to accept the fact that not only were Joel and Paavo going to go on without me, they were probably going to wind up the whole business without me, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. Not unless I wanted to risk having the world gobbled up, starting with the West Side Highway or what was left of it.
    So I wrote a note, gritting my teeth the whole time. I didn’t care about Joel, but Paavo wasn’t going to think much of me when he found out why I couldn’t come down. Grounded, like a ten-year-old!
    I know kids who would do whatever they wanted and ignore what their parents said, but I just couldn’t do that. Not with my mom on her own the way she was, and the two of us running the household together. I know who gets the blame when a kid living with only her mother looks bad, and besides, I was kind of proud of how well I got along with her, considering. I didn’t want to ruin it. We had a deal. She didn’t go through my closets and things, and I didn’t duck out on her rules, much. Mutual toleration.
    I leaned out the window.
    There was Joel, standing on the curb now and staring up. There was no way I could miss with that key. I am a champion thrower, thanks to having to throw stones to defend myself from country dogs around my uncle’s place in Pennsylvania in the summers. I crumpled the piece of notebook paper around the key and leaned out.
    â€œTina,” he yelled, “what are you doing?”
    From behind me I heard my mom coming, yelling, “Tina, what are you doing?”
    I dropped the little package. It was lighter than I’d thought and veered on a breeze. Joel, loaded down with his books and the violin case, made a clumsy dive after it. My mother banged the window shut and grabbed my arm in her grip of steel, and the rest of the evening is not worth telling about.
    Not that my mom is any kind of child abuser, but when she gets pushed over the edge into one of her strict fits, she becomes a kind of maximum-security warden, with my best interests at heart, of course.
    She said, “Clean. Up. This. Room. Now.”
    I was still putting my things away at about one  A.M. , in the dark, just stuffing them any old where. Mom had looked in once and told me to go to bed, but once I got started cleaning up I wasn’t about to stop and leave more to do tomorrow. Tomorrow, which was Saturday at last, was reserved for hearing from Joel and Paavo all about how they saved the world—without me.
    Only it didn’t happen that way.
    For one thing, I woke up that Saturday morning and found that my bookbag, which I had emptied out onto the bed the day before thank goodness, was gone. The kraken had finally gotten as close as it was going to get to the key.
    But if Joel and Paavo had stopped the kraken, wouldn’t the vanished things be coming back, not more things disappearing?
    And the day looked funny. Although it was spring, the sky was cloudy and cold again, sullen-looking, broody, and mean.
    I started to worry, but for the moment there was nothing I could do about it. I settled down to one of my neglected assignments. (“You can wait to see your friend Joel until you’ve caught up with your schoolwork.” “You told me that five times already.” “Well, I’m telling you again. How can I explain to you how distressing it is for me, Tina, to find that I can’t seem to trust you anymore? You’re not to sneak off to meet him, do you understand?” “If I want to meet Joel someplace I’m sure not going to sneak.” Etc. Our