“Nay. I labor not on Friday even.”

“Oh, I forgot it was Friday. But you’ve been up since last night, haven’t you?”

“Nay, I slept this morn,” he said. By my math, maybe he’d gotten three hours of sleep before he showed up to rescue me again. That was all he said, and I couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t another apology, so we didn’t talk on the drive.

At the school, I was late enough that the buses had already left. There were a couple of kids waiting to be picked up out front, but Marcus wasn’t one of them.

In the main office, nobody was at the front desk, so I rang the bell.

“I’m here to pick up Marcus Gill,” I said, when the secretary came out of the back room. “Is he still in his classroom?”

“No, I think he got picked up before lunch.”

“You let somebody else pick him up?”

I didn’t feel calm, and I must not have sounded very calm, because the secretary got the logbook and brought it to the front counter.

“It’s okay. We wouldn’t let anyone who wasn’t authorized pick him up.” She flipped through the logbook until she got to a form with Marcus’ name on it. “See, his grandmother picked him up before lunch. Oh, it says a family emergency. I hope everything’s okay. Is everything okay?”

I stared at the form that Winnie Gill had signed and knew everything was not okay. There was an envelope clipped to the bottom of the form. Zorza Trego, it said. Probably misspelled on purpose.

I tore it open as I walked out of the front office and read it while I waited at the curb for Gentry. The letter from the Gills’ lawyer was only a paragraph long, basically telling me to read the other thing in the envelope, which was a court order from a judge granting them “temporary emergency custody” due to “parental abandonment.”

CHAPTER 18

Marcus

   You’re going to stay with us from now on,” Grammy Winnie said.

“Until Mommy comes home, right?”

“Maybe you’ll get to stay with us for good.”

“I don’t want to stay for good,” I said.

“Well, why don’t you change clothes and then we’ll have lunch. I have chicken nuggets for you.”

At their house, I was supposed to wear nice clothes, instead of my regular clothes. They weren’t very comfortable because the shirt buttoned all up to my neck, and I wasn’t supposed to get them dirty. If I stayed there for longer, would I have to wear nice clothes all the time?

“Does Aunt Zee know I’m staying here?” I said.

“Your aunt knows. Don’t you worry about her,” Grammy said.

After lunch, Grammy and me went out on the sunporch, and she gave me a new coloring book and a new box of crayons. I never got to have crayons at her house before, because it was messy, she said. It was hard to color and not make a mess.

I was being really careful coloring when somebody rang the doorbell, and Grammy got up to see who it was.

I heard her open the door and say, “I don’t want you to come here again. I left you that letter to explain the situation.”

“I don’t care about your stupid letter. I want to see him.” It was Aunt Zee!

Grammy was a lying liar pants on fire. Aunt Zee didn’t know I was staying there. I got up and went inside the house to see her.

“We’re well within our legal rights,” Grammy said. “My husband will be home from work soon, so you need to leave.”

“I’m not scared of you. People like you always think you can get your way just because you have money.” Aunt Zee was mad and shouting, so I ran down the hallway to the front door.

“We’re good Christian people, unlike you and your family. Marcus should have been with us all along, and now he will be.”

When Grammy saw me coming, she shut the door and turned the lock.

“Aunt Zee!” I yelled. I grabbed the doorknob, but Grammy leaned against the door so it wouldn’t open.

“Let me out! I wanna see Aunt Zee!”

“No, you may not,” she said.

I wanted to hit her, but Mommy says I’m not allowed to hit girls. Even if she was old and bigger than me, I guessed Grammy Winnie was a girl.

I ran back to the sunporch, but the only door outside went into the backyard. I thought maybe I would push one of the screens out. I did that once, kind of on accident, and got in trouble.

Aunt Zee was standing on the sidewalk with Sir Gentry, and she was real mad.

“That bitch. Good people. Who says that? We’re good Christians. If you have to say that, you probably aren’t.”

“Sooth, my lady,” Sir Gentry said. “Those that would recommend themselves by their own testament have no good deeds to recommend them.”

I didn’t understand what that meant, but she laughed.

“Aunt Zee!” I yelled.

She turned around and saw me and waved with both her hands.

I heard Grammy yelling from the front door again. “You need to leave, or I will call the police. You’re trespassing.”

Aunt Zee ran across the lawn and put her hands up on the screen. She smiled at me.

“It’s okay, buddy. You’re gonna stay with your grandparents for a while. You’ll come home soon, though, okay?”

“When Mommy comes home?”

“Exactly. As soon as Mommy comes home, you’ll come home, too.”

“And we’ll be all together?” I said.

“I promise. Cross my heart.” She drew an X on her heart. “I love you, buddy.”

“I love you, too.”

“Gimme a kiss,” she said, and she put her lips on the screen. I put my lips on the screen, too, and pressed them against hers. It was so funny it made me laugh.

“I will call the police,” Grammy said. She came up behind Aunt Zee on the sidewalk next to the house. I stuck my tongue out at her and pressed it on the screen.

“I’m going. But don’t kid yourself. You’re not a good person. Or at least you’re not any better than I am,” Aunt Zee said.

I don’t know why Grammy said she wasn’t a good person. Aunt Zee was my favorite person after Mommy.

“You need to go home and not come back here. If I see you again, I’ll call the police.” Grammy looked at me. “Stop licking the screen and go inside the house.”