And saw the little boy.
Running by the windmill.
Straight toward the street.
“No, no, no, no!” Dom sprang between the blades, leaped over the fence, tackled the toddler like she’d seen Rafi do at football games, and in one very swift motion, gave him to his scared, and relieved, mother.
“Thank you so much!” the mom said.
Dom grinned. “Of course! What are knights for?”
She looked back just in time to see her squire and her master of the cookies beginning to move. And stand. And stumble. Straight for the giant’s arms, instead of away from them. Their steed circled them, barking.
She launched herself back toward the giant and caught the arm that was about to thrash her friends to smithereens, pulling it away. “Gogogogogogo!”
They did.
Pancho grabbed Roco as he and Steph stepped away from the giant and outside the little fence.
Dom let out her breath. She let go. The giant’s arm gave a jolt. With a terrible crack, it snapped as it glided by.
Tug! The giant snagged the hood on Dom’s cape.
Rip! The cape tore.
Whoop! Her foot slipped on the escaped turkey baster.
Ouch! Her ankle screamed.
Ooof! Her bottom hit the sidewalk.
From the ground, Dom watched her cape flap at the end of the giant’s arm.
So much for the Knight of the Cape.
The door to the restaurant opened. “What’s going on here?” a woman demanded.
Dom followed the woman’s eyes. The windmill’s blades still whirled, but two of them were bent, like puppets’ arms. She was the knight. She had to take responsibility. But what should she say? That she was pretending to fight a giant so that Ernie Bublassi would believe girls could be knights? That she had broken the windmill to prove a point even though they all knew it was a windmill and not a giant?
She didn’t have to figure out what to say.
“She saved my Bobby!” The little boy’s mother was almost crying. “I was on that bench right there. I was changing the baby. I didn’t realize he’d run away till he was ready to hit the street. There’s no way I could have stopped him.” The woman pointed at Dom. “She did.”
“Yes, she did!” Pancho said loudly, aiming his voice toward Ernie and Ponsi Bublassi. “Without a doubt, Dom Capote, the Knight of the Cape, saved another person in distress.”
“And she did it without any help!” Steph gave Ernie and Ponsi Bublassi very knowing looks.
Dom’s whole body was shaking and her eyes were scratchy. Everyone around her was cheering, except, of course, for Ernie and Ponsi Bublassi. They were across the street. Mouths gaping. Watching.
Dom stood next to the woman and looked up. “Are you the owner?”
The woman nodded. “I’m Ms. Belle.” She was tall. One of her feet was tapping as if she were ready to take off.
“I stopped the arms so my friends wouldn’t be hurt.” Dom blinked hard. She guessed the movement she could see out of the corner of her eye was the two bullies getting closer. She couldn’t let Ernie Bublassi see what was filling her eyes. “I’ll be glad to come sweep your sidewalk every morning and afternoon until I pay for whatever I broke.”
“No problem, honey!” Ms. Belle’s hand dismissed Dom’s offer. “Those blades are meant to snap off.”
Dom’s eyes widened. Snap off. She hadn’t broken them.
“The good thing is you saved that little guy. He would have been squished on that street for sure!”
Dom’s shoulders relaxed. Her fists loosened up. A long sigh slipped from her lips. The Knight of the Cape had saved the toddler. She could hold her head up. She had done it. Dom Capote, girl-knight, had really saved a person in distress. And she hadn’t broken the windmill!
“Come on,” Ms. Belle said. “Let’s see if everybody’s okay and I’ll fix the blades.”
“Wait!” The squeal escaped out of Dom’s mouth. Then she lowered her voice. Looking at the two bullies standing at the corner where Bobby had almost gone into the street, she told Ms. Belle about Ernie Bublassi. And wanting to prove girls can be knights.
“So you’re a knight?”
“Like Don Quijote.”
Ms. Belle gave Dom a high five. “You go, girl!”
Dom smiled. “Could you take our picture? With the little boy? You know… so we have proof?”
“Of course we’ll take a picture. You deserve a medal. You rescued this little boy. And everyone needs to know about it. I’ll send it to the newspaper. Girl-knights rule!”
The boys were getting close to Steph. Dom motioned for Ms. Belle to get close to her. “Can you say that again, a little louder?”
The owner of the Holland House Restaurant did, looking straight at Ernie and Ponsi. And then she added, “You guys lose anything around here?”
No answer.
“Maybe you’d best quit gawking and go home!”
“Away!” Steph added. “You don’t belong by this worthy knight!”
Pancho punched his fist up into the air. “And never get near us again!”
Ms. Belle’s mouth broke into a grin. “We’ll take the pic in a sec! But first, let me make sure nobody’s hurt.”
She walked over to Pancho and Steph. “You both okay?”
Pancho rubbed the big goose egg on his forehead. “I’m fine. Just a little bump.”
Steph nursed a matching bump. “Little? You have the hardest head in the universe!”
Dom didn’t say anything about the throb in her own ankle. Or laugh at Steph. She still couldn’t believe she’d rescued a real person.
“I’ll bring you some ice,” Ms. Belle said. “Just hang on.”
She came out a few minutes later, holding two Baggies of ice, a remote control, and a phone. She pushed a button on the controller to stop the blades and stuffed it into her pocket. She handed out the ice. Then she started posing people.
“Come on, come on, everybody in front of the door, here. By the sign. I want a picture for the Mundytown Weekly.” The woman swept her hand in front of her, pointing to an imaginary headline: “Local Students Save Runaway Toddler!”
She arranged Dom in the middle, lance in hand. Pancho, holding Roco, she posed on Dom’s right. Steph on her left. She placed Bobby right in front of Dom.
She took one picture and checked it out. “Perfect!” Then she took four or five more. And a couple with Dom’s phone. “They’ll be on their way to the Weekly tonight,” she promised. “And now I think it’s time for some lemonade.”
Dom touched her on the arm. “One more picture? With the windmill?”
“Whoa, girl! I can’t have pictures of my restaurant with a broken windmill out in the universe! I don’t have time to fix this right now. I have a house full of people wanting to be fed. I’ll take care of it later.”
Dom wanted to beg. She wanted proof she’d been just like Don Quijote. Exactly like Don Quijote.
But the owner of the Holland House Restaurant had said the word “broken.”
The word pinballed inside her head.
What if the blades really had broken? What if her friends had gotten really hurt? What if Bobby hadn’t made her a hero?
“Mmmm, you look a little green.” Ms. Belle got down, level with Dom, her dreadlocks brushing Dom’s forehead. “You know why I can’t do it, right?”
Thoughts crowded Dom’s head. The woman was the farthest thing from her mind. “Yeah… yeah… I get it.…”
“Good. I’ll bring the lemonade.”
Dom hesitated. “I… We don’t have any money.”
The owner threw her head back, laughing. “It’s my treat, brave knight!”
Dom still hesitated.
Pancho stepped in front of the woman. “That would be delicious!”
“Us knights are supposed to celebrate, aren’t we?” Steph said.
“Absolutely,” Bobby’s mother said. “Bring out some cookies, if you have them. They’ll be my trea
t. It’s only right.”
“How about I bring them out here?” Ms. Belle pointed to a picnic table. “That way you can stay with your dog.”
“Our steed,” Dom barely whispered.
“Your steed—why didn’t I think of that?” Ms. Belle opened the restaurant’s door. “I’ll bring them out in a sec.”
13 A Perfect Knight’s Story
Dom was still in a funk when they were ready to leave the Holland House Restaurant.
Pancho bowed to the restaurant’s owner. “We thank you for your bounty, most kind castellan,” he said to her. Then he turned to Bobby’s mother. “And you, too, kind mistress.”
Dom tried to shake the cobwebs from her head. She needed to thank the owner of the Holland House too. “Yes, thanks so much. Especially… you know…” Her fingers took an air picture.
Ms. Belle broke into a huge grin. “Us girls gotta stick together.”
Dom gave her a half wave, and she, Pancho, Steph, and Roco set off toward home.
Dom leaned on her broken lance as a cane for her twisted ankle. Each step reminded her of how much worse the whole thing could have been. And how close she’d been to having Ernie Bublassi laugh at her for the rest of her life. And having no exciting adventure book to share with Abuela. In the beginning, the book for Abuela was a way to get Rafi to help her, but now it really meant a lot. Who would want to hear about a granddaughter whose only exciting deed had been to rescue bunnies?
“What?” Pancho punched her in the shoulder. “What’s with the grumps? You did it. You’re the most amazing knight in the universe.”
Dom shook her head. “I’m not a knight, and I didn’t fight a giant. I could have broken that windmill. Really broken it. Like a million dollars’ worth of broken. And what if you were hurt? Or Steph? Or Roco? That little boy came out of nowhere. What if I hadn’t been able to stop him? I would have had no adventures for Abuela. And Ernie Bublassi would have laughed at me for the rest of my life.”
The three were silent for about five steps.
“It was all my fault,” Dom muttered. “If I hadn’t tried to fight a giant, none of this would have happened.”
Steph spoke up first. “It’s the other way around. If you hadn’t tried to fight the giant, Bobby might have gotten hurt. You wouldn’t have been there to save him.”
“And you stopped the blades from smashing into us,” Pancho said.
Dom didn’t even look at him when she answered. “That wasn’t a big deal. They were meant to break.”
“But they were hard. They tore your cape off. Maybe we would have gotten all tangled up in there or pushed against the windmill. We might have broken something if you hadn’t stopped the blades.”
“You saved us,” Steph said.
“It was a stupendous battle,” Pancho said.
“You were brave.”
“Totally valiant, O wondrous knight.” Pancho bowed low.
Dom smiled. She was happy they were trying to make her feel better, but she knew for sure Bobby was the one who had saved her.
* * *
The three stopped at Dom’s house.
“We had a wonderful adventure,” Pancho told Rafi after he introduced himself and Steph.
“We did not,” Dom said. “This little boy was running out onto the street. And I stopped him. I looked like a hero, but we’re lucky I didn’t get us killed or have to pay millions of dollars to fix the Holland House windmill.”
Pancho and Steph told the story. The more they talked, the more exciting the adventure seemed, even to Dom.
“Hold your heads high!” Rafi said. “You did amazing deeds. Deeds worthy of the best knights of the realm. And you rescued a real person. You kept him from harm. Let’s have the pics. I’m going to write all about it.”
Dom shook her head. “We did nothing.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” Pancho told Rafi. “We haven’t told you the best part yet. Thanks to Dom Capote, we own Ernie Bublassi and his brother, Ponsi. Gone. History. They’ll never torture us again. Maybe they won’t even torture anyone else again.”
“Yeah, right!” Dom said. “The only way we’ll be rid of the Bublassi brothers is if they move to Pascagoula or somewhere.”
Pancho wouldn’t let it drop. “But you said…”
“That was Don Quijote. I’m for real now. And I know Ernie Bublassi won’t ever leave us alone.”
“We’re rid of them for a while anyway,” said Pancho. “You proved girls can be knights. The picture will be in the Mundytown Weekly, right? We’ll be famous. Whatever Ernie says, we can point to that picture. Everybody in Mundytown will see it.”
Rafi leaned forward. “Wait. The picture will be in the Mundytown Weekly?”
Dom shrugged. “The owner of the restaurant said she was sending it to them.”
Rafi gave Pancho a high five. “Oooh, maybe they’ll publish my story. If they get a picture from her and a story from me, you will really own Ernie Bublassi. He might try to mess with you again, but you can put your nose up in the air and walk away. You showed them! In the weekly paper!”
“Yeah…” Dom heard what her brother was saying. It was making its way into her brain.
Steph stepped up. “They’ll never bother me again,” she said. “I have friends now, don’t I?”
“I watched you save that little Bobby,” Pancho said. “You were like a lightning bolt! If you hadn’t tackled him, he would have ended up in the street, squished by a car. I promise.”
Dom straightened up.
“Well, there you go.” Rafi jumped up on his bed and spread his arms wide. “You know what? You wanted to prove you were a knight and you did! I get it. You were exactly like Don Quijote! Most of the time he messed everything up just like you. Even if you hadn’t saved the little boy, you did what you said you would! You were a knight. Just like Don Quijote.”
Dom smiled. “All I know is if Bobby hadn’t run away, Ernie Bublassi would be laughing his head off. I’d never be able to set my foot in school tomorrow.”
“But he did, didn’t he!” Rafi said. “And you saved him. And everything else you did was like Don Quijote.”
“Even the bunnies?”
“Well…”
Dom was shaking her head.
“I have an idea,” Rafi said. “Let’s call Abuela. She’ll tell you whether you’re a good knight or not.”
They put Abuela on speakerphone and pushed the story over the airwaves.
“Oh my,” Abuela said. And “exciting.” And “amazing.” And then the best thing was: “You were just like Don Quijote!”
“Exactly!” Rafi said. “That’s what I told her.”
Abuela didn’t remember what she had for lunch, but she could still remember things that she knew a long time ago. “Rafi’s right. Don Quijote didn’t always succeed in what he started out to do,” she said. “But he always tried to do the right thing. The thing a good knight would do. He tried to help. And that’s what you did. And then you actually rescued someone! You’re even better than Don Quijote.”
Dom grinned.
“And I can’t wait to have the book so I can read it to all the other grandmas in my building! They’ll be so jealous that my granddaughter’s a knight!”
After Rafi hung up, he pulled out his laptop. “Let me hear it again. So I can finish the book. Everyone must know about your deeds, especially the Mundytown Weekly.”
So they told him again. Every little detail. He typed furiously. The way Rafi wrote it, even Crying-Boy and his brother sounded exciting.
As soon as he finished, Rafi printed each of them a book of their knightly adventures, each illustrated with eleven pictures. He put one in an envelope for Abuela and printed another one for their parents.
“Mami and Papi will just love this!” Dom said.
The last thing Rafi did was send an article to the Mundytown Weekly.
“Now they’ll have a story to go with the picture. That should be proof enough for Ernie Bublassi that a girl can be
a knight!”
“And just in case, Dom and I can pass our books around in class tomorrow,” Pancho said.
* * *
That night, before going to sleep, Dom read Rafi’s book. He was right. She had been like Don Quijote. She had messed everything up. But things didn’t turn out as bad as they could have. And she had done it. She had set out to do something and she’d done it. She had been a brave knight. Along the way, she had saved little Bobby. And that felt good. Tomorrow she could show everyone in her class her book. But the icing on the cake was that her picture would be in the Mundytown Weekly that Thursday. As the hero. She had shown Ernie Bublassi!
Most important, Abuela would also have a copy of the book soon. She could read it to her new friends. It would give Dom and Abuela adventures to talk about.
She was still looking forward to rereading more of the books Abuela liked. But something had changed. Pancho turned out to be a brave and excellent squire. Steph turned out to not be a damsel at all. Reading about adventures was fun, but it was better to have real adventures with real friends.
She put Dom Capote’s Knightly Adventures by Rafi Melendez in her bookcase, next to her other adventure books—the ones Abuela had brought from Cuba. As she did, she noticed a book sticking out, as if waiting for her. Treasure Island! Girls could be pirates, too, right? She reached in a drawer for a bandanna. She tied it around her head and texted Abuela.
Pirates next. Stay tuned.
Author’s Note
The Knight of the Cape is similar to Don Quijote, (Don Quixote in English) a book written by Miguel de Cervantes in the early 1600s. Don Quijote is a man who, like Dom, likes nothing better than reading. People tell him he shouldn’t read. Especially people in the church. But he doesn’t pay attention. He imagines he is a medieval knight and sets out to look for adventure.
Don Quijote finds a squire named Sancho Panza, who keeps him real like Pancho Sanchez keeps Dom real. Like Dom, when Don Quijote rescued someone, he thought the tormentor would never come back. He tackled bullies like Ponsi Bublassi and thought he’d won. Both Don Quijote and Dom fought giants that were actually windmills.
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