How I Became a Writer and Oggie Learned to Drive

by Janet Taylor Lisle

  “Where?” Oggie said.

  “Outside in the alley.”

  “You mean she’s HERE?” The only Raven he’d heard of was the one in The Mysterious Mole People.

  “Just wait,” I told him. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I went running down to the front hall to tell her to come in. She saw me at the door, but before I could say anything, she put her finger on her lips and nodded her head up the street.

  When I looked, my knee joints went weak. There was Cat Man. Right on Dyer Street. He was getting out of a big turquoise-colored car with Ralphie and Ringo. They slammed the doors shut and started walking up the sidewalk toward Jupiter. I ducked inside and beat it back upstairs. Mom had put a lock on our door that she said a storm trooper couldn’t get through, and I was glad.

  “Don’t move!” I told Oggie. “Somebody’s coming we don’t want to see. Raven gave me a warning.”

  Pretty soon, the doorbell rang. Oggie’s eyes practically came out of his head.

  “It’s not the Mysterious Mole People, is it?” he whispered. “It couldn’t be them!” Even though he knew they weren’t real, he was just checking.

  “No, it’s not,” I whispered back. “It’s the Night Riders.”

  The doorbell rang again. And again. We sat still on the couch, hardly breathing. Finally, the ringing stopped. We crept over to the window. Down the street, I spotted Cat Man getting back into the car. He was driving, with Ralphie up front and Ringo in the backseat. They pulled out with a rattle from the curb. It was the car with the bad tailpipe! They drove by our house and disappeared down Dyer Street.

  Oggie saw the car, too. He didn’t know who was in it, though.

  “That was a Pontiac Bonneville!” he told me in an awed voice after it went by. “They stopped making them a long time ago. I only ever saw one other one in my whole life.”

  At that moment, across in the alley, Raven stepped out. She saw us at the window and gave us the all-clear signal. I went down and opened the front door a crack. In about ten seconds, she slid inside.

  “That was close,” I said. “What’s Cat Man doing here? How did he know where I live?”

  Raven looked at me and shook her head. “Archie,” she said, “you got trouble again.”

  Cat Man

  “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN all this time?” Raven asked me while we were walking up to the living room. “I tried to keep Cat Man on hold, but he’s double worried now. He thinks you might be a mole.”

  “A WHAT?” I cried. Oggie, who was standing on the landing listening, just about fell over. You can probably guess why.

  “A spy,” Raven said. “For another gang. He’s worried somebody’s trying to take him over. All this getting sick or whatever, he doesn’t buy it.”

  “But I AM sick! This is Oggie, my little brother.”

  Raven gave him a thumbs-up and said hi.

  “Are you from the underworld?” Oggie asked, totally in awe. You could see he was about to start re-believing in Mole People and underground kingdoms in about five seconds. Little kids can go back and forth on stuff like that with no problem.

  It was a while before we got him straightened out. He had to hear the whole story—of the Night Riders and how I’d seen his wallet in Cat Man’s pocket; of meeting Raven and my jobs on Garden Street, which, right about then, I was beginning to be sorry I’d started up again. I’d be sorrier, too, before I was through.

  “You named Raven in The Mysterious Mole People after THIS Raven?” Oggie asked me when we’d finished.

  He was pretty disgusted. He had a glamorous image in his mind of the character Raven because she’d saved Amory’s life and could shinny up ropes and speak in Mole language after a year of living underground. By comparison, here was this ordinary, real-life girl in a worn-out sweatshirt and jeans.

  “Listen, I’m not that bad,” the real Raven told him. “I can walk on my hands, want to see?”

  Oggie clamped his teeth together and stuck out his chin. He thought we were jerking him around. That’s what happens when writers try to model their characters on a real person. Everybody is furious because they think you didn’t get it right—which is usually true, you didn’t. Who wants to be tied down to boring facts about people when you can make up things about them that sound ten times better?

  Oggie’s wallet was a big revelation to Raven. She hadn’t known that was how I got dragged into the whole mess of the Night Riders.

  “You should’ve told me,” she said. “I’ve seen that red wallet. It’s there, at 5446.”

  “You saw my WALLET?” Oggie screeched.

  “It’s in the bathroom, thrown up on a shelf.”

  “Where’s the bathroom? I never saw one,” I said.

  “On the right going down the hall, before you come to the meeting room. That wallet’s been in there for days. It’s kind of beat-up, so nobody wanted it.”

  “Oh, no! My wallet is beat-up?” Oggie yelled. “I’ve got to get it back!”

  “Cool off, I’ll get it,” I told him.

  “You always say that, then you never do!”

  “I will, I will. Right now we’ve got bigger problems on our hands.”

  “The biggest one is that Cat Man has found out where you live,” Raven told me. “He probably knows your telephone number, too, and where Oggie goes to afterschool. Cat Man’s good at research.”

  The phone rang suddenly. We all froze. Oggie had hung it back up when I wasn’t looking. I didn’t want to answer, but he said, “What if it’s Mom?”

  I picked up. It was the lady next door asking how we were doing. I said fine. She said she wouldn’t bother to come check us then, that Mom wanted her to call to say she’d been trying to get through to us. She was in a meeting now and would be a half hour late getting home. I said that was okay, and we hung up.

  “Mom will be a half hour late,” I told Oggie.

  “So what?” he snapped. He was mad about something. I didn’t have time to find out what.

  Outside, a car roared down Dyer Street. Raven and I ran to the window. It wasn’t Cat Man this time, but just thinking he’d been out there looking for me, in person, gave me the creeps.

  “What should I do?” I asked her.

  “You can’t hide, that’s for sure.”

  “I guess I’d better check in at Garden Street again. What if he sets me up like Tommy?”

  “That’s what I’d do,” Raven said, “but be careful. Cat Man’s jumpy. He’s got problems with the gang.”

  When she said that, a dark sense of forboding swept over me. Suddenly, the last place in the world I wanted to be was back on Garden Street. I knew something bad was waiting to happen there. Something really bad, like … well, I couldn’t even think. I didn’t want to think. I wished this were a story instead of real life.

  When you’re writing a story, a good trick is to give your characters a dark sense of forboding as the plot starts getting tight. It raises the suspense and sets up the reader for the shocker that’s going to happen next. Wherever you find dark forboding, you can bet, almost one hundred percent, that a terrible event is on the way. In books, that is. In real life, it’s probably about fifty-fifty.

  I went upstairs to get my shoes and a sweater. When I came back down, Oggie had his pointy-eyed look on. I should’ve known right then that he was cooking something up.

  “Oggie? You’ve got to take care of yourself for a while.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. He was sitting on the couch watching TV in his pj’s. Who would’ve guessed what he had on his mind?

  “Keep the front door locked. I’ll be back in an hour. If Mom calls and wants to tell me something, say I’m in the bathroom.”

  Oggie looked at me. He didn’t say anything.

  “Sorry, I have to go, too,” Raven told him. “I’ve got another delivery to make for Cat Man or I’d stay and keep you company.”

  Oggie turned his eyes on her, same accusing stare. Then he watched, looking pointier by
the minute, while Raven and I put our coats on and walked out the door.

  The Fireworks

  IT SEEMED LIKE A long walk to Garden Street that afternoon. I left my bike at home since I was determined not to do any more jobs for Cat Man. My Blue Hawks cap was on my head, but it wasn’t doing much good. No way could I feel either normal or professional about what was happening. Stupid was the main way I felt; stupid to ever let myself get dragged into the Night Riders.

  It didn’t help when, down the street a little from 5446, I noticed a turquoise Pontiac Bonneville with a busted tailpipe parked at the curb. Cat Man was in residence, no doubt about that.

  A bunch of mean-looking types on bikes pulled into the driveway just behind me as I went around back. I didn’t want to deal with them, so I ran for the back door and got inside fast. My heart was already crashing away inside me. I wished Raven was there to see me through this.

  Some yelling was going on downstairs. I heard it before I even got down to the hall. The noise was coming from the Night Riders’ meeting room, along with the sound of furniture smashing on the floor. Somebody grunted really loud. Somebody screamed the F word. Whatever was going on sounded bad, a scene I didn’t want to get into. I was about to turn around and run back when, upstairs, I heard the door to the backyard fly open. The gang that had been behind me started coming down.

  These guys were in a bad mood, you could tell. They came thudding down the stairs, pounding their fists against the wall, and when they rounded the corner everybody began whistling a low, deadly whistle. An attack whistle, I guess. Whatever, that finished me. I opened the nearest door in the hall and jumped inside. It was some kind of ancient storeroom, I think, dark as night.

  The pack went by outside. I opened my door a crack, just in time to see them burst into the meeting room down the hall. Inside, Cat Man was yelling.

  I began to understand what was happening. The Night Riders were being attacked by another gang. But that wasn’t all. Some of the Night Riders had switched sides. They were slugging it out with their friends. You could tell from the stuff that was being yelled.

  Ralphie and Ringo were standing up for Cat Man, shouting things like, “Are you crazy? We’ll kill you for this!” and “Get outta here before we stomp you!

  I opened the door wider to get a better view. The shadow of a very small person flashed by. I closed the door fast, but a second later, a blinding light went off in my brain.

  I flung the door open again. “OGGIE?” I screeched. I couldn’t believe it.

  When he heard his name, Oggie stopped. He turned around and saw me. Just then, a whole horde of fighters lurched out from the meeting room and started tearing each other to pieces at the end of the hall.

  “Oggie! Here!” I kind of yelled in a whisper.

  He looked straight at me for a second, then he turned and ran the other way, toward the fight.

  “No! Come back!”

  I jumped out and started after him, but suddenly, he was gone. He’d disappeared into a door on the right. The hall was so dark, I wasn’t sure where.

  A gunshot went off inside the meeting room. Then another shot. I backed up against the wall and held my breath. Down at the end of the hall, one of the Night Riders had Ralphie in a head-hold. Another one was choking Ringo on the floor. I inched out to look for Oggie again, and BANG! somebody ran straight into my back.

  “Oof! Archie!”

  “Raven!”

  “Why are you standing here? Get out! They’re shooting down there. The cops are coming. I heard sirens outside.”

  “Oggie’s here! He must’ve followed me from the house. Now I can’t find him.”

  Raven looked down the dim hall. “Which way did he go?” she asked. She’s a cool customer, let me tell you. She didn’t even look scared.

  “Down there, somewhere on the right.”

  “You go. I’ll find him.”

  “I can’t leave him here!”

  “Archie, go!” She gave me a hard push.

  I ran upstairs and outside. Far off I heard sirens. I waited on the driveway, but Raven and Oggie didn’t come.

  The sirens moved closer. I walked down the driveway a little way. Then I walked back toward the house. I didn’t know what to do. I was in agony waiting.

  Sirens started screaming in my ears. About two blocks down, the cops had turned onto Garden Street. They were closing in.

  I bent over and ran out to the street. I went along the sidewalk, around a little curve, and crouched down beside a car where I couldn’t be seen.

  Two patrol cars came screeching up and stopped in the middle of the street in front of 5446. Another car turned in the driveway. A bunch of cops got out. Their guns were drawn. I was just about dying. Oggie and Raven were still in there.

  I couldn’t stand waiting anymore. I had to go back in the house to find Oggie. I needed to tell the cops who he was. My little brother. Who didn’t do anything. Who followed me, that’s all. Don’t shoot him! It was all my fault!

  I ran up the driveway behind the cops, yelling “Wait! Wait!” but they didn’t hear me. They’d gone into the backyard. A flicker of light caught my eye. I stopped and looked around.

  On the house’s first floor, a window was being lifted up, slowly, slowly, by invisible hands. When it was only halfway up, it stuck. It wouldn’t go any further. A girl’s head with very short hair looked out, then disappeared. Something else began to come through the slot. A small body was getting shoved out. It fell headfirst on the ground. Thud!

  Oggie!

  I couldn’t even yell, I was so happy to see him.

  In one second, he was up and running. Raven came out of the window behind him, landing on her palms, stepping out on them, light and springy. She wasn’t kidding, she really could walk on her hands.

  “Raven! OVER HERE!” I got my voice back and roared it out.

  They sprinted for the sidewalk. I led the way. We all ran back to my hiding place beside the car and flung ourselves down. Whew! I gave Oggie a big shove because I was so mad at him for following me.

  “You idiot!” I yelled. “Why are you here?”

  Then I gave him a big hug because I love him so much. Oggie pushed me away. He pulled something red out of his pocket.

  “Look!”

  His red leather wallet. He held it up, proud as could be. “The money’s gone, but I don’t care.”

  Raven shook her head. “He was in the bathroom, hiding out.”

  “After I found it, the Night Riders were shooting,” Oggie said. “The cops came and started yelling for them to throw down their guns. Then Raven found me. She knew how to get out.” The way he looked at her, you could see she’d just lived up to her character in the book. She was a hero.

  “You dope,” I choked. “I would’ve brought that wallet back for you.”

  “No you wouldn’t,” Oggie said. “I waited and waited.”

  “Well, I tried,” I said.

  “But you never did.” He gave me a cold look and put the wallet back in his pocket.

  There was no time for Oggie to stay mad at me, though. Three seconds later, he saw something and jumped up.

  “Hey, look! It’s the PONTIAC BONNEVILLE!”

  “Where?” Raven spun around. I leaped to my feet. We got ready to start running again.

  The Getaway

  “RIGHT HERE. WE’RE LEANING on it,” Oggie said. He began to walk around the car. It was the one we’d been hiding beside the whole time. How I could’ve missed it, I’ll never know.

  “Oggie, get down. Somebody will see you!” Raven said.

  I tried to grab him, but he stepped away. He started peering in the windows, checking out the turquoise fins and the big, glitzy taillights. He disappeared around to the street side.

  “Look at this radio,” we heard him saying. “I always wanted to see inside one of these.”

  Two cops came around the side of 5446. They walked fast down the driveway, talking.

  “We’ve got to get out
of here!” Raven said in my ear.

  “How?” I whispered back. “They’ll see us if we try to run.”

  “If we stay here, they’ll see us anyway.” The cops were checking their watches and talking into a radio. All they had to do to see us was to look around.

  A loud click sounded behind us. The car door we were crouched against shot open. We jumped a mile.

  “Get in!” whispered a voice.

  “Oggie! How did you get in there?”

  “It was unlocked. Come on.”

  We scrambled inside. Raven closed the car door quietly and we got down under the dashboard in the front seat. Oggie was little enough that he didn’t need to duck. He was sitting in the driver’s seat with his hands on the steering wheel, looking awed out of his mind. He turned the wheel a few times, then leaned way over to check out the brake and the accelerator. When he came back up, he had something in his hand.

  “Look what I found.” He held up some keys. “Somebody must have dropped them.”

  “They’re Cat Man’s car keys,” Raven hissed. “Put them back where they were! We don’t want to touch anything in here. Cat Man goes crazy if you touch his car.”

  A crackle of gunshots broke out suddenly from behind the house. I peeked out the car window just in time to see Ralphie running at top speed down the driveway. He dropped down behind a bush.

  There were more gunshots, and along came Ringo, then Cat Man. They ran across and hid behind a broken-down shed in the next yard down. Ten seconds later, a cop came around the side of the house looking for them with his gun out.

  Raven inched up from the floor to watch beside me. We had a good view of everything.

  “What’s happening?” Oggie asked.

  “Never mind,” Raven said. “It’s not for you to know.”

  While the cop looked down the street one way, we saw Ralphie get up and run the other way to the shed. Then all three, Cat Man, Ralphie, and Ringo, ran to the next yard and hid again. They were working their way down the street, getting closer to us.

  “They’re coming for the car!” Raven whispered suddenly. “They’re going to try and make a getaway in the car.”