Chapter Two
Hunt
Rob sat down on the couch at Lenni's house next to Jamal. There was a knock on the door, and Lenni quickly went to the door and opened it.
He heard Gaby and her brother Alex, and Tina, and turned to see them coming with Lenni toward the living room area. They sat down on the couch, including Alex next to Rob on the corner. Lenni opened her notebook, which as Lenni had said during lunch, was full of possible clues. One was quite conspicuous, though . . .
"So what was this important clue that you guys know about that wasn't in the newspapers?" Gaby asked. Next to her, Tina also looked slightly impatient.
Jamal grinned. "You're not going to believe this," he said, glancing at Rob briefly. "So yesterday, Lenni and Alex had said that there was a common thing in all of the robberies mentioned where someone had seen the possible thief."
"Except the one that I saw," Alex put in.
"Right," Jamal agreed, nodding. "The witnesses said that they saw a middle school kid that could be a suspect in most of the robberies."
"And you would not believe what happened at Rob's house yesterday," Alex said.
Tina's face turned alarmed. "Someone broke into your house?" she asked.
Rob shook his head. "No, there was a police car there, and he had come about the robberies, but not at my place," he said. He quickly filled in the others about yesterday.
"What?" Gaby said, looking surprised. "Did you see the video too? Maybe the police officer and his granddaughter had seen someone else."
"No, I didn't see it," Rob replied, shaking his head again. "The police officer was sure that the kid in the video looked like me, though."
Alex spoke up, looking excited. "Remember what I saw at the basketball game, though?" he asked.
"What was that?" Tina asked curiously. "I heard from Gaby that Hurston won."
The Latino boy grinned. "By a landslide," he said. "During the first half, though, I had thought that I saw Rob there, between two Dayton guys."
"But it wasn't me," Rob said, crossing his arms.
"I know," Alex replied, shrugging. "But with what that police officer had said, it proves that I saw someone that looks like you. And that someone goes to Dayton," he ended triumphantly.
"But how are we going to catch someone from Dayton?" Tina asked.
Alex shrugged again. "Beats me. Maybe we could go there after school with Rob, and see if anyone still there would recognize him."
Lenni looked up from writing in the casebook. Rob was a little creeped out by what she had no doubtedly written about his look-a-like.
"We have to find out whoever he is, though, before he gets Rob into more trouble," she said.
"But the police would've found out from the teachers that he was there when the robbery that the police guy at Rob's house was talking about," Alex said, frowning. "He would know now that Rob didn't do it."
Jamal looked concerned. "But what if he steals something when Rob's not at school, or a place when Rob's not around anybody?" he said. "That could cause a problem."
"Why is he only stealing stuff from our side of town?" Tina asked, frowning. "Wouldn't it be easier to do that where he lives?"
Alex shrugged. "Maybe he didn't want to be recognized," he suggested. "Or maybe he even knows about Rob, and is stealing stuff from his side of town to get him in trouble."
"And how would he know Rob?" Jamal asked doubtfully.
"Rob wasn't even in Brooklyn last year," Gaby chimed in.
Alex shrugged again. "Eh, I don't know," he said. "But now we have an evil Dayton twin to catch," he added, grinning.
Rob didn't really feel like grinning back, and wondered if Alex would feel less excited if it were if the robber looked like him instead. As Rob had expected, his dad had not been happy last night after he had come home. At least he was not grounded or anything like that, though it was almost like he was on a probationary period. Why did the look-a-like person have to suddenly pop up, anyway?
"A doppelganger, really," Jamal corrected Alex. "Rob doesn't have a twin, right?"
"Yeah," Rob said, nodding.
Alex grinned again. "Hey, I like that word," he said. "It sounds more sci-fi."
Lenni closed the notebook. "So asking someone at Dayton about Rob sounds good," she said. "We don't have any other clues. The stores- and the library branch- are not even related, besides that they're close to each other, and we don't know what was stolen. The times that things were stolen don't even match. They're all so random."
"Rob and I could go to Dayton after school tomorrow," Jamal said, looking at Rob. "If that's okay with you."
Rob shrugged. At least he would not have to tell his parents where in the world he was going, since they would still both be working. He definitely doubted that at least he dad would approve. "I guess," he said.
"And the rest of us can go check out the places that the doppelganger stole stuff from, and see what was stolen," Alex added.
Gaby nodded, smiling. "All right," she said. She then frowned some. "I wish I could go to Dayton with Jamal and Rob, though."
Alex narrowed his eyes at his sister. "You're from elementary school, and you look it," he pointed out disapprovingly. "People there would know that you don't belong."
"Yeah, I guess," Gaby agreed reluctantly.
Jamal looked at Alex. "What did the people with the guy that looked like Rob at the basketball game look like?" he asked.
Alex frowned, thinking. "I think that one had darker skin, like he was African-American or something," he said. "And the other one had black hair. Maybe he was Mexican; or Asian, like Japanese, or Vietnamese like Tina. They looked like that they were in seventh or eighth grade. And later, some taller guy that could be the first guy's brother or cousin or something came over, and they and the doppelganger followed him to somewhere to the other left side of the bleachers."
Jamal nodded. "Okay, at least that's something," he asked. "We don't know who those two guys are, and they might not even be at Dayton after school. So it's probably the best that we either find the guy who looks like Rob, if he would still be there, or someone that knows him, and find out who he is."
"Right," Rob agreed. Hopefully they would not be in trouble for being at the wrong school. He did not need anything else that the police would get on his case about.
"He could be skipping school again, though," Gaby pointed out. "He's stolen stuff during school before."
Tina looked at Alex. "Was the doppelganger carrying a backpack, or anything with words?" she asked. "So Ghostwriter could find it?"
Alex shook his head. "No, the only words that I saw were on the two other guy's Dayton jackets, and anyone could be wearing those. And I wasn't even close enough to see any names in the bleachers, and I wasn't looking for them when I passed them in the hallway, either."
"Yeah," Jamal said. "There are probably a lot of those jackets at Dayton."
"We'd all better be careful," Lenni commented, looking a bit worried. "Especially Rob and Jamal. They'll be going to another middle school. And the rest of us have got to watch out for more robberies, since so many have happened within so few days."
"It'll be so worth it, though," Alex said, grinning. He put his right fist firmly on the palm of his left hand. "Tomorrow, we're going to get more evidence to catch a doppelganger."
Rob looked at the tall maroon brick building, surrounded by a lot of leafy trees. He walked closer to the glass doors of the front of the building, Jamal beside him. His skateboard was still at his house, as he had purposely left it behind so that he would look less conspicuous when he went to Dayton, and he hadn't wanted to leave it in his locker. He had definitely missed it while going to school this morning.
He looked up briefly, seeing the name of the building in large colored letters on the brick wall. Dayton Middle School.
"I can't believe we're actually doing this," Rob said quietly to Jamal as his friend neared the front doors.
Jamal looked at him. "Well, we've got to get more clues about who your Dayton doppelganger is somehow," he pointed out.
"Yeah, yeah," Rob said, trying to ignore the dread in his chest.
He sure hoped that they wouldn't be caught being in the wrong school. Maybe there was a bit of solace in that maybe some Dayton teacher would remember him being at the school if his "evil" doppelganger stole something again while he was there.
One of the front doors opened suddenly, and a dark-skinned girl walked out. "Sorry," she said briefly, barely even looking at them.
The girl walked passed them. "Hey," Jamal called out to her. The girl turned around, looking impatient.
"Do you . . . uh, happen to know him?" Jamal asked, pointing to Rob. Rob tried to look as if he wasn't worried about getting caught, especially with Jamal's kind of odd question.
"No, sorry," the girl quickly responded.
Rob and Jamal watched the girl as she strode off away from them into the large parking lot.
"That didn't help any," Rob commented.
Jamal shrugged. "Well, it was just the first try," he said. "We can ask more people things inside."
Rob nodded, and futilely attempting to squash his jumping nerves as his friend opened the door and they walked inside.
The inside of Dayton looked like any school, he supposed, with posters and things like student art hanging on the walls. There were several red rugs on the floor that definitely was not at Hurston, though, as well as two stripes, red and blue, on the walls, as well as the Dayton insignia.
About twenty people later, including from in the computer room, as Rob had suggested- once they had found it, with the help of a nice teacher hanging something on a bulletin board in a hallway- they were still as clueless as they were as they had gone into the school.
"Wow," Jamal said to Rob near the library. "I wonder if would be better to go to some Dayton event, where they are a lot of kids from there. Maybe we should look at that bulletin board where that teacher was again."
Rob shrugged. It had been quite strange with Jamal asking so many people about the doppelganger in the first place. There might not even be a Dayton event anytime soon, though.
"Hey, you!" someone called from behind them.
Rob turned around guiltily, certain that someone had finally figured out that he and Jamal did not belong in the school. There was a boy with blonde hair running toward them, carrying a large colored poster.
The boy looked at Rob. "You're the weird guy that was with Travis and Daiki, right?" he asked. "Branson, or something?"
Rob looked at Jamal, a little miffed at the boy's attitude, as well as perhaps the sheer luck in being told both the names of the two people that had been with the doppelganger at the basketball game, as well as possibly the doppelganger himself.
He tried to look inconspicuous, like he belonged at Dayton, while Jamal answered. "Weird guy?" he asked.
The blonde boy rolled his eyes. "Yeah, whatever," he said. "You don't go to Dayton-" Rob saw Jamal shoot a quick confused look at him- "and you appeared out of nowhere in the gym. I know I saw that. And then one of the windows just exploded" –he popped out the fingers on his free hand- "just like that. So, what are you doing, anyway?"
"Uh-" Rob started.
The blonde boy smirked. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Feeling down since your buddies aren't with you?" He laughed slightly. "They're not here, anyway. I saw them leave school earlier. I could say that you're not supposed to be here, though."
Rob was strongly reminded of a notorious mean kid in his grade at Hurston, Calvin Ferguson, as the blonde kid continued. "And I don't know you," he said, looking at Jamal. "You probably don't go here either. Boy, you're going to get in a lot of trouble if I rat on you two, huh?"
Jamal kept his usual calm demeanor as he answered. "Well, we were just looking for Travis and Daiki, like you said," he responded. "And we don't know where else they would be. Could you help on that one?"
"Like I'd help you," the blonde boy sneered. "But I guess that the librarian in there would, especially since you two aren't supposed to be here?" he added, pointing unnecessarily to the library wall windows to the left of them. "She's always there for a while, but anyone that stays for after school projects in Dayton would know that."
Jamal started to back up, and Rob followed him. "We . . . were just leaving," he said.
He started to run down the hall, and Rob ran beside him, ignoring both the shouting of a male teacher that came out of a classroom as they passed it- what bad luck- plus the annoying blonde kid.
Rob quickly looked behind him to see the teacher scowling angrily not at him and Jamal, but the Dayton kid. Perhaps he had a bad reputation of some sort, even with doing after school projects, maybe even for a sort of detention, and the teacher they had run passed had thought that the blonde kid was in the wrong for something.
Several hallways later, they reached the front entrance. Jamal quickly shoved the front door open and he and Rob burst out the door, and did not stop until they reached the outer side of the parking lot.
"Whew," Rob said, panting slightly. "I'm glad that teacher didn't follow us." He looked back at Dayton, but no one was pursuing them, and both the parking lot and the front of the building was thankfully void of any random people.
Jamal nodded. "Yeah, no kidding," he agreed. He straightened. "But we did get some clues about that doppelganger, and maybe his friends at the basketball game, though."
"Travis and Daiki," Rob said.
"Alex had said that one of the guys with the doppelganger could be Asian, and Daiki is an Asian name, right?" Jamal said.
"Yeah, it's Japanese," Rob answered. He had known someone named Daiki in an air force base in the south somewhere, possibly Alabama or Louisiana. He then frowned. "What about the window exploding, though, that the Dayton kid was talking about?"
Jamal shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "He could have been exaggerating. Windows don't explode by themselves."
"Yeah, definitely not," Rob agreed. The blonde boy had probably been wrong about the doppelganger when saying that he had 'appeared out of nowhere', also.
Rob looked at Dayton again, and still saw the parking lot, empty besides a few cars. "I wonder if the others found what the doppelganger stole."
"I hope so," Jamal said.
Just then, there was the sound of glass breaking behind them. Rob whipped around to look back at the parking lot, but saw no people- but he did see the broken side front window of a small tan car about ten feet from them.
"Did you see anyone throw anything?" Jamal asked.
Rob shook his head. "No," he answered.
He scanned the parking lot, squinting in the bright sun, but still saw no one there. Behind him, small trees lined the sidewalk, but unlike the large ones in front of the school, they were definitely not wide enough to hide anyone. Some fleet person could have run away quickly after throwing something, though.
They ran to the car, careful to not step on the sharp glass bits, but found nothing of interest beside the smashed window.
"I guess that whatever was thrown landed in the car where we can't see it," Jamal concluded, looking through the front window.
"Hey!"
Rob turned his head at an angry voice, and saw a black-haired high school-aged female wearing a backpack shouting and running toward them. "Did you bust that window?" she asked angrily, pointing at the tan car.
"No," Jamal insisted, but the high schooler's angered face looked far from appeased.
"I bet you guys are the ones that have been stealing from Dayton, too!" she shouted. She stamped her foot. "You stop doing things at my sister's school, you hear?" she demanded. "And I'll remember your faces!"
She pelted off toward the school entrance while Rob watched in distress.
"Well, at least we don't go to Dayton," Jamal said. "We'd better get out of here before someone else finds us here, though."
"Definitely," Rob agreed.
They dashed away from the parking lot, toward the direction of Lenni's house.