The Boxer and the Spy

“Doesn’t matter,” Abby said. “I got a cell. They can report to me.”

“We have to use people we can trust,” Terry said. “We can’t let Bullard know, or Kip Carter and his crew either.”

“I’ll do it,” Abby said. “I got a lot of girlfriends who’d love to do this. Let me organize this. We’ll like chart his movements.”

Terry looked at her and laughed.

“Abby Hall,” he said. “Girl detective.”

She grinned at him. Her eyes were very big. Her mouth was wide. When she smiled, it made her face seem bright, and he always thought of her smiling like that. It made him think of glee when she grinned like that, as if something wildly exciting was about to happen.

“Well,” she said, “it is kind of fun, isn’t it?”

“Not if Kip Carter pounds me into a fish cake,” Terry said.

“Maybe he can’t,” Abby said. “Gordon couldn’t.”

“Gordon is not Kip Carter,” Terry said.

“Don’t you think if Kip Carter All-American thought he could pound you into a fish cake he’d have done it instead of siccing Gordon on you?”

Terry shrugged.

They were in the Coffee Café in the center of town. The café had not set out to be a high school hangout. But it was downtown, next to the cinema, four blocks from the high school, and never seemed crowded in the afternoon. Slowly the kids started hanging out there, and the more they hung out there, the more adults didn’t come, so that finally the place had become a high school hangout. Whether the owners liked it or not, it was a fact. If you were a high school kid, the café was where you went.

“Have you found out any more about steroids?” Abby said.

“I’ve been on the Internet, but there‘s, like, too much information and they say different stuff, and I don’t know what’s true and what’s not.”

“And there’s no one to ask?” Abby said.

“Like who? My mother? She’s a bartender. She doesn’t know any more than I do about steroids.”

“And there’s no one else,” Abby said.

“Nobody that knows anything. I mean I can’t just make an appointment with some doctor and say, ‘tell me about ’roids.’ You know?”

“I do,” Abby said. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

“You do a lot of thinking,” Terry said.

“Yes I do,” Abby said, and smiled the big smile at him again. “I’m very smart.”

“Modest too,” Terry said.

“Absolutely,” Abby said.

“So what have you been thinking?”

“Gary,” she said. “At the drugstore.”

“Sarkis Pharmacy?”

“Yes,” Abby said. “He’s very nice, and he must know about steroids. I bet he’s got a book or something.”

Terry nodded, looking at her.

She is smart, he thought, and the best part is, she’s being smart for me.

“Let’s go over there now,” Terry said.

“On the hunt,” Abby said.

And they left.