Shadows of Sherwood by Kekla Magoon Page A

The children waved back. They laughed and leaped around, as if the whole world wasn’t spiraling toward awful. Robyn would be coming home from school right now, like usual, if she hadn’t been forced to run away.
    The thought made her laugh out loud. Yesterday, Robyn would have said that school was the worst imaginable thing to have to endure. School didn’t seem like such a bad deal anymore.
    â€œWhat’s funny?” Laurel asked.
    â€œCute kids,” Robyn answered, though she knew the laughter had come up from someplace deeper—a part of herself that hurt too much to think about. “What is this place?” she asked.
    â€œIt’s called Getty,” Laurel said.
    â€œNever heard of it,” Robyn said. Getty wasn’t one of the six outlying counties. “Are we still in Sherwood?” She followed Laurel into the backyard of one of the wooden homes. This one seemed well kept compared to some of the others. It appeared freshly painted, and the lawn was decorated with pretty plants and trimmed shrubbery.
    â€œYes. Getty’s just what we call this part of the neighborhood. There’s also Sherwood Plaza, the Brownstones, Sherwood Park . . .” Laurel rattled off a long list of names as she went to the back of the house and began unwinding a long garden hose with a spray nozzle. She handed it to Robyn and turned the spigot on. Nothing happened.
    â€œSqueeze the nozzle,” Laurel said. “It’s like a shower.” She overturned a large rock and dug up a plastic bag containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a bar of soap.
    Robyn stood, staring at her. “What?”
    â€œHold the hose over my head,” Laurel said. “Like a shower.” The small girl stepped out of sight between two bigbushes and stripped her stained T-shirt off. It landed in the grass beside Robyn’s feet. Then came the ragged shorts.
    â€œWon’t someone see us?” Robyn glanced around.
    â€œThe people who live here work all day,” Laurel said. “Everyone’s away. They won’t even notice.”
    Robyn raised the nozzle over the bush and aimed it down at Laurel’s head. “Everyone? How many people live here?” The entire footprint of the house was about the size of Robyn’s bedroom suite in Loxley Manor.
    â€œTwo families,” Laurel answered. “Seven people that I know of. I might not have seen everyone.”
    Robyn stared at the small house. Seven people? Where did they all sleep?
    â€œThat’s good,” Laurel said, much sooner than Robyn expected. One sticklike arm snaked out and retrieved her clothing. She popped out of hiding, looking clean and damp, her hair wet and finger combed. Without the caked-on blood and dirt, the cut along the side of her face looked thin and fresh but not as bad. Even the gross clothes didn’t look quite as gross against soap-scrubbed skin. “Your turn.”
    â€œUm . . . that’s okay,” Robyn said.
    â€œYou have to wash up before we get new clothes,” Laurel said. “You can’t go to the market looking like that. You have leaves in your hair.”
    â€œI—I can’t wash my hair under a garden hose,” Robyn said. Bound up in its intricate braid, her thick, curly black hair tapered neatly to the middle of her back. Unbound, itbecame a beautiful but unruly cascade that took hours to tame. “There’s just no way.”
    Laurel came around and picked the leaves and twigs out of Robyn’s hair. “Neat braid,” she said. “This looks way more complicated than a French braid.”
    â€œIt’s similar,” Robyn said. Except her braid started with six strands instead of three. Weaving and lifting and smoothing all the pieces at once was quite challenging. Robyn had only recently mastered it without her father’s help.
Your grandmother would be so proud
, he’d whispered, hugging her close.
    â€œJust get the mud