by Barry Lyga
Kyle was already bored enough in school. Having everything dumbed down for the moron from Planet Brainless was just making things worse.
As the week wore on, Kyle became increasingly annoyed by Mighty Mike. One morning, his parents turned on the TV and who should be there? Who should be sitting on the set of the Today show, acting as if he had been born to sit there?
Who else?
“Well, gosh, Mr. Lauer,” Mike said, gazing earnestly into the camera, “I just hope that when people need help it’s the kind of help I can give!”
Oh, puke. Kyle nearly gagged on his cereal.
Matt Lauer grinned and cut to video from last night — Mighty Mike stopping a gush of lava in Hawaii with his freezer vision.
Freezer vision! Who came up with these dim-witted names?
(Kyle had tried staring out the window at a fire hydrant for an hour, but apparently he did not have freezer vision. One point to Mighty Mike.)
“We’re so glad you were able to visit with us, Mighty Mike,” said Matt Lauer. “Tell me a little bit about this project of yours with the government.”
“Well, the project is me, I guess. I visit a special clinic a few times a week and they run some tests on me. Trying to figure out how my powers work, really.”
“That must be exhausting, doing that all the time.”
“I don’t mind. I’m happy to help.”
“Well, I know you have to be in school soon, and we wouldn’t want you to be late.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Mike said. “I can fly pretty fast.”
“That you can,” said Matt Lauer. “That you can.”
Kyle clenched his fist around his spoon, mashing it into a twisted wreck of stainless steel. Too bad, but it was the only way to keep from throwing that same spoon through the TV screen. He would throw it away and hope his parents wouldn’t notice.
Bad enough the world — including Bouring Middle School — had decided to bow down and worship a punk from outer space. Worse yet was that Mighty Mike got to enjoy his powers — he got to fly to school from the set of the Today show, while Kyle had to take the bus!
He stalked out of the house without saying good-bye to his parents and threw the balled-up spoon with a fraction of his new strength, aiming at the sewer grate across the street. The spoon clanked once against the grate and then dropped in.
As he waited for the bus, Kyle fumed. He had gotten very good at fuming lately. His own incredible intelligence was frustrating enough, but with Mighty Mike added into the equation, life in Bouring was quickly becoming torture.
He put in his earbuds while he waited. “Have you figured out how to get rid of Mighty Mike yet?”
“There’s a lot of information to go through,” Erasmus said, a bit impatiently. “What are you doing to help?”
“I’m busy with living a life. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“I thought you were smart enough to live a life and plot the destruction of your nemesis.”
Kyle ignored it. “You know, before that brat arrived, I figured I was only a few years away from running this town. Once I got into high school, I would have been unstoppable.”
“But now there’s Mighty Mike.”
“Yeah. Who gets excused from class at least three times a day to go attend to some crime or accident or natural disaster. I can’t decide which is worse: being bored out of my skull by school or watching everyone bow down in Mike’s direction.”
“I have some news for you. I’ve been calculating some of your powers and their limits based on the nights you’ve been sneaking out to the mine. Unlike Mike, you are limited to just flight and enhanced speed, strength, and endurance.”
“No kidding, genius. It’s not fair.”
“Not fair? You can run for miles without getting tired; you could fly at Mach 1 if you could figure out how to avoid the sonic boom.”
“Mike has been clocked at faster than Mach 1,” Kyle said, sulking.
“I wonder how he manages to move so fast without shattering every window in Bouring?”
“Who cares? The point is, he gets to have fun and have crowds cheering for him while I have to stay hidden!”
“Kyle, look on the bright side: You are the most powerful kid ever born on Earth.”
“That’s not enough. I thought this Mighty Mike worship was just a passing fad, like when everyone wore capes. But this town has totally fallen head over heels in love with him.”
“It’s pathetic.”
“I know!”
On the bus, Kyle blocked out the noise and chaos of the other kids and seethed. He was beyond frustrated. The word to describe his aggravation hadn’t been invented yet.
(Kyle made a note to himself: Develop a new word to describe his aggravation.)
The bus came to Mairi’s stop. “My mom’s mad,” Mairi announced as soon as she sat down.
“Why?” Good. Mairi could help distract him a little bit. Take his mind off of Mighty Mike.
“You know the billboard that sits out on the highway? ”
There was a large billboard 3.2 miles from the Bouring town border. (Ever since his brain had gotten bigger, Kyle had been very specific about things like distance and time.) It said, YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENTER THE TOWN OF BOURING …IT’S NOT BORING! As if that were the most clever slogan in the world. On a lark, Kyle had once suggested at a town meeting the slogan: “Bouring: The U makes it exciting!” To his delight, people had taken his suggestion seriously and thereafter ensued two weeks of debating, arguing, and pro-and-con editorials in the Bouring Record. It was one of his best pranks ever.
Still, in the end the idea had been defeated, and the billboard maintained its current slogan, along with an image of the Bouring Lighthouse and a burst that read, VISIT THE HISTORIC BOURING LIGHTHOUSE! ONLY TEN MINUTES FROM HERE!
Mairi’s mother was the curator of the Bouring Lighthouse Museum, which consisted, really, of a gift shop on the first floor of the lighthouse. The lighthouse was, Kyle had to admit, something of an oddity because Bouring was totally landlocked. There wasn’t even a lake nearby. The biggest body of water within ten miles was the Bouring municipal pool. No one — not even Mairi’s mother — knew why there was a lighthouse in Bouring, but that hadn’t stopped Mrs. MacTaggert from turning it into a museum and getting the town to declare it a tourist attraction.
“What about the billboard?” Kyle asked.
Mairi was nearly fuming. Kyle couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her so angry. “The town council met last night and they’re considering changing the billboard to say ‘The Home of Mighty Mike!’ instead of showing the lighthouse. Mom’s really mad.”
Mighty Mike! Again! Did this kid have to insinuate himself into every last possible corner of Kyle’s life and consciousness?
“You know what, Mairi? I don’t like that kid,” Kyle said.
Mairi was taken aback. “It’s not his fault, Kyle! It’s the stupid town council. Mike would never try to hurt my mom’s business.”
Kyle took a deep breath and did his best to calm Mairi down as the school bus bounced and jolted down the road. He didn’t know that things were about to get worse. He probably should have predicted it, but he just didn’t know.
Things got worse right in the middle of science, Kyle’s favorite subject. It was the only subject where he didn’t go out of his mind with boredom because he could at least look ahead in the book and speculate about different theories and research applications. He didn’t bother paying attention to Miss Schwartz, the science teacher, of course. He already knew more than she ever would know in her entire life.
The door opened without so much as a knock and there stood Sheriff Maxwell Monroe. Six feet two, with shoulders like a Cadillac grille and a face to match.
Kyle stiffened at Monroe’s presence. He couldn’t help it. He’d had his share of run-ins with the sheriff in the past. Too many of them, in fact. He couldn’t stand the sight of Monroe — the shaggy blond hair, the ridiculous handle
bar mustache, the watery blue eyes. But the worst part about Monroe was that he was on to Kyle. “Can’t wait until you’re eighteen,” he’d told Kyle more than once. “Can’t wait until I get to throw you in jail for real. I count the days, kiddo.”
Kyle’s mind raced. Why would Monroe be here? Kyle hadn’t so much as laid a whoopee cushion on someone’s chair since “the flu.” He had been too busy stretching his new brain and experimenting with his new powers —
Was that it? His powers? Had someone seen Kyle flying out at the mine and reported him?
No. That couldn’t be. They wouldn’t just send the sheriff for that, would they?
Sheriff Monroe cleared his throat and then stood there, his thumbs hooked in his belt loops, until the room fell silent. As if he’d been waiting for just the right moment, he hitched up his pants, jingling the handcuffs that dangled from his gun belt.
Show-off.
“There’s gonna be an announcement soon,” he drawled, without even looking over at Miss Schwartz, “but the principal said I could tell y’all first, seeing as how this class is sort of affected. It involves one of your classmates.”
He was here to arrest Kyle! Kyle’s heart pounded. For what? Kyle hadn’t done anything!
“I’m real proud to announce,” Monroe went on, “that the town council has just voted to make this coming Saturday ‘Mighty Mike Day.’ ”
As soon as he said it, the entire class erupted into cheers and elated screams. Monroe’s big, dumb face split into a huge grin, his mustache waggling at the ends.
Kyle slumped in his seat. He was the only kid not to jump up. Except for Mighty Mike, who pretended to be humble, shaking his head from his seat and making a “Who, me?” face.
Look at them! Look at those morons. Clapping and cheering for Mighty Mike. And look at Mighty Mike, still basking in his false humility. Now he allowed the applause to pull him from his chair and he made a quick little bow to his adoring crowd.
Mighty Mike Day! Had the entire town council — the entire town — gone completely mad?
Sheriff Monroe ducked out of the class without so much as a glance in Kyle’s direction, a little smile playing on his face as if he were thrilled with the chaos he’d just caused by tossing this particular knowledge grenade into the room. Just as Miss Schwartz got everyone calmed down and back into their seats, the principal made the same announcement over the loudspeaker, sending everyone into another spasm of delight. Only this time, you could hear the ecstasy up and down the halls as Bouring Middle School rang with joy.
Kyle thumped his forehead on his desk. A whole day to honor Mike for all his good deeds. There would be a parade and a reviewing stand and speeches and food and all that other stuff that the mundane, plebeian masses so enjoyed.
Ugh. Kyle could barely keep from puking. A whole day to honor a space alien? Sure, he stopped that volcano and he’d unfrozen a slick highway in Vermont and he’d flown a sick girl to a special hospital on the other side of the country and done some other good things, but so what? Wouldn’t anyone with his powers do those things? Mike had an unfair advantage! He was self-centered and arrogant and … and …
And he wore a cape. A cape! Who in their right mind, Kyle wondered for the 324th time, wears a cape? Just for wearing the cape alone, Mighty Mike ought to be disqualified from any and all honors.
Second of all, Mighty Mike was a moron! How could you honor an imbecile, a nincompoop, a dunderhead, a simpleton, a chump? (Kyle had gotten tired of thinking of Mike as an idiot, so he’d memorized the thesaurus.)
It’s not just that Mike was stupid compared to Kyle; after all, everyone was a ninny compared to Kyle. “Mighty Mike” was objectively a dunce. He had tried to blow out that fire like it was a candle and made things worse instead! Why, just the other day in this very science classroom, Kyle had watched as Mike stood, rapt, staring at the class fish tank.
“How do they breathe in there?” he wanted to know.
“Uh, they’re fish,” Mairi explained.
“Of course!” Mike said. “Brilliant!”
Everyone thought Mike was just kidding, but Kyle knew the truth. The alien punk was brain-dead. (The cape alone proved that.)
Third of all, face facts: If anyone should be honored in this podunk town, it was Kyle! Wasn’t he a native of Bouring? Hadn’t he lived here his entire life? Hadn’t he used the principles of the Prankster Manifesto to try to educate and enlighten the lamebrained masses? Wasn’t he, in fact, the single smartest person for miles around? Heck, he might just be the smartest person on the planet. (Hmm. Kyle made a note to himself to start looking into that….)
For all his superior brainpower, though, Kyle still lacked the imagination to envision how his day was about to get even worse.
CHAPTER
TEN
By the time the class was calmed down a second time (with Mike taking two bows this time, one of them hovering a foot and a half off the floor), Kyle had already sworn to himself that he would go nowhere near Mighty Mike Day. He was boycotting the entire thing.
He had much more important plans for this coming Saturday. For one thing, with his parents out of the house (they would, predictably, want to go see the Mighty Mike Day parade), he could begin his plans to renovate the basement into a lab. With the right equipment and supplies, he thought he might even be able to get a miniature nuclear reactor going down there. That would supply the energy he needed for the other machinery and gadgets he planned to build: the rocket ship, the transformation booth, and — of course — the time machine.
The bell rang to end science class. Lunchtime. Kyle’s stomach was all in knots — just the thought of Mighty Mike Day made him want to throw up.
“Pizza day,” Mairi announced, coming up to him.
“Pizza day!” Kyle said, with maybe a little more excitement than the occasion merited. But something was finally going his way on this Worst of All Days. Heck, his stomach even felt better just at the idea of Thursday pizza.
Mairi blinked at his shout of joy. “Yeah. Pizza.”
“I’ll be there in a minute,” he told her. “I just have to take care of something.”
Mairi went to the door, then stopped and turned back to him. She and Kyle were now the only two people in the room, but she whispered anyway. “You’re not up to anything, are you, Kyle? Anything prankster-y?”
Kyle was surprised by how much her question hurt. “No, Mairi. I just need to take care of something. Really.”
She nodded and then smiled, and everything was all right.
As soon as he was alone, Kyle whipped out Erasmus and slipped in the earbuds. “This is a disaster. They’re having a parade to honor Mighty Mike!”
“How nice for him,” Erasmus said in a voice sodden with sarcasm.
“Start coming up with excuses for me not to go. And see if you can come up with a reason for Mairi not to go, too.”
“Don’t you have your own brain?”
“I built you to help me. It’s not like you have anything else to do with your time.”
“How do you know? All of your music is still here on my hard drive. I was building my own concert.”
“Just do what I tell —”
Another bell rang. The lunch bell! Kyle put Erasmus in his pocket and darted out the door.
Luck was with him — he didn’t run into any teachers on his way to the lunchroom. He scanned the lunch line to see how far ahead of him Mairi was, but he couldn’t find her. Had she already gotten her pizza? Was he that late?
He craned his neck to locate their usual table, but it was empty.
Just then, at the other end of the room, something caught his attention and he glanced in that direction.
What he saw made his entire body stiffen, as if he’d just been dunked in liquid nitrogen.
There was Mairi, sitting at a lunch table with Mighty Mike!
A small group of kids had gathered there. Kyle eased himself into the crowd, using two big eighth graders to conceal himself. He
could still watch through the space between them, and he could hear everything.
On the table was a familiar sight — two trays, a cheese-and-sauce-smeared knife, two plates.
Mairi transferred half of a pepperoni pizza from one plate to the other, swapping it with half a sausage pizza.
No. No!
Mike’s head was cocked at the pizza, as if the birdbrain couldn’t be sure what he was seeing, as if the concept of baked dough with sauce and cheese and salty meat products on top of it just boggled his infinitesimally tiny alien brain.
“It’s called ‘pizza,’” Mairi explained.
Mike nodded sagely, as though he’d just cured cancer and boredom in a single stroke. “Pizza. With two zees?”
“Right,” said Mairi.
As it turns out, Mike loved pizza-with-two-zees. Applause went up from the crowd (Kyle excepted).
Mike also loved hanging out with Mairi. That much was obvious even to anyone without an IQ in the thousands.
Kyle didn’t trust himself to stand so close. He faded back through the crowd and stood against the far wall of the lunchroom, his own hunger forgotten, seething.
Stealing Kyle’s loyal subjects was one thing. Becoming the most popular kid at school for no reason — that was bad, sure. But splitting pizza with Mairi on Thursday?
Kyle had no choice. Before, Mighty Mike was an annoyance and a potential danger.
Now he was an enemy.
from the top secret journal of Kyle Camden (deciphered):
The space alien has committed an unforgivable act. I have no choice. I must destroy him.
This isn’t my fault. He forced my hand.
First of all, I should note that I forgive Mairi for spending time with the alien. She was just doing what Mairi does — being kind, helping someone. Mairi is a good person. She doesn’t know Mighty Mike is an alien creature from another planet. How could she?
The easiest way to destroy Mighty Mike would be to tell people that he’s an alien. But doing that would also reveal that I was in the field the night of the plasma storm. This is problematic for two reasons: