Uh-oh, I thought, remembering that my little brother was still part insect. What will Mom and Dad do when they see Iggy flying around the house?
IN THE FRONT ROOM, I found Iggy attempting to climb up the wall.
“Iggy!” Dottie yelled. “Come back down here!”
“Hey, Dano!” Iggy shouted, “Look at me!”
I noticed that Iggy’s stinger was no longer visible, and his wings looked much smaller. Interesting, I thought. Maybe the insect traits go away once he calms down.
“Look!” Iggy tried to stand on the wall horizontally, with only two feet touching the wall. His insect grip must have been wearing off because he fell.
Luckily, I was there to break his fall just in time.
“No fair!” Iggy yelled. “I want STAND ON DAT WALL!”
“That’s enough wall climbing,” I said. “You must be tired after battling that monster.”
“I NOT TIRED!”
“Fine,” I said, “but just stop for a minute because I need to show you something in our room.”
Iggy suddenly looked hopeful. “Our room?”
I realized it was probably the first time I had called it “our room” instead of “my room.”
“Sure,” I said. “The room is both of ours, right?”
“Okay, Dano!” Iggy zoomed past me and did a belly flop onto his bed.
“I have something for you, Iggy.” I sat down on the bed and Iggy leaned his head against my shoulder. “Here, you can have this nice human norm- I mean, this nice pacifier.”
“Mom say I not sposed to have dat.”
“But this one is a special reward for attacking that monster.”
Iggy stuck the pacifier in his mouth and closed his eyes. He looked happy.
“Thanks, Iggy,” I said.
“Tanks why?”
“You helped rescue us from that Gobblebox monster. I guess you really were a superkid today.”
“Like Squidboy,” he said.
“Right,” I said. “Like Squidboy.”
“Dano,” said Iggy, half asleep, “I glad you not eated pecuz I love you eleventy-forty, sixty-eight.”
I knew that was Iggy’s idea of the biggest number in the world.
I started to tell Iggy that eleventy-forty isn’t even a real number, but then I changed my mind. “Me too, Iggy,” I said. “I love you eleventy-forty, sixty-eight.”
I guess I kind of like Iggy’s quirks—his babyish words, his Squidboy underpants and Cinderella nightgown—even his freakish bug-DNA and everything. Maybe sharing a room with Iggy won’t be as terrible as I expected, I thought.
And maybe having an alien for a friend isn’t such a bad thing either.
SO IN CASE you’re wondering, Chauncey seemed normal enough after he took a nap on the couch. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to remember that he turned into a cube-shaped monster and ate most of the objects in our kitchen, plus a couple of major appliances before Alistair changed him back into a regular boy. I think Alistair is just relieved that we got through this whole mess without losing his alien watch, and without anyone except me finding out that he’s actually from Planet Blaron. (I mean, Iggy kind of knows about the Blaronites, but nobody ever believes anything he says anyway, so that’s okay.) For example, Mom and Dad didn’t pay much attention when Iggy told them how he “flied around the house to sting dat monster!” And luckily, Iggy’s wings and stinger completely disappeared after his nap with the Human Normalizer. Right now, Iggy looks just like a normal boy.
You’d never know from looking at him that he’s secretly part insect—and that his secret identity is “Superkid-in-Training.”
Iggy Loomis, Superkid in Training Page 8