by Mike Jung
I snorted.
“Probably not,” I said.
“Dude, don’t be such a, what do you call it, pissimist,” Max said.
“Pessimist,” I said.
“Whatever,” Max said. “She’d totally be impressed! The only reason to keep it secret would be—”
Max’s eyes opened up all the way, all at once, and George knocked a plastic cup over. It ricocheted off a chair and went rattling away across the floor.
“You know something,” George said, his eyes open extra wide.
“What did he tell you?” Max said.
“All kinds of amazing stuff,” I said. You know that feeling when you know a really good secret, and other people don’t know it but they know you know it? It was awesome.
“Tell us!” George said.
“Dude, chill,” Max said. “He’ll tell us when he’s ready.”
I waited for it, and sure enough, exactly two seconds later Max said, “Okay, Vincent, you’re ready NOW.”
I told them almost everything—the crowd knocking me over, getting picked up by Stupendous, flying to a downtown rooftop, telling Stupendous about the Meteor Strike, etc. George let out many cries of “dude!” and “excellent!” and “what?” as he pounded me on the back, while Max sucked on a toothpick and occasionally raised both arms in a touchdown signal. When I got to the part about Stupendous telling me his secret identity, I thought George’s head might explode.
“This. Is. AMAZING,” George said. He was whispering, but it was almost as loud as his regular voice, just more hissy sounding. “It’s the biggest secret ever!”
“I know, right?” I said.
“So who is he?” Max said. “What’s his secret identity?”
“You’re not gonna believe it,” I said. I leaned way over the table and whispered, “It’s Polly Winnicott-Lee.”
“WHAT?” he said.
George spoke in a lower voice. “She’s a girl!”
“A girl he’s in love with,” Max said. “Don’t forget.”
“I’m NOT in love with her.” I punched Max on the arm. He didn’t react at all, as usual.
“Dude, this is getting crazier and crazier,” George said. “A girl? How can Captain Stupendous be a girl?”
“We have to meet up with her, Vincent,” Max said.
“We are,” I said. “This afternoon, at Lake Higgleman.”
“Lake Higgleman?” George and Max said at the same time.
“Wow, could she pick a more disgusting place?” Max wrinkled his nose.
“That’s probably the only lake in the world that people avoid on purpose during the summer,” George said. “Wait a minute….”
“I think I can hear the gears grinding in your head, George,” I said. “Yeah, it’s private.”
My phone rang (the non–Stupendous Alert ring) and I checked to see who it was before answering.
“Hang on, guys, it’s my dad. I’m surprised it took him this long to call.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, son, where are you?”
That’s my dad. He’s lived in Copperplate City his whole life and nothing bad’s ever happened to him, but every time a villain comes to town he has to call and make sure the villain didn’t show up specifically to kill ME.
“I’m at Spud’s, Dad.”
“Maybe you should head home, son. I was in the lab so I didn’t see the news right away, but that robot attacked the school district offices!”
“I know, Dad.”
“That’s practically next door to your school!”
“I KNOW, Dad. I actually go to that school, remember?”
“You didn’t go out there to watch or anything like that, did you?”
Sigh. “Everybody did, Dad.”
“Patty Suarez reported that a student was almost killed during the fight!”
The key word is “almost,” I wanted to say. “I’ve got Max here to protect me.” As usual, Dad totally missed the sarcasm.
“Max can’t protect you, Vincent. Everyone in this town overestimates the level of protection provided by Captain Stupendous, especially when it concerns unpredictable new villains like this Professor Mayhem character.”
I don’t know where he was getting all that stuff about the city not being safe, but whatever. Except … maybe now he was right? Ugh.
“I think I’ll come by for dinner tomorrow night. Sound good to you?”
“Sure. Can we, um, not talk about …”
“About what?”
“You know … chemistry and science and stuff like that.”
As soon as I said it I wanted to take it back, but it was already out there. Sometimes I wonder if I really am as dumb as Dad thinks I am.
“Vincent, you can’t talk about Captain Stupendous twenty-four hours a day. A little academic rigor is good for you.”
“Dad, I—”
“You’re not too young to think about the future, you know.”
“I was just—”
“Be the hero of your own life, Vincent!”
Sigh. “Ooooookay, Dad. Forget I said anything.”
“I’ll call your mother right after I get off the phone with you. I’ll see you tomorrow, son.”
“Okay, Dad, see you.”
“STAY OUT OF DANGER.”
“Sure thing, Dad.” I stuffed my phone in my pocket. I should say I started to stuff the phone in my pocket, but it rang again. Mom, this time.
“Hi, honey, are you okay?”
“I’m totally fine, Mom, are you okay? That robot was right outside your building!”
“I’m okay, I was actually downtown for a meeting when the robot … well, I wouldn’t say it attacked the district offices, exactly. But most of the district leadership was in the field anyway, so if this Professor Mayhem was looking for one of us, he would have been out of luck in any event.”
“Okay. Are you … coming home?”
I looked at Max and George, who were staring up at the ceiling, with their hands folded in front of them and mouthing no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Seriously, we had work to do, and Mom coming home and being a helicopter parent wouldn’t help. Lucky for us, Mom has never been a helicopter parent.
“I’m afraid I have to stay here, Vincent. The mayor has called an emergency meeting—”
“—of the city leadership in response to the latest Captain Stupendous incident,” I said along with her. Yeah, Mom is actually enough of a big shot to get called into those meetings, and there are a lot of them. She chuckled a little bit.
“Are you sure you’re okay? Your father would probably pitch a fit if he knew I wasn’t coming home to spend the afternoon with you, but …”
“It’s cool, Mom, don’t worry!” I tried not to sound too happy. Nothing makes a parent more suspicious than being happy when they say they won’t be home soon.
“Okay. I should still be home in time for dinner, though, and remember that Bobby’s coming over tonight.”
“Okay.” I hung up and shoved the phone back in my pocket. “Detective Bobby Carpenter’s coming over for dinner tonight.”
“Awesome!” George was very impressed by cops. “That’s so cool that your mom’s going out with a cop. You think he’d let us look at his gun if we asked?”
“No, George.” I was 100 percent sure the answer was no—I’d already asked to see Bobby’s gun, and he said no. But he didn’t start treating me like I was a dumb, irresponsible kid, which was a nice change of pace.
“Let’s just get out of here,” Max said. “It doesn’t sound like anything else’ll happen today.”
“Whatever Mayhem’s planning will happen soon, though,” George said. “What do you think he’s gonna do?”
“I guess we’re gonna find out,” I said. “Let’s go to the lake, we’ve got a date with Captain Stupendous.”
We left the mob of Stupendous fans inside Spud’s, hopped on our bikes, and headed out. We rode through Auto Row, past Chinatown, through the Copperplate University campus, and
finally into Higgleman Park. The park is full of baby strollers, grandmas with two canes, freaks with sandwich boards talking about the end of the world, and girls on Rollerblades.
The south end of the park is ringed by hills and covered with big rocks and scrubby trees. The hills look out over Lake Higgleman, one of the grossest places in existence. It is covered by an inch-thick layer of algae, and a million geese live there, honking and breeding and crapping like there’s no tomorrow. If Lake Higgleman were in a more central spot, the smell would probably kill everyone in the city.
“She couldn’t find a nice Porta-Potty to meet up in, huh?” Max said, wrinkling his nose and pulling his shirt down in back. Wearing tight shirts like Max does means your shirt always rides up in back when you’re on a bike. One more reason to wear baggy shirts, I say.
“I guess not. Let’s go up there,” I said, pointing at a nearby hilltop covered with twisted-up trees. We walked our bikes up the hill, weaving and picking up one wheel or the other to avoid all the goose turds.
“If we weren’t about to meet Captain Stupendous, I’d smack you upside the head, Vincent,” Max said, hopping a little as he stepped on a turd. “This is too much like being at home.”
“Hey, this was her idea,” I said. “Blame Polly.”
“You could … I don’t know, clean up your house more, you know,” George said.
“I keep telling you, it’s more complicated than that.”
George shrugged. “I do it.”
“I can’t—dude, you’ve met my dad. Why are we still talking about this?”
George shrugged again. “Sorry.”
We got up into the trees and, holy mackerel, there was a clear space with almost no bird feces in it, just a bunch of big, flat rocks. We tilted our bikes up against the gnarly devil trees and stood in a circle, looking at each other. Then we sat on the rocks and waited. We thought about going down to check out the water, but seriously, the goose poop made the whole place like a toxic-waste dump.
“Okay, where is she?” said Max after two minutes.
“Here,” Captain Stupendous said. He stepped out from behind a tree, straight in front of me and right behind Max. He must have been waiting there the whole time. His hair was all black and shiny, and the S below the C on his chest gleamed.
Stupendous tapped Max on the shoulder, and Max twitched once really hard and flailed his arms in the air. He does that waving-his-arms thing every time he’s surprised—if we’re at the movies and a monster jumps out of the shadows, he does it. Sometimes it’s hilarious but mostly it’s just strange. Stupendous took a step back.
“Whoa, what is that all about?” he said.
I kind of wanted Stupendous to make a more dramatic entrance—flying in at warp speed, coming up out of the ground like a human drill, etc.—but the guys were definitely impressed. They looked like somebody just hit them on the back of the skull with a board. Stupendous muttered “stupendify,” and there was a BLIP of blue light. Polly appeared.
“Wow,” Max said. “You really are a girl.”
Something was wrong with Max’s voice—it was, I don’t know, less monotone than usual? His hair is impossible to smooth down—too spiky—but he ran a hand over it anyway. His hair sprang back up immediately.
“Congratulations, genius,” Polly said. “Figured that out all by yourself, huh?”
“This can’t be for real,” George said, wrapping his arms around his head.
Polly looked at George. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just, you know … how can a girl be Captain Stupendous?” George said. “Captain Stupendous is supposed to be a man.”
“SUPPOSED to be a man?” Polly said, giving George a full-on look of death. George took a step back.
“Well, I just mean he’s always been a man.”
“I think it’s cool,” I said. “It’s unexpected, you know? Nobody’s gonna guess Captain Stupendous is a girl. And we have more important things to—”
“Why won’t anybody guess Captain Stupendous is a girl?” Polly said. She looked at me and put her hands on her hips. “Why can’t a girl be a superhero?”
“Hey, don’t get mad at me,” I said. Geez, you try to say something helpful…. “It’s not my fault you’re a girl.”
“Girls are, you know, girls,” George said. “They like dolls and makeup and ponies and stuff like that, not superheroes.”
“Oh little dude, wrong thing to say.” Max shook his head. “What George means is—”
“They? You know you’re talking to an actual girl, don’t you?” Polly said. “You can tell the difference, right?”
“I think it’s okay that you’re a girl,” I said.
“Oh, well, thank you so much,” Polly said. “I don’t know why I bothered meeting you guys, I knew it was a dumb idea.”
“Fine, go lose another fight by yourself, then!” I said.
“Maybe I will!” Polly said.
I smacked myself in the forehead, then took a deep breath.
Polly looked at Max and George. “Who are you guys anyway?”
“Oh right,” I said. I introduced George and Max.
“Hi,” George said.
“Hey, Captain Stupendous’s new alter ago,” Max said.
“You look normal, but you’re pretty weird, you know that?” Polly said to Max, ignoring George.
“Why do you think I hang out with these guys?” Max said. He grinned, and for the first time I noticed how straight and white his teeth really are. I poked the back of my snaggly canine tooth with my tongue.
“I thought it’s because we were the only ones who’d sit with you during lunch after that underwear-in-the-zipper thing in first grade,” I said.
“DUDE.” Max frowned at me, neck muscles bulging. “SO uncool.”
“I’m just saying.”
“That was only because you guys were so weird nobody else would sit with you either,” Max said. He grinned again, but it was wider and more sharklike—you could see more of his teeth.
“So did you become Captain Stupendous after the first fight with Professor Mayhem?” George said, darting his eyes back and forth between me and Max.
Polly nodded, but she kept smirking at Max. “You remember how the robot just threw me, right?”
“Totally,” I said.
“It’s a classic distraction move,” Max said.
“Throw a helpless victim, then make a clean escape!” George said.
“Will you guys shut up?” Polly said. “It’s like you’re talking about sports.”
“Um … we don’t like sports….” George said.
Polly ignored him again and glared at us for a minute.
“I totally screamed and thought I was gonna die, but Captain Stupendous caught me and took me to this random rooftop.
“He asked me if I was hurt, and I said no. I was kind of surprised—on TV he seems so stuck-up, but he was really nice. Then he looked like he was gonna fly off, but he just stood there with one hand in the air. After a second he disappeared in a flash of blue light. Another person appeared in his place, grabbed his chest, and fell down. I couldn’t tell who it was at first, but then he said my name. Guess who it was.”
George, Max, and I looked at each other.
“How are we supposed to know?” Max said.
“You probably knew him too!” Polly crossed her arms. “Did you take that art enrichment class in fourth grade?”
“MR. ZAZUETA?” I said. “No way!”
“Way,” Polly said. “Mr. Zazueta was Captain Stupendous.
“He waved for me to listen to him—I had to put my ear right over his mouth. He said he was having a heart attack, and he didn’t want to do it this way, but there was no choice. Then he grabbed my leg and said something I couldn’t hear, that harsh blue light was everywhere, and he said, ‘Now you’re Captain Stupendous.’
“Then he died.”
The clearing was quiet for a minute as we thought about that. George even managed not t
o make some kind of creepy joke about dead people.
“I took a bunch of Mr. Zazueta’s classes.” Polly’s voice was low, and she was looking at her feet. George opened his mouth to say something—probably something dumb—but Max punched him in the shoulder. “He was the only teacher in our school who wasn’t a total idiot.”
“I guess he was cool,” I said. “I didn’t really know him.”
“Was he your friend or something?” Max said.
Polly shrugged. “I talked to him about stuff—art, or my mom and dad. Sometimes I …”
“Sometimes you what?” I said.
“Nothing,” Polly mumbled, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.
Captain Stupendous was an art teacher. Dude, what a letdown. And Polly talked to a teacher about her family? It was like she lived in an alternate universe.
I guess all three of us were just staring at Polly, because she looked quickly at each of us. Max smiled, George kept staring, and of course I looked down at my feet. When I looked back up, Polly was standing with her hands in her back pockets.
“So those other clubs suck and you guys are the real experts, huh?” Polly said.
We nodded. We weren’t being stuck-up, it was just the truth.
“We know the things that really count,” I said. “Fight moves, refinery accidents mapped against mutant events, villain attack patterns …”
“We know everything,” George said. Max crossed his arms and nodded his head. “Well, except Max.” Max glared at George and held up a fist.
“Do you know how to get ‘rid of the powers’?” Polly said.
Confusion! Did she really say that? George blinked really hard, and Max twitched just a little bit.
“What do you mean, ‘get rid of the powers’?” I said.
“I mean, give them to someone else, like Mr. Zazueta gave them to me,” Polly said. “I don’t want to be Captain Stupendous.”
Don’t want to be Captain Stupendous? What kind of crazy talk was that?
“You don’t want to be the most amazing superhero that’s ever lived?” George said.
“Why should I?” Polly said.
“It’s obvious,” Max said. “So you can beat anyone in a fight or save the world! So you can fly!”