Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities

by Mike Jung

  “What?”

  I gave him the rundown on Mayhem’s TV broadcast.

  “… so he’s gonna kill her if Dad doesn’t show up and turn himself in tomorrow at the stadium.”

  “Oh. Oh geez, Vincent.” Stupendous put his hands over his mouth. He walked over and sat on the bed.

  “Will he really do it?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t wanna find out. You have to locate Mayhem’s headquarters and get her out of there.”

  And that’s when I really understood how deep the doo-doo was, because the real, original Captain Stupendous could have done that with no problem, right? Things wouldn’t even be this bad in the first place if Mr. Zazueta was still running the show.

  And it wouldn’t be this bad if it wasn’t for my brilliant idea to visit Colossal Dome at the exact time my mom was being kidnapped. Yep, things were completely in the toilet with lame old Vincent Wu trying to run the show.

  I put my face in my hands and started crying like the wussy boy I truly was.

  “Whoa, hey, Vincent, take it easy,” Stupendous said. I heard him jump to his feet, and a second later he petted me on the head like a dog. “It’s gonna be okay, I swear.”

  “HOW’S IT GONNA BE OKAY?” I shouted, not even caring if Dad and Bobby and all the Corwin Towers security people heard me. “HOW? I DON’T KNOW WHERE PROFESSOR MAYHEM’S SECRET HEADQUARTERS IS, DO YOU?”

  “Well, actually—”

  The door opened and this time it was Dad sticking his head into the room.

  “Vincent, are you—”

  “GET OUT!” Stupendous hollered, and I knew from experience how hard it is to ignore him when he yells like that. A framed picture fell off the wall, bounced off the bed, and crashed onto the floor. Dad immediately shut the door, probably more from reflexes than anything else.

  I glared at Stupendous with his big old muscles and his stupid, weird girl secret identity like I hated him more than anybody else in the world, and he just looked down at the floor.

  “Max and George actually do have a theory on where Mayhem’s headquarters is.”

  “They do? Really?” I should have felt … I don’t know, relieved or hopeful to hear that, but I just felt worse.

  “Totally.”

  “Well, that’s perfect. It was my idea to go to Colossal Dome, and that’s when Mayhem kidnapped my mom. It’s practically my fault she was taken. You should just leave me here, it sounds like you guys are doing fine without me.”

  “Oh, you’ve GOT to be kidding me, Vincent.” Stupendous frowned. “We all went to Colossal Dome.”

  “Yeah, but it was my idea.”

  “Well, then, come on, think of another idea to fix it!” Stupendous’s eyes started to glow.

  “I can’t, I’m stuck in the middle of Corwin Towers with a million cops and security people around me.”

  Stupendous made an AARHGGLE sound and looked at the ceiling.

  “So you’re just quitting, huh?”

  “You’re the superhero! I’m just another scrawny geek in the galaxy’s worst superhero fan club.”

  “He’s gonna kill her tomorrow, right?”

  “Right.” She’s doomed. What can we do? What can I do?

  “Well, you better help me figure out what to do tonight.”

  Stupendous stood up and cracked his knuckles. I flopped backward on the bed.

  “So what, you’re gonna bust me out of here?” I said to the ceiling.

  With a jerk the ceiling got a lot closer to my face, then I saw the room whirl around me until I was staring over Stupendous’s shoulder at the bedroom door.

  “Yep, I’m gonna bust you out of here, fan boy. Hang on.”

  “WHOA, HEY, WHAT ARE YOU—”

  Stupendous carried me to the wall opposite the door, and even though I couldn’t see, the BAM sound and the spray of dust and chunks of plaster made it pretty obvious what he was doing.

  Stupendous was busting me out, by punching straight through the walls of the building.

  “Wait, why don’t we just walk out?” I shouted. I had to shout, because busting through a wall is louder than you might think. It’s not just the punching and the walls collapsing, it’s also the yelling and the doors slamming and the alarms going off. At least that’s what it was like in Corwin Towers.

  “You seriously think they’re gonna let me just take you to Professor Mayhem’s headquarters with me? Ha!” Stupendous shouted as he punched through another wall.

  “Hey, hey, wait a minute—me go to Mayhem’s headquarters? What are you talking abou—”

  I was distracted by the pack of security guys we stepped into the middle of after punching through the latest wall.

  “Captain Stupendous, cease and desist!” one of them yelled.

  “Piss off!” Stupendous yelled back.

  “I told him to stop but he wouldn’t listen!” I yelled. It just slipped out—it’d been a crazy day, you know? Stupendous looked back at me. I couldn’t actually see his face, but I could tell from the shape of his cheeks that he was grinning.

  “You are such a goody two-shoes,” he said. “No wonder Mrs. Burnell likes you so much, you’re a total teacher’s pet.”

  “I am not a teach—AAAACKK …” BAM! A torn strip of wallpaper smacked me in the face as Stupendous bashed his way out into that wide hallway with the windows, which I guess went all the way around the building. There were a bunch of people in work clothes walking around, and they stopped and dropped their papers and briefcases and stuff when we came through the wall.

  “Captain Stupendous!” a girl in a black shirt and skirt said, gawking at us. She smiled and smoothed out her hair as a bunch of security guys appeared around her.

  “Later, posers,” Stupendous said. He looked around and spotted a hideous metal statue of a man (or maybe it was a woman, it was hard to tell) with really long, thin arms and legs and a lumpy watermelon of a head. The statue was set on a big black pedestal with a velvet rope around it. Stupendous grabbed the statue, yanked it off the pedestal, and hoisted it like a javelin.

  “WAIT, ARE YOU GONNA THROW THAT?” I shouted. “NO, YOU’LL—”

  “Calm down, Vincent,” Stupendous said. His arm bunched up—I swear, his shoulder muscle alone was bigger than the entire top half of my body—and threw the statue.

  “MOVE, MOVE, MOVE!” I made hyperactive sweeping motions with my arms, which may have been a waste of time since Stupendous was facing the windows, which meant I was facing the hole we’d just made in the wall. “GET AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS!”

  KERRAAAAASH! I heard the window shatter, then BAZOOM, my head snapped back and my arms were flung out parallel to Stupendous’s body as we took off. I briefly saw a crowd of people staring out the bashed-open window of Corwin Towers, but we pulled away fast—the busted window, the whole side of the building, the whole tower, the downtown skyline, then we were in the night sky.

  “It got dark,” I said, feeling like a total space case. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, though, and I was distracted by my hair—the wind was blowing it around in all directions. It was like having a cloud of hair descend on my forehead.

  “Yeah,” Stupendous said. “By the way, the cops are still all over your house, so we’re going to MY house.”

  I had a crazy vision of flying into the rumored-to-be-amazing secret headquarters of Captain Stupendous, then I snapped back to my senses. Polly’s house. Would we make our rescue plans in Polly’s room? I’d never been in a girl’s room before, unless you count my cousin Jennifer.

  In the dark it was hard to tell what part of the city we were flying over, but after a few minutes I saw lit-up swimming pools and big, big houses. The pools were like shiny blue kidney beans, floating in the dark, and the houses were far apart. There were two rows of tiny lights leading up to each house—driveways, probably.

  We stopped over one of the biggest houses in the whole neighborhood—there was actually a garden on the roof. The kidney-shaped swimming pool looked like
a killer whale could comfortably live in it, and there was a little house to one side, probably for changing into swimsuits or something like that. We dropped fast into the yard.

  “Home sweet home—hang on a second,” Stupendous said. He ducked into the changing house, and I saw a quick flash of blue light from under the door. A second later Polly stepped out.

  “Listen, my parents are out of town, but our housekeeper, Annabelle, is here, so we have to be quiet when we go in, got it?” she said.

  “Sure.” I looked around the yard, which was filled with patio furniture and had a mammoth brick oven over by the actual house. A bunch of metal tables and chairs were spread out around it, and the lawn went on for miles. The yard by itself was probably bigger than the whole block I lived on.

  “So … you’re rich, huh?” I said as we snuck across the yard.

  “No, my parents are,” Polly said. “Keep it down, will you?”

  There was a set of big sliding glass doors right in the center of the house, but Polly went to a regular door around the corner, unlocked it, and eased it open. The house seemed even bigger on the inside—we tiptoed through a kitchen the size of an airport, with steel and polished rock surfaces everywhere, then up a flight of stairs that was wide enough for at least six people to walk side by side. At the foot of the stairs I heard a TV somewhere close by.

  “Hey, Annabelle,” Polly called in the direction of the TV, not bothering to stop moving. She did a come-on gesture with her hand, palm up and fingers flapping, as the not-visible Annabelle said, “hi, Polly” in a faint voice. We took the stairs to the second floor, then down a dark hallway.

  I guess my impression of girl bedrooms was based completely on my cousin Jennifer’s room, which is so pink and full of foofy ruffled blankets and rhinestones that you want to scream. Polly’s room? NOT foofy. The place was covered in concert posters for weirdo bands I’d never heard of—Lizard Brain, The Wire and the Fire, Mock Apple Pie—and a guitar covered with stickers was propped up in the far corner of the room. The walls were painted dark red, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d been painted black. There were no stuffed animals in sight. There was a really big set of closet doors, though, and after a few seconds one of them slid open and Max and George climbed out of it.

  “Dude, finally,” George said.

  “Yeah, we were wondering if you were ever gonna make it.” Max punched me on the shoulder—not too hard—and grinned at Polly. Which made no sense at all, since I was the one who’d been hauled off by the cops. “You have the craziest wardrobe, Polly. I’ve never seen so many puffy dresses in one place before.”

  “Blame my mom,” Polly said. “The only reason I don’t light ’em all on fire is because I know she’ll go ballistic.”

  “Want a muffin, Vincent?” George held up a half-full basket of them. “Lemon and poppy seed, they’re good.”

  I looked at Polly, who shrugged. “All we have in the kitchen is leftover Thai food and muffins. Annabelle makes them.”

  “Thanks.” I took two and bit the entire top off one. I held up a finger and chewed furiously, then swallowed. The lump of chewed muffin barely made it through.

  “Any new news about my mom?”

  “Nothing yet, but we’re keeping an eye on the news,” Max said. He pointed at Polly’s TV, which took up about three-quarters of the wall across from her bed. “Sorry, dude. We gotta get her back.”

  “No kidding, but how are we gonna do that, Max?” Suddenly I felt so, so, so tired. I sat on Polly’s bed, then flopped onto my back and stared at the ceiling.

  “Are you asking me?” Max pointed at his own chest, right at the spot where his T-shirt stretched between his pecs.

  “Yeah.”

  “Nobody ever asks me,” George mumbled.

  “What?” Polly squinted at George.

  “Nothing, nothing.”

  Polly’s room had the nicest ceiling fan I’d ever seen—the fan blades were light-colored wood with a cool, swirly pattern in the grain. Two chains hung down from it, one hanging lower than the other, and the little handles on the ends of them looked like they were made out of marble.

  “What happened to ‘oh Max, you’re too bossy’ and all that?” Max’s eyebrows were knotted together, but not in a mad way, more like a confused way.

  “Look where my ideas got us. Kidnapped, locked up, hiding in a girl’s closet … I probably shouldn’t be president of the club.”

  “Oh come on, Vincent, knock it off,” Polly said.

  “Seriously,” I said. “I’m done. Besides, Polly says you guys figured out where Mayhem is without me, right?”

  “Yeah, we did,” Max said slowly.

  “Well, spit it out,” I said.

  “Vincent,” George said, with a frown. “Why are—”

  “GEORGE,” Max said in his I’m-warning-you voice, but George cut him off.

  “No, I’m not gonna say something bad, just … dude, you’re our friend.”

  “Yeah, big deal,” I said.

  “Shut up, it IS a big deal!” George barked. “It SUCKED having you locked up, it was even worse than when Max joined the football team!”

  Max and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. A second later George joined in.

  “Worse than the football team!” I howled.

  “I don’t know, man, football was pretty bad,” Max said, hooting and snorting.

  There was a noise downstairs, and Polly furiously shushed us as she dashed over to the door.

  “Polly? You okay?” I could barely make out what Annabelle said from wherever she was. Polly opened the door far enough to stick her head out.

  “Fine! Sorry, I’ll turn down the volume!”

  She closed the door and gave us the stink eye.

  “You know, all this male bonding is awesome, but I’m not allowed to have boys up here, so you guys have to keep it down.”

  Max ignored Polly (for once) and grinned at George.

  “Vincent, did you see George trying to get past the police barricade when they took you away?” he said.

  I nodded. George’s face turned red.

  “Did you know George elbowed a cop in the face?”

  “Seriously?” I hoisted myself up on my elbows and stared at George with my mouth open. “You? George Loney, law enforcement fan boy, hitting a cop?”

  George lifted his chin and stuck his chest out a little.

  “It was an accident,” he said in a prissy voice, kind of like Vice Principal Castle.

  “It was fantastic,” Max said, with an ear-to-ear grin.

  “I missed it,” Polly said.

  “Well, yeah, you were too busy calling the cops every four-letter word in existence,” George said, with his own ear-to-ear grin.

  “Which was just as fantastic,” Max said.

  “Aw, you guys totally love me,” I said.

  “Oh gross, don’t make me elbow you in the face,” George said, but he was obviously trying not to keep smiling.

  Polly stuck a finger in her mouth and made gagging noises, but she was smiling a little bit too.

  “Why don’t you guys just sing ‘Kumbaya’ and tell Vincent where Mayhem is?” she said, crossing her arms.

  “Yeah, spill it,” I said.

  Max held up a long, brown, wet-looking feather, and when the smell hit me I figured it out too. It was totally obvious, in fact.

  “Where’s the stinkiest place you’ve ever been?” George said.

  “He’s at Lake Higgleman!”

  Everyone was totally exhausted, and after a couple of hours talking about what to do we all fell asleep on the floor of Polly’s room without really meaning to. A few hours later I woke up to the sound of somebody saying “psssssst!” in my ear.

  “Huh? Whuzzat?” I grunted. I opened my eyes to see Polly looking down at me, holding a finger in front of her mouth.

  “Wake up, Vincent, we need to get out there while it’s still dark. Don’t wake up Annabelle!” Polly stood up and poke
d Max in the side with her foot, not gently, then did the same to George.

  After a totally unsatisfying breakfast of stale muffins we headed out to the lake. We arrived before sunrise, where we learned that the only thing worse than being at Lake Higgleman during the day was being there when it was dark. It smelled just as bad, and you couldn’t see any of the goose turds. At least the geese weren’t swarming around, looking like they were about to attack you—they were out there in the dark somewhere, maybe just floating on the surface of the lake. I thought about Mom being held prisoner by a supervillain somewhere at the bottom of the lake, and had a quiet freak-out moment.

  “So, dude,” Max said in a low voice. “Are you …” We were at the very edge of the grass, about twenty feet from the edge of the water. Between the grass and the water was mud, mud, more mud, and a zillion cigar-shaped bird turds. We had flashlights, but there were no streetlights or anything out by the lake, so anything that wasn’t in the beam of our flashlights was totally black.

  “Not so much.”

  “I figured.”

  “I guess we should have come up with an actual rescue plan before coming out here, huh?”

  “It’s gotta be in the water, right?” George said. “It’d be too easy to find if it was out here on land.”

  “No doubt,” I said. “You’re just gonna have to look around, you know, in there.”

  I said that last part to Polly.

  “You mean under the water?” It was hard to see her face in the dark, but it looked like she made an eww face. “Ugh. This water’s gross enough to kill even a superhero.”

  “Why are you not in Captain Stupendous form?” George said. “Seriously, we’re practically on the front porch of a supervillain.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Polly said. “I’ll do it when I’m ready.”

  “Hang on, let’s just look around the edge of the lake for a little bit,” I said. “There might at least be some clue about WHERE in the water Mayhem’s headquarters is.”

  We walked slowly around the edge of the lake, shining our flashlights onto the muddy lakeshore. There were a lot of geese with their heads tucked under their wings, looking like dark, egg-shaped lumps in the mud, but no giant robot footprints or anything like that. There was a lot of bug noise, though—chirping, buzzing, whirring, it was like a freaking bug convention.