“Hey, watch where you’re walking!” he hollered.
“You watch where you’re driving!” Blue hollered back. He grabbed Tumble’s hand and tugged her out of the way. The driver threw a rude gesture out of the window as he sped away.
“What a jerk,” said Blue. “Are you all right?”
“It’s not his fault,” Tumble said numbly. “It’s me. I’m—”
“It’s his fault for being mean about it,” said Blue. “Most people would’ve stopped to make sure you were okay.”
Tumble was looking toward the old man with the flat tire.
Blue followed her gaze and saw that he was standing up with a smile on his face. Whatever the problem had been, he must have figured it out.
Tumble sighed. “We’ve just got to talk to Maximal, Blue,” she said. “Do you think . . . if we went up to the bus and explained things . . . would they let us in?”
Blue frowned at the Starlets in their silver uniforms. They seemed to be maintaining a perimeter around Maximal Star’s bus, but what if there wasn’t time for Tumble to ask her questions at the book signing?
“I guess we could try.”
“That’s right,” Tumble said. “Trying is the trick. I thought you hadn’t read that chapter.”
“Um,” said Blue, not wanting to disappoint her.
“We’ll try until we make things change,” she announced, confidence seeping back into her voice.
Watching her walk toward the bus, straight-backed with her chin up, Blue shook his head. He wished he believed in something half as much as Tumble did Maximal Star. He didn’t like their chances of getting in to see the man, but he figured he might as well do his part.
“Wait for me!” he called. “I’ll watch for traffic!”
THIRTY-SEVEN
STARLETS
Amy the Starlet was friendly, but Blue thought it would have taken a tank to move her away from the door to Maximal Star’s bus. She stood with her tall white boots spread shoulder-width apart and crossed her arms over her sparkly silver vest.
“Sorry, short stuff,” she said, “but Mr. Star doesn’t see fans until six o’clock, and it’s not six yet.”
“Not even Young Heroes?” Tumble asked desperately. She pulled her membership card out of her backpack and held it out to the Starlet.
Amy flipped the card over and squinted at it. “Oh, is this a kid’s club thing? That’s Lucy’s job. She’s over there.”
She pointed to a booth where a Starlet with dark red lipstick and an Afro was selling coffee mugs, protein powder, and star-shaped key chains.
“It’s not really a kid’s club,” Tumble said. “It’s for heroes in training.”
Amy the Starlet blinked so rapidly that the glitter on her eyelids dusted her cheeks.
“Come on,” said Blue, hoping to stave off an argument. “Maybe Lucy can help us.”
He tugged Tumble toward the booth. They had to wait in line behind a woman who was thinking about buying a Maximal Star Lantern. According to Lucy the Starlet, it was a flashlight “as bright as a shooting star.”
“I’m looking for one with a fire-starter built in,” the woman said.
“You could buy a Maximal Star Lighter, too,” Lucy suggested.
The woman left without buying either.
“Typical,” Lucy muttered.
Tumble cleared her throat, and the Starlet beamed at her. “Hi, there! You’re Maximally decked out, aren’t you? Is that your emergency backpack?”
Tumble’s eyes lit. “Yes!” she said. “You could tell even with the daisies?”
“Of course!” said Lucy, nodding so that her dangly earrings swung back and forth. “You look like someone who’s ever prepared for every eventuality.”
“Oh my gosh!” Tumble squealed. “That’s from Chapter Seven! I’m Tumble, and this is Blue.”
Blue waved.
Lucy pumped her fists in the air. “Wow, you guys have even got heroing names! I used to call myself the Stinger when I was your age.”
She made a lunging gesture, like she was holding an imaginary rapier. Then she frowned at Blue. “You don’t look the part, though. You definitely need a T-shirt. Or a coffee mug. Do you like mugs?”
Were there people, Blue wondered, who had strong feelings either way about mugs? “I didn’t bring any money.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Tumble said. “My mom gave me plenty for both of us. Pick something! Anything you want.”
Blue didn’t necessarily want any of it, but maybe buying something would put Lucy in a helpful mood. He scanned the objects, looking for one without a picture of Maximal’s bright white smile on it. “Maybe the flashlight?”
“Great! Because it gets dark in your attic,” said Tumble.
“Sure. Yeah.”
“Not a big fan yet, is he?” Lucy said to Tumble. “But I can tell you’re working hard on that.” She pulled a boxed flashlight out from underneath the table in front of her and tucked it into a plastic bag.
“I’m going to convince him,” Tumble agreed. “Or Mr. Star will convince him tonight at the talk. Do you think there will be time during the signing for us to ask him a question?”
“Well—”
“Right,” Tumble said, snapping her fingers. “Of course not! Because all of these people are here to get their books signed. So, if a Young Hero had a very important question for Mr. Star, wouldn’t it be better for her to see him before the show?”
Blue watched Lucy the Starlet’s face. There was a brief hitch in her smile. “He’s supposed to have a Q&A at the end of the talk. You’ll be able to ask your question then.”
“Um . . . but . . .” Tumble seemed a little flustered. “It’s kind of a private question?”
“I’m really sorry,” said Lucy, leaning over the table toward them. “We can’t let fans in to see Mr. Star early. We’re not allowed.”
“Maybe we could—”
“I’m afraid not.”
A line was forming behind them. Lucy handed Blue the bag that held the flashlight.
“Look,” she said quietly, reaching out to take the money from a wilted Tumble. “I can’t promise anything, but if you’ll sit in the front, I’ll try to sneak you backstage for a couple of minutes. We’ll tell him you’re a VIP. It’ll be . . .” She glanced toward the tour bus. “Fun. It’ll be fun.”
Tumble perked up in an instant. “Really?” She grabbed Blue’s arm. “Blue, did you hear that? I can’t even . . . wow! Thank you so much!”
“Sure,” said Lucy. “No problem.”
Blue thought she looked awfully uncomfortable for someone who didn’t have a problem, but Tumble didn’t seem to notice.
“Seventy-five cents is your change,” said Lucy the Starlet, holding three quarters out toward Tumble. “Stay heroic, you two.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
MAXIMAL STAR
There was no special seating for card-carrying members of the Young Heroes Fan Club, despite what the invitation had promised. But since Tumble and Blue were near the beginning of the line to enter the gymnasium, they managed to race to the front row ahead of the crowd.
Eve had said she’d find herself a place closer to the back since she didn’t feel like running for it, so it was just the two of them. They sat on the edge of their metal folding chairs, waiting for some sign from Lucy the Starlet that they were allowed to go backstage.
The gym was still set up for what Tumble assumed had been a graduation ceremony. They sat a few yards away from a stage covered in potted ferns and heavy green bunting. The roar of the air-conditioning system was soon drowned out by the chatter of the crowd, who took their places in the rows behind them and in the stands to either side.
To the left of the stage, a Starlet was standing guard in front of a door. She kept trying to discreetly adjust one of her boo
ts, never noticing how Tumble stared at her, willing her to wave them over or wink at them or do anything other than fiddle with the boot’s zipper.
Would Maximal be carrying his own emergency backpack? she wondered. Or would one of the Starlets be in charge of carrying it for him since he was going to be busy speaking? Did he keep diaper pins on him all the time, like she did, and would he be willing to show Blue how useful they were?
She glanced at the time on her phone again. 5:55.
“Come on,” she muttered. “Come on, come on.”
“I bet Granny Eve wouldn’t mind staying after the signing,” Blue said. “She doesn’t want to be around the house with all of the Grand Revue preparations going on anyway.”
“I like your grandma,” said Tumble, her eyes still fixed on the Starlet guarding the door. “I don’t want her to be cursed. I don’t want you to be cursed. I don’t want an alligator to eat Howard. If Maximal can just give me a little advice, I know we can find a way to fix everything.”
With two minutes to go before Maximal was supposed to appear, Tumble crashed her elbow into Blue’s shoulder so hard that he swayed into the man sitting beside him.
“Sorry,” he said hastily. “Tumble, what—”
“Lucy,” she hissed, already halfway out of her chair.
The Starlet had poked her head out of the backstage door, and she was looking right at the two of them.
■ ■ ■
“Oh my gosh,” Tumble said breathlessly as they followed the clunk-clunk sound of Lucy’s boots down a hallway that smelled like fresh paint. “Oh my gosh. We’re going to meet him. We really are.”
Her eyes were so round Blue thought a surprise might make them roll right out of her head, and she was clutching her pink daisy backpack to her chest like it was the only solid thing in the world.
“I’m taking you to the green room,” said Lucy. She cracked the piece of chewing gum in her mouth. “We’re running a little late, but he should be there by now. You can ask him your question. Just be quick about it, okay?”
“Of course!” Tumble said. “I’ll be so quick. Thank you so much.”
“No problem.” Lucy stopped in front of a classroom door. “We’ve got cookies and stuff. You can fix a plate if you want. Nobody will mind.”
“Blue,” Tumble breathed, “we’re going to eat cookies with Maximal Star.”
Blue watched her walk into the room, so light on her feet that she seemed to be in danger of drifting away. He followed her inside and was disappointed to find that the “green room” was not green. It was just a classroom that had been turned into a staging area for Maximal and the Starlets. The teacher’s desk had been filled with trays of cookies and energy bars and pitchers of ice water. The Starlets milled around chatting with other adults who Blue guessed were community representatives.
“He should be . . .” said Lucy, scanning the faces in the room. “Hang on, you two. Let me see if I can find out where he’s gone.”
She trotted over toward a Starlet who had on gold boots instead of white. Blue assumed she was the boss.
Tumble was still lost in her happy daze.
“Do you want food?” Blue asked.
“Do you think . . . would he mind if we took a picture with him?” she said.
“I think we should stay on track and ask him our questions first.”
“Right. Of course. I wish my parents had come. If they could just meet him face-to-face . . .”
Lucy was on her way back to them already, and she was holding two star-shaped VIP badges that dangled from rhinestone-studded lanyards.
“So, we’re definitely behind schedule,” she said with an embarrassed laugh. “He’s still on the bus. But I found these for you guys!”
Tumble had the lanyard around her neck almost before it was out of Lucy’s hand. The VIP star hung right over the center of her chest and flashed in the classroom’s fluorescent lighting.
“M’kay,” said Lucy. “Why don’t you have a seat and wait? I’m going to go get our promotional video playing for the people in the audience. I’ll be right back.”
Tumble and Blue sat at desks in the front corner of the room, so that they would know the second Maximal Star entered. They waited.
And waited.
None of the Starlets or the other grown-ups seemed to care that they were there. Blue looked around. The Starlets also didn’t seem worried that Maximal hadn’t made an appearance yet. “What do you think’s taking so long?” he asked Tumble.
She was staring at the door as if she could make her hero walk through it just by willing it to happen.
“Probably it’s just an emergency,” she said, as if emergencies were things that happened all the time. “Someone passed out from the heat, or he had a call from a person in crisis.”
Fifteen minutes later, Blue was starting to think she was right. Tumble was too hyped up and distracted to make good conversation, so he’d been picking at the rhinestones on his lanyard. Whatever had been used to glue them in place was strong, but he’d managed to pry a few off before he noticed the boss Starlet watching him.
He was just wondering how annoyed his grandmother was getting, sitting in the gym waiting for Maximal to show up, when the door swung open and a scruffy-looking man slouched into the room. Even though he had the familiar spray-on orange tan and swishy haircut from his book cover, Blue wouldn’t have recognized him if the Starlets hadn’t all burst into action.
“You’re not in your uniform!”
“Where’s the mic? Did somebody fix it?”
“He can’t go on like that. Not again.”
“Coffee,” Maximal Star grunted.
He looked like someone who’d just woken up and put on the first clothes he found. His faded shirt was stretched over his stomach, and his gray sweatpants belonged at a rummage sale, not on someone who was about to go speak to an audience full of fans.
“Coffee!” Maximal bellowed when the Starlets kept flitting around him like a swarm of flustered bees.
They scattered in every direction, except for the boss Starlet in her gold boots. She was trying to clip a small microphone to the neck of his shirt. She leaned forward to whisper in his ear, and he turned his bloodshot eyes toward Tumble and Blue.
■ ■ ■
It was him. Really him. Sort of. Tumble hovered halfway out of her desk.
“Maybe he was up all night saving people,” Blue whispered encouragingly.
“Right,” she said. “He probably was.”
Of course he was, she told herself. This was Maximal Star, after all, and if he looked a little rougher and more bad-tempered than she had imagined, it was only because he had been working himself too hard.
She took a deep breath, picked up her backpack and walked toward him. She could feel Blue a step behind her, and she was grateful to have him guarding her back as most of the people in the room focused on them.
Shoulders back, head up—a heroic first impression. She was going to do this right.
“Mr. Star,” she said in her clearest voice, “my name’s Tumble Wilson, and I’m ready for any situation no matter how rough-and-tumble it gets.”
The Starlet in the gold boots smiled and made an awww sound, but Tumble didn’t let it ruin the moment. She could and would keep her head in any situation.
“I’ve read your book all the way through at least fourteen times,” said Tumble, “and I’m trying hard to follow the tenets of heroism. But I’ve got a big problem.”
Maximal Star blinked at her. “Well,” he said, and Tumble was relieved that he had the same deep, slow voice in real life that he did on his commercials. “Well, we can’t have that. Tell me the problem, and we’ll see what we can do about it.”
Tumble wished other people weren’t watching. If it were just her and Blue and Maximal, she could’ve explained how thing
s really were, but she didn’t want to talk about curses in front of everyone else.
“It’s like this,” she said, refusing to sound nervous. “Every time I try to save someone, I end up getting myself into more trouble than the person I’m trying to help. And then someone else has to come along and save me. It’s almost like . . . like I’m jinxed or something.”
Maximal yawned and scratched the back of his neck. “Are you prepared with all of the proper precautions?”
“Absolutely,” said Tumble. “And I try to preemptively plan for problems. But everything still goes wrong. Do you . . . do you think anyone can be a hero? Even if they’re up against something really tough?”
Maximal looked around the room. Everyone was waiting to hear what he said.
He flashed his white, white teeth and threw his arms out dramatically. “Of course anyone can be a hero!” he announced. “That’s what the whole book is about.”
“But if I always get into trouble—”
“Just stick to the tenets, and maybe try to start smaller. Little things are the way to go,” Maximal said.
The Starlet who had refused to let them on the bus earlier approached with a cup of iced coffee; he snatched it from her and took a big sip from the straw. “See?” he said. “Amy here is my hero for fetching me this latte.”
Several people laughed.
Tumble frowned. “I’m not talking about coffee,” she said. “What if I need to do something bigger? What about all the people who need real help? What am I supposed to do about them?”
For the first time, Blue spoke up. “We’re serious, sir,” he said. “How is someone supposed to be a hero if they always end up in danger?”
“You two are cute,” said Maximal. “Nobody expects a couple of kids to save the day. Leave that to the grown-ups.”
Tumble’s backpack slipped off of her shoulder and onto the floor. She didn’t even try to catch it. “But in How to Hero Every Day you say—”
“Listen, I’m supposed to be onstage in a minute—”
Tumble & Blue Page 16